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The other new area editor is Professor Chao-Min Chiu （邱兆民）, an excellent
scholar from Department of Information Management in College of Management, National
Sun Yat-sen University. He excels in the research fields including electronic commerce,
virtual community, information technology adoption, and multivariate data analysis.

Introduction of this Edition
The following is a brief introduction to each article published in this edition. The
first article “Valuation of Spread and Basket Options” in the field of finance by Chang,
Huang, Lin, and Wu adopts the unbounded-system distribution of the Johnson (1949)
distribution family to approximate the basket/spread distribution and derive a versatile
pricing model. The pricing model can price both basket and spread options; hence, the
risks of issuing both options can be consistently and efficiently integrated and managed.
Moreover, this pricing model can instantly price the two options (almost as short in time
as the Black-Scholes model (Black and Scholes, 1973)), and the results are quite accurate
in comparison with the Monte Carlo simulation results. Moreover, they also present the
method for computing Greeks. Finally, they provide numerical examples to demonstrate
the implementation of the pricing model. These examples also show the economic
intuitions of Greeks for basket and spread options, and for an option portfolio consisting
of both options.
The second article “The Interrelationship among Normal and Abnormal D&O
Insurance Coverage, Institutional Investor Characteristics and Audit Fees” in the field of
accounting by Chiou and Liao first examines the relationship between the appropriateness
of directors’ and officers’ (D&O) insurance coverage and audit fees. The paper further
examines the interaction effect between the D&O insurance coverage and institutional
investors who have insurance business relationships with the D&O insured companies
on audit fees, analyzing how this effect is reflected in the charging of audit fees. Using
the data of firms listed in the Taiwan Stock Exchange and Taipei Exchange from 2013 to
2018 from the Taiwan Economic Journal (TEJ) and conducting multiple sensitive tests,
they first find that if the firm purchases appropriate (normal) D&O insurance coverage,
as the normal D&O insurance coverage increases, the auditor charges lower audit fees.
However, if the firm purchases excess (abnormal) D&O insurance coverage, an adverse
effect occurs as a result of directors’ and managers’ opportunistic behavior and thus the
litigation risk increases; hence, as the abnormal D&O insurance coverage increases, the
auditor charges higher audit fees. As for the interaction effect, when the firm purchases