Making sense and transparency in finance literature: Evidence from trends in readability

Transparency continues to interest finance scholarship, as regards not just to financial reporting, but to a host of areas. Concomitantly, there is a growing emphasis on the transparency of the finance research process, with journals initiating requirements for uploading data and codes. However, little consideration is given to the transparency of finance scholarly texts, despite new emphasis by academic institutions and accreditation bodies on articles having an impact on practitioners. We use textual analysis to investigate the readability of articles in a selection of finance journals. Results evidence that academic articles are becoming less readable. Whether readability straightforwardly implies transparency is unclear, still, we consider these issues alongside our findings. Our study should be of great interest to those concerned with the state of finance scholarship.     

Exploring the circular economy paradigm: A natural resource-based view on supplier selection criteria

The paradigm of circular economy and the transfer of its principles to supply chain management has recently received much attention from researchers and practitioners. Limited natural resources, governmental legislation, and social responsibility for environmental preservation are the main factors for the development of circular supply chains. Especially in the automotive industry, critical materials are used to produce electric vehicles, reinforcing the importance of circularity for the industry. As the first stage of the supply chain, suppliers have a considerable influence on creating self-sufficient production systems, and in the automotive sector, a low level of vertical integration is important. Therefore, selecting suppliers is an enabler for circular supply chains, but this decision is a complex process due to multiple, partly conflicting criteria. To contribute to the knowledge in this research area, this study applies a fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory approach for supplier selection in a circular supply chain in a case study of electric vehicles. First, a set of criteria for supplier selection in circular supply chains was identified based on a literature review and was systematically categorized based on the natural resource-based view. Afterward, the criteria were assessed and refined by experts with a strong procurement background in the automotive industry. Second, the experts were interviewed for value collection, and finally, the mutual influence of the criteria was determined. The results show that the most important criteria for circular supplier selection in electric vehicle supply chains are environmental standards, environmental-related certifications, resource consumption, and waste generation. Regarding the natural resource-based view, short-term focused criteria addressing the capability of pollution prevention have a higher importance compared to long-term criteria that drive sustainable development. In addition, this study classifies the criteria into the categories of causes and effects, discusses the prominence of the criteria, and presents a strategic map showing the mutual influences of the criteria. The results contribute to the theoretical and practical discussion on circular supply chains by identifying the key criteria for circular supplier selection and providing decision-making support for procurement managers.     

Early-life exposure to earthquakes and its long-term effects on human capital outcomes: The case of Myanmar

This paper investigates the long-term effects of early-life exposure to natural disasters on a range of health and educational outcomes, utilizing the spatiotemporal variation in two large earthquakes that occurred in Myanmar in the same year as a natural experiment. The results indicate that cohorts exposed to earthquakes have a higher probability of having at least some difficulty with four activities: seeing, hearing, walking, and remembering. We adopt a battery of alternative specifications and arrive at similar results. Our further results show that earthquakes adversely impact the long-run educational attainment of individuals, exacerbating the pre-existing gender gap in schooling. The findings of this paper provide additional evidence of the importance of timely disaster management as one straightforward way to address the early-life roots of unequal opportunities.     

A social media analysis of travel preferences and attitudes,before and during Covid-19

Covid-19 created tremendous uncertainty in the tourism industry; in this study, we use social media data to explore differences in the preferences and attitudes of tourism consumers, both before and during the pandemic. We use natural language processing (NLP) techniques to analyze over one million Reddit posts on travel-related subreddits. We investigate the preference for city and nature-oriented tourism in selected destinations; the analysis demonstrates that nature tourism gained interest during Covid-19 in destinations with rich nature resources, whereas city tourism lost interest in destinations known for city tourism. We also classify Reddit authors into two categories: conservation and openness, according to a psychological theory of personal values, and show that this is predictive, with openness associated with positive travel sentiment and low risk awareness. This points to the potential for value-based segmentation of travel consumers based on theoretically-grounded NLP analysis of social media data.     

Language and identity in the shadow: A multi-case study of a Japanese multinational corporation

This paper explores how different organizational identities can be constructed by the use of multiple languages within a multinational corporation’s (MNC) subsidiaries. Scholars are increasingly interested in the importance of language in international business but little is currently known about how identities interact with language across an MNC’s subsidiaries. Applying language and social identity theory, this paper analyses the interactions between organizational identity and the use of multiple languages within the lines of communication in the Thai, Taiwanese and US subsidiaries of a Japanese MNC, focusing especially on communications with customers and headquarters. The findings reveal the range of uses of different languages in the lines of communication and the attendant sharing and shaping of social identities in each subsidiary, thus highlighting the importance of the contexts of subsidiaries. In addition, in a sharp contrast to the approach to linguistic identity assumed in the current literature, the findings reveal how national identity can be sustained independently of the use of language. Moreover, the findings also reveal that perceived identity is influenced not only by actors’ language abilities and ethnicity, but also by their post-colonial views on both parent and host countries, and how this underpins shadow organizational structures.     

The shocks of natural disasters on NPLs: Global evidence

The relationship between natural disasters and NPLs is of significant importance in the natural disaster economics field. Thus, this research investigates the effects of natural disasters on non-performing loans (NPLs) using panel data covering 101 countries from 1996 to 2017. We introduce interaction terms between natural disasters and different financial risks to represent the moderating effects of natural disasters through such risks. Several conclusions arise from the empirical results. (1) Natural disasters produce significant effects on NPLs both in current year and five-period lag terms. (2) Natural disasters increase NPLs through five kinds of financial risks, and the moderating effects are statistically significant. (3) The effects of natural disasters on NPLs present significant heterogeneity between OECD and non-OECD countries. From these results, we put forward several policy implications.     

Discontinuity of required oral and literacy skills across job roles in achieving high work performance: An fsQCA approach

This study explores how the English proficiency of local employees in foreign subsidiaries of multinational enterprises mitigates language barriers and improves their work performance. A research framework is developed by introducing the multidimensionality of foreign language proficiency and employing insights from applied linguistics, the brain-drain model, and media synchronicity theory. By using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis for data analysis, this study finds that the relative importance of English literacy skill to oral skill in achieving high work performance varies across positions in foreign subsidiaries. Discontinuity of required linguistic skills between managerial and nonmanagerial positions implies that incremental development of a skill set required for lower positions does not assure successful capability development toward upper positions. This study also finds that competence that supports appropriate usage of English in a specific context plays an important role in mitigating language barriers and achieving high work performance.     

The risk impacts of global natural and technological disasters

This research develops an expected risk model and estimates risk impacts of single or multiple disasters in terms of human fatality, injury, affected, and economic damage for nearly 200 nations. Both natural hazards, including geophysical, meteorological, hydrological, and technological disasters, such as industrial, transport, and structural, are considered. Relevant measures of expected risk, such as standard deviation, coefficient of variance, range, and rank are also calculated to assess a country's overall risk. Social-economic-physical factors from the World Development Index developed by the United Nations (UN) are then regressed with occurrences and risks of natural and tech disasters to seek plausible associations. The results show that (1) the model performs reasonably well in fitting observed and modeled risks and risk impacts, relatively better for natural disaster and affected people and economic damage; (2) while natural disasters are far more risky than tech ones in total risk impacts; specific risks for subgroups of natural or tech disasters vary widely in magnitude and by country; (3) high natural and/or tech risks concentrate in a small number of countries, such as China, India, Bangladesh in Asia; U.S., Mexico, Canada in North America; Turkey, Russia, France, Germany in Europe, and Algeria, Egypt, and Ethiopia in Africa, which are relatively large in population, fast in development, or advanced in industrialization; yet (4) high risk deviations per unit risk impacts reveal that many small, developing, and tech backward countries need to prepare even more for both natural and tech disasters. Finally, (5) while many country-level development factors, together with disaster occurrence, are statistically significant, only some can provide weak predictability of disaster risk impacts under robust regression. The research findings provide useful risk references to countries for resilient national policies for disaster preparation, mitigation, and recovery.     

Automated inference of product attributes and their importance from user-generated content: Can we replace traditional market research?

User-generated content, particularly online product reviews by customers, provide marketers with rich data of customer evaluations of product attributes. This study proposes, benchmarks, and validates a new approach for inferring attribute-level evaluations from user-generated content. Moreover, little is known about whether and when insights from product reviews gained in such a way are consistent with traditional research methods, such as conjoint analysis and satisfaction driver analysis. To provide first insights into this question, the authors apply their approach to a dataset with almost one million product reviews from 52 product categories and run conjoint and satisfaction driver analyses for these categories. Results indicate that the consistency between methods largely varies across product categories. Initial exploratory analyses suggest that consistency might be higher for categories characterized by low experience qualities, high hedonic value, and high customer willingness to post online reviews—but further work will be necessary to validate these findings.     

Does reporting quality affect systematic risk? Evidence from a regulatory lottery

On June 1, 1976, the Swedish parliament voted on a legislative bill that, if approved, would have substantially increased the quality of the corporate information disclosed to the public. Since parliament was hung, the outcome of the vote was decided by a lottery. The winning lottery ticket was a “No”, which meant that the bill was rejected. I exploit this lottery as an exogenous event to study if reporting quality affects systematic risk. I find that the rejection of the bill resulted in a negative abnormal return that persisted in the following day. This result suggests that there is a causal relationship between reporting quality and equity prices through its impact on systematic risk.