Abstract Displacements derived from many of the accelerogram recordings of the 1999 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake show drifts when only a simple baseline derived from the pre-event portion of the record is removed from the records. The appearance of the velocity and displacement records suggests that changes in the zero level of the acceleration are responsible for these drifts. The source of the shifts in zero level are unknown, but in at least one case it is almost certainly due to tilting of the ground. This article illustrates the effect on the ground velocity, ground displacement, and response spectra of several schemes for accounting for these baseline shifts. A wide range of final displacements can be obtained for various choices of baseline correction, and comparison with nearby GPS stations (none of which are colocated with the accelerograph stations) do not help in choosing the appropriate baseline correction. The results suggest that final displacements estimated from the records should be used with caution. The most important conclusion for earthquake engineering purposes, however, is that the response spectra for periods less than about 20 sec are usually unaffected by the baseline correction. Although limited to the analysis of only a small number of recordings, the results may have more general significance both for the many other recordings of this earthquake and for data that will be obtained in the future from similar high-quality accelerograph networks now being installed or soon to be installed in many parts of the world.

We benefited from the comments of James S. Wallace at the Meetings of the Financial Management

This paper describes a speech-input interface function, called speech shift, that enables a user to specify a speech-input mode by simply changing (shifting) voice pitch. While current speech-input interfaces have used only verbal information, we aimed at building a more user-friendly speech interface by making use of nonverbal information, the voice pitch. By intentionally controlling the pitch, a user can enter the same word with it having different meanings (functions) without explicitly changing the speech-input mode. Our speech-shift function implemented on a voice-enabled word processor, for example, can distinguish an utterance with a high pitch from one with a normal (low) pitch, and regard the former as voice-command-mode input (such as file-menu and edit-menu commands) and the latter as regular dictation-mode text input. Our experimental results from twenty subjects showed that the speech-shift function is effective, easy to use, and a labor-saving input method.

This paper uses data from linguistics to explore some old (and ongoing) debates about the semantics of definite descriptions. In the end, I will argue that a serious and perhaps insur-mountable empirical hurdle confronts any account which follows Bertrand Russell (1905) in

The Law of Proportionate Effect depicts that firm’s growth rate is independent of its size;

Abstract: Concentration in the U.S. insurance industry’s market shares and ownership, coupled with a network interlocking ownership relationships by institutional inves-tors, raise social concerns. Studying the relationship between Tobin’s q and corporate governance features of the industry, we fail to find support for the incentive alignment or entrenchment hypotheses, but our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that controlling owners may couple with others to expropriate private value from minority shareholders. An interesting observation from the study is the degree to which family control is prevalent in the industry; combining family control and institutional own-ership makes most stock insurers closely held.

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Do failing businesses continue their loss-making operations for too long to the detriment of their creditors? Using a sample of distressed firms worth more dead than alive, we find that most of them continue operations long after the optimal exit time. The failure to liquidate costs the typical sample firm over three years 8.7 % of its assets in lost earnings relative to the industry median. Excessive continuations are financed by reductions in working capital, and are facilitated by low current debt payments, high proportions of public bonds, and the absence of covenants prohibiting asset sales. Unlike bank covenants, bond covenants increase the probability of exit, but for many inefficient firms they may not be restrictive enough.