How Busyness Influences SEC Compliance Activities: Evidence from the Filing Review Process and Comment Letters

The SEC reviews firm filings and issues comment letters on those filings. These comment letters play an important role in the assessment of firm value. These activities are seasonally compressed because over 70 percent of registrants have a December fiscal year-end. Research in other settings finds that busyness leads to negative outcomes. We examine how busyness impacts the frequency, scope, and timeliness of comment letters. We find that the SEC issues fewer comment letters when busy, focuses its limited resources on the most severe cases of disclosure noncompliance, and extends the amount of time between receiving a firm's filing and issuing a comment letter. Despite this, we find no evidence that the SEC misses more serious compliance issues when busy. Our results have implications for policymakers responsible for allocating resources to the SEC.     

Relative educational poverty: conceptual and empirical issues

Quality & Quantity - This paper’s goal is to discuss implications for the empirical study of low educational status arising from the use of the concept of educational poverty in research....     

Incrementality of SME Loan Guarantees

In many countries, loan guarantee programs are important elements of government policy with respect to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). If loan guarantee schemes are to be effective, a majority of firms obtaining assistance through such a scheme ought not to be able to obtain financing from existing sources: a property known as incrementality or additionality. This paper describes a new approach to measuring incrementality. This work uses a two-stage process to estimate the incrementality of loans made under the terms of the Canada Small Business Financing (CSBF) program. First, a logistic regression-based model of loan outcomes (essentially a credit-scoring model) is estimated based on a large representative sample of SMEs. The resulting model was consistent with prior expectations and exhibited high levels of goodness-of-fit. The model was then employed to classify a sample of firms that had received loans under the terms of the loan guarantee scheme. Incremental loans ought to be classified as “turndowns” by the model; hence the proportion of loan guarantee recipients that the model classified as turndowns is a direct measure of incrementality. For the CSBF loan guarantee program incrementality was estimated (with 95% confidence) as 74.8±9.0%.     

The effect of experience with a brand imitator on the original brand

Imitating the look of an existing successful brand is a common occurrence in today's crowded marketplace. It was found that a negative experience with an imitator brand increased the evaluations of the original brand. A positive experience with the imitator was shown to have the opposite effect, and there was a decrease in the evaluations of the original brand. Subjects also indicated they would be likely to purchase the positive imitator over the original at only a 10 percent price reduction.     

A city of trades: Spanish and Italian immigrants in late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires,Argentina

The city of Buenos Aires in the 1890s is an extreme case in immigration history since the native workers accounted for less than one-third of the labour force. In this paper, we look at the labour market performance of Argentineans vis-à-vis the largest two immigrant groups, Italians and the Spaniards. We find that, on average, Argentineans enjoyed higher wages, but workers specialised in particular occupations by nationality. Immigrants clustered in occupations with lower salaries. Despite higher literacy levels and the language advantage, Spaniards did not outperform Italians in earnings. Ethnic networks facilitated the integration of immigrants into the host society and played a role in the occupation selection of immigrants. Our results suggest that Italian prosperity in Buenos Aires was not based on superior earnings or skills but on older and powerful networks.     

Why (not) cooperate? A cognitive model of farmers’ intention to join producer groups in Romania

After the breakdown of the communist regime in Romania, collective farms were replaced by a large number of small-scale private farms. Although cooperation seems to be a favourable choice for these smallholders, it did not develop as perhaps expected. This article explores the factors that determine the formation of the intention of Romanian vegetable farmers to join marketing cooperatives in the form of so called producer groups. Our theoretical framework refers to Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behaviour, which we model with a structural equation model. We identified as main intention drivers the expectation for better prices and easier access to capital. Perceived family support is another significant factor. The level of distrust is high. Although our trust variable is not significant as a predictor of the intention to cooperate in the model, we find qualitative indications that trust plays a role when the intention is translated into actual behaviour.     

Fit for addressing grand challenges? A process model for effective accountability relationships within multi-stakeholder initiatives in developing countries

Business is expected to contribute to grand challenges (GC) such as poverty within their corporate social responsibilities. Multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) have developed to a popular governance model to address GC. While existing scholarship has discussed the positive and negative aspects of MSIs, we know relatively little about how corporations within MSIs are held accountable. The objective of the study is to analyze the dynamics of accountability relationships between the corporate actor and the accountability forum to conceive a process model for effective accountability relationships in developing countries. We conducted an inductive study which explored the tensions the accountability forum perceives in MSI accountability relationships and the criteria to meet the forum's accountability claims. Our study identified four accountability criteria: transparency, inclusion, procedural fairness, and efficacy. Our main theoretical claim is that considering the four accountability criteria in the process of facilitating, dialoguing, and evaluating allows affected stakeholders to validate and match legitimacy claims with their own expectations, and thus, manage MSIs more effectively. Our contribution to existing scholarship on MSIs in developing countries is that we offer a novel perspective on analyzing the effectiveness of MSIs to address GC through our focus on one element of MSIs––specifically accountability. Beyond academic theorizing, this perspective may well hold value for nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and business managers as it advances a concept of responsibility based on a set of accountability criteria which have the potential to become a cornerstone for how MSI members can organize to effectively address GC in developing countries.     

Rivaroxaban for non-valvular atrial fibrillation and venous thromboembolism in the Netherlands: a real-world data based cost-effectiveness analysis

Background: Non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have been included in international guidelines as important alternatives to vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) for the treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, NOACs are widely used next to VKAs. The objective of this study is to estimate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with rivaroxaban compared to VKAs in NVAF and VTE patients in the Netherlands, using data from international prospective observational phase IV studies.

Methods: Two models were developed to represent NVAF and VTE patients, populated with patients from the XANTUS (NCT01606995) and XALIA (NCT01619007) international prospective observational studies. The 1-year cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban use, compared to VKAs, was explored in a population consisting of NVAF and VTE patients (base case) as well as for four scenarios with sub-populations: NVAF patients only, VTE patients only, NVAF patients with unstable international normalized ratio (INR), and NVAF patients using an INR self-measuring device.

Results: In the base case, rivaroxaban saved €72,350 and gained 21 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) in a simulation of 2,000 patients over the use of VKAs. Ergo, rivaroxaban was dominant over VKAs. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed a probability of 85% for rivaroxaban being dominant and 100% at a willingness-to-pay threshold of €20,000/QALY. Rivaroxaban appeared to be dominant in all scenarios as well, except for the NVAF-patients-only scenario where the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was €157/QALY.

Conclusions: In patients with NVAF or VTE, rivaroxaban treatment is likely to be cost-effective and a potentially cost-saving alternative to VKA in the Netherlands.