Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Digital Commons Network

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Singapore Management University

Series

2006

Discipline
Keyword
Publication

Articles 1 - 30 of 385

Full-Text Articles in Entire DC Network

What's Ahead For 2007? Knowledge@Wharton Network Surveys The Globe, Knowledge@Smu Dec 2006

What's Ahead For 2007? Knowledge@Wharton Network Surveys The Globe, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

On the financial front, 2006 has been a pretty good year all around. Stock markets in many countries have rallied, energy prices have fallen, inflation is relatively low and growth in GDP ranges from respectable to robust. But the economies of most countries also face a number of threats -- some predictable, some not -- that could derail recent gains in our increasingly connected global markets. What's ahead for 2007 in the U.S., India, Europe, Latin America, China and other parts of the world? We offer a roundup of reports from the Knowledge@Wharton Network, including India Knowledge@Wharton, Universia Knowledge@Wharton and …


How And Why Chinese Firms Excel In 'The Art Of Price War', Knowledge@Smu Dec 2006

How And Why Chinese Firms Excel In 'The Art Of Price War', Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

When it comes to price wars, Wharton marketing professor Z. John Zhang can't help but notice that companies in the West and companies in China are quite literally worlds apart. In the West, Zhang says, the outbreak of a price war is viewed as the failure of managerial rationality. In China, the outbreak of a price war is considered a legitimate and effective business strategy. In a recent paper, Zhang and Dongsheng Zhou, a marketing professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, analyze two price wars that took place in China in the mid-1990s.


Insider Trading And Voluntary Disclosures, Qiang Cheng, Kin Lo Dec 2006

Insider Trading And Voluntary Disclosures, Qiang Cheng, Kin Lo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We hypothesize that insiders strategically choose disclosure policies and the timing of their equity trades to maximize trading profits, subject to the litigation costs associated with disclosure and insider trading. Accounting for endogeneity between disclosures and trading, we find that when managers plan to purchase shares, they increase the number of bad news forecasts to reduce the purchase price. In addition, this relation is stronger for trades initiated by chief executive officers than for those initiated by other executives. Confirming this strategic behavior, we find that managers successfully time their trades around bad news forecasts, buying fewer shares beforehand and …


A Universal Copyright Fund: A New Way To Bridge The Copyright Divide, Kung-Chung Liu, Haochen Sun Dec 2006

A Universal Copyright Fund: A New Way To Bridge The Copyright Divide, Kung-Chung Liu, Haochen Sun

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The ever-increasing digitization of works, along with the deployment of technical measures to protect such works and the expansive use of the Internet, further exacerbate the divide between the IP-rich and IP-poor countries in their ability to benefit from such works. It is suggested by this paper that to borrow from experiences on how the telecommunications world provides universal service to each and every household at affordable prices, and to endeavor to shed some new light on how the copyright divide can be narrowed. It is structured in three parts. The first part will examine the past and future failure …


Towards Effective Content-Based Music Retrieval With Multiple Acoustic Feature Combination, Jialie Shen, John Shepherd, Ann H. H. Ngu Dec 2006

Towards Effective Content-Based Music Retrieval With Multiple Acoustic Feature Combination, Jialie Shen, John Shepherd, Ann H. H. Ngu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a new approach to constructing music descriptors to support efficient content-based music retrieval and classification. The system applies multiple musical properties combined with a hybrid architecture based on principal component analysis (PCA) and a multilayer perceptron neural network. This architecture enables straightforward incorporation of multiple musical feature vectors, based on properties such as timbral texture, pitch, and rhythm structure, into a single low-dimensioned vector that is more effective for classification than the larger individual feature vectors. The use of supervised training enables incorporation of human musical perception that further enhances the classification process. We compare …


On The Lower Bound Of Local Optimums In K-Means Algorithms, Zhenjie Zhang, Bing Tian Dai, Anthony K.H. Tung Dec 2006

On The Lower Bound Of Local Optimums In K-Means Algorithms, Zhenjie Zhang, Bing Tian Dai, Anthony K.H. Tung

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.


Rapid Identification Of Column Heterogeneity, Bing Tian Dai, Nick Koudas, Beng Chin Ooi, Divesh Srivastava, Suresh Venkatasubramanian Dec 2006

Rapid Identification Of Column Heterogeneity, Bing Tian Dai, Nick Koudas, Beng Chin Ooi, Divesh Srivastava, Suresh Venkatasubramanian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

No abstract provided.


Continuous Monitoring Of Knn Queries In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yuxia Yao, Xueyan Tang, Ee Peng Lim Dec 2006

Continuous Monitoring Of Knn Queries In Wireless Sensor Networks, Yuxia Yao, Xueyan Tang, Ee Peng Lim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Wireless sensor networks have been widely used for civilian and military applications, such as environmental monitoring and vehicle tracking. In these applications, continuous query processing is often required and their efficient evaluation is a critical requirement to be met. Due to the limited power supply for sensor nodes, energy efficiency is a major performance measure in such query evaluation. In this paper, we focus on continuous kNN query processing. We observe that the centralized data storage and monitoring schemes do not favor energy efficiency. We therefore propose a localized scheme to monitor long running nearest neighbor queries in sensor networks. …


Clique Percolation For Finding Naturally Cohesive And Overlapping Document Clusters, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong, Yunqing Xia, Ruifeng Xu Dec 2006

Clique Percolation For Finding Naturally Cohesive And Overlapping Document Clusters, Wei Gao, Kam-Fai Wong, Yunqing Xia, Ruifeng Xu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Techniques for find document clusters mostly depend on models that impose strong explicit and/or implicit priori assumptions. As a consequence, the clustering effects tend to be unnatural and stray away from the intrinsic grouping natures of a document collection. We apply a novel graph-theoretic technique called Clique Percolation Method (CPM) for document clustering. In this method, a process of enumerating highly cohesive maximal document cliques is performed in a random graph, where those strongly adjacent cliques are mingled to form naturally overlapping clusters. Our clustering results can unveil the inherent structural connections of the underlying data. Experiments show that CPM …


Maximum Likelihood And Gaussian Estimation Of Continuous Time Models In Finance, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Dec 2006

Maximum Likelihood And Gaussian Estimation Of Continuous Time Models In Finance, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper overviews maximum likelihood and Gaussian methods of estimating continuous time models used in finance. Since the exact likelihood can be constructed only in special cases, much attention has been devoted to the development of methods designed to approximate the likelihood. These approaches range from crude Euler-type approximations and higher order stochastic Taylor series expansions to more complex polynomial-based expansions and infill approximations to the likelihood based on a continuous time data record. The methods are discussed, their properties are outlined and their relative finite sample performance compared in a simulation experiment with the nonlinear CIR diffusion model, which …


Query-Based Watermarking For Xml Data, Xuan Zhou, Hwee Hwa Pang, Kian-Lee Tan Dec 2006

Query-Based Watermarking For Xml Data, Xuan Zhou, Hwee Hwa Pang, Kian-Lee Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As increasing amount of XML data is exchanged over the internet, copyright protection of this type of data is becoming an important requirement for many applications. In this paper, we introduce a rights protection scheme for XML data based on digital watermarking. One of the main challenges for watermarking XML data is that the data could be easily reorganized by an adversary in an attempt to destroy any embedded watermark. To overcome it, we propose a query-based watermarking scheme, which creates queries to identify available watermarking capacity, such that watermarks could be recovered from reorganized data through query rewriting. The …


Household Heterogeneity And Optimal Inter-Temporal Pricing For A Durable-Good Monopoly, Winston T. H. Koh Dec 2006

Household Heterogeneity And Optimal Inter-Temporal Pricing For A Durable-Good Monopoly, Winston T. H. Koh

Research Collection School Of Economics

In this paper, I extend the analysis in Koh (2006) to examine the optimality of inter-temporal price discrimination for a durable-good monopoly in a model where infinitely-lived households consume both durable goods and a stream of non-durable goods subject to different inter-temporal budget constraints. I also consider the multi-dimensional setting where households differ in both inter-temporal budget constraints and the utilities they derive from the consumption of the durable good.


The Singapore 'Advantage' In Suzhou, China: Premium Or Perception?, Caroline Yeoh, Di Kun Goh, Victor Sim, Norhanna Yumi Dec 2006

The Singapore 'Advantage' In Suzhou, China: Premium Or Perception?, Caroline Yeoh, Di Kun Goh, Victor Sim, Norhanna Yumi

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper revisits Singapore’s industrial development in Suzhou, China, which has been in operation for more than a decade. We aim to glean insights from this experiment and more importantly, to verify recent claims of it generating political gain and economic capital for Singapore. The flagship project took on an identical framework as the other Singaporean transborder industrialization ventures in the region by adopting Singapore’s expertise and reputation for an efficient and stable government and investment environment. These measures were coupled with the combination of local-specific advantages in the region, such as availability of cheaper labour and market access. Singapore’s …


The Association Between Earnings Quality And Regulatory Report Opinions In The Accounting Industry, Tracey Chunqi Zhang, Katherine Gunny Dec 2006

The Association Between Earnings Quality And Regulatory Report Opinions In The Accounting Industry, Tracey Chunqi Zhang, Katherine Gunny

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We compare the outcome of two different information systems – self regulation versus private sector regulation – in the accounting industry. Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) inspections replaced American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) peer reviews of auditors. Peer review opinions are useful with respect to decisions about hiring and firing of auditors (Hilary and Lennox, 2005); therefore, the question remains what are the benefits of incurring the cost to replace a selfregulatory system with a private regulatory agency. We examine the usefulness of these two information systems at distinguishing earnings quality at firms …


Reputation Stretching In Online Auctions, Jianqing Chen, Mei Lin, Andrew B. Whinston Dec 2006

Reputation Stretching In Online Auctions, Jianqing Chen, Mei Lin, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Reputation systems are ubiquitously employed in the online marketplaces to provide information on users’ abilities and trustworthiness. We focus particularly on the problem of reputation stretching, the extension of an established reputation into a new market. By examining various factors—market size, the expected performance in the expanding market, and the risk of performance in the expanding market—we characterize conditions that affect bidder’s stretching decision in the expanding market. Moreover, we analyze both the short-term and the long-term expanding cases, and obtain contrasting results in the two settings.


The Effect Of The Options Backdating Scandal On The Stock-Price Performance Of 110 Accused Companies, Gennaro Bernile, Gregg A. Jarrell, Howard Mulcahey Dec 2006

The Effect Of The Options Backdating Scandal On The Stock-Price Performance Of 110 Accused Companies, Gennaro Bernile, Gregg A. Jarrell, Howard Mulcahey

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Since academic scholars and the Wall Street Journal reported widespread evidence indicating that option grants to executives were backdated, an avalanche of news stories followed documenting this ever-widening corporate scandal. In this study we ask: "How do disclosures of backdating affect shareholder value?" We closely examine 110 companies listed in the Wall Street Journal's Perfect Payday webpage, collecting all news stories related to options backdating. We find that shareholders of these 110 companies suffer on average significant stock-price declines, ranging between 20% and 50%. Moreover, these losses do not seem to be due to temporary overreactions (at least so far). …


Economics Of Competition': A Study Of Low-Cost Manufacturing Enclaves In Batam Island, Indonesia, Caroline Yeoh, Feng Hao Chua, Sylvie Tan Dec 2006

Economics Of Competition': A Study Of Low-Cost Manufacturing Enclaves In Batam Island, Indonesia, Caroline Yeoh, Feng Hao Chua, Sylvie Tan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Singapore’s transborder industrialization projects in China and India have received much attention. This regionalization initiative was intended to set in place a strategic configuration for the city-state to restructure its domestic industries and, pari passu, retain important linkages with contiguous, low-cost environments. Our study reports on Singapore’s pioneering, albeit lesser-known, project - Batamindo Industrial Park – in neighboring Batam Island, Indonesia, and finds that the strategic intent of this policy gambit remains stymied by non-economic, socio-political complexities in the host environment, and the economics of competition from other industrial estates in the vicinity of this prototype, remains to be addressed.


Certainty As A Moderator Of Feedback Reactions? A Test Of The Strength Of The Self-Verification Motive, Frederik Anseel, Filip Lievens Dec 2006

Certainty As A Moderator Of Feedback Reactions? A Test Of The Strength Of The Self-Verification Motive, Frederik Anseel, Filip Lievens

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The present study investigated whether employees are merely interested in hearing good news about themselves, as predicted by self-enhancement theory, or are more interested in feedback that confirms their self-concept, as predicted by self-verification theory. We examined in a field study whether self-view certainty serves as a moderator and strengthens the effect of congruence between individuals' self-views and the performance feedback they receive about these self-views on feedback reactions. Polynomial regression results revealed that people mainly reacted favourably to positive feedback. Prior self-views did not play a key role in explaining feedback reactions. As feedback scores were the main determinant …


Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima As National Trauma, Hiro Saito Dec 2006

Reiterated Commemoration: Hiroshima As National Trauma, Hiro Saito

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article examines historical transformations of Japanese collective memory of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima by utilizing a theoretical framework that combines a model of reiterated problem solving and a theory of cultural trauma. I illustrate how the event of the nuclear fallout in March 1954 allowed actors to consolidate previously fragmented commemorative practices into a master frame to define the postwar Japanese identity in terms of transnational commemoration of "Hiroshima." I also show that nationalization of trauma of "Hiroshima" involved a shift from pity to sympathy in structures of feeling about the event. This historical study suggests that a …


Managing News In A Managed Media: Mediating The Message In Malaysiakini.Com, Augustine Pang Dec 2006

Managing News In A Managed Media: Mediating The Message In Malaysiakini.Com, Augustine Pang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Widely regarded as an anomaly in the neo-authoritarian system in Malaysia, Malaysiakini.com is proving that managing an independent media in a government-managed media landscape is more than a Sisyphean struggle. Employing participant observation and interviews, supplemented by artifacts and media accounts, this study seeks to understand the media management of Malaysiakini.com through news management, using Shoemaker and Reese’s (1996) hierarchy of influence model, which posits a framework of internal and external forces that affect news management. The study found determined attempts to minimize ideological influences through media socialization by accentuating on the direct influences, such as the journalists’ role in …


Environmental And Resource Management Under Myopia, Tomoki Fujii Dec 2006

Environmental And Resource Management Under Myopia, Tomoki Fujii

Research Collection School Of Economics

Myopia is important in environmental and resource management problems because they often involve intertemporal decisions over a long time horizon. We present a parsimonious extension of standard dynamic programming equation in a continuous time and continuous state setting, which enables rich description of myopic behavior. In our model, the process of planning future controls and choosing current control are clearly distinguished. We Illustrate the behavior of various types of myopic agents with a simple example of non-renewable resource extraction, and discuss the policy relevance of the expiry of extraction permits to resource management under Myopia.


Towards Effective Content-Based Music Retrieval With Multiple Acoustic Feature Composition, Jialie Shen, John Shepherd, Ngu Ahh Dec 2006

Towards Effective Content-Based Music Retrieval With Multiple Acoustic Feature Composition, Jialie Shen, John Shepherd, Ngu Ahh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we present a new approach to constructing music descriptors to support efficient content-based music retrieval and classification. The system applies multiple musical properties combined with a hybrid architecture based on principal component analysis (PCA) and a multilayer perceptron neural network. This architecture enables straightforward incorporation of multiple musical feature vectors, based on properties such as timbral texture, pitch, and rhythm structure, into a single low-dimensioned vector that is more effective for classification than the larger individual feature vectors. The use of supervised training enables incorporation of human musical perception that further enhances the classification process. We compare …


Formal Analysis And Systematic Construction Of Two-Factor Authentication Scheme, Guomin Yang, Duncan S. Wong, Huaxiong Wang, Xiaotie Deng Dec 2006

Formal Analysis And Systematic Construction Of Two-Factor Authentication Scheme, Guomin Yang, Duncan S. Wong, Huaxiong Wang, Xiaotie Deng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most commonly used two-factor authentication mechanisms is based on smart card and user’s password. Throughout the years, there have been many schemes proposed, but most of them have already been found flawed due to the lack of formal security analysis. On the cryptanalysis of this type of schemes, in this paper, we further review two recently proposed schemes and show that their security claims are invalid. To address the current issue, we propose a new and simplified property set and a formal adversarial model for analyzing the security of this type of schemes. We believe that the …


Designing Web Sites For Customer Loyalty Across Business Domains: A Multilevel Analysis, S. Mithas, Narayanasamy Ramasubbu, M. S. Krishnan, C. Fornell Dec 2006

Designing Web Sites For Customer Loyalty Across Business Domains: A Multilevel Analysis, S. Mithas, Narayanasamy Ramasubbu, M. S. Krishnan, C. Fornell

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Web Sites are important components of Internet strategy for organizations. This paper develops a theoretical model for understanding the effect of Web site design elements on customer loyalty to a Web site. We show the relevance of the business domain of a Web site to gain a contextual understanding of relative importance of Web site design elements. We use a hierarchical linear modeling approach to model multilevel and cross-level interactions that have not been explicitly considered in previous research. By analyzing, data on more than 12,000 online customer surveys for 43 Web sites in several business domains, we find that …


Escalation And De-Escalation Of Commitment To Information Systems Projects: Insights From An Approach-Avoidance Process Model, Gary Pan, Shan Ling Pan Dec 2006

Escalation And De-Escalation Of Commitment To Information Systems Projects: Insights From An Approach-Avoidance Process Model, Gary Pan, Shan Ling Pan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We view escalation and de-escalation of commitment as processes involving recurring instances of approach-avoidance conflict. This paper outlines an approach-avoidance process model for describing and analyzing escalation and de-escalation of commitment in information systems projects. In the model, the sequential mapping of project events is integrated with a model of approach-avoidance conflict that identifies periods of gradual evolution at two separate levels of social analysis (project and work) that are punctuated by sudden, revolutionary periods of rapid change. By conceiving the processes of commitment escalation and de-escalation as sequences of events involving approach-avoidance conflicts, researchers may develop a deeper understanding …


Implication Of Comprehensive Income Disclosure For Future Earnings And Analysts' Forecasts, Jong-Hag Choi, Yoonseok Zang Dec 2006

Implication Of Comprehensive Income Disclosure For Future Earnings And Analysts' Forecasts, Jong-Hag Choi, Yoonseok Zang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper examines the association of comprehensive income with subsequent period net income as well as analysts’ earnings forecasts. Our results support the notion that comprehensive income is incrementally useful in predicting subsequent period changes in net income. We also document that comprehensive income is associated with analysts’ earnings forecast revisions and forecast errors. The evidence is consistent with analysts’ failure to fully utilize the information disclosed in comprehensive income. The result suggests that analysts revise their year t+1’s forecast downward when comprehensive income is smaller than net income but they do not revise the forecast upward when comprehensive income …


Online Advertising By The Comparison Challenge Approach, Jae Wong Lee, Jae Kyu Lee Dec 2006

Online Advertising By The Comparison Challenge Approach, Jae Wong Lee, Jae Kyu Lee

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

To enhance the effectiveness of online comparisons from a manufacturer's point of view, we develop a framework for the comparison challenge approach. To develop the comparison challenge framework, we analyze 12 factors that determine the characteristics of comparison and propose models of valuable comparison challenges using the CompareMe and CompareThem strategies. We demonstrate the approaches with the example of PC selection. To help plan the comparison challenges, we formulate a mathematical programming model that maximizes the total value of comparison under the constraints of comparison opportunity and budgetary limitation. The model is applied to eight comparison scenarios, and its performance …


Cosign: A Parallel Algorithm For Coordinated Traffic Signal Control, Shih-Fen Cheng, Marina A. Epelman, Robert L. Smith Dec 2006

Cosign: A Parallel Algorithm For Coordinated Traffic Signal Control, Shih-Fen Cheng, Marina A. Epelman, Robert L. Smith

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The problem of finding optimal coordinated signal timing plans for a large number of traffic signals is a challenging problem because of the exponential growth in the number of joint timing plans that need to be explored as the network size grows. In this paper, the game-theoretic paradigm of fictitious play to iteratively search for a coordinated signal timing plan is employed, which improves a system-wide performance criterion for a traffic network. The algorithm is robustly scalable to realistic-size networks modeled with high-fidelity simulations. Results of a case study for the city of Troy, MI, where there are 75 signalized …


Dynamic Multi-Linked Negotiations In Multi-Echelon Production Scheduling Networks, Hoong Chuin Lau, Guan Li Soh, Wee Chong Wan Dec 2006

Dynamic Multi-Linked Negotiations In Multi-Echelon Production Scheduling Networks, Hoong Chuin Lau, Guan Li Soh, Wee Chong Wan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this paper, we are concerned with scheduling resources in a multi-tier production/logistics system for multi-indenture goods. Unlike classical production scheduling problems, the problem we study is concerned with local utilities which are private. We present an agent model and investigate an efficient scheme for handling multi-linked agent negotiations. With this scheme we attempt to overcome the drawbacks of sequential negotiations and negotiation parameter settings. Our approach is based on embedding a credit-based negotiation protocol within a local search scheduling algorithm. We demonstrate the computational efficiency and effectiveness of the approach in solving a real-life dynamic production scheduling problem which …


Supply Chain Information Sharing In A Macro Prediction Market, Zhiling Guo, Fang Fang, Andrew B. Whinston Dec 2006

Supply Chain Information Sharing In A Macro Prediction Market, Zhiling Guo, Fang Fang, Andrew B. Whinston

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper aims to address supply chain partners' incentives for information sharing from an information systems design perspective. Specifically, we consider a supply chain characterized by N geographically distributed retailers who order a homogeneous product from one manufacturer. Each retailer's demand risk consists of two parts: a systematic risk part that affects all retailers and an idiosyncratic risk part that only has a local effect. We propose a macro prediction market to effectively elicit and aggregate useful information about systematic demand risk. We show that such information can be used to achieve accurate demand forecast sharing and better channel coordination …