【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障4系列】【4-05】经管

猫咪团团

上次有同学反映越障太简单，所以这次选了篇稍微难一点的。文章比较长，建议最好读完，如果不想看的话，可以看到自由阅读之前的部分

【速度】

There’s One Upside For Unemployed Older Workers: Happiness

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As silver linings go, this might not make anyone jump for joy. But it might make a few hop a little — especially those concerned about the growing army of aging “discouraged workers” who’ve given up looking for a job. A recent study suggests that there’s at least one upside for the millions of beleaguered older Americans among the nation’s long-term unemployed: Unlike their working peers, retirement — officially calling it quits –actually makes jobless workers happier.

To be clear: This study offers little comfort for those who need to work because they can’t make ends meet. But the findings do have practical significance for folks in the 55+ set whose search for employment is as much about staying engaged and happy as it is about economics. For them, surprisingly, the best way to cope with a long and fruitless job search may be to simply give it up. Likewise, the study has contrarian implications for policy makers, economists and other interested parties — especially those in the Obama and Romney campaign — who are weighing the importance of discouraged workers on the labor force participation rate, which has been in long decline. As the economy heats up, some observers wonder whether many discouraged workers will start hunting for jobs again, thus raising the unemployment rate. But some of that concern may be misplaced if, as this study suggests, a portion of the long-term unemployed (out of work for 27 weeks or more) have found that giving up the job search altogether has improved their outlook and overall happiness.


To see why that might be — why early retirement may be the wisest course for some out-of-work older people — it’s crucial to understand why unemployed people typically experience a decline in “subjective well-being.” (That’s how researchers describe measured happiness levels.) The obvious reasons — a lack of money and the stresses and frustrations that come along with it — are not the complete story. Rather than fretting simply because they can’t keep up with the Joneses, unemployed workers are also grumpy because they’re not keeping up with the Joneses’ … expectations.

[344 words]

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That is, the jobless are unhappy in part because of the feeling that they’re not conforming to societal standards. They should be working, they believe, and they’re not. This explains in large part why most unemployed people do not experience significant boosts in reported well-being when they start getting unemployment benefits, or why all those “days off” don’t give them even a little lift in spirits. (It’s also true that people with jobs who voluntarily retire are generally no happier in retirement than they were when they were working.)

By contrast, older workers who retire after a long stretch of unemployment actually get happier when they officially give up the job hunt. That’s according to the findings of a team of economics researchers, led by Clemens Hetschko of Freie University in Berlin, who looked at 15 years of socio-economic data in Germany, following people from working age into retirement. And while it’s impossible to know for sure why the switch from “I’m unemployed” to “I’m retired” makes people happier, Hetschko and friends have a theory. (“Identity theory,” to be exact.)


As the researchers wrote, “Retiring is associated with a switch in social categories and an increase in identity utility for the formerly unemployed.” In other words, a large chunk of our self-image is constructed from our sense of belonging to a group or groups and adhering to the rules, standards and values of the group. So when we switch from unemployment (standards-violation) to retirement (standards-upholding) we remove a powerful source of self-criticism and loathing. We feel better about ourselves because we’ve gone from being social outcasts to being more “normal.”

Now, to be sure, Germany is not America, but given the similarities in both cultures’ work ethics — those Protestants referenced in the phrase “Protestant work ethic” were mostly German Lutherans — there’s good reason to think Hetschko’s findings apply to U.S. workers as well. This is a country where one of the first questions we ask someone we’ve just met is, “What do you do for a living?” Which means that, for all the self-esteem people get from working with others and contributing to society, the happy-making course of action for at least some unemployed older workers is to hang it up and file for Social Security. To paraphrase a classic imperative: Don’t just stand there in the unemployment line, retire.

[390 words]


Smartphone Shoppers Actually Increase In-Store Sales
By Gary Belsky | @garybelsky | July 3, 2012 | +


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They call it “showrooming,” and to hear the nation’s retailers and other experts fret about consumers using smartphones to buy online while shopping in stores, it’s the worst thing to happen to brick-and-mortar sales since Jeff Bezos started a website to sell books. Except it’s not. Turns out, consumers who use smartphones when out shopping are 14% more likely to make a purchase in the store than those without.
That’s according to a new study from Deloitte, an in-depth survey that might have drawn more attention when it was released if Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts hadn’t had an out-of-body experience when deciding the fate of Obamacare.
The consulting firm’s study, “The Mobile Influence Factor in Retail Sales,” is important for two reasons. First, it reframes the idea that consumers are increasingly going to stores, getting up close and personal with whatever items they’re shopping for, then turning to their smartphones to buy said items from competitors, online or otherwise.
This happens, to be sure, aided in part by a raft of third-party smartphone apps that make showrooming easier; nearly four in 10 (37%) of the folks surveyed by Deloitte who used a smartphone on their last shopping trip did so through a third-party app. But other things happen, too, many to the benefit of brick-and-mortar retailers. “Mobile devices’ influence on retail store sales has passed the rate at which consumers purchase through their devices today,” Deloitte’s Alison Paul commented in the firm’s press release. “Consumers’ store-related mobile activities are contributing to, not taking away from, in-store sales.” According to Deloitte, for example, roughly half (48%) of all smartphone users surveyed say their phones have influenced their decision to buy an item in a physical store. Overall, the consultant estimates, smartphones will influence 19% ($689 million) of U.S. retail sales by 2016.

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That’s why, as my Time.com colleague Brad Tuttle has written, forward-thinking brick-and-mortar retailers have aggressively entered the shopping app game themselves rather than bemoaning the effects of third-party apps. And, clearly, that strategy is the right one: More than one third (34%) of smartphone owners surveyed who used their device on their most recent shopping trip employed a retailer’s app to make the purchase. And this habit is only likely to increase as smartphone adoption becomes more widespread, because the longer people have smartphones, the more likely they are to use them when shopping: According to Deloitte, smartphone use for store-related shopping increases 40% after the first six months of ownership.
“Retailers that do not engage shoppers through specialized mobile applications or targeted smartphone-based promotions leave the door open for competitors to reach a customer who is standing in the retailer’s store and at the point of purchase,” Deloitte’s Kasey Lobaugh is quoted as saying. And, doubtless, Deloitte’s digital and retail consultants would be more than happy to help any and all retailers get up to speed in the shopping app game!
Which is fine; that’s why consultant firms commission these kinds of studies — to build their businesses. And it’s why all such reports, especially those based on surveys, should be read with caution. What people do vs. what they tell survey takers they do are often different. (See any survey about infidelity.) But the general tone and conclusions of the study pass the smell test, which leads us to the second reason why it’s important.
If it turns out that shopping apps actually enhance rather than diminish in-store sales, it will only be the latest example of a new technology helping an established business model despite the sky-is-falling forecasts of supposed experts in a field. From concerns that the telegraph would kill the newspaper business to worries that TVS and VCRs would ruin Hollywood, established competitors in a longstanding business are notoriously poor at understanding or predicting the effect of so-called disruptive technologies. More often than not, they benefit rather than damage an industry, and even more frequently they’re a boon for consumers.
As a wise philosopher once said, “Everyone is conservative about their own thing.” And that’s especially true about business leaders.
[375 words]

Consumers Prefer to Get More Rather than Pay Less – Because They’re Bad at Math
By Brad Tuttle | @bradrtuttle | July 3, 2012 | 36TweetinShare12

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Is it better to get more or pay less? If you think they’re basically the same, you’re like most consumers. And, like most consumers, you’re wrong.

When offered the possibility of 33% off a product or the same product with 33% more quantity, which would you choose?

The Economist sums up the results of a new study published in the Journal of Marketing, which reveals that most consumers view these options as essentially the same proposition. But they’re not. The discount is by far the better deal. As the Economist puts it, because most shoppers are “useless at fractions,” they don’t realize that, for instance, a “50% increase in quantity is the same as a 33% discount in price.”

In one part of the study, Akshay Rao, the General Mills Chair in Marketing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, asked undergraduate students to evaluate two deals on loose coffee beans — one with 33% more beans for free, the other at 33% off the price. The students viewed the offers as six of one, half a dozen of the other.

But let’s do the math, using some easy round numbers for the sake of simplicity. Say the initial price is $10 for 10 oz. of coffee beans. Hopefully, it’s obvious that the unit price is therefore $1 per oz. An extra 33% more “free” beans would bring the total up to 13.3 oz. for $10. That $10 divided by 13.3 oz. give us a unit price of $0.75 per oz. With a 33% discount off the initial offer, though, the proposition becomes $6.67 for 10 oz., for a unit price of $0.67 per oz.
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[自由阅读]

Shoppers routinely bite on offers that are worse values because they do the math incorrectly, and also perhaps just because they’re infatuated with the idea of getting something extra for free. The prospect of receiving something for nothing has been demonstrated to make consumers do some pretty irrational things, including buying goods they otherwise wouldn’t have and being far more likely to order items online with free shipping, regardless of the overall expense.

It seems as if the psychology power of free may also make us worse at math. In another marketing experiment involving hand lotion in an actual store, researchers sold 73% more when it came in a bonus pack than when it was priced at a discount with the same exact unit price.

Researchers have a term for the phenomenon in which shoppers pay little attention to unit price. They call it “base-value neglect.” Neglect at your own peril.


【越障】
The bond market
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield
The remarkable demand for low-yielding government bonds
Jun 30th 2012 | from the print edition

[attachimg=412,232]102962[/attachimg]
AMERICA can now borrow from the bond markets at a cheaper rate than at any time in the history of the republic. Germany has raised two-year money for a fraction of a percentage point. Even Britain, a weaker economy than either of those two, is enjoying yields on its ten-year bonds that are at an all-time low.

The deteriorating state of government finances and their rising debt-to-GDP ratios mean there are lots of these bonds to buy. Nevertheless, thanks to the global economic slowdown and the European debt crisis, the demand from savers for safe assets has overwhelmed the supply. Investors have poured $190 billion into global bond funds this year, according to EPFR Global, a data company, while other funds have seen a net outflow of $1.34 trillion. Almost $1 trillion has gone into bond funds since the start of 2009.

Even negative interest rates do not deter investors. The yield on short-term Treasury bills has occasionally been negative in recent years without affecting demand. Safety is all: this is one of those times when, as they say, it is the return of capital not the return on capital that matters.

But it is more than just one of those times. There have been crises before, but not even the Great Depression pushed bond yields down this far or this widely. The records being set in the markets are due to a combination of peculiar circumstances, cyclical swings and historical shifts. Together they have produced a bond market which is behaving in a way never seen before.

QE or not QE?

Look at the factors specific to this particular crisis first. A lot of nervous money is leaving crisis-stricken European nations; ?00 billion ($130 billion) left Spain in the first quarter of this year. Investors in these countries are worried about the safety of their local banks, the potential for default on government debt and the risk that the country will leave the euro. To a Greek worried that his savings will lose 40% of their value if they end up in drachmas, a near-zero yield on German government bonds still looks like a good deal.

Panicky demand is only part of the story. Low bond yields are a deliberate aim of central-bank policies to stimulate the economy at a time when they have already cut interest rates to close to zero. In America and Britain, the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England have embraced quantitative easing (QE)—the buying of government bonds with newly created money. The Fed has followed this up with “Operation Twist”, a policy that switches its holdings of short-term debt for long-term debt, with the aim of forcing down yields on the latter. The Fed has also indicated that it is likely to hold short rates close to zero until late 2014; since bond yields reflect expectations of future short rates, among other things, that promise is likely to have lowered them further.



The impact of all this central-bank intervention is not clear. The Bank of England estimated that its first round of QE lowered government bond yields by a percentage point. But Treasury bond yields rose during the Fed’s two QE programmes; the declines in yields came in between the two programmes, and between the end of the second programme and the start of Operation Twist (see chart 1).

[attachimg=290,281]102960[/attachimg]

The odd behaviour of Treasury yields does not in itself prove that QE was ineffective. It may be, as Jim Reid of Deutsche Bank suggests, that investors believed QE would be good for the economy and therefore switched their money into equities and commodities; both markets rallied sharply during the bond-buying programmes. But it does mean that QE is not the whole story when it comes to low yields—a conclusion reinforced by the low level of German yields in the absence of any central-bank bond-buying.

Low yields are to be expected in any downturn. When the economic outlook turns grim, government bond prices tend to rise, and thus their yields fall. The reasons are twofold. First, during a recession, inflation, the great enemy of bond investors, mostly stops being a worry. Second, a weak economy leads to more corporate failures and falling profits, prompting investors to flee the equity market.

In such circumstances, investors’ desire for safety tends to overwhelm concerns about the long-term health of government finances. The Treasury bond is the most liquid asset in the world; investors know that they can instantly sell their holdings without moving the price. This tends to make Treasury bonds the beneficiary of any bad news—even bad news about American government finances. When Standard & Poor’s cut America’s credit rating from AAA in August 2011, Treasury yields dropped.

The effects of the downturn would not count for so much, though, had it not been for the long-running bull market in bonds that preceded it, a market that brought great returns as it drove yields down. Martin Barnes of BCA Research calculates that, since September 1981, the real returns for holders of 30-year Treasury bonds have been an annualised 8.8%. That makes the past few decades one of the two great bond bull markets in history; the other was between mid-1920 and the end of 1940, when annualised returns were 9.2%. In both cases, equities rallied as well, for a time. The 1920s and 1990s are better known as equity bull markets than for their bond returns. But equities eventually faltered (in 1929 and 2000), whereas bond yields drove remorselessly lower (see chart 2).

[attachimg=595,278]102961[/attachimg]

But now that bond yields have fallen so far, the road ahead looks barely trafficable. The capital gains that bond investors make as yields fall (and prices rise) are one of the two ways in which they make a return; the other is income from interest. When yields approach zero potential returns peter out; the income is reduced and the scope for further capital gains is limited.

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[自由阅读]
The thunder and the sunshine

History suggests that investing at the current low level of Treasury yields is a very bad option. Investors who bought Treasury bonds at a 2% yield in 1945 earned a negative real annual return of 2.3% over the following 35 years, according to the Barclays Capital Equity-Gilt study.

There is, though, a prominent counter-example: Japan. Ten-year Japanese bond yields fell below 2% in the late 1990s and have stayed below that level for most of the time since. Hedge funds which bet that Japan’s deteriorating debt-to-GDP ratio would eventually cause its bond yields to soar as the price of bonds dropped have been repeatedly disappointed.

Generalising from Japan’s experience would be risky. Its debt is owed mostly to its own citizens rather than to foreigners, so it has been saved from the kind of confidence run that has bedevilled Greece and Spain. And Japanese prices have been flat or falling for most of the period, so real bond yields have still been positive.

In America, Britain and Germany ten-year bond yields under 2% are now lower than the explicit (or implicit) inflation targets of their central banks. Investors are expecting to lose money in real terms. The same phenomenon can be observed in the index-linked government-bond market, where both interest payments and the maturity value are pegged to inflation. Many index-linked bonds in America and Britain are trading on a negative real yield.

Real yields have been negative before. In the 1970s, investors were caught out by a sudden surge in global inflation, and were too slow to push yields higher in response. But push they eventually did, and by the 1980s yields were high, real rates positive and the scene set for the subsequent bull market. The legend grew of the “bond market vigilantes” who would intimidate governments that pursued loose policies.

The low real yields of the 1970s were part of a longer period of poor bond returns which can in part be explained by what is known as “financial repression”. Carmen Reinhart of the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Belen Sbrancia of the University of Maryland calculate that average real rates on deposits and Treasury bills were negative throughout the 1945-80 period in advanced economies. They explain this in terms of the policies governments used to escape from the debt burden of the second world war.

Governments were helped in keeping rates down because of the capital controls they ran as part of the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates. Those kept savings corralled in their domestic market. But there was also regulation that meant pension funds, insurance companies and banks bought government bonds regardless of the yields on offer.

A similar effect may be occurring today. In response to the crisis of 2008, commercial banks are now required to hold liquidity cushions, usually in the form of government bonds. Regulations are also forcing bonds on insurance companies. In addition, central banks have been lending at low rates to provide liquidity. Banks that have benefited from the European Central Bank’s Long-Term Refinancing Operations have invested some of the money in government bonds. Pension funds once pushed into bonds by regulation are now kept there by demography: retiring members need to be paid their income.

Help, help, I’m being repressed

In addition to these domestic enthusiasts, Western governments have also been able to tap overseas savings. Central banks hold government bonds as part of their reserves, with Treasury bonds being by far the most popular asset. Foreigners own 43% of all Treasury debt; official institutions, largely in Asia and in oil-exporting countries, own around $3.5 trillion-worth. These central banks are either just looking for a liquid home for their assets or buying the bonds as a way of managing their country’s exchange rate against the dollar.

Add together the purchases of global central banks, domestic central banks (via QE) and financially repressed institutions, and well over half of British and American government bonds may be owned by investors who are relatively unconcerned about low yields. Mutual-fund and hedge-fund managers, more bothered about making a decent return, are thus hard put to play the role of vigilantes, so the state of the market is no longer the economic signal that once it was.

Indeed, in historic terms, conventional wisdom about bond markets has been turned on its head. The gold standard and the Bretton Woods system were both ways of reassuring international creditors that their holdings would not be eroded by inflation or currency devaluations; countries with a sound currency were rewarded with lower borrowing costs. But one reason why British yields are so low today is that investors believe the country has the flexibility to depreciate its currency—unlike the southern European countries which have to choose between austerity and default.

This division of bond markets into a premier league (of governments that can borrow at less than 2%) and the minor leagues (of those paying 6% or more) is a great advantage to those countries in the former category. America and Britain, in particular, can finance very high deficits (by historic standards) without feeling under pressure. Indeed, despite many years of current-account deficits, both countries have a surplus on their investment-income accounts, largely because foreigners earn such low yields on their dollar and sterling deposits and bonds.

It is a neat trick: buy real goods and services from other countries and sell them low-yielding pieces of paper in return. And it looks like one that may have a fair bit of mileage left. Investors starved for choice may not relish yield-free bonds. But they seem likely to keep buying them.

teddybearj4

辛苦团团了！！！好好休息~~养好身体呀，革命之本钱！
连续奋战期末，过来换换脑子~~~~
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速度：
1'42    1'36    1'34    2'05    2'27
(果然一停下来速度就不行了~ 今天团团速度选的几篇文章都很有意思~)

越障：16'15 (真的好长时间= =！不过团团这篇是真心信息量大呀~这都可以当专业报告来看了)
Main idea:
文章通过对世界上主要的资本市场经济体出现的政府债券利率下降的现象分析了原因和本质。
Structure:
(这次文章的structure部分读得不好，看到后面前面都忘记了……说点大概吧，里面各种上下文矛盾，各种经济解释矛盾大家就无视之吧><)
*首先author分析说可能是认为央行实施了量化宽松的货币政策啊，造成了长期国债收益率的持续走低，人们对前景的展望为负面，然后长期国债的价格上涨，利率下降。然后放了一张08finacial crisis之后美国在实施量化宽松政策之后美国10期国债的变动情况，但是我没太看懂这里的矛盾是出在了哪里。不过后面作者详细的分析了这个图背后，说是因为在衰退时期啊，像通胀压力什么的，经济下行，实体经济很多都不行啦，企业倒闭，国际证券投资什么的好多都撤离证券市场了。
*后面又贴了一个20世纪初到现在的美国长期债券收益率的变动和英国永续债券的收益率的变动曲线，可以看到从二战开始到70年代布雷顿森林体系瓦解之间，整体由于金本位的关系收益率还是很稳定的，但是70年代之后，估计是因为很多国家都实行浮动汇率了，汇率差什么的估计导致了各国之间的利差什么的，使得长期国债这么变动吧~
*最后又就现在的低收益率的情况给了投资者一些建议吧~举例几个历史例子，又美国，还有日本的。但是最后的结论看不大懂他究竟是支持还是反对的，结论用的句子不是很直接。

Olina加油

又是地板

bet

2‘
1’50“
1‘45”
2‘
2’30“

越障
15’25“
主要讲的就是美、英、日等国的政府债券的收益率持续下跌的现象，但是由于投资者的选择太少，人们只能选择持续购买，甚至有的债券出现了负利率。文中还分析了收益率下跌的原因（内容太多我理不清了啊），主要围绕treasure bonds分析。以上这些国家还采取了量化宽松等政策，但还经济还是在repression中……

文章实在太长了，回忆的有些混乱了

ladyMcc

3'05''
2'47''
2'45''
2'52''
1'35''
越障冇读懂。。。

我想问一下各位在做这个练习的时候，如果句子没读懂，会不会往回再看？我很纠结、、、

cleotina

占上吧

jiline

团团注意身体
02'0702'19
02'07
01'53
00'45

暮已央

占···晚上没法上网···占前位总是这么艰难啊
团团保重身体~
今天不发简写了~整理了一天阅读题，头晕眼花···
计时：
2:12；
2:09；
1:36；
2:24；
00:57
最后这篇有意思~O(∩_∩)O哈哈~数学不好
自由阅读：
00:55
越障
4:45
自由阅读
3:45
别以为我读得快···其实今天脑子里就是一团浆糊···

草莓葡萄

读的很慢，而且内容掌握也不太好~
2'23
2'35
1'51
2'21
1‘47

越障 6’14
关于负债利率下调的好处和影响，以及过去最低负债的时候经济状况。

铁板神猴

团团要坚持住呀，身体保重！
1'56''
2'15''
1'15''
2'00''
1'28''
56''