Information asymmetry and monitoring in equity private placements

This paper systematically examines the factors that determine price discounts and announcement effects of equity private placements conducted by firms in Taiwan from 2002 to 2008. Different with most studies of private placements using available observations as a whole sample, our study separates the whole sample into subsamples by exchange-listed firms and OTC firms. The results for OTC firms corroborate the information hypothesis; the discounts serve as compensation for investor's costs of assessing firms, while abnormal returns reflect the information about firm quality. On the other hand, the empirical results show that some of our findings support an information explanation and some support a monitoring explanation in the case of exchange-listed firms. It seems that there are different motives behind the exchange-listed firms placing equity privately.     

Measuring strategic environmental performance

It is now widely acknowledged that environmental issues will increasingly affect the performance of firms in western countries, both in the short and in the long run. Environmental issues can act on revenues and on costs. They can influence revenues when a firm follows a ‘green strategy’, i.e. it enhances the characteristics of environmental compatibility of its products or it promotes a credible image of a ‘green company’, that employs only clean technologies. They can influence costs as, on the one hand, more limiting environmental standards can result in higher manufacturing and non manufacturing costs and, on the other hand, programmes focused on improving environmental performances can result in less spoils and wastes, hence in lower costs. Hence, environmental performance should be a structured part of the management control system of an industrial firm. Unfortunately, it is not completely clear how accounting information can be structured in order to obtain this result. This paper is aimed at developing a set of information that can be used for a managerial control focused on the environmental performance of an industrial firm. This paper is organized in three main sections. Section I describes the conceptual requirements of a management control system based on accounting information for monitoring the environmental performance of an industrial firm (completeness, long term orientation, external orientation, measurability and cost). Section II analyses different classes of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPI) used in practice. Both accounting measures (prevention costs and investments; operating environmental costs; contingent environmental liabilities) and non financial measures (physical indicators; compliance) are considered. Section III suggests an integrated approach to the design of a management control system focused on environmental issues, where different classes of indicators are used jointly. More specifically, two integrated systems, one mostly based on physical measures and aimed at external communication, the other focused on accounting measures and supporting managerial decision making, are suggested.     

Accounting choice: The role of monitoring costs

Focusing on monitoring costs, the agency framework is used to extend and test the positive theory of accounting choice. To reduce monitoring cost, a firm is predicted to adopt those accounting methods employed by other firms facing the most similar economic environment. This allows the firm's shareholders (typically acting through the Board of Directors) to use the performance of these other firms to better impute and reward its own manager's performance. This hypothesis is tested and supported by examining, for a sample of industrial firms, the choice of depreciation method.     

The impact of HR configuration on firm performance in Singapore: a resource-based explanation

This study investigates how the characteristics of a firm's human resource practices and processes (HRPPs) are associated with firm performance. The results found that the extent to which HRPPs can be substituted by information technology or codified in employee manuals, made them easy to be imitated and were therefore associated with an attenuation of the firm's financial performance. On the other hand, constant positive investments into a firm's HRPPs were associated with enhanced firm performance. No significant relationships were found between the embeddedness of HRPPs with information technology or the uniqueness of the firm's HRPPs and firm performance. The results are explained in terms of the resource-based view of the firm.     

Innovation efficiency and firm performance in a benchmarking context

This paper examines the effect of innovation efficiency on firm performance using the Greek version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012–2014 and employs a dataset of 1,274 innovative manufacturing firms. Introducing a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-type benchmarking strategy with non-continuous knowledge inputs, the main findings suggest that innovation efficiency, although does not exert a direct impact on firm performance, moderates the relationship between the internally generated knowledge and firm performance. On the other hand, such a moderation relationship is not confirmed for the relationship between external knowledge and innovation spillovers on firm's performance. Although the impact of the embodied to innovation inputs spillovers, on firm performance, is always positive and significant, empirical results indicate that absorptive capacity exhibits diminishing returns with respect to performance.     

The Tracking of Environmental Costs: Motivations and Impacts

Abstract

Most accounting systems separately capture and accumulate one portion of the overall environmental costs of firms, while the remainder is embedded in other cost pools, such as general overhead costs or administrative costs. Little empirical evidence has been provided to explain the impacts of cost accounting systems that make a larger portion of firms' total environmental costs visible. The aim of this study is to conceptually and empirically examine the relationships among the tracking of environmental costs (TEC) by firms, their environmental motivations, and the impacts in terms of environmental and economic performance. Using survey data from a large sample of manufacturing firms, the results suggest two main conclusions. First, the TEC has an indirect influence on economic performance through environmental performance. Second, this indirect effect is influenced by the environmental motivations of the firm. More specifically, this indirect effect is greater (lesser) for firms whose motivations are predominately business-oriented (sustainability-oriented).     

Skill shortages and labor market outcomes in Central Europe

The new Central European members of the EU have been characterized by low employment rates, especially among unskilled workers, despite the GDP recoveries and large private sector shares in output and employment. Evidence points at skill shortages in Central Europe as a key impediment to faster labor reallocation and convergence to the EU-15 employment structures. In this paper, we develop a simple model of labor reallocation with transaction costs and show how skill shortages can inhibit firm creation and increase income inequality. We use the model to examine the impact of training subsidies and their financing on skill acquisition and start-ups of new private firms, and show that the positive effect of subsidies would be mostly offset by high wage taxes. Shifting financing from wage to consumption taxes would improve incentives for workers’ training and firm start-ups, while relying more on income taxes could reduce the income gap between workers and entrepreneurs.     

Private Debt and Timely Loss Recognition

Abstract

In this study, we investigate whether private debt contracting provides incentives for borrowers to recognize economic losses earlier in accounting earnings. Focusing on the window around firms' issuances of private loans, we document that timely loss recognition significantly increases following an issuance. This effect is significantly stronger for debt contracts that include performance covenants acting as trip-wires when firm performance deteriorates. We also find that timely loss recognition is particularly used when writing debt contracts is hampered by uncertainty about a firm's future development. These findings are consistent with timely loss recognition being used to increase contract efficiency by facilitating state-contingent control allocation based on a borrower's performance over the loan term.     

The role of debt and bankruptcy statutes in facilitating tacit collusion

Using a two‐period model this paper examines the quantity decisions of leveraged duopolists that are vulnerable to bankruptcy in the first period. When the firms have symmetric costs, a bankrupt firm reorganizes under Chapter 11. If a Chapter 11 firm experiences marginal cost relief, each firm produces a collusive output in period one in order to prevent its rival's financial demise. When the firms have asymmetric costs, the less efficient firm is liquidated under Chapter 7 upon bankruptcy. A predatory equilibrium exists, whereby the inefficient firm is driven from the market. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How do European firms adjust their labour costs when nominal wages are rigid?

Although workers' nominal wages are seldom cut, firms have multiple options available if they require adjustments in their wage bills. We broaden the analysis of relative (in)flexibility in labour costs by investigating the use of other margins of labour cost adjustment at the firm level beyond base wages. Using data from a unique survey, we find that European firms make extensive use of other components of compensation to adjust the cost of labour. Interestingly, firms facing base wage rigidity are more likely to use alternative margins of labour cost adjustment; therefore there appears to be some degree of substitutability between wage flexibility and the flexibility of other cost components. Changes in bonuses and non-pay benefits are some of the potential margins firms use to reduce costs. We also show how the margins of adjustment chosen are affected by unionisation and firm and worker characteristics.     

A suggested methodology for calculating the cost of university graduates

Costs are the valuations placed on the use of resources; they include operating and opportunity costs. As such they vary according to one's orientation. In higher education, costs can be evaluated from the point of view of three entities: the university as an economic firm (institutional cost); the students as private individuals (private cost); and society at large (social cost). This paper considers the institutional costs of higher education.Based on a hypothetical college model, two methodologies are suggested for evaluating the institutional costs in the “production’ of university graduates. The net-value-added method assumes that the cost of dropouts is inherent in the cost of graduates. The cost-per-student-year method assumes that dropouts and graduates are joint products of the educational system each with their own separate costs.The application of the two cost models is demonstrated with empirical data based on the University of Mosul in Iraq. The implications of the suggested methodologies for institutions with diverse specializations, high dropout rates, or large proportions of transfer students are also discussed.     

Cost management and value creation: the missing link

Understanding of the relationship between the costs of the firm and the value the firm provides to its customers is the key to the ability of the firm to reach its profit potential. From this perspective the firm needs to have a thorough understanding of its activities, their costs and their relation to market prices. Advanced cost management studies and practices suggest a variety of different tools that help us understand the relationship between value and cost. However, most of these studies provide us with qualitative tools only. An exception is studies related to product cost planning, as in the case of target costing or value analysis/value engineering. This paper, while being a part of emerging literature on strategic cost management, extends the existing knowledge of the relationship between costs and value by introducing the value creation model (VCM). In particular, the VCM model defines the firms' cost structure in terms of value added, non-value added but required activities, as well as of waste. A firm's cost structure is aligned with value attributes embedded in products and services. The VCM model seeks to understand the trade-off between what the customer is willing to pay for a product/service bundle (value) and the cost the firm bears to provide what the customer desires. Based on these trade-offs, VCM defines value multipliers, which help the firm determine which activities the firm should focus on in order to develop a competitive advantage.     

浅谈降低项目物资成本的方法和途径

物资管理是企业生产、经营管理的重要环节,始终贯穿于企业生产的全过程。材料费用在项目成本支出中占有相当大的比例。那么,如何降低项目物资成本,提高项目经济效益,是当今企业关注的一个焦点。本文围绕材料数量、材料信息、材料价格、材料质量、材料消耗量控制等几个方面进行了深入探讨和研究,在此基础上提出了降低项目物资成本的方法和途径。     

Rent Division, Restructuring, and Managerial Risk Taking: A Strategic Bargaining Model

This paper demonstrates that, when the manager of a poorly performing firm generates firm-specific rents, strategic considerations associated with anticipated future restructuring may lead to the adoption of risky operating policies. Furthermore, this bias toward risky policies may be exacerbated by increases in managerial entrenchment. This is the case even when the manager does not have an ownership stake in the firm. On the other hand, a manager of a firm that is performing well will prefer safer policies. These results are driven by endogenously determined management-borne costs of financial distress, and obtain under both restructuring regimes that enforce the priority of creditor claims as well as restructuring regimes that induce deviations from absolute priority.     

Agency costs and audit quality: evidence from France

The IFRS mandatory adoption in European countries is an excellent context from which to assess the validity of accounting choice theory, which postulates that information asymmetry, contractual efficiency (agency costs) and managerial opportunism reasons could drive the choice. With this aim, we test the impact of these factors to explain the adoption of fair value for investment properties (IAS 40) in the real estate industry, taking into account the ‘revaluation’ option offered by IFRS1 and using historical cost without revaluations as a baseline category for comparison purposes. We select a sample of European real estate companies from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden, all first-time adopters of the IFRS. Using a multinomial logistic model, we show that information asymmetry, contractual efficiency and managerial opportunism could account for the fair value choice. Particularly, the most significant findings are that size as a proxy of political costs reduces the likelihood of using fair value while market-to-book ratio is negatively associated with the fair value choice. On the other hand, leverage, another typical proxy of contracting costs, seems not to influence the choice. This evidence confirms the current validity of traditional accounting choice theory even if it reveals, in such a context, the irrelevance of the usual relations between accounting choice and leverage.     

Signifying Williamson's Contribution to the Transaction Cost Approach: An Agent‐Based Simulation of Coasean Transaction Costs and Specialization

This article simulates Ronald Coase's transaction cost approach to firm organizing using agent‐based modelling, and contextualizes and contrasts it with a division‐of‐labour/specialization view of the firm that Coase challenged and sought to replace. The simulation tests the firm formation process based on the different implications of transaction costs and specialization as drivers of integration, focusing especially on Coase's rejection of specialization as an explanation for integration in the firm. The results show little support for, and suggest an important shortcoming to, Coase's transaction cost theory. My findings thereby indicate a potential relationship between the specialization theory and Williamson's Transaction Cost Economics, especially the latter's emphasis on co‐specialization through relationship‐specific investments, which helps shed light on TCE's significant influence in the theory of the firm literature.     

中小微集成电路设计企业成本核算的优化方法探讨

近年来,企业之间的竞争日趋激烈,企业要想获得长远发展,除了需要不断地开发新产品来创造更多的价值,还需要有效控制企业各个环节的经营成本。论文对目前大部分中小微集成电路设计企业在材料成本核算与产品成本核算方面存在的问题进行了探讨,重点分析了材料流转各环节与各类成本核算方法存在的问题,对存货流转环节的成本核算与产成品的成本核算的优化对策进行了探讨,以期为中小微集成电路设计企业高质量开展存货流转环节的成本核算与产成品的成本核算提供帮助。     

Information Revelation in Procurement Auctions with Two‐Sided Asymmetric Information

A buyer needs to procure a good from one of two suppliers offering differentiated products and with privately observed costs. The buyer privately observes the own valuations for the products and (ex ante) decides how much of this information should be revealed to suppliers before they play a first score auction. Our main result is that the more significant is each supplier's private information on the own cost, the less information the buyer should reveal. We also examine the buyer's incentives to make untruthful announces.     

Efficiency measurement in the manufacturing firm

Manufacturing firms with standard costing systems use accounting cost variance heuristics to measure the expost performance of the organization and control costs. This article shows that if the underlying technology of the firm is semi-translog then the data provided by a standard costing system can also be used to compute economic performance indices, such as Malmquist and Konus indices, without incurring additional information costs. These indices can be used either in place of or in conjunction with accounting variances to help control the costs of the organization by allocating responsibility over these indices to those managers who (partially) control them.The refereeing process of this paper was handled through S. Hackman.     

The Risk-Relevance of Accounting Data: Evidence from the Spanish Stock Market

This paper analyses the relevance of accounting fundamentals to inform about equity risk as measured by the cost of equity capital. Assuming the latter is a summary measure of how investors make decisions regarding the allocation of resources, the strength of the association between the cost of capital and the accounting‐based measures of risk indicates how important these measures are for market participants when making economic decisions. To infer the cost of equity capital, we use the O'Hanlon and Steele's method, which is based on the residual income valuation model. Moreover, we use the insights from this model to provide a theoretical underpinning for the choice of the accounting variables related to risk. The sample refers to the non‐financial firms listed in the Madrid Stock Exchange along the period 1987–2002. Our results support our initial expectations regarding the association between the cost of equity capital and the accounting‐based risk variables, thereby supporting the usefulness of fundamental analysis to determine the risk inherent in share's future payoffs. In particular, we highlight the role of investing risk, which has been ignored in previous research. Our results are also robust to measures of risk other than the cost of capital such as the variability in total returns and the firm's systematic risk (β).