A Simple Bayesian Procedure for Sample Size Determination in an Audit of Property Value Appraisals

The article proposes a simple Bayesian technique for auditing property appraisals to determine whether state accuracy guidelines are met. The proposed technique addresses elicitation of appraisers' prior beliefs, computation of reappraisal sample sizes and reporting of audit results. To facilitate communication of quantitative audit findings to nonstatistician stakeholders, the concept of variance appears nowhere in prior elicitation or reporting. In contrast to classical frequentist techniques, the Bayesian procedure easily integrates expert judgment and responds flexibly to the arrival of new information. In addition, the Bayesian procedure significantly reduces the number of reappraisals required to regulate appraisal systems when they are functioning well. The technique can be applied in other settings where government officials audit their own work and must convince overseers, especially the public, that accuracy requirements are satisfied.     

The 3‐day Week of 1974 and Earnings Data Reliability in the Family Expenditure Survey and the National Child Development Study*

In early 1974, an energy conservation policy limited the British workweek to 3 days. Researchers fear that earnings reports given by survey respondents during this period may not be comparable with those given in more typical circumstances. This study uses responses during and after the 3‐day week policy to estimate the degree of misreporting in the National Child Development Study (NCDS) and the Family Expenditure Survey (FES). The estimates show that very few respondents gave ‘incorrect’ 3‐day figures. In the FES, the estimated fraction of misreports is no larger than 3.2%; in the NCDS, the best estimate is 0.     

工业品公司品牌和市场战略

经过二十年的发展, 跨国企业在中国的消费品品牌营销手段已十分娴熟,但对于工业品的品牌战略,即使是在全球市场上有相当丰富经验的跨国企业,在中国的市场实践上仍存在种种认识的误区,采用的手段或自相矛盾,或片面单一,缺乏统一完整的策略。     

How Unbecoming of You: Online Experiments Uncovering Gender Biases in Perceptions of Ridesharing Performance

Journal of Business Ethics - Gender discrimination continues to plague organizations. While the advent of the Internet and the digitization of commerce have provided both a mechanism by which goods...     

School foodservice employees’ beliefs about local produce use at work and home

Sustainability practices are becoming an essential part of foodservice businesses. Schools often purchase local produce and use it in school meals as part of their sustainability efforts. School foodservice employees play an important role in the effectuation of these efforts and understanding their perceptions is important. A questionnaire was used to assess foodservice employees’ beliefs regarding the quality and benefits of local produce use in schools. Results indicate differences in employees’ perceptions regarding benefits and quality of local produce based on their perception of the importance of purchasing local produce for home use.     

Conditional Mandates on Management Earnings Forecasts: The Impact on the Cost of Debt

Exploiting a unique conditional disclosure mandate on management earnings forecasts (MEFs) in China, we examine the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on the cost of debt. We find that firms providing voluntary MEFs have lower cost of debt than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters. The results of the channel analyses reveal that voluntary forecasters have greater commitment to voluntary MEFs in future periods than do mandatory forecasters and nonforecasters, and the precision, accuracy, and timeliness of MEFs are higher for voluntary forecasters than for mandatory forecasters. Additional analyses show that the differential effects of voluntary and mandatory MEFs on cost of debt are stronger for voluntary forecasters operating in opaque information environments, issuing high-quality and confirming forecasts, controlled by private shareholders, and operating in highly competitive product markets. Overall, our results indicate that, compared with mandatory MEFs, voluntary MEFs are more informative for credit investors, particularly for firms facing greater information risk and operating uncertainty.     

The Value of CEO Mobility: Contextual Factors That Shape the Impact of Prior CEO Experience on Market Performance and CEO Compensation

This study examines the value that prior CEO experience has for the companies that hire such CEOs—as reflected in the firms’ subsequent market‐based performance—as well as its value for the CEO that possesses this experience—as reflected in his or her initial compensation. While we suggest that shareholders tend not to benefit from firms hiring experienced CEOs, we also argue that particular firm and industry contextual factors that shaped the prior CEO experience help ameliorate this detrimental effect. Regardless, we also suggest that prior CEO experience generally stands to benefit the CEOs, in that it brings them a compensation premium over those CEOs without such prior experience. We tested our hypotheses on a sample of 654 US CEO succession events that occurred between 2001 and 2004 and found broad support for our hypotheses. We close with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future research as well as what they mean for firms hiring experienced CEOs and for CEO careers more generally. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.