Timing the investment grade securities market: Evidence from high quality bond funds

We examine the ability of bond fund managers to shift assets between bonds and cash and across bonds of different maturities in order to capture the changes in their relative returns. As measured by estimated changes in portfolio allocations, we find strong evidence of perverse market timing ability between cash and investment grade securities, and our results indicate additional perverse timing across the bond maturity spectrum. Results are robust to an alternative performance metric. We present evidence that the survival of the majority of these funds despite their negative performance may reflect the value investors place on the portfolio diversification benefits of holding these funds.     

Sticks and Stones may Break Your Bones, but Words can Break Your Spirit: Bullying in the Workplace

Workplace bullying has a well-established body of research internationally, but the United States has lagged behind the rest of the world in the identification and investigation of this phenomenon. This paper presents a managerial perspective on bullying in organizations. The lack of attention to the concept of workplace dignity in American organizational structures has supported and even encouraged both casual and more severe forms of harassment that our workplace laws do not currently cover. The demoralization victims suffer can create toxic working environments and impair organizational productivity. Some methods of protecting your organization from this blight of bullying are proposed. Bullying has always been part of the human condition; history is rife with references to abuse of power and unnecessary or excessive force. The classic bully story is of Joseph and his brothers, a tale of envy and hostility. The refinement of bullying to include various forms of legally defined social harassment is a relatively late phenomenon, however, dating to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In the United States, bullying is not illegal, whereas it is illegal in many other countries. Bullying is not about benign teasing, nor does it include the off-color jokes, racial slurs, or unwelcome advances that are the hallmarks of legally defined harassment. Workplace bullying is the pattern of destructive and generally deliberate demeaning of co-workers or subordinates that reminds us of the activities of the schoolyard bully. Unlike the schoolyard bully, however, the workplace bully is an adult, usually (but not always) aware of the impact of his or her behavior on others. Bullying in the workplace, often tacitly accepted by the organizational leadership, can create an environment of psychological threat that diminishes corporate productivity and inhibits individual and group commitment. The two examples that follow will help to clarify the difference between harassment and bullying.     

Risk assessment of BSE infectivity in the environment from rendering of over thirty month scheme cattle

One of the measures put in place by the UK government following the emergence of new variant CJD and the likely link to BSE in cattle was the exclusion of older cattle from food for human consumption, the so called Over Thirty Month Scheme. Cattle slaughteredunder this scheme are rendered to produce Meat and Bone Meal and tallow for subsequent disposal. Concern was expressed about the liquid waste effluent from one rendering plant, which was being discharged to a soakaway over an aquifer used for public drinking water supply. This risk assessment was carried out for the UK Environment Agency to assess whether the public drinking water supply was safe, and to evaluate alternative options. The study considered both normal effluent and accidental spills, and evaluated the various barriers that affect the amount of infectivity getting into the drinking water supply. The study was able to demonstrate that the risks to people drinking the water are extremely low, and thus provide a useful input to decision making even with the high levels of uncertainty about many of the input parameters.     

Technology transfer from government laboratories to industrial markets

The first purpose of this article is to explore the interface between Marketing and R&D. The intent is to illustrate the nature of the relationship that must be developed and maintained to assure the successful transfer of technology from Federal laboratories to the civilian and commercial sectors of the nation. The second purpose of this article is to explore how government participation affects the R&D—Marketing interface and other dimensions of the innovation process.     

The effect of additional guidance on fair value measurement and disclosure in illiquid or inactive markets

This paper examines fair value accounting – specifically, the application of FASB FSP 157-4 in the US. Data is analyzed from financial firms before and after FSP 157-4 was implemented to examine how this standard changed fair valuations and disclosures. We consider whether managers took advantage of the flexibility in the new standard by classifying their assets at level 3. We find that there is no significant change in the amount of assets that are transferred into level 3 after FSP 157-4 as compared to before. We also find a significant increase in the extent of disclosures as measured by word count. Fair value disclosures increased by an average of 52%. After further partitioning the sample based on size, we find that both main results hold for small and big firms in our additional sample. There is no evidence managers used the flexibility of the new standard to classify more financial assets at level 3; however, managers responded to the new standard with a significantly longer disclosure.     

A comparison of corporate versus government bond funds

We examine four separate classifications (high quality corporate, general corporate, government Treasury, and general government) of investment grade bond funds over the 1994–2009 period. We verify that distinct differences exist in investment styles across the classifications. We also document significant differences in performance as corporate funds outperform government funds by a risk adjusted average of 8 to 53 basis points on an annual basis depending on the model used. The performance differences are not strictly a function of expenses and are robust to alternative evaluation metrics. An examination of cash flows to the funds indicates that investment dollars are driven by the differences in risk adjusted performance.     

Development and validation of the active empathetic listening scale

This article presents a scale to measure active empathetic listening (AEL) of salespeople. AEL is defined as a form of listening practiced by salespeople in which traditional active listening is combined with empathy to achieve a higher form of listening. The AEL scale is composed of three dimensions: sensing, processing, and responding. Itemgeneration procedures and the results of three empirical studies are presented. Study 1 establishes that the item set is suitable for differentiating between effective and ineffective listeners from the point of view of customers. Study 2 determines that the item set is suitable for use by self‐report of salespeople, establishes that it conforms to the three theoretical dimensions, and that it possesses convergent validity. Study 3 further refines the item set, confirms the dimensionality of the scale, and establishes that the scale possesses construct validity in the form of discriminant and nomological validity. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Tax‐Time Savings among Low‐Income Households in the $aveNYC Program

This article explores savings outcomes for participants in the $aveNYC tax‐time matched savings program compared with a group of New York City tax filers who were not offered the program. $aveNYC was administered at Volunteer Income Tax Assistance sites during the 2008–2010 tax seasons. The program offered taxpayers the opportunity to open a savings account with their tax refund and receive a 50% match on their initial deposit. The study's primary outcome is savings held by respondents 6–11 months after receipt of matching funds. We compare participants in the 2009 program cohort to a comparison group on the following outcomes: level of savings, having nonzero savings, and having enough savings to cover one or two months of expenses at current consumption levels. We find significant differences on savings levels, the presence of any savings, and the likelihood of having savings to meet one month's expenses.