Subpar Performance Research Articles

Effect of emotion regulation as a de-biasing mechanism on overconfidence in investment behavior

Overconfidence is a bias closely associated with strong positive emotions such as pride. Strong positive emotions can hamper effective decision-making. This paper is predicated on the hypothesis that if investors with a pronounced tendency toward overconfidence can regulate strong positive emotions, they will be able to reduce bias and avoid subpar investment performance. We investigated the relationships among overconfidence, positive emotional reactions, and strategies for regulating emotions after a gain in the stock investment area, where investors succumb to overconfidence and important financial decisions are made. Identifying the differences in cognitive processes and emotion regulation strategies, which more or less overconfident investors exhibit, will in turn provide a de-bias mechanism to reduce overconfidence. The findings of this research will help investors avoid overconfidence by using strategies for emotional regulation reported in this study in order to achieve decision excellence.

Der Einfluss von Qualitätsmessung, Transparenz und Peer Reviews auf die Krankenhaussterblichkeit – Retrospektive Vorher-Nachher-Studie mit 63 Kliniken

BackgroundIn 2008 the ‘Initiative Qualitätsmedizin’ (initiative for quality in medical care, IQM) was established as a voluntary non-profit association of hospital providers of all kinds of ownership. Currently, about 350 hospitals from Germany and Switzerland participate in IQM. Member hospitals are committed to a quality strategy based on measuring outcome indicators using administrative data, peer review procedures to improve medical quality, and transparency by public reporting. This study aims to investigate whether voluntary implementation of this approach is associated with improvements in medical outcome. MethodsWithin a retrospective before-after study 63 hospitals, which started to participate in IQM between 2009 and 2011, were monitored. In-hospital mortality in these hospitals was studied for 14 selected inpatient services in comparison to the German national average. The analyses examine whether in-hospital mortality declined after participation of the studied hospitals in IQM, independently of secular trends or deviations in case mix when compared to the national average, and whether such findings were associated with initial hospital performance or peer review procedures. ResultsDeclining in-hospital mortality was observed in hospitals with initially subpar performance. These declines were statistically significant for treatment of myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia, and septicemia. Similar, but statistically non-significant trends were observed for nine further treatments. Following peer-review procedures significant declines in in-hospital mortality were observed for treatments of myocardial infarction, heart failure, and pneumonia. Mortality declines after peer reviews regarding stroke, hip fracture and colorectal resection were not significant, and after peer reviews regarding mechanically ventilated patients no changes were observed. ConclusionThe results point to a positive impact of the quality approach applied by IQM on clinical outcomes. A more targeted selection of hospitals to be peer-reviewed might further enhance the impact of this approach.

Chinese renminbi, Mexican peso U.S. dollar exchange rates and their competitive positions in export markets

Since, in the NAFTA era, the Mexican economy is much more advanced in the manufacturing sector than those of other Latin American countries, Mexico competes directly with China for U.S. imports. This study empirically investigates the behavior of the Mexican peso/Chinese yuan, Mexican peso/U.S. dollar, and Chinese yuan/U.S. dollar real exchange rates to determine whether the exchange rate policies serve as contributing factors to the subpar performance of the Mexican economy. The empirical findings suggest that the Mexican, Chinese, and U.S. real exchange rates, over the sample period, prove consistent with predations of the purchasing power parity theory; therefore, exchange rate policies may not be a contributing factor to the poor performance of the Mexican economy

Social Network Determinants of Involuntary Turnover

Involuntary turnover research focuses mainly on the factors that increase terminations, with sub-par employee job performance considered the main factor. This study instead examines the social netw...

Advertising appeals across varying economic and regulatory conditions: A longitudinal content analysis in the mutual fund industry

This research investigates the relationship between the utilization of various appeals in mutual fund advertisements and prevailing market, and regulatory conditions during the period 2000—2009. Mutual fund firms promote their investment products utilizing an array of advertising appeals, including those that highlight performance, product and consistency. We hypothesize that the application of these appeals varies over time and according to market conditions. In addition, the research considers the 2007 regulatory efforts mandating the inclusion of mutual fund expense information in advertisements that promote fund performance. A longitudinal content analysis is utilized to survey the presence and prevalence of various advertising appeals by mutual fund providers in Money magazine from 2000 to 2009. Results reveal that appeal usage varies over time and by market performance. Appeals focusing on performance and product are strongly correlated with market performance, whereas appeals relating to trust are correlated with subpar market performance. In addition, the use of cost information, broadly defined, has become more important over the 2000–2009 period independent of market performance. The implications of these findings and their relationship to government regulation are also discussed.

Money in Motion: Modernizing Canada's Payment System

Payment systems, like plumbing, do not attract much attention when they are working well. A failure, on the other hand, is cause for alarm: as a broken pipe can flood a basement, broken payments can disrupt the financial system. Subpar performance short of a crisis, though less apparent, can also be damaging. Backed-up plumbing causes much inconvenience in familiar ways. A strained payment system also can be very costly. In that regard, Canada’s payment systems need some timely maintenance. A variety of systems make up the Canadian payments landscape: cash, credit cards, debit cards and cheques among others. Most prominent in terms of volume and value are the clearing and settlement systems operated by the Canadian Payments Association (CPA). But the CPA’s systems are now long in the tooth, forcing users to deal with technologies from the 1980s and 1990s. The tremendous advances in information technology since then allow for systems that are faster, cheaper and better able to meet users’ needs. Some countries have already dispensed with paper payments transactions and replaced them with digital payments. An efficient payment system can contribute to the competitiveness of a country’s economy. A first step toward modernizing the Canadian payment system would be replacement of current cheque processing with digital methods. This step alone should save Canadian businesses several billions of dollars per year. It will require reorganizing the CPA’s clearing and settlement systems as a huband-spoke and replacing payee-pull cheques (where the payee’s institution submits the transaction to the settlement system) by payer-push digital payments (where the payer’s financial institution submits the transaction). These steps can be facilitated by a commitment to financing the CPA’s major capital projects through borrowing and recouping the costs through future dues. The success of this modernization will depend on an extensive effort to educate consumers and businesses, especially small businesses, of the benefits of a payer-push electronic payment system. Modernization of the CPA’s payment systems should not stop with eliminating cheques. There is also a need for enhanced information to accompany payments transactions so as to allow seamless end-to-end processing from payer to payee and for real-time processing to limit payment-system risk.

As You Like It by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, and: Merry Wives of Windsor by Santa Cruz Shakespeare (review)

Reviewed by: As You Like Itby Santa Cruz Shakespeare, and: Merry Wives of Windsorby Santa Cruz Shakespeare Katherine Steele Brokaw As You Like ItPresented by Santa Cruz Shakespeare at the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen, Santa Cruz, California. July 1–August 10, 2014. Directed by Mark Rucker. Sets by Michael Ganio. Costumes by B. Modern. Lights by Kent Dorsey. Sound composition and design by Jeff Mockus. With Brandon Blum (Amiens), Marcus Cato (Adam), Carly Cioffi (Phebe), Julia Coffey (Rosalind), William Elsman (Silvius), Dan Flapper (Orlando), Allen Gilmore (Jaques), Mark Anderson Phillips (Oliver), Neiry Rojo (Audrey), Mike Ryan (Touchstone), Kit Wilder (Corin), Greta Wohlrabe (Celia), and Richard Ziman (Dukes Frederick and Senior). Merry Wives of WindsorPresented by Santa Cruz Shakespeare at the Sinsheimer-Stanley Festival Glen, Santa Cruz, California. July 13–August 10, 2014. Directed by Kirsten Brandt. Sets by Eric Barker. Costumes by B. Modern. Lights by Kent Dorsey. Sound composition and design by Jeff Mockus. With Brandon Blum (Rugby), Marcus Cato (Shallow), Carly Cioffi (Mistress Quickly), Julia Coffey (Mistress Ford), William Elsman (Caius), Dan Flapper (Slender), Allen Gilmore (Page), Maribel Martinez (Anne), Mark Anderson Phillips (Ford), Neiry Rojo (Host), Kit Wilder (Sir Hugh Evans), Greta Wohlrabe (Mistress Page), and Richard Ziman (Falstaff). Santa Cruz Shakespeare (SCS), the festival that arose from the ashes of Shakespeare Santa Cruz (SSC), performed two comedies for its inaugural season. In December 2013, University of California-Santa Cruz pulled the plug and stopped funding the former festival, which had been running since 1981. Supporters both local and distant sprung into action, and a campaign raised $1.1 million in three months to establish the independent, forward-funding SCS: they were able to fund the first season on the money raised, and all profits from the inaugural season will go toward funding season two. The new company line-up features many of the same administrators, directors, actors, and designers as SSC; but with a restructured financial model, the support of new advisory board members Sir Patrick Stewart and Olympia Dukakis, and a freer rehearsal [End Page 129]schedule without the restrictions of the UCSC academic calendar, it seems that better times are ahead for Shakespeare in this coastal town. Certainly the new company’s first two productions bode well. Even a sub-par performance would make for a pleasant evening in a space as beautiful as the Glen, erected as it is in a majestic grove of redwood trees, but these shows were delightful pieces of theater. With an eye to the budget, the scenic designers exploited the gorgeous surroundings as much as possible: it’s useful to have the forest of Arden played by ancient trees (six even grow on stage). The rest of the As You Like Itset featured leaves painted on doors and floors, and alternating black and white banners for the court scenes. The mid-nineteenth-century American setting was primarily evoked through costumes: Arden, in this case, was a sort of Walden, its visitors Thoreauvians returning to nature in order to escape the industrialized world and antebellum manners. An effervescent Celia (Greta Wohlrabe) dominated the opening scenes, leaving Rosalind—looking dour and uncomfortable in a black corseted dress—very much in her shadow (it was hard to believe Duke Frederick was worried about his daughter getting outshone by her cousin). Wohlrabe’s exuberance, comic timing, husky voice, and bright looks made her the clear star of the entire production. For example, Celia’s suggestion to give herself the clunky name “Aliena” got far more laughs than Rosalind’s “suit me all points like a man” speech (1.3.122, 1.3.110). As Celia and also as Mistress Page, Wohlrabe pulled off that tricky balance between sounding colloquially modern and having command over Shakespearean meter and diction. Though Coffey’s Rosalind was far more engaging once she became Ganymede, she never quite matched the winning charm of Wohlrabe (Fig. 1). Dan Flapper made a worthy Orlando: he was determined and self-assured. Snappy direction made the opening moments between the lovers suitably awkward. That sparky, awkward chemistry between the two was again on display in the “woo me” scene, which digressed into the “boys” hitting each...

1.1 μm Superficially porous particles for liquid chromatography: Part II: Column packing and chromatographic performance

The predicted advantages of superficially porous particles over totally porous particles are decreased eddy dispersion, longitudinal diffusion, and resistance to mass transfer contributions to the theoretical plate height. While sub-2 micron superficially porous particles are commercially available, further improvements in performance are predicted by decreasing the particle diameter and decreasing the porous layer thickness. 1.1μm superficially porous particles with 187Å pores have been synthesized using a layer-by-layer method tuned for production of smaller diameter particles. Following synthesis, these particles were packed into 30μm i.d. capillary columns and their chromatographic performance evaluated using electrochemical detection. Based on the initial studies, the column efficiency did not meet theory, but was similar to the commercially available products tested. It is believed that the column packing process plays a critical role in the sub-par column performance. To determine if column efficiency could be predicted by solvent-particle interactions, in-solution optical microscopy and sedimentation velocity of particles in various slurry solvents were investigated and compared to column performance. Aggregating slurry solvents, such as methanol were found to produce columns with increased efficiency. The hmin for a column packed with an acetone slurry and a methanol slurry at 3mg/mL were found to be 6.3 and 3.5, respectively. Increasing the slurry concentration to 25mg/mL further improved the efficiency, producing a column with an hmin of 2.6. These efficiency results were accurately predicted by in-solution optical microscopy.

The Pathologies of Power: Fear, Honor, Glory, and Hubris in U.S. Foreign Policy

Books about improving U.S. foreign policy are a dime a dozen. But in The Pathologies of Power, Christopher Fettweis offers an unusual take on what he sees as the subpar foreign policy performance of the planet's sole superpower. Fettweis claims that U.S. foreign policy is driven by four pathological beliefs—fear, honor, glory, and hubris—that lead to poor policymaking. The book devotes a chapter to each of the beliefs that Fettweis contends account for foreign policy disasters like the Iraq war and the Vietnam war. Foremost among the pathological beliefs is fear, which is behind the views that the world is full of enemies and that we are living in dangerous times. According to Fettweis, America's paranoia about communism led to costly U.S. involvement in various “geopolitically irrelevant backwaters” (p. 14) during the Cold War. The (neo)conservative view of ever-present danger is unfounded today. The empirical reality is that “there has never been a more peaceful, less violent period of time than the post-Cold War era” (p. 33).

The Impact of Culture on the Indian Construction Industry

The Indian construction industry has been characterized by poor performance. This paper analyzes the potential impact of the Indian culture on the poor performance. If the culture is a major cause in the construction industry subpar performance, can the cultural influence be overridden to minimize construction project delays and cost overruns. The authors propose to identify the unique cultural issues, identify using the Construction Industry Structure (CIS) model the impact of the cultural issues on the construction industry, and identify a potential solution to the problem. The paper proposes to test the solution in actual tests with industry participants. What makes this research unique is the approach of using deductive logic to create a simple solution, and then convincing a major research client to test the proposal.

A model linking sources of stress to approach and avoidance coping styles of Turkish basketball referees

Purpose of this study was to externally validate and test a conceptual transient model involving six paths that linked sources of acute stress to avoidance and approach coping styles among Turkish basketball referees. The sample consisted of 125 Turkish basketball referees ranging in age from 18 to 36 years (mean = 25.58. σ = 3.69). The path analysis tested the relationships simultaneously from stressors, in consecutive order, distractions, subpar performance and verbal abuse, to coping styles, first both avoidance-cognitive and approach-cognitive, and then approach-behaviour. Results indicated that the model achieved a good fit and that all paths tested simultaneously were significant. The distractions stressor was positively related to subpar performance, which, in turn, was positively related to verbal abuse. Verbal abuse was negatively associated with an avoidance-cognitive coping style and positively related to the approach-cognitive coping style. The results also supported a crossover effect of both avoidance-cognitive and approach-cognitive on approach-behaviour. One implication of this study is that coping should be studied in naturally occurring stages, a process-oriented approach. Another implication is that approach and avoidance coping styles, each sub-divided into cognitive and behavioural categories, provide a meaningful framework which provides sports officials a coherent structure for learning and improving ways to cope with acute stress experienced during the contest.

Manager Divestment in Leveraged Buyouts

We examine changes in managers' investment in the firm around leveraged buyouts and find agency costs counter to those described in extant literature. In majority of deals during 1997–2008, managers divested a portion of their pre-LBO shareholdings while maintaining an ownership stake in the post-LBO firm. Such divestment opportunities encourage managers to behave in a way that benefits existing shareholders but is costly to new investors. We report a positive relation between management's divestment and pre-LBO earnings management, market timing, and better buyout pricing. Although managerial divestment also leads to subpar post-buyout performance, the involvement of private equity mitigates it.

Revisiting the Winners’ Game

During the past few years, investment professionals have been accused of violating their fiduciary duties and providing subpar performance in exchange for costly fees. Yet, many investment professionals are careful stewards of client assets. They are defined by four elements that serve as benchmarks for industry best practices. Investors can regain confidence in advisers and the industry by asking five key questions to identify such stewards.

Investment Bubbles and Jobless Slow-Growth Expansions: A Tale of Three Recoveries

In most U.S. post-war business cycles, recessions were followed by above trend growth in output and employment. After the last three recessions, however, output and employment growth were sluggish. Economists focusing on employment have described these recoveries as “jobless.” This paper shows that each of the last three recessions coincided with a collapsing bubble in a category of private fixed investment: commercial real estate (1990-91), internet equipment (2001), and housing (2008-09). No previous recessions coincided with similar reallocations of investment spending. The paper provides evidence of the unique pattern of investment spending during the last three business cycles, and discusses how the collapse of investment bubbles can restrain economic recoveries. Since investment bubbles can deflate during financial crises, they help explain the sub-par economic performance that often accompanies these crises.

Technology Focus: Production Operations (March 2013)

Technology Focus Production engineers are often tasked with analyzing existing data to try to understand the factors affecting equipment failures or subpar performance, to guide the implementation of actions geared toward mitigating such problems and improving overall operations. Sometimes, this can become quite a difficult task. One reason is that the existing data can be of bad quality, containing records that are incomplete (missing critical information), inconsistent (with information incompatible with other information in the same record or in other records), or inaccurate (because of errors in measuring or recording the values for the parameters). Sorting through such issues with the data can sometimes be very time consuming. It often is not entirely successful; and it is never fun. Another reason is that evaluating the effect of each possible influential factor is usually more complex than we first think. Early on in my career, I came across a quote, attributed to Sir Cyril Hinshelwood, in a book about data reduction and analysis, which I share often with my younger colleagues. It describes the normal stages of developing a theory on the basis of existing data: The first stage usually involves “gross simplifications, reflecting partly the need for practical views and even more a too-enthusiastic aspiration for the elegance of form.” In the second stage, “the symmetry of the hypothetical system is distorted and the neatness marred as recalcitrant facts increasingly rebel against uniformity.” In the third stage, “if and when it is obtained, a new order emerges, more intricately contrived, less obvious, and with its parts subtly interwoven, since it is of nature’s and not of man’s conception.” Putting the puzzle together is the fun part. Some of the papers in this feature illustrate how tough production challenges can be tackled on the basis of thorough analysis and interpretation of good-quality data. Collecting such good-quality data has a cost. If collecting the data is worth the effort because of the value that we can extract from the information it contains, then implementing measures to ensure its quality should also be warranted. It will allow us to spend our time in the most rewarding (and entertaining) part of the task, which is coming up with a good theory for the trends we can see in the data. Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. SPE 153005 An Exhaustive Study of Scaling in the Canadian Bakken: Failure Mechanisms and Innovative Mitigation Strategies From More Than 400 Wells by Jonathan J. Wylde, Clariant Oil Services, et al. SPE 159385 Paraffin-Deposition Analysis for Crude Oils Under Turbulent-Flow Conditions by Hamidreza Karami Mirazizi, The University of Tulsa, et al. SPE 153224 Coiled-Tubing Sand Cleanout at Low-Bottomhole-Pressure, Large-Diameter-Casing, and Long-Horizontal-Well Applications in Deepwater West Seno Field by J.B. Putra Koesnihadi, Chevron, et al. OTC 23622 Treating and Releasing Produced Water at the Ultradeepwater Seabed by Timothy P. Daigle, Fluor Offshore Solutions, et al.

The Drug Shortage

The Drug Shortage

Improved linear crosstalk tolerance in an un-amplified ring PON

There is increased interest in ring-based passive optical network (PON) architectures due to their local area network (LAN) capability among end users and inherent protection and restoration schemes. The ring architecture includes optical filters and switches with non-ideal channel isolation, leading to the generation of linear crosstalk, which can significantly degrade the system performance if it is not sufficiently suppressed. We use simulation to analyze the effects of linear crosstalk in an un-amplified TDM optical ring and show how we can improve the tolerance of the crosstalk in our architecture that employs optimized tap split ratios as a means of increasing the number of ONUs served. Our approach is based on simulation of the entire network using a combination of wavelength-domain and time-domain techniques. Typically, PON networks use two or three wavelengths that are separated by more than 50 nm to maintain the cost of components low and as such, it is logical that any crosstalk will be negligible. However, the subpar performance of such components motivated our study into the impact of crosstalk. We show that the tap ratio optimization which increases the number ONUs that can be served in the ring can also exacerbate the effects of linear interchannel crosstalk at the ONU's downstream signal receivers. We also show that surplus power at the last ONU can be utilized to counter this degraded crosstalk performance by careful tap ratio selection, thereby improving the overall tolerance to linear crosstalk in the system.

Sub-Par Performance In A Sub-Prime World? A Recent Comparative Performance Analysis Of Real Estate Mutual Funds Vs. Common Stock Mutual Funds

<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; margin: 0in 0.5in 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Historically, </span><span style="font-size: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-style: italic; mso-ansi-language: EN;" lang="EN">little evidence has been found to suggest that real estate investments exhibit superior returns. Further, it appears that real estate mutual fund managers do not possess the ability to consistently beat benchmark averages. However, there have been mixed results for REITs indicating they might be characterized by inefficiencies that could be exploited by informed fund managers. In this analysis, we examine whether mutual fund managers who have concentrated in real estate assets have statistically outperformed other categories of equity mutual funds as well as the S&P 500 and various NAREIT Indexes. </span></span></p>

Internal Versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers

Internal versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers BY LINLIN MA June 12, 2013 Committee Chair: VIKAS AGARWAL Major Academic Unit: DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE I use a unique dataset of 1,808 mutual fund manager replacements to study the determinants and the subsequent impact of the choice between hiring the successor from within (internal hire) and outside (external hire) the fund family. I find that fund families prefer to replace their top performers with internal hires and bottom performers with external hires. External hires demonstrate superior ability to turn around bottom performing funds, but exhibit inferior ability to maintain the record of top performing funds. I find no cross-sectional difference in post-replacement performance between internal and external successors, indicating fund families, in general, make their replacement decisions optimally. I do, however, find that funds that deviate from the optimal decision have subsequent sub-par performance. Overall, the evidence suggests that portfolio managers play a pivotal role in determining mutual fund performance. Internal versus External Replacement of Mutual Fund Managers

Improving propensity score weighting using machine learning.

Machine learning techniques such as classification and regression trees (CART) have been suggested as promising alternatives to logistic regression for the estimation of propensity scores. The authors examined the performance of various CART-based propensity score models using simulated data. Hypothetical studies of varying sample sizes (n=500, 1000, 2000) with a binary exposure, continuous outcome, and 10 covariates were simulated under seven scenarios differing by degree of non-linear and non-additive associations between covariates and the exposure. Propensity score weights were estimated using logistic regression (all main effects), CART, pruned CART, and the ensemble methods of bagged CART, random forests, and boosted CART. Performance metrics included covariate balance, standard error, per cent absolute bias, and 95 per cent confidence interval (CI) coverage. All methods displayed generally acceptable performance under conditions of either non-linearity or non-additivity alone. However, under conditions of both moderate non-additivity and moderate non-linearity, logistic regression had subpar performance, whereas ensemble methods provided substantially better bias reduction and more consistent 95 per cent CI coverage. The results suggest that ensemble methods, especially boosted CART, may be useful for propensity score weighting.