Impact of website characteristics on relationship quality: a comparison of banks financial cooperatives

This study seeks to investigate differences exhibited by bank customers and members of financial cooperatives respecting website characteristics (website design, convenience, information quality, ease of use and security/confidentiality) and their impact on online relationship quality (composed of trust, commitment and satisfaction). An online survey was conducted with 476 banking sector customers (banks and financial cooperatives), followed by a confirmatory factors analysis and multigroup analysis using EQS 6.2 software. Results evidence a significant difference in terms of website design and security/confidentiality. The impact of these variables on relationship quality proves significantly higher in the case of banks. This study submits that web strategies used by banks and financial cooperatives to develop online relationship quality may vary based on the type of organization.     

The impact of SEC investigations and accounting and auditing enforcement releases on firms’ cost of equity capital

I study the impact of an SEC investigation (as captured by accounting and auditing enforcement releases) on a firm’s cost of equity capital. AAERs are often used in accounting literature as a proxy for fraudulent financial reporting. Fraudulent financial reporting should lead to an increase in cost of equity capital as a firm’s future cash flows become less certain. Overall, this study provides evidence of changes in cost of equity capital for firms targeted by an SEC AAER on the date the investigation is first made public.     

Accounting research in the Asia–Pacific region: an update

We provide an updated study of accounting research in the Asia–Pacific region using the publication records of six premier accounting journals (top-6) from 1991 to 2010, and augment the findings with the broader range of publications from an additional twenty accounting journals during the same period. Overall, the higher education institutions (HEIs) in the region produced 7.7 and 11.1 % of the total weighted number of articles (wt-articles) in the top-6 and 20 accounting journals. Interestingly, HEIs in the region exhibit a trend toward an increase in the yearly wt-articles and relative percentage of the total. The general performance of the accounting programs in the region is persistent during 1991–2010. The Asia–Pacific accounting programs are particularly successful in placing publications in journals such as Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting. The accounting research productivity, however, is dominated by select institutions in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Singapore. Several institutions in these four countries/areas maintain a consistently high ranking. In terms of top-6 accounting journal publications, the top five institutions are the University of New South Wales, Nanyang Technological University, the University of Melbourne, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. The percentage share of the research output among the top five institutions is high, suggesting that a high hurdle is set for up-and-coming institutions to move up the rankings.     

Towards a better understanding of mobile banking: the impact of customer experience on trust and commitment

In the current context of ubiquitous connectedness through portable mobile devices and services, it is important to comprehend more fully the nature of consumer/bank interactions and relationships. At the same time, firms in the service sector are trying to provide customers with impactful positive experiences. This article examines the impact of mobile banking experience on trust and commitment based on the customer experience dimensions defined by Schmitt and expanded to include the negative aspect of the affective dimension. A total of 396 panellists of a recognized Canadian research firm responded to a self-administered online questionnaire. Findings demonstrate that the cognitive and negative affective dimensions of mobile experience impact trust, whereas the positive affective/sensory dimension influences commitment. The behavioural and social dimensions do not have significant impacts. This study enriches the theoretical corpus of knowledge in customer experience, relationship marketing and m-banking literature, lending practical implications for mobile services managers. Financial institutions, for example, should offer sensory mobile applications designed to appeal to the eye or to the touch (positive affective/sensory dimension), provide tools and information intended to arouse user curiosity and provoke reflection (cognitive dimension), while avoiding negative experiences which can lead to damaging feelings/emotions such as disappointment and anger (negative affective dimension).     

Small-time ruin for a financial process modulated by a Harris recurrent Markov chain

We consider a nonstandard ruin problem where: (i) the increments of the process are heavy-tailed and Markov-dependent, modulated by a general Harris recurrent Markov chain; (ii) ruin occurs when a positive boundary is attained within a sufficiently small time. Our main result provides sharp asymptotics for the small-time probability of ruin, viz., P(sup? _{n≤δ u} S _n ≥u), where {S _n } denotes the discrete partial sums of the process and δ∈(0,1/μ), where μ is the mean drift. We apply our results to obtain risk estimates which quantify, e.g., repetitive operational risk losses or the extremal behavior for a GARCH(1,1) process.     

Through bubbles and crises: An analysis of the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Journal of Financial Services Marketing</Emphasis> from 2000 to 2012

This article presents an analysis of all publications of the Journal of Financial Services Marketing (JFSM), from 2000 until the end of 2012. The objectives of this study were: (i) to compare the subjects covered by the journal with industry trends, and identify opportunities for future research, and (ii) to assess the journal’s development over time and its influence in the field of financial services marketing. Data for this content analysis was collected manually from the publisher’s Website and from each paper, and a grounded theory approach was used to group the papers into clusters based on emerging themes. The study indicates that JFSM has been successful in covering the industry’s most important trends, including mobile banking, relationship management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and service quality. A number of gaps were identified, in particular regarding mobile banking services and the impact of new online business models (for example, PayPal, crowdfunding, Bitcoin). These findings should assist JFSM’s editorial board to determine its future direction, and offer readers insight into industry trends and the journal’s role in covering them.     

How do CEO incentives affect corporate tax planning and financial reporting of income taxes?

We examine how different accounting metrics used to evaluate CEO performance for annual bonuses affect the level of corporate tax planning as well as financial reporting for income taxes. We predict and find that firms using cash flow metrics report lower GAAP and cash effective tax rates (ETR) than firms using earnings metrics. We also find that firms using after-tax earnings metrics report lower GAAP ETRs but similar cash ETRs as firms using pre-tax earnings metrics. Further analyses show that firms using after-tax earnings metrics are more likely to designate foreign earnings as permanently reinvested and have lower discretionary reserves for tax uncertainty. Hence, it appears that both types of firms engage in similar levels of tax planning, but firms evaluating CEOs with after tax-earnings metrics incentivize different financial reporting choices.     

Food for Thought? A Rejoinder on Peer-review and RAE2008 Evidence

This Rejoinder responds to criticisms made by Simon Hussain (2011) Hussain, S. 2011. Food for thought on the ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide. Accounting Education: an international journal, 20(6), : 545–559. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] about the construction and operation of the Association of Business Schools' (ABS) Academic Journal Quality Guide. In this paper the broad purposes of journal lists and guides are outlined before an account is given of the long history and multiple forms of these lists, particularly in the field of Accounting. Having described the main features of different types of journal list, the advantages and benefits of the approach adopted in the compilation of the ABS Journal Quality Guide is outlined. The paper then ends by noting that one of the copy-editing mistakes identified by Dr Hussain has been rectified, but the remaining concerns about the rating of accounting education and accounting history journals reflect the absence of these titles from journal citation reports and international journal lists. Furthermore, the lower rating of Accounting & Finance research in the RAE2008 in comparison with Business & Management Studies research in the same year and Accounting & Finance research in 2001, has more to do with the way in which the Accounting & Finance Panel calibrated and normalized its judgements than with the ratings contained within the ABS Guide.     

Analysing corporate insolvency in the Gulf Cooperation Council using logistic regression and multidimensional scaling

In this paper, we examine corporate insolvency in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region between 2004 and 2011. Data comprises 28 financial ratio variables from 112 firms. We use Logit regression with best-subset selection criteria to investigate the predictive value of the ratios in the GCC context, particularly cash flow-based ratios. We also examine the main dimensions of the ratios, and the weights firms attach to them, using 3-way Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). We find that a parsimonious Logit model with the profitability ratio EBITTL, the leverage ratio TLTA and the cash flow ratios CFFOTA and CFFOCL can predict insolvency, ex-ante, with 84.8, 95.6 and 73.9 % overall, type I and II accuracy, respectively. From MDS, we uncover four financial-ratio dimensions: (i) ‘Non-strategic sales activities’, (ii) ‘Profitability and financial stability balance’, (iii) ‘Sales activities against capital conversion’; and (iv) ‘Market value against cash generation’. Insolvent firms appear very specific and attach most salience to the ‘Non-strategic sales activities’ dimension, unlike solvent firms which attach more salience to the other three dimensions. Therefore, the results imply that, to reduce susceptibility to insolvency in the GCC, managers should focus less on non-strategic sales activities.     

From <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance</Emphasis> to <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review</Emphasis>

The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review celebrates in 2016 its 40^th year of existence. Yes. But it must be recalled that about half of these 40 years occurred under a different name—The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance. For a long time, the fate of the journal was very closely linked to the development of “The Geneva Association”.     

Grundfragen zu Anzeige-, Auskunfts- und Aufklärungsobliegenheiten nach dem VVG 2008

This article analyzes the disputed legal nature of the duty to notify and the duty to disclose information according to sections 30 et seq. of the German Insurance Contract Act (VVG). To the extent to which the aforementioned legal provisions impose such obligations on a third party, the author reaches the conclusion that they are to be regarded as true legal obligations, i.e. their breach may result in damage claims. As to the policyholder, however, the legal provisions must be qualified as statutory warranties (so-called Obliegenheiten) without sanctions. Therefore, in order to sanction a policyholder’s breach of his obligations, the contracting parties have to turn the statutory Obliegenheiten into contractual Obliegenheiten, which are then subject to section 28 VVG. In the second part of the article the author addresses the scope of application and the content of the Obliegenheit to instruct the policyholder according to section 28 subsection 4 VVG. This Obliegenheit is imposed on the insurer as a requirement for the sanction of a breach of the contractual duties to provide information and to disclose by the policyholder.     

Punitive Damages in Bad Faith Actions Against Insurers in the USA: The Impact of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Campbell v. State Farm</Emphasis>

This article provides an overview of the history and practice of punitive damages in the USA, including U.S. Supreme Court resistance to punitive damages beginning in the 1990s. The 2003 Campbell decision continued this doctrinal trend in an case of seemingly egregious insurer “bad faith.” Examining insurance bad faith cases after Campbell, it appears that the Court’s decision had a practical impact as well as a doctrinal impact. Since Campbell, insurers appear to have enjoyed greater judicial protection against punitive damages in bad faith cases, expanding a trend discernable after the Court’s 1996 BMW v. Gore decision. However, the 50 states have not modified their jury instructions on punitive damages since these decisions, seemingly ceding this area to the courts as a matter of federal constitutional review. The 2007 Williams v. Philip Morris decision continued the trend in a non-insurance case, as the court overturned a large punitive award against a tobacco company.     

Online banking services: a meta-analytic review and assessment of the impact of antecedents and consequents on satisfaction

This paper provides a meta-analysis of the generalizations in the relationships between the antecedents and consequents of satisfaction with online banking services. In total, 118 observations were analysed, with a sample of 49,607 respondents in 39 published articles from studies indexed in ten databases (Jstor, Emerald, PsycINFO, Taylor & Francis, Elsevier Science Direct, Scopus, ProQuest, SciELO, Google Scholar and EBSCO). Specifically, for the data analysis, we used the correlation coefficient r (plus χ², f test, t test, z test and β values). The results showed that constructs related to uncertainty, as evoked by online devices, system performance, quality of device content and online banking device structures, are significant and positive antecedents of consumer satisfaction. We also found that satisfaction with online banking services promotes trust and loyalty. Finally, we also detected that the relationship between reliability, satisfaction and service quality is stronger among Western banking consumers.     

Enhancement of value investing strategies based on financial statement variables: the German evidence

This paper examines the added-value of combining traditional valuation ratios with each other as well as with some financial statement variables in the German stock markets during the 2000–2015 period. The results show that combination pays off and, moreover, that the benefits of combination are greater in Germany than in most other developed stock markets. Particularly, we find strong evidence of the added-value of using Piotroski’s F-score as a supplementary selection criterion for value stocks as well as for low-accrual stocks. Our results show further that the F-score also boosts the efficacy of other valuation ratios besides the book-to-price ratio. In addition, the inclusion of F-score besides a relative value measure tends to increase the average market equity of portfolio firms. The decomposition of the full-sample-period performance into separate bull- and bear-period performance shows clearly that the better performance of F-score-boosted portfolios is mostly attributable to their outperformance during bearish periods, even though on average, they also generate higher bull-period returns than the comparable value portfolios formed without F-score. The use of F-score as a supplementary criterion also increases the proportion of stocks that earn above-market-average returns during the subsequent holding period. For the first time in the financial literature, we also document a strong relationship between high F-score stocks and momentum stocks.     

Quadratic minimization with portfolio and intertemporal wealth constraints

We address a problem of stochastic optimal control motivated by portfolio optimization in mathematical finance, the goal of which is to minimize the expected value of a general quadratic loss function of the wealth at close of trade when there is a specified convex constraint on the portfolio, together with a specified almost-sure lower-bound on intertemporal wealth over the full trading interval. A precursor to the present work, by Heunis (Ann Financ 11:243–282, 2015), addressed the simpler problem of minimizing a general quadratic loss function with a convex portfolio constraint and a stipulated almost-sure lower-bound on the wealth only at close of trade. In the parlance of optimal control the problem that we shall address here exhibits the combination of a control constraint (i.e. the portfolio constraint) together with an almost-sure intertemporal state constraint (on the wealth over the full trading interval). Optimal control problems with this combination of constraints are well known to be quite challenging even in the deterministic case, and of course become still more so when one deals with these same constraints in a stochastic setting. We nevertheless find that an ingenious variational approach of Rockafellar (Conjugate duality and optimization, CBMS-NSF series no. 16, SIAM, 1974), which played a key role in the precursor work noted above, is fully equal to the challenges posed by this problem, and leads naturally to an appropriate vector space of dual variables, together with a dual functional on the space of dual variables, such that the dual problem of maximizing the dual functional is guaranteed to have a solution (or Lagrange multiplier) when the problem constraints satisfy a simple and natural Slater condition. We then establish necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimality of a candidate wealth process in terms of the Lagrange multiplier, and use these conditions to construct an optimal portfolio.     

Das Direktanspruchsstatut nach dem EuGH-Urteil „Odenbreit“

This Article deals with the impact of the ECJ’s decision in the case “Odenbreit” in which it allowed the injured person—in the concrete case injured in a car accident—to sue the liability insurer of the tortfeaser, both domiciled in another Member State, by means of the direct action, in the Member State of his or her own domicile. As a consequence, the court situated at the domicile of the injured person has to apply foreign law, which brings about some disadvantages to the injured person. The application of the lex fori, however, enjoys several advantages. The analysis shows to what extent the application of the lex fori would be possible de lege lata and de lege ferenda.     

Strong Increases in Downside Risk Aversion

A ranking of risk preferences is of economic interest insofar as it leads to unambiguous comparative statics predictions, and for this to be the case, the ranking must be a strict partial ordering. The ranking by greater risk aversion meets this demand at the second order, and yields a variety of well-known predictions concerning the effect of greater risk aversion on demands for insurance and risky assets, among many other applications. There has been less success at the third order, where ranking preferences by aversion to downside risk has not produced a strict partial ordering. The problem is that account has not been taken of the fact that an increase in downside risk aversion must induce changes in risk aversion as well. We propose a definition of stronger downside risk aversion that does yield a strict partial ordering by requiring a nested increase in both second- and third-order risk aversion, so that v is more strongly downside risk averse than u if v is more risk averse and more downside risk averse than u. We demonstrate that v being more strongly downside risk averse than u is characterized by v never liking any change in the probability distribution for y that induces a third-order stochastic dominance deterioration in the distribution for u(y). We apply the definition to obtain intuitive comparative statics predictions in the precautionary saving problem, and relate the definition to alternatives proposed in the literature.     

A multivariate stochastic volatility model with applications in the foreign exchange market

The main objective of this paper is to study the behavior of a daily calibration of a multivariate stochastic volatility model, namely the principal component stochastic volatility (PCSV) model, to market data of plain vanilla options on foreign exchange rates. To this end, a general setting describing a foreign exchange market is introduced. Two adequate models—PCSV and a simpler multivariate Heston model—are adjusted to suit the foreign exchange setting. For both models, characteristic functions are found which allow for an almost instantaneous calculation of option prices using Fourier techniques. After presenting the general calibration procedure, both the multivariate Heston and the PCSV models are calibrated to a time series of option data on three exchange rates—USD-SEK, EUR-SEK, and EUR-USD—spanning more than 11 years. Finally, the benefits of the PCSV model which we find to be superior to the multivariate extension of the Heston model in replicating the dynamics of these options are highlighted.     

A Direct Test of the Free Cash Flow Hypothesis: Evidence from Real Estate Transactions

This paper tests (Jensen The American Economic Review, 76, 323–329 1986) free cash flow hypothesis using data on real estate transactions. We find that firms with either higher free cash flow or higher cash reserve pay more fore real estate, which is consistent with the free cash flow hypothesis. We also find that the agency costs of free cash flow associated with real estate transactions are more severe when firms have lower Tobin’s Q. Furthermore, we find that among the commonly used corporate governance measures, only equity compensation is effective in mitigating the agency problem of free cash flow.     

Variables influencing the customer relationship management of banks

Banks are important role players to the economy of any country. However, to survive in a competitive business environment banks need to focus on building and maintaining client relationships and to identify how their employees influence these relationships. This study investigates the influence of variables, with regard to bank employees, on the customer relationship management (CRM) of banks. A literature study explains CRM, the banking industry and employees' involvement with banking clients. To assess the impact of the predetermined variables from literature on the CRM of banks, a number of hypotheses were constructed and tested empirically among a sample of banking clients. The findings reveal that the variables knowledgeability and attitude of bank employees have a statistically significant impact on the effectiveness of the CRM strategies of banks. Based on the findings of the empirical investigation, strategies are provided for banks to improve their employees' knowledgeability and attitude in order to ensure more effective CRM strategies.