scholarly journals Ready When the Big One Comes? Natural Disasters and Mass Support for Preparedness Investment

Author(s):  
Michael M. Bechtel ◽  
Massimo Mannino

AbstractSocieties can address collective threats such as natural disasters or pandemics by investing in preparedness (ex ante) or by offering compensation after an adverse event has occurred (ex post). What explains which of these options voters prefer? We study how personal exposure and policy knowledge affect mass support for long-term disaster preparedness, a type of long-term investment meant to cope with an increasingly destructive and frequent class of events. We first assess whether support for preparedness reflects personal affectedness and find that neither subjective nor geo-coded measures of disaster exposure predict policy preferences. Second, we explore whether this finding can be explained by misperceptions about the features of the available policy options. We find that revealing the damage reductions associated with preparedness systematically reduces opposition to long-term investment. These results suggest that opposition to preparing for collective threats may depend more on informational deficiencies than on personal experience with realized risks.

Author(s):  
Chris Reed

Using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to replace human decision-making will inevitably create new risks whose consequences are unforeseeable. This naturally leads to calls for regulation, but I argue that it is too early to attempt a general system of AI regulation. Instead, we should work incrementally within the existing legal and regulatory schemes which allocate responsibility, and therefore liability, to persons. Where AI clearly creates risks which current law and regulation cannot deal with adequately, then new regulation will be needed. But in most cases, the current system can work effectively if the producers of AI technology can provide sufficient transparency in explaining how AI decisions are made. Transparency ex post can often be achieved through retrospective analysis of the technology's operations, and will be sufficient if the main goal is to compensate victims of incorrect decisions. Ex ante transparency is more challenging, and can limit the use of some AI technologies such as neural networks. It should only be demanded by regulation where the AI presents risks to fundamental rights, or where society needs reassuring that the technology can safely be used. Masterly inactivity in regulation is likely to achieve a better long-term solution than a rush to regulate in ignorance. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘The growing ubiquity of algorithms in society: implications, impacts and innovations'.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 227
Author(s):  
Tamara Stojanović ◽  
Ljiljana Drinić

The aim of our research was to test the predictability of Altman’s Z-score models in the case of agricultural companies in the Republic of Srpska. Due to the fact that according to these models the companies from the critical zone are supposed to go bankrupt in the near future, while the companies from the safe zone are not supposed to go bankrupt, these two groups of companies have been subject to ex-ante analysis during the period of five years (2011-2015) in order to estimate the predicting efficiency of Z-score models. The authors have also performed the ex-post analysis to see how the bankrupt companies had been classified according to these models in the years preceding their bankruptcy. The results of these analyses show that Z-score models are not reliable in predicting bankruptcy, nor for the creditworthiness analysis, but can be useful in identifying agricultural companies with long-term financial difficulties especially if other, non-financial variables are included.


2008 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-104
Author(s):  
Jesse De Beer

The concept of an equity risk premium (ERP) is fundamental to modern financial theory and central to every decision at the heart of corporate finance. Efforts to quantify ERP are well rewarded by insights into the stability and dynamics of long-term investment performance. Such efforts require the quantification of both historically realised (ex post) and expected future (ex ante) premiums. Finding an appropriate proxy for the expected (ex ante) ERP remains a challenging aspect. One widely used application is the use of long-term averages of observed market premiums as a proxy for expected returns. The aim of this paper is to analyse the appropriateness of the historical methodology of estimating expected ERP in the South African context. The analysis in this paper suggests that analysing past historical figures remains useful in the SA context. This is supported by the results of the statistical analysis, showing stationarity of the ERP time-series, meaning that the true mean does not change over time. This implies that the historical average mean may be used as a proxy for the long-run expected ERP. However, the well-documented problems relating to large standard errors (predictability problem) and relevance due to changing circumstances are also evident in the SA data. Thus, investors would be well advised to analyse the past and apply informed judgments as to future differences, if any, when attempting to arrive at fair forecasts.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krishna Chaitanya Vadlamannati

AbstractDoes international investor sentiment improve when a crises-ridden country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program? I argue that merely participating in an IMF program may not revive the sentiments of investors. Rather, investor sentiment would improve when governments enhance the credibility of their commitment to reforms by accepting severe conditions imposed by the IMF, which incur ex ante and ex post political costs. Using panel data on 166 countries during the 1992–2013 period (twenty-two years), I find that countries participating in IMF programs, with conditions attached, specifically prior actions and performance criteria conditions, after controlling for endogeneity concerns using exogeneous instruments, are associated with an increase in long-term investor sentiment. These results are robust to using alternative data, variables and estimation methods. My findings are in stark contrast to those who argue that IMF conditional programs are akin to swallowing a bitter pill. In fact, my results demonstrate that the so-called bitter pill may act as a palliative.


2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanket Mohapatra ◽  
George Joseph ◽  
Dilip Ratha
Keyword(s):  
Ex Post ◽  

2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Meng Wu

If the venture project has a great demand of investment, venture entrepreneurs will seek multiple venture capitalists to ensure necessary funding. This paper discusses the decision-making process in the case that multiple venture capitalists invest in a single project. From the beginning of the project till the withdrawal of the investment, the efforts of both parties are long term and dynamic. We consider the Stackelberg game model for venture capital investment in multiple periods. Given the optimal efforts by the entrepreneurs, our results clearly show that as time goes, in every single period entrepreneurs will expect their share of revenue paid to shrink. In other words, they expect a higher ex ante payment and a lower ex post payment. But, in contrast, venture capitalists are expecting exactly the opposite. With a further analysis, we also design an optimal contract in multiple periods. Last but not the least, several issues to be further investigated are proposed as well.


2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (5) ◽  
pp. 50-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nelson Oly Ndubisi ◽  
Setiadi Umar

Purpose The purpose of this study is to show how outsourcing partners can maximise the benefits of outsourcing while containing the negative effect of destructive conflict (the “bad apple”) on trust and commitment. Design/methodology/approach The study reviewed existing literature on the benefits and limitations of outsourcing from the principal’s (outsourcer) and the agent’s (service provider) perspectives. The study further draws on empirical evidence from studies conducted across ten industries in three countries within the Asia–Pacific Rim and the Middle-East, namely, Australia, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. Findings Long-term orientation and ethical norms are robust ex-ante (i.e. before the destructive conflict) handling strategies, whereas integrative conflict handling style and (to a lesser degree) accommodating and compromising conflict handling styles are effective ex-post (i.e. after the destructive conflict) handling strategies. Forcing and avoidance conflict handling styles can escalate destructive conflict and should be completely avoided by outsourcing partners at all times. Practical implications The benefits of outsourcing outweigh its challenges. Trust and commitment are positively affected by ex-ante and ex-post (destructive conflict) strategies. Destructive conflicts (or the bad apple effect) can be contained through these strategies. Firms should leverage the upsides of outsourcing relationships and contain the downsides by integrating long-term orientation and ethical norms that can help to pre-empt and forestall destructive conflict. They should adopt an integrative conflict handling strategy in the event of a manifest conflict. Other strategies that can be applied to manifest conflict (albeit more sparingly) are accommodating and compromising strategies. Each has the potential to increase trust and commitment in the relationship. Originality/value The authors unveil before and after (the destructive conflict) handling strategies that do not depend on contextual factors or industry/sectoral differences.


2011 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 493-525 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernst Fehr ◽  
Oliver Hart ◽  
Christian Zehnder

Hart and John Moore (2008) introduce new behavioral assumptions that can explain long-term contracts and the employment relation. We examine experimentally their idea that contracts serve as reference points. The evidence confirms the prediction that there is a trade-off between rigidity and flexibility. Flexible contracts—which would dominate rigid contracts under standard assumptions—cause significant shading in ex post performance, while under rigid contracts much less shading occurs. The experiment appears to reveal a new behavioral force: ex ante competition legitimizes the terms of a contract, and aggrievement and shading occur mainly about outcomes within the contract. (JEL D44, D86, J41)


2018 ◽  
pp. 49-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. E. Mamonov

Our analysis documents that the existence of hidden “holes” in the capital of not yet failed banks - while creating intertemporal pressure on the actual level of capital - leads to changing of maturity of loans supplied rather than to contracting of their volume. Long-term loans decrease, whereas short-term loans rise - and, what is most remarkably, by approximately the same amounts. Standardly, the higher the maturity of loans the higher the credit risk and, thus, the more loan loss reserves (LLP) banks are forced to create, increasing the pressure on capital. Banks that already hide “holes” in the capital, but have not yet faced with license withdrawal, must possess strong incentives to shorten the maturity of supplied loans. On the one hand, it raises the turnovers of LLP and facilitates the flexibility of capital management; on the other hand, it allows increasing the speed of shifting of attracted deposits to loans to related parties in domestic or foreign jurisdictions. This enlarges the potential size of ex post revealed “hole” in the capital and, therefore, allows us to assume that not every loan might be viewed as a good for the economy: excessive short-term and insufficient long-term loans can produce the source for future losses.


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