Using Industry-Sponsored Game Nights to Educate About Risk and Insurance

As educators in the field of risk management and insurance, we see know- ledge of risk management and insurance as a core business function. However, some colleagues and students see insurance as cold-call sales or companies with a lot of money that continue to raise their prices. So we have to find ways to make our public aware of the usefulness of risk management and insurance in the business world and in private life and of the opportunities that having such knowledge presents to all business majors and business people. One method that is beginning to show dramatic improvements in at least our students' perceptions of the field and the major involves industry-sponsored game nights. While not an academic endeavor nor strictly risk management education, we believe the idea provides a useful tool for opening students' eyes to the need for knowledge of risk management and insurance and of the opportunities that are available in the insurance industry and its related fields. This article discusses the history of such an event at Appalachian State Univer- sity, the current status of the North Carolina Surplus Lines Association (NCSLA) event, and the benefits of the event.     

Minimum and preferred entry qualifications and training provision for North Australian workers

This paper reports on the outcomes of a replication study of a survey of British employers that requested information on the qualifications sought when recruiting employees and on subsequent training and development. While the British survey was interested in the uptake and use of the British National Vocational Qualifications, the study reported in this article is primarily focused on the uptake and use of the Australian Qualifications Framework qualifications by North Australian employers. This study was prompted by the skills shortages and recruitment difficulties being experienced by organizations throughout rural and regional Australia. Previous studies have found that vocational qualifications were not valued by UK employers and few employers were encouraging employees to undertake vocational awards. If this is also the case in Australia, it may in part explain problems in recruiting skilled workers. This research clearly demonstrates that employees in regional and rural Australia are seeking to improve their knowledge and skills through vocational training and higher education qualifications. Also, employers are providing access to training and are supporting managerial and professional employees to gain higher educational qualifications. When recruiting all types of worker other than unskilled labourers, the majority of organizations prefer to recruit workers with qualifications. In rural and regional centres, however, a more pragmatic stance of recruiting unqualified employees in some areas is observed. Clearly, employers will attempt to minimize training costs by recruiting skilled employees, but in the end they will have to provide access to training and education to ensure that they have a skilled workforce that can deliver essential services and products.     

The Need for Effective Communication with Market Stakeholders

Good corporate governance practices have become increasingly important in determining the cost of capital in global capital markets. The Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) aims to promote an environment of market confidence so that listed companies can obtain reasonably priced capital and maximise the value of their listing. As the market operator, the exchange has the ability to set and monitor disclosure standards and to support dialogue between companies and investors. However, a problem with corporate governance disclosures in Australia is that they have not delivered particularly meaningful information to investors about the performance of individual companies.     

Do the Merits Matter More? The Impact of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act

This article examines the effect of the Private Securities LitigationReform Act of 1995 (PSLRA) on stockholder lawsuits. We explorethe role of restatements, earnings forecasts, and insider tradingin the filing and resolution of lawsuits for a sample of hightechnology firms. Consistent with our predictions, there isa post-PSLRA shift away from litigation based on forward-lookingearnings disclosures. Conversely, there is a significantly greatercorrelation between litigation and both earnings restatementsand abnormal insider selling after the PSLRA. Finally, we finda post-PSLRA increase in the likelihood of settlement for casesinvolving earnings restatements.     

Financial acumen, women speculators, and the Royal African company during the South Sea bubble

Price bubbles provide a unique opportunity to study the financial acumen of shareholders. We focus on the 1720 South Sea episode as experienced by the Royal African Company whose stock was more speculative than other joint stocks. During 1720 the company had a new large stock issue. This paper examines the financial acumen of those women who traded senior and engrafted stock across 1720. We find that depending on the pricing regime, these women at worst broke even on their activities or had positive speculative gains. Our findings are consistent with a growing literature on the positive link between gender, capital gains and financial markets.     

Export Sophistication: A Dynamic Panel Data Approach

In this article, we analyze export sophistication based on a large panel dataset (2001–2015; 101 countries) and using various estimation algorithms. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we evaluate the bias properties of estimators and show that GMM-type estimators outperform instrumental-variable and fixed-effects estimators. Based on our analysis we document that GDP per capita and the size of the economy exhibit significant and positive effects on export sophistication; weak institutional quality exhibits negative effect. We also show that export sophistication is path-dependent and stable even during a major economic crisis, which is especially important for emerging and developing economies.     

An alternative interpretation of the discontinuity in earnings distributions

We show that the asymmetric effects of income taxes and special items for profit and loss firms contribute to a discontinuity at zero in the distribution of earnings. Income taxes draw profit observations towards zero while negative special items pull loss observations away from zero. These earnings components are thus expected to contribute to a discontinuity even in the absence of discretion. We show our results are not an artifact of deflation and that other common components of earnings do not have similar effects on the earnings distribution around zero.

Supply structure: The pendulum in action

Using an in-depth longitudinal case study based on an “historical retrospective”, this article focuses on how some factors (“drivers”) set into motion the pendulum of change in supply structures, a research theme neglected in the supply field. It examines, over a 20-year period, the changes made to the supply structure of a well-known organization. The data comes mainly from: (a) semi-structured interviews with 21 managers and professionals within eight operating units, and (b) documentary analyses of the archives. This article shows how to map structural changes of the supply function, while explaining the nature and the causes of these changes. Understanding the pendulum movement from one supply structure to another can be very valuable, as well for academics as for managers.     

Property rights imperfections and asset allocation: Co-ownership in Bulgaria

This paper analyzes how imperfections of property rights affect households’ allocation of assets using micro-survey data from Bulgaria. Co-ownership of assets is widespread in many countries due to inheritance. Central and Eastern Europe offers an interesting natural experiment to assess the effects of this type of property rights imperfection because of the asset restitution process in the 1990s. In Bulgaria, where co-ownership is very prominent and land is strongly fragmented, the land reform and inheritance legislation allows identifying the impact of co-ownership by taking advantage of a discontinuity created by a minimum plot size law. We find that land in co-ownership is more likely to be used by less efficient farm organizations or to be left abandoned, and that it is related to significant welfare losses. The paper hence provides evidence of sub-optimal land allocation following a privatization that established formal but imperfect property rights.