Bouncing Back from Extreme Weather Events: Some Preliminary Findings on Resilience Barriers Facing Small and Medium‐Sized Enterprises

Extreme weather events (EWEs) pose unprecedented threats to modern societies and represent a much‐debated issue strongly interlinked with current development policies. Small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), which constitute a driving force of economic growth, employment and total value added, remain highly vulnerable to and ill prepared for such environmental perturbations. This study investigates barriers to SMEs’ resilience to EWEs in an attempt to shed light on enabling factors that can define effective organizational responses to non‐linear environmental stimuli. Relying on structural equation modeling and data gathered from 109 SMEs that recently experienced EWE impacts, we link the general concept of SMEs’ resilience barriers to EWEs with a series of elements to determine specific internal and external factors that contribute the most to EWE resilience. In particular, external barriers of institutional conditions and mechanisms of support and guidance as well as internal barriers of resources and managerial perceptions are found to be the most critical ones in determining resilience. The assessment offers essential research evidence for practitioners on SME management and sets forth linkages with current mechanisms for policy interventions towards an appropriate resilience agenda for SMEs. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Asymmetric information consolidation and price discovery: Inferring bad news from insider sales

Due to the paucity of sources of negative firm‐specific information, US capital markets have more difficulty identifying and incorporating bad news into stock prices than they do good news. Even though insider selling is a potentially important proxy for undisclosed bad news, researchers have difficulty ex ante identifying information‐based sales due to an inability to separate liquidity‐motivated from information‐based insider trades. We hypothesize that when insiders in multiple firms sell shares of one firm in which they are insiders and at the same time buy shares of other insider portfolio firms, the sale is more likely to be information‐based, since the proceeds are reinvested. Conversely, when an insider sells one firm without purchasing others or sells multiple insider firms the sale is likely liquidity‐motivated. We find that insider sales identified as information‐based using this algorithm are followed by significant negative abnormal returns. Information‐based sales are also more likely to be associated with delistings, earnings declines and earnings restatements. Analysts are also more likely to revise their earnings forecasts downwards for these firms. It is thus possible to ex ante identify insider sales with information content. Our results will be of interest to investors and also to regulators designing insider trading rules.     

A conceptual model and research agenda for bidding,planning and delivering Major sport events that lever human rights

In this conceptual article, the authors propose a framework for how progressive human rights outcomes may be obtained in the context of bidding, planning and implementing major sport events (MSEs) through the implementation of four pathways, including good governance, the democratic participation of stakeholders, the formalisation of human rights agendas and the deployment of sensitive urban development. The authors argue that there is a need for adherence to internationally recognised standards, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights if rhetorical statements from MSE awarding bodies and host organisers are to be accountable to a wider set of actors. If researchers and practitioners want to address some of the critical issues related to human rights and MSEs, it is imperative that key actors working in the rights sphere are involved in shaping the research agenda and monitoring its implementation. Academics need to take a proactive approach aimed at achieving both theoretically grounded and practically relevant solutions, with engagement occurring over an extended period of time. This approach, avowedly political and concerned with genuine action, is a key way in which MSE stakeholders can be held to account for their actions in regard to human rights.     

Collusion and group lending with adverse selection

In an environment with correlated returns, this paper characterizes optimal lending contracts when the bank faces adverse selection and borrowers have limited liability. Group lending contracts are shown to be dominated by revelation mechanisms which do not use the ex post observability of the partners' performances. However, when collusion between borrowers under complete information is allowed, group lending contracts are optimal in the class of simple revelation mechanisms (which elicit only the borrower's own private information) and remain useful with extended revelation mechanisms.     

IDEF3方法在集装箱码头仿真中的应用

针对Witness仿真过程中经常出现的问题，提出了一种优化仿真设计的建模方法，井结合集装箱码头物流的实际情况进行了说明。建立了集装箱入港物流的模型框架，达到了码头仿真单元的可重构性，大大提高了仿真的速度，并有效地避免了仿真过程中一些难以发现的问题。     

Characterization of a class of moral-hazard, adverse selection games

Studying a principal-agent game in which the agent alone observes the state of the world and reports it, but the moral hazard is not reducible, shows that, if the principal uses all signals, then no solution exists, i.e. there is no contract that elicits truth-telling and motivates the agent to exert effort. When the principal does not use signals on the state of the world that seem irrelevant, a solution exists in which some of the ex post signals on outcome are not used, even though they obey the informativeness condition of Holmstrom (Bell Journal of Economics, 1979, 10, 74–91).     

公司发行可转换债券融资的动机分析

公司使用可转换债券筹集外部资金既是作为普通债券的替代,增加转换特性来降低利息率从而保持现金流量,也是转换条款建立“延迟股权”,通过转换,以高于现行股票的价格出售。本文研究发现,公司发行可转换债券是为了减少由于股东和管理者以及股东和债权人之间冲突所引起的代理成本;为了降低由发行普通债券带来的高额预期财务危机成本和普通股发行中经常出现的严重负面公告效应;以及在投资者和管理者对公司面临的风险认识不同时,使其价值不易受公司风险变化的影响。     

The politics of redistributive social insurance

This paper analyses the political support for a social insurance that includes elements of redistribution when there exists an imperfect private insurance alternative. Individuals differ both in their income and risk. The social insurance is compulsory and charges an income-related contribution with pooling of risks. The private insurance is voluntary and charges a contribution based on individual risks. However due to the adverse selection problem, private insurance companies provide only partial insurance. Adopting a non-expected utility model, we show that there is a general majority support for social insurance and that this support is increasing with risk aversion. We also show that a mixed insurance is politically impossible, regardless of the degree of redistribution of social insurance and the joint distribution of risk and income in the population. Lastly, we analyse how the political support for social insurance is affected by any change in its redistributive component and the possibility of using genetic tests.     

论会计事项的认定与会计确认

符合确认标准的会计事项是会计确认的对象,会计确认是会计事项进入财务会计系统的第一道关口,两者关系十分密切,本文对会计事项作了科学界定,并针对不同事项的认定说明其对会计确认对象、观点和时间的影响,为科学合理地确认会计事项提供了理论指导。     

The Delphi method, impeachment and terrorism: Accuracies of short-range forecasts for volatile world events

Two experiments examined the effects of iterated polling and feedback on prediction accuracy for volatile world events using the Delphi paradigm. In both experiments, participants predicted rapidly changing geopolitical events. The first experiment occurred during the litigation surrounding the Clinton/Lewinsky affair in 1998. Results indicated that feedback improved individual and group accuracy for predictions of whether an event would occur. These types of predictions derived from group consensus were approximately 90% accurate, which was significantly higher than the average individual participant's accuracy. Neither polling nor feedback had much effect on time course predictions. The second experiment occurred during the American military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. In Experiment 2, participants were polled three times to determine if increasing the number of iterated polls would improve Delphi accuracy. The results showed that accuracy improved from the first to the second poll but not from the second to the third. The groups predicted whether these scenarios would occur with approximately 75% accuracy, which was significantly higher than the accuracy of any individual participant. Once again, the Delphi procedure did not enhance time course predictions in Experiment 2.