The information content of institutional trades on the London Stock Exchange

We construct a unique data set that includes all reported institutional block trades on the London Stock Exchange and analyze the market reaction to buy and sell trades. We find that the type of investors behind the trade and the combination of the trade's size and the trader's resulting level of ownership are the major determinants of the information effects and the asymmetry between price impacts of buy and sell trades. In particular, large trades undertaken by fund managers, the most active investors in our sample, have strong information content, while, for the remaining trades, we report limited support for the information and the price impact asymmetry hypotheses. These results hold even after accounting for trade complexity and volatility effects in the regressions

Robust transport planning: conceptualising the citp and iptn plan under deep uncertainty

The transport planning profession is becoming increasingly aware of how uncertain the future is. The level of uncertainty in transport planning and decision-making has intensified ‒ as it has in a number of spheres of policy ‒ in the face of climate change, political and economic instability, technological innovation, and changing consumer preferences (Lyons, 2016). COVID-19 has accelerated many innovative and disruptive transitions, expanding the set of plausible futures and compounding the ‘deep’ uncertainty that we have about planning for a future that is decades, and many crises, away from the present (UN-Habitat, 2020). Conventional transport planning practices conceal uncertainty by relying heavily on historic cause-effect relationships, and result in misplaced confidence in our predictive abilities (Marsden & McDonald, 2019). This presentation outlines the development of the Comprehensive Integrated Transport Plan (CITP) and Integrated Public Transport Network (IPTN) plan in the City of Cape Town using new transport planning practices that try to grapple with the deep uncertainty we’re facing in long-term transport planning in South Africa. The new approach brings together new techniques from the climate adaptation, Decision-Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU), and sustainability transitions research fields into transport planning. This development process has resulted from a unique knowledge co-production arrangement between academia and local government that was started in 2017. The lessons from developing this new transport planning approach together, which still meets the established CITP and IPTN plan requirements, will be relevant to those cities across South Africa, and many others in the Global South, who are looking to embed more resilience in their transport planning system in the post-covid era.Papers presented at the 40th International Southern African Transport Conference on 04 -08 July 202

An examination of the relationship of governance structure and performance: Evidence from banking companies in Bangladesh

Corporate governance has become increasingly important in developed and developing countries just after a series of corporate scandals and failures in a number of countries. Corporate governance structure is often viewed as a means of corporate success despite prior studies reveal mixed, somewhere conflicting and ambiguous, and somewhere no relationship between governance structure and performance. This study empirically investigates the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and financial performance of listed banking companies in Bangladesh by using two multiple regression models. The study reveals that a good number of companies do not comply with the regulatory requirements indicating remarkable shortfall in corporate governance practice. The companies are run by the professional managers having no duality and no ownership interest for which they are compensated by high remuneration to curb agency conflict. Apart from some inconsistent relationship between some corporate variables, the corporate governance mechanisms do not appear to have significant relationship with financial performances. The findings reveal an insignificant negative impact or somewhere no impact of independent directors and non-independent non-executive directors on the level of performance that strongly support the concept that the managers are essentially worthy of trust and earn returns for the owners as claimed by stewardship theory. The study provides support for the view that while much emphasis on corporate governance mechanisms is necessary to safeguard the interest of stakeholders; corporate governance on its own, as a set of codes or standards for corporate conformance, cannot make a company successful. Companies need to balance corporate governance mechanisms with performance by adopting strategic decision and risk management with the efficient utilization of the organization’s resources

A Low-Mass Planet with a Possible Sub-Stellar-Mass Host in Microlensing Event MOA-2007-BLG-192

We report the detection of an extrasolar planet of mass ratio q ~ 2 x 10^(-4) in microlensing event MOA-2007-BLG-192. The best fit microlensing model shows both the microlensing parallax and finite source effects, and these can be combined to obtain the lens masses of M = 0.060 (+0.028 -0.021) M_sun for the primary and m = 3.3 (+4.9 -1.6) M_earth for the planet. However, the observational coverage of the planetary deviation is sparse and incomplete, and the radius of the source was estimated without the benefit of a source star color measurement. As a result, the 2-sigma limits on the mass ratio and finite source measurements are weak. Nevertheless, the microlensing parallax signal clearly favors a sub-stellar mass planetary host, and the measurement of finite source effects in the light curve supports this conclusion. Adaptive optics images taken with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) NACO instrument are consistent with a lens star that is either a brown dwarf or a star at the bottom of the main sequence. Follow-up VLT and/or Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations will either confirm that the primary is a brown dwarf or detect the low-mass lens star and enable a precise determination of its mass. In either case, the lens star, MOA-2007-BLG-192L, is the lowest mass primary known to have a companion with a planetary mass ratio, and the planet, MOA-2007-BLG-192Lb, is probably the lowest mass exoplanet found to date, aside from the lowest mass pulsar planet.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Scheduled for the Sept. 1, 2008 issu

Why do large shareholders adopt a short-term versus a long-term investment horizon in different firms?

I ask why the same large shareholders have different investment horizons. Using data for 1998–2013, I examine four fundamental firm policies for their potential influence on blockholders’ investments with different time horizons. The panel ordinary least squares, difference‐in‐difference (using the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act), logistic, and dynamic generalized method of moments regression analyses reveal that blockholders adopt a short‐term horizon in smaller firms with a less independent board, high leverage, and high dividends while the same blockholders keep their investments longer in firms with a more independent board and low dividends. Under various economic conditions, different firm characteristics gain importance in blockholders’ decision on short‐term versus long‐term investments

Multiple agency perspective, family control, and private information abuse in an emerging economy

Using a comprehensive sample of listed companies in Hong Kong this paper investigates how family control affects private information abuses and firm performance in emerging economies. We combine research on stock market microstructure with more recent studies of multiple agency perspectives and argue that family ownership and control over the board increases the risk of private information abuse. This, in turn, has a negative impact on stock market performance. Family control is associated with an incentive to distort information disclosure to minority shareholders and obtain private benefits of control. However, the multiple agency roles of controlling families may have different governance properties in terms of investors’ perceptions of private information abuse. These findings contribute to our understanding of the conflicting evidence on the governance role of family control within a multiple agency perspectiv

Hamlet and the fall of the Berlin wall : the myth of interventionist Shakespeare performance

The critical reception of Heiner Müller’s 1990 Hamlet/Maschine at the Deutsches Theater in East Berlin epitomizes a trend of crediting GDR Shakespeare performance with political influence. Drawing on rehearsal notes and reviews, Oliver challenges the interventionist Shakespeare myth, contrasting the Deutsches Theater’s political involvement with the impact of its Hamlet production on events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall. Shakespeare’s capacity for political intervention at this point was limited by theater practitioners’ reliance on public funding, their close relationships with governmental authority, and an underlying distrust of the masses. Ultimately, GDR artists proved useful to the 1989 protest movement because they occupied a unique position at the interface of dissidence and power

Truth, trust, and civic duty:Cultural factors in citizens' perceptions of mobile phone apps and social media in disasters

This study investigates how citizens perceive the role of mobile phone apps specifically designed for disaster communication, and how these perceptions may differ from perceived roles and functions of social media in disaster-related tasks/situations. Focusing on trust in authorities and technology use, results suggest that social media use not only fosters trust via shared narratives and collective sense-making but may also improve trust relationships through local authorities assuming the function of a trustworthy information provider. In disaster apps usage, trust between citizens and authorities is generated through perceptions of shared responsibility rather than shared narratives. Apps were seen as mechanisms that reveal authorities' general willingness to share control, which may help overcome citizens' perceptions that they are distrusted by authorities.</p

Brief of Interested Law Professors As \u3ci\u3eAmici Curiae\u3c/i\u3e Supporting Petitioner in \u3ci\u3eBrohl v. Direct Marketing Association\u3c/i\u3e

Amici curiae are 14 professors of law who have devoted much of their teaching and research to the area of state taxes and the role of state tax policy in our federal system. The names and affiliations (for identification purposes only) of amici are included in an addendum to this brief. The amici are concerned with the effect of this Court’s dormant Commerce Clause jurisprudence on the development of fair and efficient state tax systems. No decision of this Court has had more effect on state sales and use tax systems than Quill Corporation v. North Dakota. We believe the Tenth Circuit properly decided the case below. But if the Court decides to grant the Direct Marketing Association’s petition to review the issue of discrimination which it raises, we respectfully request that the Court also grant the conditional crosspetition filed by Executive Director Barbara J. Brohl of the Colorado Department of Revenue asking the Court to reconsider Quill. This brief sets forth the reasons for our support of that cross-petitio