Risk-managed industry momentum and momentum crashes

This paper investigates Barroso and Santa-Clara’s [J. Financ. Econ., 2008, 116, 111–120] risk-managed momentum strategy in an industry momentum setting. We investigate several traditional momentum strategies including that recently proposed by Novy-Marx [J. Financ. Econ., 2012, 103, 429–453]. We moreover examine the impact of different variance forecast horizons on average pay-offs and also Daniel and Moskowitz’s [J. Financ. Econ., 2016, 122, 221–247] optionality effects. Our results show in general that neither plain industry momentum strategies nor the risk-managed industry momentum strategies are subject to optionality effects, implying that these strategies have no time-varying beta. Moreover, the benefits of risk management are robust across volatility estimators, momentum strategies and subsamples. Finally, the ‘echo effect’ in industries is not robust in subsamples as the strategy works only during the most recent subsample.     

The Effect of Friendly Persuasion and Gender on Tax Comliance Behavior

Friendly persuasion, in contrast to deterrent measures like tax audits and penalties on underreported taxes, is a positive and possibly a cost effective method of increasing taxpayer compliance. However, prior studies have failed to show that friendly persuasion has a significant impact on compliance (Blumenthal et al., 2001; McGraw and Scholz, 1991). In our study, in contrast to prior studies, we examine the impact of generating and reading reasons supporting compliance as friendly persuasion on individuals' income reporting behavior as well as control for gender effects. Specifically, we predict an interaction effect between friendly persuasion and gender on compliance behavior. We carried out a 2 (friendly persuasion and control) × 2 (men and women) full factorial experiment, where participants earned $30 by completing two questionnaires. Participants in the friendly persuasion group were required first to generate and second to read a list of reasons why they should comply fully. Afterwards, participants in both groups were asked to report the income they earned and pay tax on the reported income. The results show a significant main effect for gender as well as a significant interaction effect between gender and friendly persuasion on income reported. Women in the friendly persuasion group reported significantly higher income compared to men in that group. Other comparisons were not significant. Policy implications for increasing taxpayers' ethics and compliance are highlighted.     

Effects of Minimum Bid Increments in Internet Auctions: Evidence from a Field Experiment

I study the role of minimum bid increments (MBI) in internet auctions using natural field experiment data from a Finnish online auction site Huuto.net. Internet auctions are typically viewed as second‐price, implying truthful bidding. However, due to the presence of the MBI, equilibrium bidding behavior involves bid shading. I sell otherwise identical gift cards while varying the MBI and test between truthful bidding and bid shading. Truthful bidding is rejected. Consistently with equilibrium behavior, bid shading increases as the MBI increases. This implies that real‐world bidders are capable of reacting rationally even to seemingly small variations in their strategic environment.     

Analysing the Institutional Logic of Late DRG Adopters

Abstract: This study investigates how institutional logics that are prevalent in an organizational field influence change in management accounting. More precisely, we examine the institutional logics of late DRG adopters through which organizations attempt to address the pressures imposed by the institutional field of health care. Specific attention is also paid to the way in which organizations operate at different institutional levels and what kinds of interrelationships exist between these levels. Such developments may at least partially explain why the implementation and adoption of DRG–based accounting systems in Finnish health care took almost twenty years.     

The Role of Multinational Corporations and National States in the Globalization of Innovatory Capacity: The European Perspective

The recent ability of multinational corporations (MNCs) to develop integrated technological networks, increasingly motivated within Europe by the further progress of economic integration, is argued to affect and be affected by national technological competitiveness. This paper examines the precise geographical dispersion of technological activity in Europe by the largest MNCs, and the potential impact of those MNCs on the level and structure of the technological capacity of European home and host countries, using data on patents granted to the world largest firms in the US. Since the late 1980s, the majority of the technological activity conducted in foreign-owned research facilities located in Europe, has taken place in affiliates of European-owned companies. This paper examines whether the much higher degree of internationalization of corporate technology in European MNCs than in their US or Japanese counterparts is attributable to cross-border activity within Europe, or extends to European-owned research facilities in the US and Japan. While intra-European activity matters more for Dutch, Belgian and Swedish MNCs (and in the electrical equipment and computing industries), whose strategies are substantially based on corporate European integration, investments in the US are of greater significance for French and Swiss companies, and of the greatest importance for German and British firms (and in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries), representing a more widely 'globalized' technological strategy.     

Gender differences in information processing: An empirical test of the hypothesis-confirming strategy in an audit context

Accounting education research reports that female students outperform male students. We posit that different information processing styles may have accounted for this difference. We postulate that because male students tend to process information selectively, they would rate confirming information as more important than female students would. Female students would rate disconfirming information as more important. We also postulate that male students are hypothesis-confirming whereas the female students are not. Consequently, female students being comprehensive processors, would rate the task as more difficult compared to male students. To test these propositions, 36 male and 33 female students performed an evaluation task that contained equal numbers of confirming and disconfirming cues. The students were required to rate the importance of these cues to their hypothesis. The results support our propositions except that female and male students do not rate confirming information significantly differently from each other.     

Reducing nutrient loads from dairy farms: a bioeconomic model with endogenous feeding and land use

Growth trends of animal farming pose a threat to water quality around the world. To find cost‐efficient means to reduce nutrient loads from agriculture, detailed information on the abatement measures need to be incorporated in bioeconomic models. This study presents a theoretical framework that covers both animal and crop operations on farms. It describes the farmer decision making problem and incorporates nonlinear functions to capture the economic and biological aspects of the problem. The model is applied to Finnish dairy farms. The abatement cost functions are derived for nitrogen and phosphorus. Results indicate that abatement measures on fields should precede dietary changes.     

Language and the Circuits of Power in a Merging Multinational Corporation

abstract    We argue in this paper that corporate language policies have significant power implications that are easily overlooked. By drawing on previous work on power in organizations ( Clegg, 1989 ), we examine the complex power implications of language policy decisions by looking at three levels of analysis: episodic social interaction, identity/subjectivity construction, and reconstruction of structures of domination. In our empirical analysis, we focus on the power implications of the choice of Swedish as the corporate language in the case of the recent banking sector merger between the Finnish Merita and the Swedish Nordbanken. Our findings show how language skills become empowering or disempowering resources in organizational communication, how these skills are associated with professional competence, and how this leads to the creation of new social networks. The case also illustrates how language skills are an essential element in the construction of international confrontation, lead to a construction of superiority and inferiority, and also reproduce post-colonial identities in the merging bank. Finally, we also point out how such policies ultimately lead to the reification of post-colonial and neo-colonial structures of domination in multinational corporations.