The mean work required to drive a bistable system from one equilibrium state to another is calculated by using a Langevin simulation combined with Monte Carlo sampling. The resulting work depends not only on the proposal form but also on the temperature, because the particle subjected to thermal...

Under the influence of national economic reform and development, China has changed the way that it finances healthcare from a government-based system to a more market-oriented system. China has done this without a sophisticated healthcare payment system, and this has resulted in the rapid growth...

We explore the determinants of intraday volatility in interest‐rate and foreign‐exchange markets, focusing on the importance and interaction of three types of information in predicting intraday volatility: (a) knowledge of recent past volatilities (i.e., ARCH or Autoregressive Conditional...

Signaling strategies that sellers of higher-quality products or securities employ to differentiate their products include (1) development of a reputation for quality, (2) third-party certification, (3) warranties, and (4) information disclosure. These signaling strategies are compared using data...

Dividing the 223 largest traders of heating oil futures between June 1993 and March 1997 into 11 different line-of-business groupings, we document their trading activity. We find substantial and significant differences between the 11 trader types in their propensity to take long, short, or...

This article examines the economic advantage of learners in a futures market. We develop a dynamic model of learning in which a spot market and futures market both exist for a real good. The economy is composed of producers who can engage in hedging activities, speculators who trade in the...

This study examines the short‐term volatility of natural gas prices through an examination of the intraday prices of the nearby natural gas futures contract traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The influence on volatility of what many regard as a key element of the information set...

We find that corporate governance characteristics of acquiring firms (board ownership, board size, and block-holder control) have an economically and statistically significant impact on operating performance changes following mergers. We also show that dispersion of intra-board ownership stakes...