This paper examines the information content of net income and cash flows for hotel and tourism industry and department store industry in Taiwan. The National Association of Real Estate Investment Trust (NATEIT) has suggested that Net Income is a misleading measure of operating performance for income-producing real estate operating companies. They assert that historical cost based depreciation is inappropriate for income-producing real estate because it is not correlated with changes in the value of those real estates. Thus, the NAREIT has promoted Funds From Operations (FFO) as a supplemental measure of operating performance. FFO is calculated as net income adding depreciation expense and excluding realized gain or loss from the sale of properties. Like the REITs, the hotel and department stores industry hold and operate income-producing real estate. We test the NAREIT proposal that FFO is a more informative measure for real estate operating companies by doing an empirical analysis for hotel industry and department store industry. The results suggest that although FFO is associated with stock market performance, it is not relatively superior to Net Income or incrementally relevant beyond Net Income. Furthermore, results on testing of individual components in deriving FFO from Net Income show that both depreciation expenses and gain or loss from sale of properties is not associated with stock price performance. This indicates that FFO excludes non-value relevant accounting data. Therefore, the test results show little evidence in supporting NAREIT¡¦s claim that FFO is a more informative measure for real estate operating companies. Although we do not have strong evidence to indicate that FFO is a better performance measure than Net Income, it is still a value relevant information in determining the value of income-producing real estate managing companies. The recent passed Taiwan Real Estate Securitization Act provides investors a new channel to invest in income-producing real estate. While it is not likely that FFO will replace Net Income as the main performance measure of the securities under Taiwan Real Estate Securitization Act, FFO could provide investors helpful information in determining the value of these income-producing real estate securities.

How to evaluate mutual fund performance correctly and determine the investment targets of mutual funds are the important issues to investors. In this study, we apply an innovative bootstrap statistical technique, to solve the small sample size problem and the distribution assumption disturbance in previous research. We examine the performance of domestic open-end mutual funds over the period from 1998 to 2003 using five performance measurement models. We further test the persistence of mutual fund performance. This study shows that¡G 1. On average, mutual fund managers do not own superior ability in stock selection. Most funds experiencing abnormal performance may simply result from good luck, since random selection also creates abnormal performance. 2. Mutual fund managers do not own market-timing ability. Classified further by investment objectives, the sample indicates that only the group of small-scale stocks shows significant market-timing ability. 3. Performance persistence does not exist no matter in long-term or short-term period.

ABSTRACT After the national universities in Taiwan implementing the college affairs funds, the expenditure comes from not only the government supply but also universities themselves. It¡¦s for the purpose of their needs on teaching, researching, and serving. In order to enhance the elasticity that the funds use independently and the competitiveness of higher education, it is bound to put more focus on both the managing and cost efficiency. This research adopts the efficiency-measuring mode of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to weigh the conditions of managing results and efficiency fluctuations¡]the fluctuation of Malmquist productivity¡^of 51 national universities in Taiwan from year 2001 to 2004. The conclusion of obtaining is as follows: From the aspect of managing efficiency, National Chiao Tung University and National Dong Hwa University perform the best among the general universities; as for the technological universities and vocational colleges, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology and National Chin-Yi Institute of Technology perform the best. The lacks of valid managements in resource usages causes the technical inefficiencies; the general universities performed like the technological and vocational colleges were rather similar and relatively inefficient from the year 2001 to 2004. The reasons of inefficiency came from the technological efficiency of bad management with reached the scale efficiency of the best scale at the same time. The Malmquist indices of National Tsing Hua University and National Taichung University were more than 1 from the year 2001 to 2004; as for the technological and vocational colleges, the Malmquist indices of National Tai-Chung Institute of Technology, National Taichung Nursing College, National Taiwan Junior College of Performing Arts, and National Tainan Institute of Nursing were more than 1 as well. There is a decline trend gradually of productivity in 2001-2004 in both the general universities and technological and vocational colleges, it was mainly that the production technology efficiency retrogresses. Finally, implementing college affair funds may be still affected by other external objective environments, the one of great impact among them: external parameters, such as size of the school, the history of the school, and the location of the school. Through the regression analysis, there are strong correlation between campus size and management efficiency for the general universities; however, not between history and location of the school. On the other hand, the technological and vocational colleges, do not have dominance to whole efficiency value. From the analysis, we can understand the over-all performing, efficiency of the universities in Taiwan. The fund governors should manage and advent different efficiencies with various methods in order to promote the managing efficiency of the whole. KEY WORDS¡GCollege affair funds Efficient evaluation Data envelopment analysis Malmquist index.

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Abstract Since Markowitz (1952) proposed modern portfolio theory to evaluate the correlation between investment returns and risk, a portfolio constructed by securities (mainly stocks and bonds) is called¡¨ security portfolio¡¨, which becomes popular and recognized to the financial market. Mutual funds are one of the security portfolios managed by investment professionals. To maximize the portfolio return by choosing a combination of stocks and bonds, to decide an adequate investment philosophy, strategy, process and asset reallocation, are key elements of obtaining considerable returns with limited risk and main standard of manifesting the quality and capability of fund managers. The past performance of funds is publicly available, which is scrutinized to decide what to purchase or redeem. Many studies about evaluation of portfolio performance focus on fund performance. Nevertheless recent researches focus on fund flows instead. In this study, we will examine variables that influence flows of open-ended equity mutual funds in Taiwan and have a better understanding of investor behaviors of purchasing or redeeming. We first identify variables that influence fund flows and then employee those to analyze the influence in between. We discovered that the investors are more zealous in chasing previous winners based on the short-term performance, approximately 3 to 6 months. However, once the performance of the invested fund improves for the past 12 months they trend to redeem shares to realize profit. Furthermore, they review risk before making the decision, but ignore it after investment. Investors incline to buy or sell funds of high £] and are more susceptible to related expenses and react negatively to funds that require high expense. Investors are significantly willing to invest funds that are actively traded.

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A Study of the Performance Evaluation Scheme of Central Government¡¦s Public Education Project Grants toward the Localities in Taiwan. The main purpose of this study are (a) to explore the principle and scheme of the performance-based project evaluation, (b) to understand the current status and problems of the compulsory educational grant system, (c) to explore the development and general situation of the performance evaluation of the compulsory education project grants, and (d) to construct a performance evaluation scheme of the central government¡¦s compulsory education project grants toward the localities. Based on the research findings, the recommendations are offered as the improvement for relevant institutes. To achieve the purposes above, the research adopts the document analysis, literature analysis, expert interviews, questionnaire, expert workshops and on-the-spot interviews. First, through the analysis of document and literature, the context of every compulsory educational grant project, the grant system of compulsory education, and the theories of performance evaluation are discussed. Secondly, interview methodology helps to explore the compulsory educational grant system and projects. Thirdly, in order to have a wide understanding for the current grant projects, we compile questionnaire A and B. The samples of the former are the administrative managers in Bureau of Education of every Hsien and City Local Governments; the samples of the latter are the principals of the public primary and junior high schools. The applied analysis method is descriptive statistics. Fourthly, through the holding workshops and on-the-spot interviews, we realize the executive situation and related problems of the compulsory education project grants. Finally, we have the following conclusions and suggestions. The main conclusions are as follows: 1. The central government¡¦s compulsory education project grants have improved the learning environment of the compulsory education a great deal, but there are still some problems remained. (1) The rate of self-financial resources of the local governments is too low and the current expenditure for the localities is overloaded. (2) The equity, executive efficiency and independence of the grant system remain to be promoted. (3) The roles of the central and local governments in the grant system are not clearly defined. (4) The policies of the compulsory educational grant projects lack continuity. (5) The local governments¡¦ examination for the grants is not transparent enough and some set their own rules to limit the proposals for the grants. (6) Some grant projects cannot resolve the main difficulties of schools. (7) Some local governments appear to expend the budget as possible due to the pressure of budget-execution. 2. The research finds that under the principles of horizontal equity, vertical equity, independence, priority, accountability and democracy, the compulsory educational grant system will be greatly improved. 3. Some local governments and principals have no idea of accountability, and the performance-based project evaluation cannot be put into effect. In order to strengthen the accountability of all the educational personnel, we should to make explicit principles of evaluation and take account of the results to decide the amount of the next grants. Additionally, the indexes of evaluation should have qualitative and quantitative ones including short-term and long-term evaluation. The execution of evaluation needs self-evaluation and expert-evaluation. To get rid of the personal factors, a special institute for allocating the grants should be established. Besides, evaluation can be executed from several ways and put into a part of the execution for the grants. 4. This research constructs a performance-based project evaluation scheme. We suggest the grant system should be divided into project and general grant ones. According to the scheme, the project grant system has no big difference from the present one and its function is to attain vertical equity; the general grant system is formula-based and it stresses the principles of independence and efficiency. After the formula and the educational funds for each local government are decided, the proposal method is from bottom to top. As for the performance evaluation, ¡§ Educational funds allocation committee ¡¨ of the central government and ¡§ Education investigation committee ¡¨ of the Hsien and City Local Governments should be established first. These committees execute evaluation in the general grant system, and the process of evaluation includes school self-evaluation. According to the result of our research, we propose the following suggestions: 1. Immediate suggestions: (1) To attain the equity of grant allocation and using efficiency, a data base of the fundamental teaching equipment for every schools should be established soon so as to improve the performance evaluation. (2) To assure the fundamental teaching equipment for all the schools, we should make ¡§ indexes of the fundamental teaching equipment¡¨ for the whole country so as to attain the principles of horizontal equity and priority. (3) To fulfill the dependence of the local governments and schools and to improve the using efficiency for the grants, the central government should increase the general grants. (4) To strengthen the functions of the general grant system, the central government should establish ¡§ Educational funds allocation committee ¡¨ as an advisory examining body for Bureau of Education. (5) The local governments should establish ¡§ Education investigation committee ¡¨ as an advisory examining body for every Hsien and City Bureau of Education. (6) To attain the independence of using funds and performance evaluation, we should strengthen the functions of school administrative affairs meeting. (7) We should strengthen the performance evaluation of the compulsory educational grants, and put the evaluation into the grant system so as to enhance the idea of accountability. 2. Long-term suggestions: To effectively improve the performance-based project evaluation, the central government should develop indexes of evaluation for the long-term educational results and strengthen the qualitative performance evaluation.

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For the last half century, financial forecast has been undergone numerous discussions among AICPA, authority agencies, and experts. Generally, scholars and researchers use either general financial ratios or cash-flow ratios or both to predict if enterprises will bankrupt or fail. As a matter of fact, there is no concurrent conclusion as for which one is better. Some believe that the former is more accurate than the latter, while some claim that it is the vice versa. Still, some assert that it is more accurate to use them both, and some even believe that cash forecast sheet is the most effective. Usually, it has been some time since financial forecast was submitted to board of directors for approval prior to fiscal year, and moreover, some unpredictable information might occur during fiscal year given the information asymmetry. Therefore, the most important is to find funds gap as early as possible so as to respond quickly. From the perspective of an enterprise insider, the researcher regards financial forecast as a necessary tool for professional managers to cope with current information, utilizing models conforming to business¡¦s needs to introduce various situations for predicting possible funds gap in the near future. The information for the development of financial forecasts is highly complex, involving all departments in a company. Using Excel as a tool and a case company as a basis, this study developed a model which could be used for predictions with several single variables or multi-variables. Also, the validity of this model was verified by virtue of about twenty times of simulation tests. II Given that this case company, which engages in basic metal industry, is small and middle business, the model developed based on this case can only be used by similar businesses. This model which employs a MIS approach and is developed based on financial and accounting procedures often acquires inputs of enormous amount of time, manpower, and resources to become an effective tool for planning and management. Due to the limited resources and talented, it takes researcher a lot of efforts to successfully establish this model. Moreover, the operation of this model which uses Excel as a tool is not as easy as that of other systems written with programming languages. Finally, because the case company is small and middle business which has possible crises different from that of large companies, the prediction the model can make is limited. This study is mainly concerned with a system model which is not able to be shown in the text. Therefore, it is suggested to first recognize the framework of this study, and then pair with related tables to better understand this study.