Maximilian Müller

This paper examines the effectiveness of public enforcement by studying the effects of regulatory intervention to curb tunneling through intercorporate loans in China. Specifically, we explore whether public enforcement efforts in 2006 resulted in less tunneling, and ultimately in increased performance for tunneling firms. We show that tunneling is among the dominant factors increasing the likelihood of becoming blacklisted. We also find that firms’ tunneling mechanisms decreased significantly after the regulatory shock, and that their performance increased significantly compared to non-tunneling firms after the regulatory shock. Finally, we find a positive market reaction to the public announcement of tunneling both for firms that have been blacklisted and other tunneling firms that are not blacklisted. Collectively, these results suggest that public enforcement in the presence of a credible threat succeeds in deterring the effect on tunneling behavior in China.

Rare earth elements have become increasingly important because of their relative scarcity and worldwide increasing demand, as well as China’s quasi-monopoly of this market. REEs are virtually not substitutable, and they are essential for a variety of high-tech products and modern key technologies. This has raised serious concerns that China will misuse its dominant position to set export quotas in order to maximize its own profits at the expense of other rare earth user industries. In fact, export restrictions on REEs were the catalyst for the U.S. to lodge a formal complaint against China in 2012 at the World Trade Organization. This paper analyzes possible wealth transfer effects by focusing on export quota announcements by China, and the share price reactions of Chinese REE suppliers, the U.S. REE users, and the rest of the world REE refiners. Overall, we find limited support for the view of a wealth transfer in connection with MOFCOM announcements only when disentangling events prior to and post the initiation of the WTO trial, consistent with the trial triggering changes to China’s REE policy and recent announcement to abolish quotas. We do find, however, that extreme REE price movements have a first-order effect on all companies in the REE industry consistent with recent market trends to enable hedging against REE price volatility.

In this process-oriented study, we examined the influence of the time dimension on Psi effects in two experimental conditions (present vs. future). For data collection, selected viewers with experience in the remote viewing method gathered information about targets that were distant in space (the present) and time (the future). The present condition was composed of binary truth statements consisting of two possible options related to current world knowledge. The future condition consisted of two options that were not yet determined at the time of viewing, but depended on the outcome of future mixed martial arts fights. According to the associative remote viewing (ARV) method, the binary outcomes of the present and future options were each associated with a photo, which had to be described by the viewers. An independent judge analyzed the viewers’ qualitative reports through binary correspondence ratings amounting to a hit (1) or no hit (0) per trial. Independently of the time condition, a Psi effect could be observed. The hit rates of the judge (0.88 and 0.62 for the present and future, respectively) were significantly higher than the expected value (0.5) under the null hypothesis (present: p < 0.001, ESP = 0.73; future: p = 0.027, ESF = 0.22; binomial distribution). In addition, the hit rates in the two time conditions differed significantly from each other (χ2 = 9.01; df = 1, p < 0.003). The results confirm the hypothesis that Psi is not completely independent of the time dimension and that the hit rate is influenced by a priori target probabilities. With regard to the Informational Psi (IΨ) theory, we will discuss the implications of a probabilistic future for the understanding of Psi effects.

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