The efficient market hypothesis and corporate event waves: part 1

Efficient markets are commonly defined as ones that do not allow investors to earn above-average returns without accepting above-average risk. In a traditional framework, where investors are rational and there are no frictions, the efficient market hypothesis (EMH) states that a security's price reflects its fundamental value, which is the sum of its discounted expected future cash flows. Put simply, under the EMH, securities are "rightly priced." Through this study, the author finds that while the EMH has been widely accepted for decades among academics, practitioners and regulators still appear to be unconvinced. From a behavioral perspective, the author shows that human psychology and sentiment factors can account for some discrepancies in financial markets. He also finds evidence of limited arbitrage being risky and costly and, hence, impeding the ability of investors to take advantage of profitable opportunities. This study provides an extensive analysis of the critical discussions surrounding the EMH and deepens and strengthens the understanding of the EMH, as well as the arguments for and against.

The efficient market hypothesis and corporate event waves: part II

This article is the second of a two-part series on the efficient market hypothesis corporate event waves. The ideas of market efficiency, or rational theory, and the behavioral hypothesis have been extensively used to explain the modern phenomena of corporate event waves. Some studies investigate the patterns of corporate events from a behavioral finance perspective and suggest that corporate announcement waves are driven by investor sentiment. Baker and Wurgler examine equity market timing as an aspect of real corporate financial policy. Sentiment can also explain IPO waves. Post-announcement returns and IPO volume are positively correlated to firms' capital demands and the level of investor optimism. Helwge and Liang examine the IPO cycles from hot to cold markets from 1975 to 2000. Corporate e vent wave scan also be explained by the neoclassical efficiency hypothesis, proposing that business cycle fluctuations and economic conditions drive firms' decisions on financing transactions.

Mining streams of short text for analysis of world-wide event evolutions

Streams of short text, such as news titles, enable us to effectively and efficiently learn the real world events that occur anywhere and anytime. Short text messages that are companied by timestamps and generally brief events using only a few words differ from other longer text documents, such as web pages, news stories, blogs, technical papers and books. For example, few words repeat in the same news titles, thus frequency of the term (i.e., TF) is not as important in short text corpus as in longer text corpus. Therefore, analysis of short text faces new challenges. Also, detecting and tracking events through short text analysis need to reliably identify events from constant topic clusters; however, existing methods, such as Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), generates different topic results for a corpus at different executions. In this paper, we provide a Finding Topic Clusters using Co-occurring Terms (FTCCT) algorithm to automatically generate topics from a short text corpus, and develop an Event Evolution Mining (EEM) algorithm to discover hot events and their evolutions (i.e., the popularity degrees of events changing over time). In FTCCT, a term (i.e., a single word or a multiple-words phrase) belongs to only one topic in a corpus. Experiments on news titles of 157 countries within 4 months (from July to October, 2013) demonstrate that our FTCCT-based method (combining FTCCT and EEM) achieves far higher quality of the event's content and description words than LDA-based method (combining LDA and EEM) for analysis of streams of short text. Our method also visualizes the evolutions of the hot events. The discovered world-wide event evolutions have explored some interesting correlations of the world-wide events; for example, successive extreme weather phenomenon occur in different locations - typhoon in Hong Kong and Philippines followed hurricane and storm flood in Mexico in September 2013. © 2014 Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Balancing risk? First year performing arts students’ experience of a community arts event

This study examines participants’ responses to first year students’ street performances as a non-placement work-integrated learning (WIL) activity over a two year period. The purpose of the study was to determine: (1) community perception, (2) continuous improvement, and (3) future needs. Data was collected through surveying participants’ post-viewing of the street performances, students’ reflective notes, and a recorded focus group interview. The findings indicated that audience members require additional assistance to value the students’ street performances. The results revealed that students require more guidance around researching the sites of practice, understanding group work dynamics, relaxation methods, intra- and interpersonal skill development, conflict resolution and how to effectively build community relations with the local government Council. From the findings, specific recommendations for continual improvement are made. These include offering an explanation of the street performances’ historical and aesthetic connections to the building sites for audience members, affording battery operated body-microphones and light rostrum for improved sight lines, delivering group dynamics information and arranging opportunities for students to engage more effectively with the Council. While the recommendations in this study are intended to advance the field of research that evaluates non-placement WIL performing arts curriculum in higher education, the findings are relevant to any group-based performance activity in learning and teaching.

Lynsey Martin: A case study in 1970s Australian experimental animation

Lynsey Martin’s short experimental Animations remain largely unknown internationally. His graphic 16mm films Approximately Water (4 minutes 1972), Whitewash (1973, 4 minutes), Interview (25 minutes 1973) and Leading Ladies (1975 5 minutes) are analysed for their technique and cultural position, artifacts of a productive if marginalized period of artist made films. These graphic films stand as critical works at the heart experimental filmmaking in Australia and speak through their design and production method to current trends in digital media. Martin’s work includes the use of collage and its erasure, the grain of the photographic image and handpainting and drawing imagery directly on the film surface. Martin deals with the graphic and material elements of the filmstrip, the nature of filmic movement and the nature of photography in public space. For martin his films deal with films deal abstraction and illusionism, elements of chance, the deconstruction of film language, the diary film and process as content. These films stand as historic aesthetic traces of an immediate hands-on approach to image making that came into crisis in Australia through the disappearance of technical education in the 1980s when Martin taught graphic design in technical schools.

Development of mental health first aid guidelines on how a member of the public can support a person affected by a traumatic event: a Delphi study

BACKGROUND: People who experience traumatic events have an increased risk of developing a range of mental disorders. Appropriate early support from a member of the public, whether a friend, family member, co-worker or volunteer, may help to prevent the onset of a mental disorder or may minimise its severity. However, few people have the knowledge and skills required to assist. Simple guidelines may help members of the public to offer appropriate support when it is needed.

METHODS: Guidelines were developed using the Delphi method to reach consensus in a panel of experts. Experts recruited to the panels included 37 professionals writing, planning or working clinically in the trauma area, and 17 consumer or carer advocates who had been affected by traumatic events. As input for the panels to consider, statements about how to assist someone who has experienced a traumatic event were sourced through a systematic search of both professional and lay literature. These statements were used to develop separate questionnaires about possible ways to assist adults and to assist children, and panel members answered either one questionnaire or both, depending on experience and expertise. The guidelines were written using the items most consistently endorsed by the panels across the three Delphi rounds.

RESULTS: There were 180 items relating to helping adults, of which 65 were accepted, and 155 items relating to helping children, of which 71 were accepted. These statements were used to develop the two sets of guidelines appended to this paper.

CONCLUSIONS: There are a number of actions which may be useful for members of the public when they encounter someone who has experienced a traumatic event, and it is possible that these actions may help prevent the development of some mental health problems in the future. Positive social support, a strong theme in these guidelines, has some evidence for effectiveness in developing mental health problems in people who have experienced traumatic events, but the degree to which it helps has not yet been adequately demonstrated. An evaluation of the effectiveness of these guidelines would be useful in determining their value. These guidelines may be useful to organisations who wish to develop or revise curricula of mental health first aid and trauma intervention training programs and policies. They may also be useful for members of the public who want immediate information about how to assist someone who has experienced a potentially traumatic event.

A dynamic time warped clustering technique for discrete event simulation-based system analysis

Abstract This paper introduces a novel approach for discrete event simulation output analysis. The approach combines dynamic time warping and clustering to enable the identification of system behaviours contributing to overall system performance, by linking the clustering cases to specific causal events within the system. Simulation model event logs have been analysed to group entity flows based on the path taken and travel time through the system. The proposed approach is investigated for a discrete event simulation of an international airport baggage handling system. Results show that the method is able to automatically identify key factors that influence the overall dwell time of system entities, such as bags that fail primary screening. The novel analysis methodology provides insight into system performance, beyond that achievable through traditional analysis techniques. This technique also has potential application to agent-based modelling paradigms and also business event logs traditionally studied using process mining techniques.

The event, the subject, and the artwork into the twenty-first century

Partly guided by Alain Badiou's controversial Century and its interpretation of the events and art of the last century, this book opens debates about these for the twenty-first century.

Material damage: expanded cinema

Over a 35 year career de Bruyn’s bracing and immersive work has investigated legacies of trauma anddisplacement, dealing with the residue of the white Australia policy and his own experience ofchildhood migration to Australia from Holland.In recent years de Bruyn has presented his hand drawn 16mm animation films as performances, withde Bruyn manipulating the images live, and accompanying them with a live vocal soundtrack. returnsto Auckland to deliver an expanded cinema performance for 16mm projectors and voice.

Towards a "non-didactic didacticism" of the sociopolitical: assemblages and the event in surface tension and shame

To write sociopolitical fiction is to be caught in an odd double bind. The term itself, ‘sociopolitical’ (hyphenated or not), implies an ‘assemblage’, and the terms it combines—‘the social’ and ‘the political’—each suggest complex, worldly assemblages. However, the more the writer attempts to express the assembled complexity of the sociopolitical domain, the more he/she feels a tug in the other direction: towards the version of ideas that might best explain the sociopolitical world and motivate political action. This article engages with the aesthetic and political challenges that arise in writing within a genre in which, to some extent at least, a moral content is desired by readers as an explanation for sociopolitical issues, only to be resisted when, as it often does, it becomes didactic. Co-author Cathryn Perazzo’s sociopolitical novel-in-progress, Surface Tension, is, we suggest, a laboratory of an assemblage in action. In it, we test and elaborate our hypothesis of the ‘assembled idea’ or ‘assembled morality’ of the sociopolitical novel. We conclude with a look at a published short story, ‘Shameʼ, by co-author Patrick West, which similarly deals with the sociopolitical, with how ‘non-didactic didacticisms’ might be germinated, and, most explicitly, with the ‘event’, following Deleuze’s use of this term.

The pioneering years of Australian animation (1900–1930): from animated sketches to animation empire

This article describes the very earliest beginnings of Australian animation, detailing the events, processes, and the people who pioneered this medium from approximately 1900 to 1930. It examines these early achievements, which range from the first ‘animated lightning sketches’ to the rise and subsequent demise of a major animation studio. Much of this article focuses on the innovative work of Harry Julius (1885–1938) who is generally regarded as the chief pioneer of animation in Australia. However, as this article reveals, there were others who experimented with animation before Julius, and there were a number of artists and animators who worked alongside him in those early decades. Together, Julius and team built the very successful Sydney-based studio, Cartoon Filmads, which developed into what could only be described as an ‘animation empire’ with a robust national and international reach. This article details some of the authors’ extensive research surrounding these previously overlooked cinematic efforts, and carefully analyses these in terms of content, production, audience reception and international context.

Population, behavioural and physiological responses of an urban population of black swans to an intense annual noise event

Wild animals in urban environments are exposed to a broad range of human activities that have the potential to disturb their life history and behaviour. Wildlife responses to disturbance can range from emigration to modified behaviour, or elevated stress, but these responses are rarely evaluated in concert. We simultaneously examined population, behavioural and hormonal responses of an urban population of black swans Cygnus atratus before, during and after an annual disturbance event involving large crowds and intense noise, the Australian Formula One Grand Prix. Black swan population numbers were lowest one week before the event and rose gradually over the course of the study, peaking after the event, suggesting that the disturbance does not trigger mass emigration. We also found no difference in the proportion of time spent on key behaviours such as locomotion, foraging, resting or self-maintenance over the course of the study. However, basal and capture stress-induced corticosterone levels showed significant variation, consistent with a modest physiological response. Basal plasma corticosterone levels were highest before the event and decreased over the course of the study. Capture-induced stress levels peaked during the Grand Prix and then also declined over the remainder of the study. Our results suggest that even intensely noisy and apparently disruptive events may have relatively low measurable short-term impact on population numbers, behaviour or physiology in urban populations with apparently high tolerance to anthropogenic disturbance. Nevertheless, the potential long-term impact of such disturbance on reproductive success, individual fitness and population health will need to be carefully evaluated.

Complex simulation of stockyard mining operations

Conflicts between resources in stockyards cause mining companies millions of dollars a year. An effective planning strategy needs to be established in order to reduce these operational conflicts. In this research a stockyard simulation model of a mining operation is proposed. The simulation uses discrete event and continuous strategies to create a high detail level of visualization and animation that closely resemble actual stockyard operation. The proposed simulation model is tightly integrated with a stockpile planner and it is used to evaluate the feasibility of a given production plan. The high detail visualization of the simulation model allows planner to determine the source of conflict, which can be used to guide the elimination of these conflicts.