【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障9系列】【9-5】经管

spencerX

【速度】


【速度一】

The Middle East Could Be a Cradle of Innovation
by Christopher M. Schroeder

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We in the West tend to think of innovation as the next, new, shiny, tech, globally-accepted thing. But in emerging growth markets, new access to even existing technologies (e.g., higher-speed broadband, mobile phones, smart devices), can lead to fresh and surprising thinking about local and regional problems, and one day these over-looked corners of the globe may produce world-class innovations as a result.

Consider mobile devices in Africa. Throughout the continent — and this is true throughout other emerging markets too — millions of people are glued to their cell phones. Since Africans were never tethered to landlines, innovation has been astounding. Kenya's M-Pesa, for example, allows customers to withdraw and deposit money via text message. The company is now one of the largest mobile cash-transaction companies in the world — roughly 20% of the country's GDP passes through it. The growth doesn't stop there. With hundreds of thousands of cell towers providing reception to the most rural corners of the world, mobile providers have been compelled to build their own power generators. As a result, they've spawned entire ecosystems of entrepreneurs who are using the excess electricity to power local towns and build community charging stations. And thanks to "social entrepreneurs," people with little voice are using mobile technology to report crime and corruption to authorities while holding the "powers that be" accountable — which was impossible even a few years ago.

Long before the Arab uprising in 2010 — and uninhibited by uncertainty and instability today — Middle East entrepreneurs have used innovation to overcome challenges and to find new opportunities for growth. As I have suggested in a recent post here on HBR, the Arab world alone represents a large and hungry consumer market. So it's no surprise that companies in the region are finding innovative ways to reach consumers. In the face of country-by-country regulatory complexity, Aramex, the region's largest logistics company, created Shop and Ship, which allows customers to order products from nearly any e-tailer in the U.S. and China and eventually the Middle East. It's a seamless process. Aramex receives the ordered goods at its facilities, takes care of all the bureaucratic headaches, and then delivers the goods right to the shopper.

【字数362】


【速度二】

Other e-commerce companies are overcoming obstacles in innovative ways as well. With only two million credit card users in the Middle East, and even fewer comfortable using their cards online, and with well over 60% of package deliveries paid COD, payment services create as much friction as regulatory concerns. But innovators such as CashU have created safe gateways (e.g., cash cards) for buyers who are weary about shopping online and on mobile devices.

The fact that new markets are using technology to solve local and regional problems is no longer surprising. But what's provocative, for me, is at some point these efforts will yield globally-competitive innovation as well. As Dartmouth Professors Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble argue in their new book on innovation in emerging markets, Reverse Innovation: "It is easy to understand why a poor man would want a rich man's product. But why would a rich man ever want a poor man's product? The answer is that under certain circumstances, it offers new, unexpected or long-overlooked value."

This is why, when I travel throughout the Middle East, I look hard for situations and experiences that could foster innovation on a global scale. Simply put, the Middle East — despite its uncertainty — is rife with potential. This is a region that barely knew phone lines, yet mobile penetration regularly nears 200%. And when cheap smart phones (below $40) hit the market — as they have just started to in Africa — mass adoption of mobile computing will follow. What might this market have to teach the world about the future of mobile innovation?

【字数261】


【剩余部分】

There are other opportunities for innovation as well. The largest untapped resource of fresh water in the world lies beneath the Egyptian-Libyan desert but there isn't an adequate, cost-efficient, and reliable way to deliver petroleum in order to pump it. What innovation in solar pumping and agriculture may lie here? And what about the millions of people who communicated and coordinated on mobile devices and Twitter and Facebook during the Arab uprisings? They told stories. They toppled regimes. Might the next great global social network rise from these experiences?

There was a day, in my lifetime, when no one could imagine that Japan, or Finland, or Korea would become leaders in hardware innovation or computer gaming. True, there hasn't been a great, global software innovation outside of the United States in years, arguably ever. But as the region continues to use creativity to overcome its unique problems and as long as access to inexpensive technology continues to spread, "made in MENA" doesn't seem that far off.

【字数166】


【速度三】

Housing Prices and Income Inequality
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM

Why is the gap between rich and poor in America yawning ever wider?

The issue is urgent. As my colleague Annie Lowrey writes, there is growing evidence that income inequality impedes economic growth.

And one interesting explanation boils down to the high price of housing.

A recent paper by researchers at Harvard University argues that the prohibitive cost of living in the areas with the greatest economic opportunities has forced low-wage workers to migrate instead to areas with inferior opportunities.

“The best places for low- and high-skilled workers used to be the same places: California, Maryland, New York,” said Peter Ganong, a doctoral student in economics, who wrote the paper with Daniel Shoag, a professor of public policy. “Now low-skilled workers can no longer afford to move to the high-wage places.”

In this account, people aren’t moving to the Sun Belt because they want to live there. They are moving because they can’t afford to live in Boston. And the result isn’t just second-best for them; it also slows the pace of economic growth.

Basically, the economy works best when people can move where their skills are most valued. But for low-skill workers, the high price of housing means the cost of living in those places often exceeds the benefits of working there.

The trends are beautifully illustrated by three time-lapse graphics.

The first shows that average incomes by state converged between 1880 and 1980 as low-skilled workers moved to wealthier states. The second shows the pattern of migration, which has changed significantly over the last 30 years.

The third shows the increase in land-use regulations in rich states.

And here’s the crucial point: It doesn’t have to be this way. High housing prices are the result of public policies that discourage new development. Those policies are generally embraced by the residents of wealthy areas, who benefit, at least in the short term, from restrictions on the supply of new housing. But this paper is one more reason to worry about the long-term economic consequences.

Click HERE to see the graphic

【字数335】


【速度四】

An Unlikely Cheddar Is Suddenly Boastful
By ANDREW ADAM NEWMAN

[attachimg=600,244]108362[/attachimg]

STEVEN JENKINS, author of “Cheese Primer,” was visiting his mother on the coast of Alabama recently when he discovered a package of Cracker Barrel Cheddar in her refrigerator.

“It would have been a month of Sundays before I ever got myself in front of a chunk of Kraft Cracker Barrel,” said Mr. Jenkins.

Dubious, yet curious, he cut off a slice.

“I was expecting it to be a waxy, sort of burned tasting, greasy, not very good Cheddar,” Mr. Jenkins said. “But what I tasted was a perfect piece of American idiom Cheddar.”

With mock horror, Mr. Jenkins added, “I’m a traitor to my cause.”

Now Cracker Barrel, which has not advertised on television in more than a decade, is about to introduce an advertising campaign that hopes to persuade consumers who, like Mr. Jenkins, may have underestimated its offerings.

New advertisements highlight cheese competition awards that the brand has won, most notably first place honors for the best sharp Cheddar (aged six months to one year) category at the 2012 World Champion Cheese Contest, a biennial international competition held in Madison, Wis.One commercial opens on a cheese competition, in which judges (depicted by actors) in yellow blazers examine the entries meticulously, with a judge who is wearing a bow tie studying a wedge with a magnifying glass and another wearing an ascot chewing a piece like a rabbit.

“Connoisseurs of flavor, experts in aroma — they’re the world championship cheese judges,” says a voice-over. “And while they might seem kind of odd to you, like this guy” — a judge with two thermometers inserted into a wheel of cheese writes down its temperature — “we just love them.”

【字数276】


【速度五】

After the commercial reveals that Cracker Barrel won gold at the competition earlier this year, it closes with screen text with the new slogan for the campaign, “Cheddar, Perfected.”

The commercial will be introduced Thursday and will appear widely on network and cable stations. The campaign, which also includes print, digital and in-store advertising, is by Droga5 of Manhattan. Cracker Barrel is expected to spend $20 million to $30 million on the campaign.

About 26 percent of cheese buyers say a claim about winning awards on packaging is an important factor in their choice, according to a survey by Mintel, a market research firm.

But January Vernon, a creative director for Droga5, said that in focus groups conducted by her agency, some consumers were skeptical about awards, with one saying, “There are awards for everything nowadays.”

By focusing on the scrutiny of cheese judges, the campaign aims to give the awards more context — and credence.

“Basically we’re introducing the consumer to the fact that there are people who are passionate about cheese the way there are people who are passionate about wine or show dogs,” Ms. Vernon said. “We’re using the judges as our ladder to talk about our awards.”

Introduced by Kraft in 1954, Cracker Barrel cheese has no connection to the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurant chain, which began in 1969.

Among natural cheeses, Cracker Barrel has a 3.98 percent share of the $2.6 billion block cheese subcategory, according to data for the 52 weeks ended Sept. 9 from SymphonyIRI Group, a market research firm whose data does not include Walmart.

Store brands lead every natural cheese subcategory, including block cheese, with a 37.7 percent share; shredded cheese, with a 55.2 percent share; and sliced cheese, with a 41.7 percent share, according to SymphonyIRI.

【字数297】


【剩余部分】

Historically, Cracker Barrel has been most popular in the Northeast, with Philadelphia, New York and Boston its strongest markets, according to Gwen Gray, senior director of dairy snacking at Kraft. One of the goals of the campaign is to raise the profile and sales of the brand throughout the country, she added.

Cracker Barrel typically is sold in the dairy section of supermarkets alongside everyday cheeses, rather than the deli section, which features gourmet cheeses, and Ms. Gray said that humbler placement suits the brand.

“We have won these awards and beaten these snooty cheeses, yet we’re in the dairy case and accessible for anyone to buy,” she said. The suggested retail price for all of the more than a dozen Cracker Barrel varieties, nearly all of them Cheddars, is $4.

Future commercials expected to be introduced next March feature the same cheese judges. In one spot they will take a busman’s holiday to Cheddar, England, to sample cheese in the village for which the variety is named; in another they will gather at a party in the home of one of the judges, where a variety of cheeses is being served and they cannot help but debate their merits.

Next month, Cracker Barrel and Mark West, a wine brand owned by Constellation Brands, will team up to hang promotional cards over the necks of wine bottles, offering a suggestion for which cheese goes best for the varietal being purchased — like extra sharp Cheddar for pinot noir and aged reserve Cheddar for chardonnay — and a coupon for a dollar off the cheese.

As for the new commercial featuring a cheese competition, Mr. Jenkins, the cheesemonger, who has served as a judge at cheese contests, reviewed the spot and said that it rang true and was entertaining.

“It will drive people back to the dairy aisle for cheese, which is anathema to me, but that ad is effective,” Mr. Jenkins said. “Kraft is saying, ‘Up your nose with a rubber hose,’ to all those foodies who think that the cheese aisle of a specialty food market is the only place to buy good cheese.”

【字数353】


【越障】

Rare booms and disasters in a multi-sector endowment economy
Jerry Tsai & Jessica A. Wachter

This paper introduces a representative agent asset pricing model in which the endowment and the aggregate dividend are subject to large rare negative shocks (disasters) and large rare positive shocks (booms). We consider a two-sector model for the economy: the growth sector is the claim to the stream of dividends arising from the rare booms, while the value sector is the claim to the remaining dividend stream. The two sectors add up to the aggregate market. We show that this parsimonious model can explain important features of stock market data. As shown in earlier work, a time-varying probability of rare disasters can account for the high equity premium, high stock market volatility and return predictability exhibited by the aggregate market. Beyond addressing these earlier points, our work also explains the cross-section of stock returns.

The possibility of rare booms has received little attention in comparison to rare disasters. This may be because the implications of rare booms for the equity premium, a focus of earlier work, are relatively minor. Because of decreasing marginal utility, the representative agent requires little compensation for bearing the risk of rare booms, even if they are large. However, when assets have varying exposure to the booms, the impact on the cross-section can be substantial. The model implies that investors are willing to hold the growth portfolio despite its low return because of the small possibility of a high payout. The growth portfolio has a high covariance with the market because it is subject to a time-varying risk of booms as well as a time-varying risk of disaster; once a boom occurs the resulting dividend stream has the same disaster exposure as the rest of the economy. In fact, the model accurately predicts that the growth portfolio has a market beta greater than one while the value portfolio has a market beta less than one. This combination of high betas with low expected returns allows the model to explain the striking failure of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) observed in the data (Fama and French (1992)).

Our model introduces several innovations beyond those described above. First, we model disasters and booms as influencing the drift rate of fundamentals, rather than fundamentals directly. This allows our model to capture the fact that disasters and booms unfold slowly, as emphasized by Constantinides (2008). The assumption of recursive utility implies that there is still a substantial equity premium. Second, we introduce a novel way to model value and growth assets that allows the dividends on value to grow more slowly than those of the aggregate market, but still implies value and growth add up to the market, and price ratios are stationary.

A number of other papers also offer risk-based explanations for the relatively high expected returns on value stocks (the value premium).It is likely that the value premium has multiple causes, and it is not the purpose of this article to rule out other explanations. One difficulty with these risk-based explanations is that a value premium arises because returns on the value portfolio are more risky than the growth portfolio. This, however, is not the case in the data. In our model, growth is in fact more risky. We break the link between risk and return in two ways: first, while population returns on growth may be higher, in any given sample, it is not unlikely that a value premium will be observed in the data. Second, the risk in growth arises from rare booms, which occur in times of low marginal utility. Hence investors do not require compensation for bearing this risk.

Besides addressing the sign and magnitude of the value premium, our model can also account for the time-series behavior of the value premium and its relation to the equity premium. As is well-known, the price-dividend ratio can predict excess returns on the aggregate market, implying that the equity premium is varying over time (Campbell and Shiller (1988)). The value spread can predict the return on the value-minus-growth portfolio, implying that it, too, has a time-varying risk premium (Cohen, Polk, and Vuolteenaho (2003)). However, these risk premiums appear to have little to do with one-another; the price-dividend ratio has almost no predictive power for the value spread. In our model, a two-factor structure for risk premia arises naturally, and it is thus capable of explaining this result.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes and solves the model. Section 3 discusses the quantitative fit of the model to the data. Section 4 concludes.

【字数768】

miffyhui

占，以后读

2012Michelle

谢谢LZ，辛苦了！

2'21"
1'19"
56"(自由阅读）
1'48"
1'22"
1'34"
1'34"
New tech innovation in modern life is accepted. But in some emerging market the technologies are used for local and regional problems, such as cell phone in Kenya, Africa, and Midde East.
Along with the new tech. used in Middle East, such as credit card..., again, those tech or innovation can be used to handle local & regional problems.
Even some technologies, e.g. fresh water beneath Egyptian-Libiyan programs, still have difficulties to benefit people, it will be overcome sometime. Finland & Japan had such problems when they became strong in computer game field.
The difference between rich and poor becomes bigger and bigger. The basic reason is the highly growing housing prices. Low-skilled works cannot move to good place for migration, because they cannot afford the high prices. Researchers studied the situation from 1880-1980 proved this.
The C cheese won cheese champion...widely accepted by consumers.
How the C cheese increased its market share in the past years. Surveys were done to test what factors consumers thought it's importatnt to buy. Advertising and awards gained are important for consumers to make decision.
As fairy product in super market, awarded cheese is more attractive to consumers.
4'6"
A new mode of economic is introduced. Two sectors are considered in the mode: one is growth  sector and another is value.
Brief introduction of existed modes. Comparing with those modes, what are the differences in new mode.
Detailed discussion based on different factors (ratios to evaluate the mode) is drawn to explain the new mode.
...
第一遍只看懂这么多，得回顾。头晕，下午再看一遍，汗。。

ENJ0Y

谢谢lz.....非常清晰的编排......

2.01
1.3
1.52
1.21
1.27
5.04

mix0oo

1.44
1.17
32s
1.10
1.37
1.15
1.03


3.59

alun1987

1‘44
1’20
1‘43
1’24
1‘33

越障：（好凶残……看得晕）
This article introduces an agent asset pricing model whcih relates the endowment and aggragate dividents to rare disasters and rare booms. The model considers two sectors: the growth sector is the claim of dividends from rare booms; the valure sector is the claim of the remaining dividends.
The author believe that this model can explain important features of the stock market. Beyond addressing some previous findings about varying probabilities of rare disasters, the author explains the cross-section of stock returns.

Previous studies has paid little attention to the probabilities of rare booms and rare disasters. This model suggests that people prefer to hold growth portfolio according to the small possibility for payout. The model also explains the strinking faliure of the CAPM model.

The model introduces several innovations. Firstly, rare booms and rare disasters are modled not directly as rare of fundamentals. Secondly, it provides a novel way to model value and growth assets.

Other papers offer risk-based explanations for value premium......

The model also explains the time-series behavior of value premium and the relation to ......

attractg

速度：
2’11’’  (362) Middle East will found cradle of new innovation technology. Mobile in Africa …  allow people deposit money by sending text messages…
1’37’’  (261) Innovation in Middle East will create competition in a global scale….  A professor in Dartmouth proposed “Is easy to understand why poor want rich’s product. But why rich want poor’s products?  Under some certain circumstances, the product came into unexpected way , …”
剩余部分：
1’12’’  (166) There are also other opportunities for innovations. Large amount of fresh water lies in underground between Egypt and Lybia… But there was not enough petroleum to pump those fresh water. Will solar energy and agriculture developed there? In our age, we cannot imagine that Finland , Korea , Japan can create advanced technology…   But now the world is different.
2’08’’  (335) House price and Inequality ..  The gap between rich and poor in U.S. is yawning wider ? Evidence show people moving to ..  Because they can’t afford to live in Boston. Moving to new areas is good when a person’s skill is affordable. However, the low-skill workers often find cost far weight out benefits in some wealthier areas.  Diagram show three trends: (1) low-skill workers move into the cities; (2) Emigrates change this …   ；(3) …
1’50’’  (276) Cheddar won the world Champion Cheese contest…  The cheese under meticulously examine the entries.. with one person wear a bow tie and another chew the slide of the cheese like a rabbit.  They are world best cheese judgers.
1’26’’  (297)  After Cheddar won the prize… The contest was shown on the TVs..  Consumers said  win a award is one of the important factors of choice..   “There is award for everything nowadays…”  eople are passion about cheese just like some people passion about showing dogs, ….
1’42’’  (353) This campaign was also aim at increase the known of brand and the sales… They made the C… Cheese access to anyone.  A… party .. people will find them cannot help but talk about their tastes of cheese…

越障：6’06’’ (768)
1．A represent agent asset pricing model: the endowment and aggregate subjects to large rare negative shock(disaster) or large rare positive shock(booms)
2．The possibility of boom is paid little attention compared to the disaster.
3．There are several innovation of the pricing model:
 (1) drift rate of fundamental according to disaster or booms rather than fundamental itself;
 (2) model value and growth assessment
4．Other …proposed risk-based …  high payment on stock.
5．Time-serious behavior….


忍不了自己这阅读龟速了。。。。 越障好难~~

xiaodiehoo

速度：
2.18
1.39
0.51
2.02
1.25
1.18
1.26
越障：
5.29
The paper introduces a pricing model. The aggregate market consists of growth sector and value sector.
Rare boom receives little attention because…. The model shows that investors tend to hold growth portfolio although the return is low. The value of beta determines whether it is a growth portfolio or value portfolio.
This model also provides several innovation way. First, … Second, …. This paper’s explanation doesn’t mean to rule out other explanations. In this model, growth portfolio is more risky.
虽然没有什么不清楚的单词，但还是不太清楚讲的是什么，平时接触金融的东西太少

cleotina

1’58
The wield use of cell phone in Africa has proved the development of economic and society of that area.
1’20
The product form the not rich region is popular among the rich since the innovation of it.
1’40
More people with low ability tend to move to the inferior place in order to make a balance of their budget
5’54
4+5+剩余

越障
5’20
偷懒了en久，回归坚持。 求监督

mirare

Thx a lot!

Part I
2'25
1'55
2'13
1'44
2'05
PartII
6'55
1， introduction of boom & disaster in economics
2,    our modle's advantage on dectecting the boom & disaster in economics