The impacts of autonomous vehicles, coupled with greater inter-vehicle and system connectivity, may be far-reaching on several levels. They entail changes to (1) the demand and behavior side, (2) the ...supply of mobility services, and (3) network and facility operational performance. We focus here on their impact on traffic flow and operations, especially in mixed traffic situations in which autonomous vehicles share the road with regular, human-driven vehicles, along with connected vehicles that may also have some automated functions. These mixed traffic situations correspond to likely deployment scenarios of the technologies, especially in the long transition towards 100% deployment. We explain using elementary traffic science concepts how autonomous vehicles and connected vehicles are expected to increase the throughput of highway facilities, as well as improve the stability of the traffic stream. A microsimulation framework featuring varying behavioral mechanisms for the three classes of vehicles is introduced. The framework is used to examine the throughput and stability questions through a series of experiments under varying market penetration rates of autonomous and/or connected vehicles; at low market shares, the impacts are relatively minor on either throughput or stability. However, as market shares increase, autonomous vehicles exert a greater influence on both dimensions compared to the same shares of connected vehicles. Applications of the framework to examine the effectiveness of selected traffic management approaches are discussed, including dedicated lanes for autonomous vehicles (good only if its use is optional and when the market share of autonomous vehicles is greater than the percentage of nominal capacity represented by that lane), and speed harmonization.
Abstract
We adapt simple tools from computational linguistics to construct a new measure of political risk faced by individual U.S. firms: the share of their quarterly earnings conference calls that ...they devote to political risks. We validate our measure by showing that it correctly identifies calls containing extensive conversations on risks that are political in nature, that it varies intuitively over time and across sectors, and that it correlates with the firm’s actions and stock market volatility in a manner that is highly indicative of political risk. Firms exposed to political risk retrench hiring and investment and actively lobby and donate to politicians. These results continue to hold after controlling for news about the mean (as opposed to the variance) of political shocks. Interestingly, the vast majority of the variation in our measure is at the firm level rather than at the aggregate or sector level, in the sense that it is captured neither by the interaction of sector and time fixed effects nor by heterogeneous exposure of individual firms to aggregate political risk. The dispersion of this firm-level political risk increases significantly at times with high aggregate political risk. Decomposing our measure of political risk by topic, we find that firms that devote more time to discussing risks associated with a given political topic tend to increase lobbying on that topic, but not on other topics, in the following quarter.
We document that accrual-based earnings management increased steadily from 1987 until the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) in 2002, followed by a significant decline after the passage of SOX. ...Conversely, the level of real earnings management activities declined prior to SOX and increased significantly after the passage of SOX, suggesting that firms switched from accrual-based to real earnings management methods after the passage of SOX. We also document that the accrual-based earnings management activities were particularly high in the period immediately preceding SOX. Consistent with these results, we find that firms that just achieved important earnings benchmarks used less accruals and more real earnings management after SOX when compared to similar firms before SOX. In addition, our analysis provides evidence that the increases in accrual-based earnings management in the period preceding SOX were concurrent with increases in equity-based compensation. Our results suggest that stock-option components provide a differential set of incentives with regard to accrual-based earnings management. We document that while new options granted during the current period are negatively associated with income-increasing accrual-based earnings management, unexercised options are positively associated with income-increasing accrual-based earnings management.
Foreign Banks: Trends and Impact CLAESSENS, STIJN; VAN HOREN, NEELTJE
Journal of money, credit and banking,
February 2014, Letnik:
46, Številka:
s1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Over the past two decades, foreign banks have become much more important in domestic financial intermediation, heightening the need to understand their behavior. We introduce a new, comprehensive ...database, made publicly available, on bank ownership (including the home country of foreign banks) for 5,324 banks in 137 countries over the period 1995-2009. We document large increases in foreign bank presence in many countries, but with substantial heterogeneity in terms of host and banks' home countries, bilateral investment patterns, and bank characteristics. In terms of impact, we document that the relation between private credit and foreign bank presence importantly depends on host country and banks' characteristics. Specifically, foreign banks only seem to have a negative impact on credit in low-income countries, in countries where they have a limited market share, where enforcing contracts is costly and where credit information is limited available, and when they come from distant home countries. This shows that accounting for heterogeneity, including bilateral ownership, is crucial to better understand the implications of foreign bank ownership.
The iNARTE iNformer Joffe, Elya B.
IEEE electromagnetic compatibility magazine,
01/2018, Letnik:
7, Številka:
4
Journal Article, Magazine Article
"I believe in what I call ‘the surfer's theory.’ You see a really, really big wave. You keep surfing, keep going forward. You just don't look back." Howard Lutnick
Research Summary
When platform leaders change the rules guiding who can access and control a platform, the strategies of those who create value from the platform can be upended. Little research ...examines how platform participants adapt their strategies when a platform leader changes the rules governing access and control. We trace how participation with a development platform evolved under four different governance modes with varied access and control conditions. Participation intensity increased as access opened but decreased when platform leadership became unclear. Distributed platform leadership emerged only once the platform was collectively governed. Rather than assume that all firm participation complements a platform, we show how firms guardedly participate with open and collective platforms in ways that can either extend or subvert a platform's vitality.
Managerial Summary
As firms consider transitioning proprietary products to more open platforms to grow market share and relevance, we suggest that managers consider the concerns of external participants when designing a system to govern a platform. Opening access to a platform alone may be insufficient to stimulate external participants to contribute and make real commitments. Our research shows that open access did not stimulate external participation when platform leadership was not clear. When a structured but collectively determined development and governance process was created, external participants increased their contributions and even took on project leadership roles—distributing leadership of the platform among many firms.
Video
Large Japanese banks often engaged in sham loan restructurings that kept credit flowing to otherwise insolvent borrowers (which we call zombies). We examine the implications of suppressing the normal ...competitive process whereby the zombies would shed workers and lose market share. The congestion created by the zombies reduces the profits for healthy firms, which discourages their entry and investment. We confirm that zombie-dominated industries exhibit more depressed job creation and destruction, and lower productivity. We present firm-level regressions showing that the increase in zombies depressed the investment and employment growth of non-zombies and widened the productivity gap between zombies and non-zombies.
We characterize the dynamic fragmentation of U.S. equity markets using a unique data set that disaggregates dark transactions by venue types. The “pecking order” hypothesis of trading venues states ...that investors “sort” various venue types, putting low-cost-low-immediacy venues on top and high-cost-high-immediacy venues at the bottom. Hence, midpoint dark pools on top, non-midpoint dark pools in the middle, and lit markets at the bottom. As predicted, following VIX shocks, macroeconomic news, and firms’ earnings surprises, changes in venue market shares become progressively more positive (or less negative) down the pecking order. We further document heterogeneity across dark venue types and stock size groups.
There is fierce global competition within the banking industry. Therefore, banks endeavor to grow and strive to increase their market share. We analyzed the effect of developing innovative channels ...of presenting bank services on banks' market share. The statistical population of this research was Shahr bank's central headquarter and its branches in Tehran, Iran. We developed questionnaires for gathering the data. The validity and reliability of the scales were tested by EFA, CFA, experts' opinion, and Cronbach's alpha. We used linear regression to assess the impact of innovative channels, including internet banking, automatic teller machines (ATMs), mobile banking, telephone banking (TB), and point of sales (POS) on banks' market share. The results indicated that some of these channels, including internet banking, POS, and TB, positively affect a bank's market share. The effect of two other platforms, including mobile banking and ATM development, on banks' market share was rejected. The findings of this study expand our understanding of how bank managers can improve their market share by developing innovative e-banking channels.
This paper shows the relation between CEO ownership and firm valuation hinges critically on the strength of external governance (EG). The relation is hump-shaped when EG is weak, but is insignificant ...when EG is strong. The results imply that CEO ownership and EG are substitutes for mitigating agency problems when ownership is low. However, very high levels of share ownership can reduce firm value by entrenching the CEO and discouraging him from taking risk, unless mitigated by strong EG. We identify channels through which CEO ownership affects firm value by examining R&D, which is discretionary and risky. We find CEO ownership similarly exhibits a hump-shaped relation with R&D when EG is weak, but no relation when EG is strong. Our results are robust to endogeneity issues concerning CEO ownership and EG.
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