A study of earnings-management motives in the Anglo-American and Euro-Continental accounting models: The Canadian and French cases

The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that potentially influence earnings-management policy with reference to the Anglo-American and Euro-Continental accounting models. Canada and France, respectively, belong to those different socio-economic environments. Earnings-management practices detected in those countries are expected to be affected by specific socio-economic features of the Anglo-American and the Euro-Continental environments. We explain earnings-management practices by incentives suggested in the literature to reveal which motives are prominent within each environment.We tested our earnings-management motives (EMM) model using appropriate panel-estimation techniques over 1674 Canadian and 1470 French firm-year observations. Our results provide evidence that incentives for earnings management for French firms are specifically linked to contractual debt costs and effective tax rate. However, Canadian firms show specific incentives matched with a dynamic capital market. Issuing equity is a strong motive for earnings management in Canadian firms.     

Pricing Decisions in Dual-Channel Supply Chain Including Monopolistic Manufacturer and Duopolistic Retailers: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Emergence of the Internet as a new distribution channel has led to increasing attention by researchers to dual-channel supply chain in recent years. In this paper, pricing and ordering decisions are investigated on a dual-channel supply chain which consists of monopolistic manufacturer and duopolistic retailers. The market is assumed to be controlled by the manufacturer. Thus, the manufacturer becomes leader and the two retailers act as followers. Due to establishing this new structure, different game-theoretic models including Bertrand, Collusion, and Stackelberg are developed to analyze pricing strategies under the various interactions between the two retailers. Then, the equilibrium decisions are compared under the considered scenarios and valuable managerial insights are presented. We found that the various games do not have any effects on the manufacturer’s responses. The retail prices given by the Collusion game are higher than by the other games. In the Collusion model, demands in the retail channel are lower than in the other games. Moreover, the manufacturer and retailers receive respectively the lowest and the highest profits under the Collusion game.     

Economies of Desire: Sexuality and the Sex Industry in the 21st Century

New data from sex surveys confirm that demand for commercial sex is based on permanent disparities between male and female desire, and is therefore ineradicable. Demand and supply are growing, facilitated by economic growth, the Internet, globalisation and changing sexual attitudes. A key objection to the sex industry is that pornography, lap dancing and prostitution promote rape and other kinds of violence against women. However, the evidence contradicts this contention. The commercial sex industry is impervious to prohibitions and cannot be eliminated. Laws which constrain sellers of sexual services or criminalise purchasers are not evidence‐based, and are bound to fail, wasting public resources.     

The impact of political instability on risk‐taking in the banking sector: International evidence using a dynamic panel data model (System‐GMM)

This paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the impact of political instability risk on risk‐taking in the banking sector of 75 countries, which is the first attempt for this nexus to the best of our knowledge. The dynamic panel data model (System‐GMM) showed that political instability risk significantly increases risk‐taking in the banking sector. Besides, corruption levels and government ineffectiveness are the most important channels of political instability that affect the banking sector risk. The results also actively support the “too big to fail” hypothesis. Finally, the robustness results confirm the conclusions derived from the baseline System‐GMM model.     

Self-determination and risk: the role of life goals and causality orientation in domain-specific risk propensity

A growing body of risk research shows that risk is content specific. Accordingly, various studies have highlighted some factors that could explain why people’s risk propensity may arise in certain domains of risk (e.g. the financial domain) but not in other domains (e.g. the recreational domain). Until now, no research has examined motivation as a possible correlate of domain-specific risk propensity. On the basis of self-determination theory (SDT), we examined the role of both extrinsic life goals (i.e. superficial goal striving, including fame, money, and physical attraction) and control-orientated personality style (i.e. feeling that one’s behaviors are governed by external contingencies) in the propensity to take risks in various domains (social, ethical, recreational, financial, and health/safety). A community sample of 197 participants completed measures scaled to assess extrinsic life goals, controlled orientation, and domain-specific propensity (DOSPERT). The results showed that pursuing extrinsic goals and being control oriented increased the propensity to take ethical, recreational, financial, and health/safety risks but decreased the propensity to take social risks. In addition, to corroborate that risk propensity is domain specific, these results indicate that superficial life aspiration and sensitivity to social pressures are highly predictive of instrumental risks (e.g. ethical and financial), moderately predictive of health risks, and negatively predictive of ego-threatening risks (e.g. social risk). The results are discussed in light of the domain-specific risk literature and in the perspective of interventions based on SDT.     

Safety concerns related to modular/prefabricated building construction

The US construction industry annually experiences a relatively high rate of fatalities and injuries; therefore, improving safety practices should be considered a top priority for this industry. Modular/prefabricated building construction is a construction strategy that involves manufacturing of the whole building or some of its components off-site. This research focuses on the safety performance of the modular/prefabricated building construction sector during both manufacturing and on-site processes. This safety evaluation can serve as the starting point for improving the safety performance of this sector. Research was conducted based on Occupational Safety and Health Administration investigated accidents. The study found 125 accidents related to modular/prefabricated building construction. The details of each accident were closely examined to identify the types of injury and underlying causes. Out of 125 accidents, there were 48 fatalities (38.4%), 63 hospitalized injuries (50.4%), and 14 non-hospitalized injuries (11.2%). It was found that, the most common type of injury in modular/prefabricated construction was ‘fracture’, and the most common cause of accidents was ‘fall’. The most frequent cause of cause (underlying and root cause) was ‘unstable structure’. In this research, the accidents were also examined in terms of corresponding location, occupation, equipment as well as activities during which the accidents occurred. For improving safety records of the modular/prefabricated construction sector, this study recommends that future research be conducted on stabilizing structures during their lifting, storing, and permanent installation, securing fall protection systems during on-site assembly of components while working from heights, and developing training programmes and standards focused on modular/prefabricated construction.     

Wealth effect from real estate and outbound travel demand: the Malaysian case

This study uses quarterly data from Malaysia (2000–2011) to examine the relationship between the wealth effect from real estate (WERE) and outbound tourism while controlling for other relevant outbound tourism determinants. By applying time-series cointegration regressions, the results show that WERE has a positive and significant impact on Malaysian outbound travel demand. Then, we exclude the departures for business purposes from the total departures in order to have a better understanding of the impact of WERE on the consumption of a luxury good like international travel for leisure purposes. Similarly, we find that WERE increases Malaysian international travels for leisure purposes. The findings provide some implications for Malaysian policy-makers as well as tourism and travel agents.     

The Impact of Industrial Market Access Negotiations on African Economies

This paper proposes an extensive data simulation exercise on the likely impact of non-agricultural market access liberalization. The paper analyses real options for tariff cut reduction, special and differential treatment and the treatment of unbound tariffs. This paper also gives indications concerning the likely economic impact of this trade round of industrial market access negotiations on African economies. It shows that an ambitious tariff cut reduction formula would provide greater access to developed country markets for African producers. However, this kind of formula has a major drawback for African countries in the sense that it could accelerate the de-industrialization of African countries and limit incentives to diversify their economies.     

Employee workplace spirituality and pro-environmental behavior in the hotel industry

Pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace are less investigated than those in the public and private spheres. With this in mind, and through the values framework of workplace spirituality (WPS), synthesizing the theories of connectedness and organizational citizenship, the current study proposed a theoretical model to gauge the influence of WPS, a relatively new area of inquiry in organizational research and a neglected field in tourism and hospitality, on hotel employees’ organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE). In this framework, the emerging concept of connectedness to nature (CNS) – a strong cognitive and affective predictor of pro-environmental behavior – was depicted as a mediator, and the construct of environmental awareness (EA) was deemed a moderator. The intended model received support through empirical testing, and results confirmed that WPS is significantly associated with employees’ OCBE, and CNS indirectly affects the relationship between WPS and OCBE, while EA functions as a booster. The theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed, and a series of contributory managerial implications were described accordingly.     

Labor Market Analysis and Public Policy: The Case of Morocco

This article uses detailed industry and household data to understandwhy Morocco's labor market performed poorly in 1985–95.The data indicate that marked structural changes and weak demandin the product market were responsible. This article makes twocontributions to the literature. The first is specific: it underscoresthat the demand for labor is a derived demand and that the performanceof the product market is an important determinant of the performanceof the labor market. The second is more general: it demonstratesthat this kind of microeconomic analysis, using data sets thatare often available in developing countries, can inform policydesign.