Art as an investment: Short and long-term comovements in major painting markets

This paper examines the short and long-term price linkages among major art and equity markets over the period 1976–2001. The art markets examined are Contemporary Masters, French Impressionists, Modern European, 19^th Century European, Old Masters, Surrealists, 20^th Century English and Modern US paintings. A global equity index (with dividends and capitalisation changes) is also included. Multivariate cointegration procedures, Granger non-causality tests, level VAR and generalised variance decomposition analyses based on error-correction and vector autoregressive models are conducted to analyse short and long-run relationships among these markets. The results indicate that there is a stationary long-run relationship and significant short and long run causal linkages between the various painting markets and between the equity market and painting markets. However, in terms of the percentage of variance explained most painting markets are relatively isolated, and other painting markets are generally more important than the equity market in explaining the variance that is not caused by innovations in the market itself. This suggests that opportunities for portfolio diversification in art works alone and in conjunction with equity markets exist, though in common with the literature in this area the study finds that the returns on paintings are much lower and the risks much higher than in conventional financial markets.The authors would like to thank delegates to the 14th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, University of New South Wales, seminar participants at the Queensland University of Technology and Massey University, Masaki Katsuura, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper. The financial assistance of a Queensland University of Technology, Faculty of Business Research Initiative Grant is also gratefully acknowledged.     

Managerial risk-taking incentives and the systemic risk of financial institutions

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This paper examines whether the systemic risk of financial institutions is associated with the risk-taking incentives generated by executive...     

Information technology developments of logistics service providers in Hungary

The objective of this research is to examine the role of sector-specific information technology (IT) developments and their significance in terms of the revenue and earnings before tax of Logistics Service Providers (LSPs), as well as the impact of these developments on the flexibility and integration of LSPs. A survey questionnaire was conducted with 284 LSPs participants. The data provided by the 51 responding enterprises provided a representative sample for the analysis of the sample population and the drawing of general and relevant conclusions related to basic population. It can be concluded that their revenue, earnings before tax and degree of integration into the supply chain depend on the sector-specific IT developments carried out by the given enterprise. IT investments will remain important in the future and the introduction and leveraging the best technologies may yield competitive advantages and higher financial rewards for LSPs.     

Production functions and productivity of family firms: Evidence from the S&P 500

This paper examines whether the higher profitability and valuation of family firms is related to differences in production technologies and production efficiency. Using data on S&P 500 manufacturing firms, we find that family firms are more productive than comparable non-family firms. Furthermore, our results show that the production technologies of family and non-family firms do not differ per se, thereby suggesting that the differences in the level of production output are caused by higher production efficiency of family firms. These findings indicate that the superior performance of family firms is related to their more efficient use of labor and capital resources.     

Vom Kundenvorteil über die Value Proposition zum KKV

Im Marketing wird eine Reihe von theoretischen Konstrukten diskutiert, die die Interpretation des Marketings als Konzept der marktorientierten Unternehmensführung operationalisieren soll. Nettonutzenvorteil, Kundenvorteil, Komparativer Konkurrenzvorteil (KKV) oder Unique Selling Proposition (USP) sind Beispiele für solche Konstrukte. In neuerer Zeit hat der Value-Ansatz ein neues Konstrukt hervorgebracht: die Value Proposition. Der Beitrag diskutiert, in welchem Zusammenhang das Konstrukt der Value Proposition zu den oben genannten Konstrukten steht. Dabei wird deutlich, dass die Value Proposition vor allem die monet?re Bewertung von Kundenvorteilen herausstellt.     

消费者权益保护的契约分析--从消费契约不完全性视角的研究

市场经济就是一种契约经济，消费者和生产经营者者之间的交易关系本质上就是一种契约关系，消费者权益也都是通过消费契约来界定的．但消费契约又是不完全的，通过消费契约对消费者权利的界定也就不可能是完全的。对于契约（明确的和默认的契约）已经界定的权利来说，消费者权益保护的中心就是契约的有效履行问题；对于契约没有界定的权利来说，消费者权益保护问题的关键就是剩余权利公正合理地配置问题。     

Trotz HIV-Infektion ein relativ normales Leben führen

Zusammenfassung  Moderne Therapiem?glichkeiten — Wohl kaum ein Gebiet der Medizin hat eine vergleichbar rasantere Entwicklung erlebt als die Erforschung von HIV und der antiretroviralen Therapie. Die Suche nach einem Impfstoff gegen den HI-Virus blieb allerdings erfolglos. Der einzige Schutz ist noch immer die Pr?vention. Denn auch wenn eine HIV-Infektion heute zu einer chronischen Krankheit geworden ist, endet sie noch immer mit einem vorzeitigen Tod.