The effect of measurement timing on the information content of customer satisfaction measures

We use two sets of customer satisfaction measures obtained from a homebuilding company to examine the effect of measurement timing on the association between customer satisfaction measures and future financial performance. The research site employs two separate consulting firms that measure customer satisfaction at different times from the same homebuyer population. A national consulting firm captures customer satisfaction at a fixed time in the year following purchase (the “NF” measure), whereas an industry-focused, boutique consulting firm captures customer satisfaction at three specific points in time (30 days, 5 months, 11 months) after purchase (the “BF” measures). We analyze data for the period 2002–2004 and have the following findings: first, customers’ satisfaction varies over a homebuyer's consumption period. Comparing across the three BF measures, we find that on average a homebuyer is most satisfied 30 days after purchase and least satisfied 11 months after purchase. Second, we compare the NF measure with the BF measures and find significant differences in their predictive abilities for future financial performance. The BF measures are significant leading indicators of future financial performance, as measured by higher revenues and profits and lower warranty costs, but the NF measure is not. Additional analyses indicate that the relatively higher predictive ability of the BF measures is due to the more precise timing of those measures, rather than differences in measurement content. Finally, we find that the point of diminishing returns to improvements in customer satisfaction varies across customer satisfaction measures obtained at different points in the consumption period. We conclude that timing has a significant impact on the information content of customer satisfaction measures, at least for goods and services that are consumed over extended period of time.     

Why Capital Efficiency Measures Are Rarely Used in Incentive Plans, and How to Change That

Despite the wide acceptance of DCF valuation and its corollary that value is created only by earning more than the cost of capital, very few companies use performance measures that focus on corporate efficiency in using capital—measures such as return on capital (ROC) or economic value added (EVA)—as the main basis for their top management incentive programs. In this article, the authors begin by documenting the surprisingly limited use of such measures in management incentive plans. Next they analyze three often cited problems—difficulty in retaining managers, discouragement of growth investment, and complexity—that could account for the limited use of such measures. Third and last, they suggest a number of adjustments to standard capital efficiency measures that are designed to address these problems and, in so doing, to give corporate directors more confidence in using measures like EVA to reward and hold managers accountable for value-adding performance.
In illustrating the problems encountered when using such performance measures, the article uses case studies of three long-time "EVA companies"—Briggs & Stratton, Herman Miller, and Manitowoc—to highlight the difficulty of using a "bonus bank" (or "clawback") system to hold managers fully accountable for earning a minimum return on capital. After presenting empirical data that shows "delayed productivity" of invested capital, the authors suggest that conventional capital efficiency measures can discourage value-increasing growth.
The article concludes by recommending that although measures like EVA used in combination with negative bonus banks provide the right incentives, EVA capital charges should be phased in gradually to reflect the delayed productivity of capital. At the same time, corporate boards should consider providing bonus bank "relief" when market and industry factors have excessively large negative effects on the performance measures and bonus awards.     

Do practitioner assessments agree with academic proxies for audit quality? Evidence from PCAOB and internal inspections

This study investigates the degree of concordance between fifteen measures of audit quality used in academia and two measures of audit process quality determined either by audit firms’ internal inspections or by Public Company Accounting Oversight Board inspections of individual engagements. Using two confidential datasets of these assessments of audit process quality, I find that three of the measures of audit quality used by academics have significant associations with both measures of audit process deficiencies used by auditors and regulators: (i) the propensity to restate financial statements, (ii) the propensity to meet or beat the zero earnings threshold, and (iii) audit fees. Seven academic proxies are significantly associated with only one audit process quality measure, and five have insignificant associations with both practitioner assessments. Overall, the significant associations indicate that practitioners and academics share common ground in identifying low-quality audits. These findings can provide guidance for future studies in selecting audit-quality proxies suitable for different research questions.     

Evaluating Mutual Fund Performance

We study standard mutual fund performance measures, using simulated funds whose characteristics mimic actual funds. We find that performance measures used in previous mutual fund research have little ability to detect economically large magnitudes (e.g., three percent per year) of abnormal fund performance, particularly if a fund's style characteristics differ from those of the value-weighted market portfolio. Power can be substantially improved, however, using event-study procedures that analyze a fund's stock trades. These procedures are feasible using time-series data sets on mutual fund portfolio holdings.     

A Preliminary Analysis of SASB Reporting: Disclosure Topics,Financial Relevance,and the Financial Intensity of ESG Materiality

At the end of 2018, the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) released its corporate reporting standards for material environment, social, and governance (ESG) issues. These SASB standards are analogous to FASB's but deal with ESG activities that help the companies create value over the long term and have been endorsed by large asset management firms such as BlackRock. The authors analyze the quality of ESG reporting by the 91 companies that adopted SASB's framework. While the number of such companies is still small, their results are encouraging, an indication of better things to come. Using three measures of effectiveness, Disclosure Topic Compliance Index (DTCI), Financial Relevance Compliance Index (FRCI), and Financial Intensity Compliance Index (FICI), the authors found that most companies are doing a good to very good job of reporting and companies tend to focus on measures with the highest financial relevance. Scores on these three measures were similar across industry sectors except for a few cases where the DTCI score is low. They presented cases of three SASB standard companies: 1) Sunrun, a residential solar panel company that uses some hazardous materials, 2) Suncor, an integrated oil and gas company, and 3) Target, a retail company in a highly competitive industry needing to keep costs low while also managing an extensive supply chain responsibly. These 91 companies have demonstrated that reporting according to SASB standards can be done well. This success should encourage other companies to follow and the authors offer a seven‐step process to adopt SASB standards.     

西方未成年人贫困测度研究

未成年人贫困问题是西方社会福利研究的一个重要课题,对未成年人贫困内涵的界定存在从一维到多维,从生存到发展,从物质到权利的变化趋势,受此影响,对未成年人贫困的测度包括了家庭和未成年人个体两种分析单元,测度指标逐渐多元,表达形式则可以分为数量分析法、指数分析法、综合分析法三类,对于探索我国未成年人贫困问题研究及政策实践具有积极的借鉴意义。     

Factors Associated with the Presence of Domestic Energy Efficiency Measures in England

We use cross‐sectional household survey data in England between 2002–03 and 2010–11 to explore potential barriers to ownership of three common energy efficiency measures (loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and full double glazing) in residential properties. There is little compelling evidence that credit constraints, as proxied by income, education or means‐tested benefit receipt, inhibit ownership. Failures in landlord–tenant relationships, though, are a key issue: private renters are significantly less likely to have the measures in their homes than other tenure groups. More broadly, it is the characteristics of the dwelling rather than of the occupants which are most strongly related to the presence of the measures. However, relatively few factors are consistently associated with lower ownership rates over time and efficiency measures, suggesting that policies to encourage increased take‐up may need to be tailored to the specific measure.     

The balanced scorecard--measures that drive performance

Frustrated by the inadequacies of traditional performance measurement systems, some managers have abandoned financial measures like return on equity and earnings per share. "Make operational improvements and the numbers will follow," the argument goes. But managers do not want to choose between financial and operational measures. Executives want a balanced presentation of measures that allow them to view the company from several perspectives simultaneously. During a year-long research project with 12 companies at the leading edge of performance measurement, the authors developed a "balanced scorecard," a new performance measurement system that gives top managers a fast but comprehensive view of the business. The balanced scorecard includes financial measures that tell the results of actions already taken. And it complements those financial measures with three sets of operational measures having to do with customer satisfaction, internal processes, and the organization's ability to learn and improve--the activities that drive future financial performance. Managers can create a balanced scorecard by translating their company's strategy and mission statements into specific goals and measures. To create the part of the scorecard that focuses on the customer perspective, for example, executives at Electronic Circuits Inc. established general goals for customer performance: get standard products to market sooner, improve customers' time-to-market, become customers' supplier of choice through partnerships, and develop innovative products tailored to customer needs. Managers translated these elements of strategy into four specific goals and identified a measure for each.     

Do fire sales create externalities?

We develop three novel measures of the incentives of equity mutual funds to internalize the price impact of their trading. We show that mutual funds with stronger incentives to internalize their price impact accommodate inflows and outflows by adjusting their cash buffers instead of trading in portfolio securities. As a result, stocks held by these funds have lower volatility, and flows out of these funds have smaller spillover effects on other funds holding the same securities. Our results provide evidence of meaningful fire sale externalities in the equity mutual fund industry.     

An additional analysis of estimation techniques for the degree of financial leverage

This study compares three different empirical proxies for the financial leverage component of a systematic risk‐composition model employed in prior financial research. We consider one static accounting measure and two elasticity‐based measures. We find that the traditional static accounting measure of financial leverage provides statistically different estimates of financial leverage when compared to estimates from elasticity‐based measures of the degree of financial leverage. The findings are important because the elasticity‐based models for the degree of financial leverage have clear theoretical links to market‐based models of systematic risk, while the static accounting measure of financial leverage does not. Practitioners and researchers should carefully consider why they are estimating financial leverage and choose the appropriate method for doing so given the goals and potential consequences for biased estimation.     

An exploratory study of relative and incremental information content of two non-financial performance measures: Field study evidence on absence frequency and on-time delivery

In this exploratory field study, I test the relative and incremental information content of two non-financial performance measures compared to financial performance measures for future financial performance. The proprietary database used is from the contracts of the managers of 27 responsibility centers of a large Dutch service firm. Three years of monthly observations are used for the analysis.The accounting literature is ambiguous about whether non-financial measures have relative or incremental information content, or both, beyond lagged financial measures for future financial performance. Although it is often stated that non-financial performance measures are better indicators for future financial performance than lagged financial performance, the empirical accounting research evaluates the incremental contribution of non-financial measures beyond lagged financial measures.I find that in my research context the two non-financial measures absence frequency and on-time delivery do not have more relative information content than lagged financial measures. However, the non-financial measures have incremental information content beyond the lagged financial measures for both future costs and future revenues. In addition, the individual non-financial measures have different lags for costs and revenues.     

Die Balanced Scorecard als Kennzahlensystem für Krankenkassen

The management options for sickness funds in Germany have been clearly extended over the last few years. However, apart from economic efficiency sickness funds are legally required to provide sufficient and effective health services. This complex system of strategic goals requires a comprehensive controlling system which is not implemented by many sickness funds yet. In this article a controlling system is developed which similar to the Balanced Scorecard concept incorporates quantitative as well as qualitative performance measures. Taking the legally defined system of strategic goals of sickness funds into account four partially interdependent financial goals are derived and further disaggregated into performance measures on three different levels. The article reveals that in spite of the complex system of strategic goals the development of a comprehensive controlling system for sickness funds is possible.     

Portfolio performance and accounting measures of earnings: an alternative look at usefulness

Measures of economic performance, such as accounting earnings, working capital and cash flows, have been evaluated in tests of relative explanatory power of regressions of market returns on earnings, working capital and cash flows. We employ a different test. Using Basu’s (J Finance 663–682, 1977) investment trading strategy, we measure portfolio returns based on these three accounting measures of earnings. The objective is to ascertain whether investment performance also supports the findings of the explanatory power studies that accounting earnings is the premier measure of performance. The evidence does not support this conclusion. Our findings are at variance with prior conclusions that accounting earnings is more useful than cash flow. The Basu trading strategy is effective for all three measures. Excess market returns are observed for all three measures, even when controlled for risk and for low priced stocks. But accounting earnings portfolios do not dominate working capital or cash flow portfolios. In fact, the raw returns to cash flow portfolios are marginally (statistically) larger than accounting earnings portfolios. Economically, a dollar invested in a portfolio using accounting earnings to select the stock would have an accumulated value of 22.73 while the same dollar investment using cash flow instead of accounting earnings would accumulate a value of22.73 while the same dollar investment using cash flow instead of accounting earnings would accumulate a value of 33.94 over the same 16 years starting with the second quarter of 1988 and concluding at the end of the first quarter of 2004. Thus, our results have implications for the studies of explanatory power of different measures of earnings and their comparison in the US and other markets.     

The Effect on Financial Reporting Quality of an Exemption from the SEC Reporting Requirements for Foreign Private Issuers

We test for differences in financial reporting quality between companies that are required to file periodically with the SEC and those that are exempted from filing reports with the SEC under Rule 12g3-2(b). We examine three earnings quality measures: conservatism, abnormal accruals, and the predictability of earnings. Our results, for all three measures, show different financial reporting quality for companies that file with the SEC than for companies exempt from the filing requirements. This paper provides empirical evidence of a link between filing with the SEC and financial reporting quality for foreign firms.     

Fundamental Economic Shocks and the Macroeconomy

We ask how macroeconomic and financial variables respond to empirical measures of shocks to technology, labor supply, and monetary policy. These three shocks account for the preponderance of output, productivity, and price fluctuations. Only technology shocks have a permanent impact on economic activity. Labor inputs have little initial response to technology shocks. Monetary policy has a small response to technology shocks but "leans against the wind" in response to the more cyclical labor supply shock. This shock has the biggest impact on interest rates. Stock prices respond to all three shocks. Other empirical implications of our approach are discussed.     

Where Has All the Education Gone?

Cross-national data show no association between increases inhuman capital attributable to the rising educational attainmentof the labor force and the rate of growth of output per worker.This implies that the association of educational capital growthwith conventional measures of total factor production is large,strongly statistically significant, and negative. These are"on average" results, derived from imposing a constant coefficient.However, the development impact of education varied widely acrosscountries and has fallen short of expectations for three possiblereasons. First, the institutional/governance environment couldhave been sufficiently perverse that the accumulation of educationalcapital lowered economic growth. Second, marginal returns toeducation could have fallen rapidly as the supply of educatedlabor expanded while demand remained stagnant. Third, educationalquality could have been so low that years of schooling createdno human capital. The extent and mix of these three phenomenavary from country to country in explaining the actual economicimpact of education, or the lack thereof.     

The Impact of Corporate Governance on the Financial Outcomes of Global Diversification

The tenets of agency theory suggest that: 1) managers may pursue investment strategies that are at odds with shareholder value, and 2) effective governance mechanisms can improve the quality of managerial decision-making and enhance the outcomes of corporate investment. Accordingly, using an agency theory lens, we hypothesize that the financial outcomes of global diversification are contingent on the quality of the multinational firm’s corporate governance: high (poor) quality corporate governance is associated with positive (negative) financial consequences attributable to global diversification. Using a sample of 5985 firm-year observations over the period 2002 through 2006, we find support for our hypothesis. The results are robust to using three different measures of global diversification, three different measures of financial outcomes (one accounting-based and two market-based measures), and two econometric methods to control for the endogeneity of the diversification decision.     

How useful are commercial corporate governance ratings? Evidence from emerging markets

A central issue in evaluating the effects of firm-level corporate governance (FLCG) is how to measure it. We focus here on emerging markets (EMs). One common approach to measuring FLCG uses country-specific (CSIs), tailored to each country's laws and institutions. Several studies report that CSIs can predict firm outcomes in a panel data framework with two-way (firm and time) fixed effects (TWFE). An alternate approach uses commercial CG ratings (CCGRs) that apply the same or similar elements across many countries. We assess the three best available CCGRs covering EMs (Asset4, Thomson Reuters, and MSCI), and find that they do not predict firm outcomes with TWFE in EMs. We also provide evidence that the likely cause for CCGRs' lack of performance is their poor construction rather than the inability of FLCG measures to predict outcomes. CSI-based studies suggest that disclosure (beyond country-mandated minimums) is the FLCG aspect that most consistently predicts firm outcomes in EMs. Yet, these CCGRs have no or minimal measures of disclosure. Other important limitations of the CCGRs include the use of elements that are U.S.-centric; reflect firm outcomes rather than CG; are implausible measures of good FLCG, or are vaguely or subjectively defined. We also attempt, but fail, to use element-level information from CCGRs to construct sound measures of FLCG.     

Cross-correlation Measures in the High-frequency Domain

Abstract

On a high-frequency scale the time series are not homogeneous, therefore standard correlation measures cannot be directly applied to the raw data. To deal with this problem the time series have to be either homogenized through interpolation, or methods that can handle raw non-synchronous time series need to be employed. This paper compares two traditional methods that use interpolation with an alternative method applied directly to the actual time series. The three methods are tested on simulated data and actual trades time series.     

An Intertemporal CAPM Approach to Evaluate Mutual Fund Performance

Merton (1973) and Campbell (1993) have demonstrated that if an investor anticipates information shifts, he will adjust his portfolio choice today in an attempt to hedge these shifts. Exploiting these insights, we construct a new performance measure to evaluate fund managers' hedging ability. This new measure is different from two widely adopted performance evaluation measures: securities selectivity and market timing. Moreover, an econometric methodology is developed to simultaneously estimate the magnitudes of these three portfolio performance evaluation measures. The results show that mutual fund managers are on average with positive security selection and negative market timing ability. Furthermore, the mutual funds with investment style classified as Asset Allocation generally have positive hedging timing ability.