USING INTER-FUEL AND INTRA-FUEL R&D BUDGETARY DECISIONS AS AN EXAMPLE, THE AUTHOR ILLUSTRATES THE LIMITATIONS OF THE OPTIMIZING APPROACH TO POLICY ANALYSIS. GIVEN THESE LIMITATIONS, THE USE OF RATIONAL ANALYSIS FOR THE PURPOSE OF ENHANCING GROUP COMMUNICATIONS (RATHER THAN FOR OPTIMIZING PUBLIC POLICIES) IS DISCUSSED.
THE ORIGINS OF THE NORTH VIETNAMESE ESCALATION IN VIETNAM ARE EXPLORED. THREE DECISIONS BY HANOI PLAYED A DECISIVE ROLE IN THE ORIGIN AND ESCALATION. THE BACKGROUND OF THESE DECISIONS AND HOW THEY WERE MADE ARE DISCUSSED.
What can we expect from Chinese diplomacy in the coming years and what impact will it have on the world? Have there been any changes in direction at the top level in the Xi Jinping era? What are the challenges and opportunities facing Chinese diplomacy in the foreseeable future? China's government, think-tanks and scholars are exploring these questions from different perspectives. They share a tacit understanding and consistently agree that China needs to fulfil its responsibilities as a major power, but not at the expense of sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, there are three key issues of importance, which are not given adequate attention in any of these circles: non-traditional security issues around national sovereignty and territorial integrity; the recruitment of child soldiers in neighbouring countries; and the rise of the Chinese private security industry.
In this paper, we study a sample of 179 corporate asset sales in Taiwan between 1993 and 2003. We find that corporate asset sales in Taiwan enhance parent firm value with cumulative abnormal returns of 1.7715% for the pre-announcement five-day period and 0.6086% for the two-day announcement window. This finding is consistent with the evidence discovered in both UK and US. We also examine whether asset-sale gains are positively related to managerial performance, private lender monitoring, the use of proceeds, the type of asset sales, the profitability of asset sales, and the relative size of asset sales. Our cross-sectional regression results indicate that all variables, except private debt monitoring and relative size, appear with their predicted signs, but not all of them are statistically significant. During longer event windows, we find that only managerial performance measured by Tobin's q and the use of asset-sale proceeds can explain the gains from corporate asset sales in Taiwan.
