Investment Categories Research Articles

The Effect of Non-Contributory Pensionson Saving in Mexico

This paper examines the effects of non-contributory pension programs at the federal and state levels on Mexican households' saving patterns using micro data from the Mexican Income and Expenditure Survey. The federal program by itself appears to reduce the saving rate of households whose oldest member is either 18 to 54 or 65 to 69. State programs by themselves have no significant effects on household saving rates in the smallest localities, but in larger localities they may reduce the saving of households with members in their sixties. The combination of both types of programs generally does not have statistically significant effects on households' aggregate saving, probably because each program seems to affect different population strata. No significant effects are found for households whose oldest member is age-eligible (70 and older). Within specific investment categories, evidence is found of increases in human capital and in durable and financial goods for some age groups. Finally, the paper provides evidence on household-level labor supply responses.

Investor experience in biotechnology

Biotechnology is viewed as an industry that combines scientific innovation, entrepreneurial management and experienced investment to drive innovation, primarily in biomedicine. This paper examines the third of these assumed preconditions. We find that the majority of investors in biotechnology companies over the last decade by number or by value have not been experienced, and that the majority of investors in biotechnology companies have invested in less than three such companies in the decade, suggesting that they have very limited experience of biotechnology. 13% of investment syndicates contain no investors who have made more than three biotechnology investments. Investor inexperience is disproportionately high in Seed and Series A rounds, but has little correlation with amount invested. Investor inexperience is found in all categories of investors and all territories, although US investors tend to have greater experience than those outside North America. The banking crisis of 2008-11 has not materially changed this. We suggest that the conventional image of biotechnology investment as the careful selection and nurturing of young companies by experienced investors is incomplete. This has implications for candidate investor selection by entrepreneurs, and for government support of biotechnology by supporting investors or investment mechanisms.

Indian Mutual Fund Industry An Analysis of Recent Trends

Mutual fund has emerged as a potential investment option for various categories of investors. Past studies and reports of the fund houses have clearly shown the upward movement in the growth trend of Indian mutual fund industry. Since the inception of UTI, the Indian mutual fund industry has made significant progress in terms of volume of business. A large number of schemes have been launched by the fund houses to cater the need of the investors. However, in several platforms, the progress of the industry was questioned by comparing it with other countries. The penetration of the industry to various segment of the investors and the total contribution to the corpus of the industry in terms of GDP have always drawn attention. The present paper highlighted the growth of the industry in recent times. The study focuses on the key areas which are of strategic importance to industry for its growth.

Detecting new industry emergence using government data: a new analytic approach to regional innovation policy

This paper presents the rationale and method for a new model of innovation policy by regional government that is based on the early detection of the emergence of new industry clusters. The approach takes advantage of regional governments’ superior access to distributed information about the categories of activities and investments that individual firms are making. By coding and analyzing this information we show how the nascent seeds of new industries can be detected in clusters of overlapping activities. Surprisingly, these patterns may be opaque to the firms themselves because other firms exploring similar opportunities may not be co-located or even in the same industry. We propose that this method of early detection can be leveraged into opportunities for ‘industrial incubation’ in the form of institutional support.

Effects of telecom service providers’ strategic investments on business performance

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the structure of strategic investments and the effect of each investment category on business performance in two leading information and communication technology (ICT) countries, the USA and South Korea. Design/methodology/approach – This is a longitudinal comparative study of the relationship between strategic investments and organizational performance of major telecommunication service providers (TSPs) in the two leading ICT countries, the USA and South Korea. Findings – The study found that a sufficient amount of strategic investments in technological innovations is the driving force for TSPs’ business performance. However, strategic investment structures differ among TSPs, depending on their market position, whether the first mover in the market or a follower, and on their country’s market characteristics. Moreover, even though both countries’ TSP markets are oligopolistic in nature, the market is more saturated in Korea and thus competition appears to be fiercer there than in the USA. The stronger oligopolistic market in Korea has lead TSPs to compete primarily on their marketing strategies, while TSPs in the USA do so based on technological innovation. Originality/value – The findings of the study shed new insights that can help both TSPs in developing their competitive strategies and government policy makers in assuring healthy competitive telecommunication markets in their countries.

Who's who in the Kenai River Fishery SES: A streamlined method for stakeholder identification and investment analysis

The Kenai River Fishery is a unique social–ecological system (SES) with nearly 50 federal, state, local, and nonprofit groups influencing its political, ecological, and social structure. While ecological data exists for this fishery, the complexity of its stakeholder relationships has not been investigated. Stakeholder interactions can directly influence how science is integrated into management decisions and therefore affect the adaptive capacity of SES, such as the Kenai River Fishery. Drawing from the existing stakeholder literature, this methods identifies and ranks the key SES stakeholders and describes their roles. This study approached the question of which stakeholders should be included in a future SES adaptive capacity study by (1) identifying the key stakeholders within the Kenai River Fishery, (2) ranking each stakeholder’s investment within the fishery using eleven categories of interaction, and (3) using these eleven categories to characterize each stakeholder's role within the SES. The largest number of stakeholders fall into the secondary investment category, showing that a relatively small number of resource managers are interacting with a large number of diverse nonprofit organizations. The top ranking stakeholders in this study will be invited to attend participatory scenarios workshops that will build the foundation for a deeper scenarios-based analysis of SES adaptive capacity.

Swing Pricing 101: A Closer Look at the Dealing Costs of Investment Funds Across the Globe

The discussion on the relative merits of swing pricing and the details of its implementation has intensified in the past few years on both sides of the Atlantic. A properly constructed swing pricing mechanism hinges crucially on the estimated magnitude of the dealing costs associated with an investment fund’s net flows. This article offers an unbiased look at the competing measures of these costs and compares them across several investment categories and portfolio sizes. The evidence that the authors obtain from analyzing simulated investment portfolios suggests that a great deal of caution should be put in using commission and spread costs as the main measure of a fund’s dealing costs. Their bottom-up approach relies on a properly calibrated price impact model, and the presented results indicate that the true dealing costs can differ significantly from simple commission and spread cost measures across a range of fund sizes, daily net flows, and investment styles. The adage “it’s all about costs” should anchor the debate on swing pricing and how dealing costs are incorporated.

Detecting New Industry Emergence Using Government Data: A New Analytic Approach to Regional Innovation Policy

This paper presents the rationale and method for a new model of innovation policy by regional government that is based on the early detection of the emergence of new industry clusters. The approach takes advantage of regional governments’ superior access to distributed information about the categories of activities and investments that individual firms are making. By coding and analyzing this information we show how the nascent seeds of new industries can be detected in clusters of overlapping activities. Surprisingly, these patterns may be opaque to the firms themselves because other firms exploring similar opportunities may not be co-located or even in the same industry. We propose that this method of early detection can be leveraged into opportunities for ‘industrial incubation’ in the form of institutional support.

Investment Patterns and Performance of Organizations Involved in the VC Market Evidence from the Israeli Venture Capital Market

This research is an exploratory study that analyzes various VC agents. It presents characteristics, investment patterns and performances of such agents in the Israeli VC market. Ten categories of investors were identified in the Israeli VC market, which are: domestic and Foreign VCs and CVCs, Investment Companies, Business Angels, Technological Incubators, Technology Transfer Offices, and R&D grants for startups.The theoretical part of the paper presents a review of the different types of VC agents in a comparative perspective. The picture it presents is of a diversified market with heterogonous agents. This picture is supported be the empirical part of the paper, which presents the investment patterns, risk profiles and success rates of those different types of VC agents. The empirical work of this paper is based on a population of 2,371 Israeli high tech firms, which were created during the years 1991-2000.The main findings are that foreign VC agents have superior performances to similar domestic VC agents, CVC has superior performances to LP VC funds, business angels has similar success rate as LP VC funds while significantly lower failure rate and that technological incubators have significantly inferior performances to all other VC agents.

Market Penetration and Investment Pattern: A Study of Mutual Funds in India

This paper discusses the market penetration and investment pattern of mutual funds in India. There is very large scope for the penetration of mutual funds both geographically and investors' classes. For, the population served by such firms is meager and concentrated. The Top-15 cities contribute to 87% of the entire assets under management by mutual fund companies in the country. Besides, large share is cornered by corporates and high net worth individuals. Aggressiveness in investments did not increase over time and mutual fund companies are also risk averse instead of being risk taking firms. The Indian mutual funds companies, generally, invest in three main categories of investments namely - income, equity and liquid/money market. The efforts to popularize the other categories could not be succeeded. The accounts holding are tilted wholesomely in favour of individuals and asset holding is in favour of corporates.

Satisfaction Spillovers Across Categories

We provide a descriptive study of the cross-category effects of satisfaction with financial services on retention behavior. Behavioral contrast and learning theories provide the bases for our understanding of these effects. Our empirical results reveal the following: (i) Across banking and investment categories, when customers have different providers, satisfaction with one lowers the retention probability in the other service. (ii) A customer who is dissatisfied with the investment service is more likely to stay with the current banking service. (iii) Significantly, we find that when the same firm is involved in both categories, dissatisfaction with the firm in the investment category spills over into the banking category thereby lowering its retention probability. We also find that: (a) among customers who are satisfied with banking (investment), more exposure to media increases retention probability; (b) although switching costs and order of acquisition affect retention, they do not show cross-category interactions with satisfaction. We then obtain implications for customer lifetime value (CLV) and show that it can increase satisfaction by leveraging both the within and across category effects. Bottom line: It is important for a company providing multiple services to measure satisfaction at the category level but to manage customers across categories. Data, as supplemental material, are available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2015.0941 .

Should Intangible Investments Be Reported Separately or Commingled with Operating Expenses? New Evidence

We propose a new method to estimate intangible investment outlays, other than expenditures on advertising and research and development, that are reported on a commingled basis with operating expenses in the selling, general, and administrative category of expenses. These outlays, aimed at improving organizational knowledge and capabilities, are the largest category of intangible investments and the fastest-growing category of operating investments. They affect future firm performance and risk. Predictability of future earnings and stock returns improves when these outlays are distinguished from operating expenses. Thus, benefits could accrue from reporting them separately. The SAS program to divide MainSG&A into investment and consumption portions is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2769 . This paper was accepted by Suraj Srinivasan, accounting.

Creative Accounting Scam at Satyam Computer Limited: How the Fraud Story Unfolded?

Keen to project a perpetually rosy picture of the Satyam to the investors, employees and analysts, Mr. Raju (CEO and Chairman) manipulated the account books so that it appeared to be a far bigger enterprise than it actually was. The Satyam fraud has shattered the dreams of different categories of investors, shocked the government and regulators alike, and led to questioning of the accounting practices of statutory auditors and CG norms in India. An attempt has been made to provide an explanation for various “intriguing” questions about Satyam scam, such as: What was the need to commit a fraud on such a large scale? How Raju managed to cook-up books? What was Raju’s real modus-operandi to manipulate the accounts for eight years? Why was Raju forced to blow his own whistle? Why was not there a stricter punitive action against the auditors of Satyam PwC?, etc.” Now, after thorough investigations done by the CBI and SEBI, they have unveiled the methodology by which Satyam fraud was engineered. Finally, we recommend that “CA practices should be considered as a serious crime, and as such, accounting bodies, law courts and other regulatory authorities in India need to adopt very strict punitive measures to stop such unethical CA practices”.

Impact of IT Investment on Firm Performance Based on Technology IT Architecture

Since many firms have strengthened their core competencies by using information technology, it is important to understand how IT investment contributes to the achievement of business objectives. This study categorizes the IT investments into five technical areas based on a real-life company's architecture such as basic infrastructure, security, wireless, collaboration, and datacenter. An empirical model is built to analyze how IT investment in these categories influences the business growth. We found that wireless technology is the main IT driver of revenue growth. Furthermore, our analysis shows that IT paradox exists in some investment categories because of the time lag before full realization.

Metaphors about computer education of first year nursing students

The meaning of the word of metaphor is represented as likening indirect speech. A metaphor provides a more clear transfer about an idea encountered in an event, situation or a concept. The aim of this study was by the use of metaphor to learn the thoughts and feelings of nursing students about computer education. The study included 65 (45 female, 19 male (1 experimental subject has been excluded because of missing data)) nursing students of Kocaeli University (please note that gender wasn’t specified on the first survey form). Students were asked by survey form to provide their age, gender, geographical region, place of residence within Kocaeli and their reason for choosing the department. We examined nursing students as opposed to computer education through the use of metaphors. Respondents filled in the blanks: “Computer education is similar to/like … because….” 42 different metaphors were produced. Most of the metaphors produced pertained to the human brain, world, television, smart room, encyclopedia etc. When we separated them into categories and examined them, we see 18 metaphors in the category of guidance and investment in information. Nowadays the use of computers is very important in nursing just as it is in all job groups, particularly in their student life in operating Microsoft Office programs, Acrobat Reader and the like.

Real Estate Indices and Unsmoothing Techniques

Real estate indices are an increasingly important aspect of real estate investment management. The uses of these indices include the estimation of risks and returns for assisting the asset allocation decision-making process, as well as the specification of benchmarks for performance attribution. Performance attribution provides valuable information both for bottom-up investment management (e.g., in the selection of properties or managers) and for top-down investment management (in the determination of allocation to various categories of real estate investments). The two main approaches to indexation are appraisal-based and transaction-based, each of which has its own potential problems. The chapter compares these approaches and reviews many of the most popular real estate indices, which vary in terms of methodology used. The prevalence of a variety of indexation methodologies highlights the fact that all methodologies have nontrivial problems and that real estate analysts should be aware of the challenges associated with each methodology. The first part of this chapter discusses un-smoothing of a price index or return series — the process of removing the effects of smoothing from a data series. It begins by introducing smoothed pricing and the principles of un-smoothing. The chapter also explains transaction noise, which arises when real estate transaction prices contain errors that make those prices less reliable when compared to prices of more liquid assets. For example, the reported transaction prices result from a negotiation process between buyers and sellers and therefore represent one set of possible values from a range of prices that would have been acceptable to both buyers and sellers. Transaction noise is another important technical issue when dealing with real estate indices. Property values are noisy (in the sense that they reflect random error) because empirical real estate values are imprecise indicators of true value. Finally, the chapter discusses the performance of various appraisal-based and transaction-based real estate indices.

Investment potential of the entity in the system of main categories of investments

Investment potential of the entity in the system of main categories of investments

FOREIGN CAPITAL FLOWS, FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND GROWTH IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

1. INTRODUCTIONOrthodox development perspective quite apparently delineates an important role for capital flows from richer countries as a critical component of the much-needed development finance requirement in the developing world. This North-South capital kinesis paradigm, while encompassing diverse categories of capital - portfolio investment, remittances, foreign direct investment (FDI), and official development assistance (ODA) among others - recognises the prominence of foreign direct investment, relative to other sources, as a key predictor of economic growth. In 2004, for example, FDI accounted for one half of total resource flows to developing countries, while remittances, ODA and portfolio equity split, albeit not equiproportionally, the remaining half (World Bank, 2011). This seems particularly apposite since foreign direct investment both in its conception and composition examplifies the necessary long term ingredients required to nurture growth which in itself is a phenomenon observable chiefly over comparably long horizons.However, there are conflicting opinions not only on the importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth but also on the channels. FDI can positively affect growth by an outward shiftin the economy's production possibilities frontier through technology transfer and the attendant spillovers (Blomstrom et al, 1994; Kokko and Blomstrom, 1995). The former underscores the importance of all categories of investment, particularly FDI, in maintaining the economy on a sustainable growth trajectory. For instance, most sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries witnessed systematic declines in investment rates from the early 1980s with corresponding negative growth rates in real output till around 1990 in some cases (Oshikoya, 1994). Therefore, since FDI flows to these countries ranked amongst the lowest to developing countries, it suggests close ties between low investment and the observed economic downturn in SSA during this decade that has been tagged lost.While the positive influence of FDI on growth remains in large part an empirical regularity, a crucial issue that is by far less clear regards the channels through which the positive impact of FDI on economic growth works (Lemi and Asefa, 2003). A prominent view that has emerged in this discourse is that the absorptive capacity of the FDI-receiving country matters. Interestingly though, this absorptive capacity has been looked at under different prisms. For instance, Balasubramanyam et al, (1996) and Borensztein et al, (1998) see the domestic economy's trade as well as human capital policies as the prerequisite for FDI's growth-promoting effects, while De Mello (1997) focused on the importance of physical capital accumulation. Likewise, there are equally a number of other somewhat complimentary opinions along the lines of market size, natural resource endowment amid a host of other factors.In more recent studies, however, research focus appears to have shifted to the role of the recipient economy's financial sector in the FDI-Growth nexus (see Hermes and Lensink, 2003; Alfaro et al, 2004 for elaborate narratives). There are at least three distinct merits to emphasize this shift. First, deeper and broader based financial institutions through more efficient delivery of financial services serve to promote growth directly (Levine, 1997; Errunza, 2001). Second, advanced financial systems by construction are better positioned to attract foreign direct investment which is a vital predictor of growth (Albuquerque, 2003). Third, increased financial sector efficiency should lower transaction costs which are chiefly related to perceived risks arising from information asymmetries (Reisen and Soto, 2001).While this study is similar in spirit to this latter strand of evidences, we tread a distinct path on a number of fronts. First, the link between FDI and economic growth and the influence of financial development is delved into within a SSA-specific panel context. …

Understanding Managed Futures

Managed futures strategies are a niche-within-a-niche in the capital markets. Despite this status, managed futures have become of particular interest to hedge fund investors. This paper will discuss why this has become the case by focusing on this strategy’s unique diversification properties. We will also briefly cover the main characteristics of this investment category, its underlying sources of return, and alternative statistical measures that are appropriate for comparing managed futures investments with hedge fund investments. We will rely on leading-edge academic and practitioner research in covering each of these topics.

Stock Price Dynamic When Growth Options Converted into Assets in Place: Evidence from Private Placements in Taiwan

Using a sample of 418 private placements by firms on the Taiwan stock markets, we examine their announcement returns and post-issue performance. Placements are classified into three categories: recapitalization, investment, and general purpose. We find that issuers of private placements tend to be poorly operated and financially constrained. We also document a positive market reaction to all of three categories of placements. Placements in the recapitalization category do not have long-run abnormal returns, suggesting that the benefit from relieving financial constraints is offset by the decrease in expected return when growth options are converted into assets in place. Placements in the investment category are associated with better long-run performance, suggesting that issuers with specific plans to increase investment in capital expenditures or in R&D have profitable investment opportunities. Finally, we find that placements in the general purpose category underperform, suggesting that issuers without specific investment plans tend to opportunistically time the market.