Conditional Persistence of Earnings Components and Accounting Anomalies

We suggest that the failure of investors to distinguish between an earnings component's autocorrelation coefficient (unconditional persistence) and the marginal contribution of that component's persistence to the persistence of earnings (conditional persistence) provides a partial explanation of post‐earnings‐announcement drift, post‐revenue‐announcement drift, and the accrual anomaly. When the conditional persistence of revenue surprises is high (low) relative to its unconditional persistence, both the post‐earnings‐announcement drift and the post‐revenue‐announcement drift are high (low), because investors’ under‐reaction to revenues and earnings is stronger when the persistence of revenue surprises is more strongly associated with the persistence of earnings surprises. Also, the mispricing of accruals decreases substantially when the conditional persistence of accruals is high relative to its unconditional persistence, because investors’ over‐reaction to accruals is mitigated when the persistence of accruals is indeed more strongly associated with the persistence of earnings. Our findings also suggest that financial analysts’ failure to distinguish between unconditional and conditional persistence of revenues and accruals results in more biased revenue and earnings predictions.     

沃尔泽的复合平等之梦与中国的收入分配改革

人类对物质消费的本能及其本身所具有的差异以及物品的社会意义的多样性与抽象性导致简单平等的美梦难以变成现实。复合平等是优越于简单平等的另一种平等梦想。实现复合平等的关键在于自主分配，而确保自主分配的前提是承认差别和捍卫边界。垄断与支配是两个不同的概念，实现复合平等需要消除支配但不需要消除垄断。沃尔泽的复合平等理论对当前中国推进收入分配制度改革具有重要启示，有助于“中国梦”的早日实现。     

Don't call us,we'll call you: Considering cognitive and physical effort in designing effective response systems to manage extended in-process wait

People must often wait for days or weeks to receive test results, price quotes, products, etc. Service providers may manage user experience during such in-process waits using notification systems that inform users when a response is available or inquiry systems that require users to inquire about response availability, thereby imposing prospective memory requirements on users. Based on the prospective memory and wait time literature, we make predictions regarding how response system (notification vs. inquiry) moderates the effects of waits that are shorter or longer than the provider promised on user evaluation of the wait. We find that users of a notification system evaluate a wait more positively and are less sensitive to deviations of actual from promised wait time than are users of an inquiry system. This advantage was more pronounced for a wait that was longer (vs. shorter) than promised. These effects of system and expectation on evaluation were fully mediated by their impact on the cognitive and physical effort of navigating the system. Finally, a week after having experienced a wait, users of an inquiry system who had waited longer (vs. shorter) than promised cooperated less on a follow-up task, highlighting another downside of using an inquiry system.     

论湛江新农村建设中面临的主要问题及对策

本文分析了湛江市新农村建设的现状及存在的主要问题,根据湛江农村的实际,从筹资渠道、人才建设、农民组织化程度和现代农业的发展等方面提出了新的思路和对策,具有一定的借鉴意义。     

理性选择理论：优势、局限性与可能出路

理性选择理论在政治学领域占有极其重要的地位。它建立在“经济人”假设基础之上,视社会个体为惟一真实的研究对象和分析单位,将政治行为等同于经济学意义上交换活动,这三者一并构成了理性选择理论形式优美、逻辑严谨的方法论体系———方法论个体主义、“经济人”假设和经济学交换范式。然而,理性选择理论的优势与成功却遮掩不了其方法论自身的局限性———方法论个体主义孤立地将个人作为基本分析单位,忽视了社会结构、社会规范与意识形态对个体的影响与形构;“经济人”假设将政治参与者的属性简单地给予预设,不能看清楚“政治人”的全面属性;经济学交换范式将政治活动简单地类比为经济交换活动,忽视了政治活动的复杂性。理性选择理论若要更有效地解释政治现象和研究政治问题,需要正视和克服局限,对方法论个体主义、“经济人”假设和经济学交换范式作出修正与改进。     

Exclusive Licensing in a Sequence of Innovations

In this paper, I examine the issues involved with sequential licensing of innovations. In particular, a model is developed in which the granting of an exclusive license has the potential to distort future industrial structure. Subsequent licensing negotiations are then affected by the initial exclusivity, giving the initial licensee more leverage in bidding. This dynamic effect gives firms strategic incentives to take exclusive licenses, even when, in a one-shot market, such licenses would not be optimal. Appropriate antitrust rules in the context of sequential innovations are then discussed.     

Hepatitis B does not explain male-biased sex ratios in China

Oster (2005) argued that parents with Hepatitis B (HBV) have more sons, which explained Asia's “missing women”. Lin and Luoh (2008) show no relationship between gender and mother's HBV. We test for a relationship between paternal HBV and son share and find none.     

Social Network Analysis — Erkenntnisse für die Markenpositionierung im Web

Die zunehmende Verbreitung neuer technologischer Infrastrukturen erm?glicht neue Einblicke in das Konsumentenverhalten. Das Internet f?rdert die aktive Teilnahme des Konsumenten an wirtschaftlichen Prozessen und dokumentiert seine Interaktionen mit Anbietern und anderen Nachfragern. Eine Methode zur Gewinnung systematischer Einblicke in dieses Beziehungsnetzwerk ist die Social Network Analysis (SNA). Die relativ junge Methode kann traditionelle Marktforschungsmethoden bereits erg?nzen, wie empirische Fallbeispiele zeigen.     

Private Equity and Portfolio Companies: Lessons from the Global Financial Crisis

Critics of private equity have warned that the high leverage often used in PE‐backed companies could contribute to the fragility of the financial system during economic crises. The proliferation of poorly structured transactions during booms could increase the vulnerability of the economy to downturns. The alternative hypothesis is that PE, with its operating capabilities, expertise in financial restructuring, and massive capital raised but not invested (“dry powder”), could increase the resilience of PE‐backed companies. In their study of PE‐backed buyouts in the U.K.—which requires and thereby makes accessible more information about private companies than, say, in the U.S.—the authors report finding that, during the 2008 global financial crisis, PE‐backed companies decreased their overall investments significantly less than comparable, non‐PE firms. Moreover, such PE‐backed firms also experienced greater equity and debt inflows, higher asset growth, and increased market share. These effects were especially notable among smaller, riskier PE‐backed firms with less access to capital, and also for those firms backed by PE firms with more dry powder at the crisis onset. In a survey of the partners and staff of some 750 PE firms, the authors also present compelling evidence that PEs firms play active financial and operating roles in preserving or restoring the profitability and value of their portfolio companies.     

Do firms underreport information on cyber-attacks? Evidence from capital markets

Firms should disclose information on material cyber-attacks. However, because managers have incentives to withhold negative information, and investors cannot discover most cyber-attacks independently, firms may underreport them. Using data on cyber-attacks that firms voluntarily disclosed, and those that were withheld and later discovered by sources outside the firm, we estimate the extent to which firms withhold information on cyber-attacks. We find withheld cyber-attacks are associated with a decline of approximately 3.6% in equity values in the month the attack is discovered, and disclosed attacks with a substantially lower decline of 0.7%. The evidence is consistent with managers not disclosing negative information below a certain threshold and withholding information on the more severe attacks. Using the market reactions to withheld and disclosed attacks, we estimate that managers disclose information on cyber-attacks when investors already suspect a high likelihood (40%) of an attack.