Owners on both sides of the deal: mergers and acquisitions and overlapping institutional ownership

Using a corporate governance lens, this study considers owners with a stake in both the acquiring and the target firms in the context of mergers and acquisitions. A possible agency problem arises with regard to monitoring implications as managers may be able to take advantage of compromised monitoring because overlapping owners may focus on the aggregate value for both the acquiring and the target firms and nonoverlapping owners may be interested only in the acquirer's side of the deal. The results suggest that when more owners overlap in their ownership of both the acquiring and target firms, the acquiring firms are more likely to experience decreased shareholder value through merger and acquisition deals. This effect, however, can be constrained by stronger board control. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding the changes in accounting thought

Financial accounting and reporting are in the midst of one of the most significant revolutionary changes in modern history. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework that will contribute to the dialogue surrounding these developments. We use Kuhn’s [Kuhn, T. S. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press] framework on the theory of scientific revolution to describe how changes in the need for information, coupled with the lack of relevant accounting information, led to reporting anomalies that have spurred a revolutionary shift in accounting paradigms. We are moving from an accounting paradigm that existed in the age of an industrial economy to an accounting paradigm that fits the economy in an information age. This redirection has resulted in the following: a change in the conceptualization and application of relevance and reliability, an increased use of fair value versus historical cost measurements, a renewed emphasis on principles versus rules, and an evaluation of the composition of the basic financial statements.     

Socioeconomic Index for Income and Poverty Prediction: A Sufficient Dimension Reduction Approach

The present paper introduces a novel method for the construction of Socioeconomic Status (SES) indices that are specific to a target variable of interest. It is based on the Sufficient Dimension Reduction (SDR) paradigm and uses a factorized model-based approach to simultaneously deal with predictor variables of mixed nature (i.e. quantitative, binary, and ordinal), which are usual in microeconomic data. These SES indices also identify relevant predictor variables using a two-step regularized matrix factorization approach. Using data from household surveys for Argentina (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares-EPH), the proposed method is compared with other existing dimension reduction algorithms such as standard Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and its version for mixed variables, regression on the full set of variables and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator regression (LASSO).     

Disclosure of liquidity and cash flow statements by Australian superannuation funds before Covid-19

The Commonwealth's stimulus package required the unexpected distribution of cash by superannuation funds to members during the Covid-19 pandemic. We focus on disclosure and maintenance of an operational risk financial reserve and reporting of the statement of cash flows in annual reports by Australian superannuation funds. These disclosures represent mandated sources of information providing evidence of liquidity levels for meeting cash payouts and disclosure adherence. Many funds did not meet their statutory reporting requirements. More members and higher union board membership as measures of stakeholder power explain higher disclosure in support of managerial stakeholder theory.     

Climate precarity in rural livelihoods: Agrarian transformations and smallholder vulnerability in Vietnam

In recent decades, agrarian transformations in Southeast Asia have resulted in significant environmental and social change, yet insufficient attention has focused on the particular pathways by which these changes have increased vulnerability to climate change. In particular, climate precarity, a situation in which class, social, labour and/or gender inequities amplify negative impacts from climate change, has been on the rise for many smallholders. Using case studies in Vietnam of changes to swidden agriculture in upland areas and the loss of deepwater rice systems in the Mekong Delta lowlands, the paper examines social differentiation and ecological outcomes of these processes and how they have increased climate precarity, particularly for poor households and women. Based on longitudinal fieldwork in affected regions, we identify key changes contributing to climate precarity as farming systems intensify. In particular, loss of flexibility in farmer decision-making, loss of voluntary engagement with markets, and declining access to social capital and entitlements have increased risks for households and reduced adaptation options. Suggestions are made to more directly address these elements in future agricultural and climate policies, rather than current approaches to climate adaptation that often promote even more intensification of agriculture, which runs the risk of exacerbating precarity.     

The disabling effects of enabling social policies on organisations’ human capital development practices for women

Paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are social policies designed to enhance parents' labour force participation. These policies influence not only men's and women's decisions regarding their labour market activity but also organisational decision makers' (ODMs) expectations about their employees' availability to work and thus, their willingness to invest in their employees' human capital. Using a sample of over 13,000 individuals from 19 countries, we investigate the interaction between gender and social policies on human capital development practices. In line with statistical discrimination theory, which suggests that ODMs hold different expectations about female and male productivity, we find that paid parental leave and externally provided childcare are negatively associated with the provision of human capital development for women but not for men.