The question of quality

Phuong-Thao T. Trinh, Thu-Hien T. Le, Thu-Trang Vuong, Phuong-Hanh Hoang (2019). Chapter 6. The question of quality. In Quan-Hoang Vuong, Trung Tran (Eds.), The Vietnamese Social Sciences at a Fork in the Road (pp. 121–142). Warsaw, Poland: De Gruyter. DOI:10.2478/9783110686081-011. Online ISBN: 9783110686081 © 2019 Sciendo / De Gruyte

Public regulatory reform and management earnings forecasts in a low private litigation environment

We examine the impact of continuous disclosure regulatory reform on the likelihood, frequency and qualitative characteristics of management earnings forecasts issued in New Zealand’s low private litigation environment. Using a sample of 720 earnings forecasts issued by 94 firms listed on the New Zealand Exchange before and after the reform (1999–2005), we provide strong evidence of significant changes in forecasting behaviour in the post-reform period. Specifically, firms were more likely to issue earnings forecasts to pre-empt earnings announcements and, in contrast to findings in other legal settings, those earnings forecasts exhibited higher frequency and improved qualitative characteristics (better precision and accuracy). An important implication of our findings is that public regulatory reforms may have a greater benefit in a low private litigation environment and thus add to the global debate about the effectiveness of alternative public regulatory reforms of corporate requirements

The time to shut down

At each time, a firm facing uncertainty over future market conditions have to make a decision whether they should continue to produce or stop the process? As the traditional principle, the firm will go out of production when the price of the typical unit does not cover the average variable cost that it must incur to produce the typical unit. In reality the firm can suffer losses today however it can get more gains tomorrow that is enough to make up the losses. It means that this rule seems not be suitable absolutely in an uncertainty environment. And it leads to a rule that the firm only stop producing if average variable costs of unit exceed the price of unit by a positive amount. This paper expects to find this exceeding amount and when a firm will stop producing. Under uncertainty, the price of unit and the average variables cost are assumed to follow a continuous time stochastic process. We wish to apply the optimal stopping time approach in order to solve it.

Voluntary pension system challenge of expanding coverage

Since 1947, the Vietnam Social Security (VSS) has provided social insurance to public servants and armed forces personnel in Vietnam. In 1995, the Government merged the social insurance unit of the Ministry of labour, invalids and social affairs with that of the Vietnam General Confederation of labor. At the same time the system became mandatory to the employees of the newly developing private sector. The consolidated system is publicly managed by the VSS administration. VSS collects contributions and pay social insurance benefits (in case of sickness and sick leaves, maternity and family planning related leaves, work injury and professional disease, survivorship and to people that reached pension ages). This paper investigates this issue by reviewing the characteristics of employment in Vietnam. It concludes that the risk that social coverage remains limited for many years is high and, presents accordingly some policy options to augment VSS's chances to reach universal coverage in the future.Pensions&Retirement Systems,Emerging Markets,Labor Markets,Debt Markets,Labor Policies

Membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis in patients with chronic venous catheters: a case report and literature review.

Chronic indwelling catheters have been reported to be associated with membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis (MPGN) via the activation of the classical complement pathway in association with bacterial infections such as coagulase negative staphylococcus. We herein provide supporting evidence for the direct causal relationship between chronic catheter infections and MPGN via a case of recurrent MPGN associated with recurrent catheter infections used for total parenteral nutrition (TPN) in a man with short gut syndrome. We also present a literature review of similar cases and identify common clinical manifestations that may serve to aid clinicians in the early identification of MPGN associated with infected central venous catheterization or vice versa. The importance of routine monitoring of kidney function and urinalysis among patients with chronic central venous catheterization is highlighted as kidney injury may herald or coincide with overtly infected chronic indwelling central venous catheters

The Impact of Disclosure Reform and Alternative Sources of Earnings-Related Information on the Market Reaction to Firm-Based Earnings-Related Disclosures

Our study seeks to investigate changes in the market reaction to earnings-related disclosures following the introduction of the New Zealand continuous disclosure reform. We further extend to study whether these changes are different when there exist the alternative sources of earnings-related information. Using the sample of 580 earnings forecasts and 626 earnings announcements released by 94 firms listed on the New Zealand Exchange during the financial reporting periods ending from 31 January 1999 to 31 December 2005, we find evidence that the introduction of the disclosure reform has impacted to the market reaction to earnings-related disclosures and the availability of alternative sources of earnings-related information plays an important role in shaping this impact. Specifically, the market places less emphasis on post-disclosure reform management earnings forecasts issued by firms of which the alternative sources of earnings-related information are available. There is a significant reduction in the market reaction to earnings announcements in the post-disclosure reform period. This reduction is mainly driven by group of earnings announcements issued by firms of which the alternative sources of earnings-related information are not available. These findings suggest that while the enhancement of disclosure regulation in New Zealand is considered to have some positive impact on the financial environment which is consistent with regulatory intent, the regulators should be aware that the benefits from this disclosure regulation may not be universal and thus the increase in compliance costs borne by all firms could not accordingly be equally justified

The Influence of Corporate Governance on Management Earnings Forecast Behaviour in a Low Private Litigation Environment

We examine the influence of three external corporate governance mechanisms – continuous disclosure regulatory reform, analyst following and ownership concentration and one internal corporate governance mechanism – board structure, on the likelihood, frequency, horizon, precision and accuracy of management earnings forecasts in the low private litigation environment of New Zealand. Based on a sample of 1,082 management earnings forecasts issued by 125 firms listed on the New Zealand Exchange during the 1998-2007 financial reporting periods, we provide strong evidence that these four corporate governance mechanisms have a significant influence on management earnings forecast behaviour after effectively controlling for endogeneity, multicollinearity and self-selection bias problems. Specifically, firms monitored by effective corporate governance mechanisms were more inclined to pre-empt their earnings announcements with earnings forecasts (overall, non-routine and quantitative) and provide these earnings forecasts more frequently. These earnings forecasts issued by these firms were less optimistically biased. In addition, firms having more directors with accounting expertise on their boards and audit committees were more likely to provide earnings forecasts with longer horizon and smaller forecast error. Board size and the existence of a formally established audit committee are shown to have a positive impact on forecast error. A possible interpretation of our findings is that effective corporate governance mechanisms have been able to substitute for private enforcement alternative. Our findings should have important implications for the other low private litigation environments as well as for high private litigation environments such as the United States given the high economic and social costs that have been identified as being related to private litigation

Hanoi’s early 20th century: “On the second floor - Phố Phái”

And not just look; one needs to know where to look as well. In this case: look upwards, on the second floor of the old townhouses, which has not been replaced by showcasing pavilions or modern glass doors. Some houses have been repainted, but the architecture – the form of the story, the shapes, and construction of the balconies, the decorating sculptures – still exudes a century-old familiarity. So it turns out that Phố Phái, though no longer intact, is still present here

Not-NUTs at W-NUT 2020 Task 2: A BERT-based System in Identifying Informative COVID-19 English Tweets

As of 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic is full-blown on a global scale, people's need to have access to legitimate information regarding COVID-19 is more urgent than ever, especially via online media where the abundance of irrelevant information overshadows the more informative ones. In response to such, we proposed a model that, given an English tweet, automatically identifies whether that tweet bears informative content regarding COVID-19 or not. By ensembling different BERTweet model configurations, we have achieved competitive results that are only shy of those by top performing teams by roughly 1% in terms of F1 score on the informative class. In the post-competition period, we have also experimented with various other approaches that potentially boost generalization to a new dataset