Can Accounting Earnings Predict Future GDP Growth? Evidence from China

This study investigates whether accounting earnings can predict future Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth within China’s institutional settings. Konchitchki and Patatoukas (2014a) find that accounting earnings is a significant leading indicator of GDP growth for the next three or four quarters. We conjecture, however, that earnings management would weaken such predictive power for accounting earnings because it distorts earnings from real corporate profit. As earnings of Chinese firms are more seriously manipulated than those of US firms, this study finds that earnings of Chinese listed firms can only predict GDP growth for a single quarter. We further decompose accounting earnings into operating cash flow and accrual earnings and find that operating cash flow which is less affected by earnings management has better predictive power for GDP over the longer horizon of the next three quarters, but accrual earnings can only predict GDP growth for the next quarter.     

Factors explaining movements in the implied volatility surface

This article explores the relationship of changes in the S&P 500 index implied volatility surface to economic state variables. Observable variables can explain some of the variation in implied volatility, with the majority of explanatory power from index returns. Although the contemporaneous return is most important for explaining changes in short dated volatility, the path of the index is important for explaining changes in long dated volatility. Other variables also display statistically significant relations to volatility changes. Shocks to the Nikkei 225, short‐term interest rates, and the corporate/government bond yield spread are correlated with small, systematic changes in implied volatility. The results suggest a multifactor model for market volatility, with factors other than index returns adding negligible explanatory ability. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:915–937, 2002     

Industry demand characteristics and the structure-performance relationship

Theoretical models of industrial profitability have included the price clasticity of demand among the structural elements that explain profitability. Empirical studies have accounted for variations in demand characteristics across industries by sample partition or use of broadly defined dummy variables.Variations in demand characteristics across industries can be modeled directly, by including among the variables that explain industrial profitability the share of industry sales going to different classes of consumers, for example, final consumer demand and different segments of the public sector.In empirical tests, inclusion of such demand share variables improves the explanatory power of the model, especially for consumer goods industries.     

浙江信息化对地区经济增长促进作用及机理的实证研究

以柯布-道格拉斯生产函数为基础,采用1978年～2009年的浙江省GDP、资本投资总额、从业人员、邮电业务量的时间序列数据,建立被解释变量GDP与解释变量之间的计量经济模型,研究表明:信息化对于促进浙江省经济增长具有显著的正向作用,最后提出完善政策法规、改革管理体制、加大政府投入、强化人才培养和管理等方面的政策建议.     

Microenterprise,Multinational Business Support,and Poverty Alleviation in South Africa's Informal Economy

The authors examine corporate programs that support microenterprise development in Africa. Specifically, the analysis assesses the extent to which local income and sales are affected by Coca-Cola's initiatives to assist South Africa's microenterprise in the retail trade sector. To quantify the impact, questionnaires were obtained from owners of small-scale retail establishments in the country's vast informal economy. Regression analysis is performed on key variables from the survey, testing hypotheses advanced to explain the size of an owner's income and sales. In addition to business development support, the explanatory variables include startup capital, size, and male/female ownership. It appears that business development support has a positive effect on lifting income and reducing poverty for microenterprise owners, after controlling for other influences.     

Brand Power Relationships: A Co-Evolutionary Conceptual Framework

Abstract

In the era of the Internet and networking, stakeholders increasingly acquire power by influencing brand value and meanings. However, this does not imply that marketing managers have lost their power over brand creation and management. Thus, the aim of this study is to explore brand power relationships taking the co-evolutionary perspective as conceptual lenses. In particular, this article seeks to address the competitive relationship between the corporation and its stakeholders in determining the corporate brand evolution over time, suggesting that corporate brand management is successful when co-evolving power relationships are established. The relational interplay between managers and stakeholders is framed into the Brand Power Relationship Model that suggests four potential evolutionary paths. It offers new brand typologies supported by examples from business practices, which mirror four different ways of managing and adapting brands over time; namely, through the None’s Brand, the Managers’ Brand, the Stakeholders’ Brand, and the Co-Evolutionary Brand. Focusing on the latter, this study depicts managers and stakeholders as having reciprocal influences and co-determining themselves, thus triggering interrelated relational effects that influence corporate brand evolution over time. The bilateral power of managers and stakeholders is framed into a further model, focused on corporate brand co-evolution. It is proposed that corporate brands can successfully co-create their value and meanings over time only if corporations co-evolve with their environment—in this study, multiple external stakeholders.     

贸易条件、国际利率冲击与经济波动

开放经济条件下国际金融危机所带来的传染和溢出效应是当下国际宏观经济学的热点和核心问题,而随着中国经济改革开放正在向纵深发展,在危机传染机制下的中国经济正在经历各种外部条件的冲击。金融危机的传染机制对中国经济产生了显著的负面波及效应,文章基于开放经济的视角,构建了一个动态均衡模型并对中国经济波动特征进行了研究,模型引入了反映国际经济传导的两类关键冲击,即国际贸易条件冲击和国际融资利率冲击。参数校准后的数值模拟显示,开放经济模型能够较好的匹配我国实际经济的主要二阶距波动特征,进一步的波动性分解发现国际贸易条件冲击和国际融资利率冲击对中国经济波动有很强的解释力。政府在开放经济框架下应该加强对经常账户和国际资本流动的监管,使得中国经济在改革开放走向纵深的背景下稳定增长。     

Bayesian estimation of a simultaneous probit model using error augmentation: An application to multi-buying and churning behavior

Researchers in marketing are often interested in analyzing how an agent’s discrete choice decision affects a subsequent or concurrent discrete choice decision by the same or different agent. This analysis may necessitate the use of a simultaneous equations model with discrete and continuous endogenous variables as explanatory variables. In this paper, we offer an error augmentation approach to Hierarchical Bayesian estimation of a simultaneous bivariate probit model containing both discrete and continuous endogenous variables. We accomplish the error augmentation in our MCMC algorithm using a Metropolis-Hastings step that generates the error components of the latent variables in our model. Using simulated data, we demonstrate that our error augmentation algorithm recovers closely the true parameters of the simultaneous bivariate probit model. We then apply our algorithm to customer churn data from a wireless service provider. We formulate a simultaneous bivariate probit model to study the impact of a customer’s multiple product relationships with a firm (multi-buying) on the likelihood of churn by that customer. The empirical results show that the act of multi-buying significantly reduces churn even though the customers who are more predisposed to multi-buy have an inherently higher predisposition to churn.     

Determinants of consumers’ intentions to use smartphones apps for flight ticket bookings

This study examines customers’ adoption and acceptance of smartphone apps to book their flight tickets. By integrating customers’ innovativeness, involvement and perceived trust as additional variables, this study extends the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and proposes a theoretical model that includes seven explanatory variables of the customers’ behavioural intentions: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, customers’ innovativeness, customers’ involvement and perceived trust. Data were collected from 369 customers who had booked their flight tickets via smartphone apps and was further analysed by employing partial least squares (PLS). Findings suggest that performance expectancy, facilitating conditions, customer innovativeness and perceived trust are positive and significant determinants of customers’ intentions to book their flight tickets on smartphone apps. Accordingly, several important implications for academics and industry decision makers are formulated.     

The impact of a gasoline crisis on retail sales

The gasoline crises of the 1970s demonstrated the need for including gasoline prices and gasoline shortages in models explaining retail sales. In this article, a model is constructed that incorporates the aforementioned variables, other variables, and a lagged sales figure as independent variable. The results indicate a high degree of explanatory power in predicting retail sales for a specialty store chain with a preponderance of their stores in large regional malls that sell a product which lends itself to unplanned purchase behaviour.     

企业生命周期阶段、销售操控与未来业绩

基于公司层面的生命周期阶段变量,结合Roychowdhury (2006)提出的销售操控估计方法,本文检验生命周期不同阶段下公司销售操控程度及其经济后果是否存在差异。结果表明：(1)销售操控程度存在显著的生命周期效应,在生命周期各阶段呈现出U型分布：导入期和衰退期的销售操控程度最高,淘汰期和增长期次之,成熟期最低。(2)销售操控的经济后果也存在显著的生命周期效应,同样呈现出U型分布：导入期和衰退期销售操控对未来业绩的负面影响最小,淘汰期和增长期次之,成熟期的负面影响最大。本文的研究结论不仅提供了销售操控影响因素和经济后果方面的经验证据,而且对于透析企业生命周期的作用机理具有重要的实践意义。     

Ethical Marginality: The Icarus Syndrome and Banality of Wrongdoing

This study proposes a conceptual model to explain persistent, accepted-as-normal corporate wrongdoing (hereafter banality of wrongdoing), particularly for high performance organizations. The model describes five explanatory variables: the culture of competition, ends-biased leadership, missionary zeal, legitimizing myth, and the corporate cocoon. Our thesis is that the nature of competition drives both legitimate and illegitimate goal-seeking to adopt an iconoclastic (rule-breaking) orientation. High performance organizations are favorable hosts for wrongdoing because high performance requires aggressive behavior at the ethical margins of what is acceptable. The way leadership reacts to competition sets the stage for ethical or unethical cultures to develop. Ends-biased leadership will project strong vision, using ideology and legitimizing myth as tools to inspire and motivate. The resulting missionary zeal justifies using questionable means because of the perceived value of the end. One critical method for building strong culture is creating a sense of being separate and apart from the ordinary. This cocoon effect may create a self-referential value system that is significantly at odds with mainstream culture and in which wrongdoing is banal. We intend an empirical study of the variables described in this model.     

Different forms of corporate philanthropy,different effects: A multilevel analysis

This study investigates how different types of corporate philanthropy impact employees' life satisfaction. Grounded in signaling theory, we explore and clarify the nuances among three types of corporate philanthropy values: the absolute value of corporate philanthropy, the value of a firm's corporate philanthropy relative to its past level, and the value of corporate philanthropy relative to the firm size. Results of multilevel analyses on a large scale sample with 218 firms and 2,261 employees at two time points reveal that: the absolute value of corporate philanthropy positively influences employees' life satisfaction; the value of a firm's corporate philanthropy relative to its past philanthropy negatively impacts employees’ life satisfaction; and the value of corporate philanthropy relative to the firm size positively affects employees' life satisfaction. The results indicate that the influences of corporate philanthropy on employees' life satisfaction vary depending on the evaluation benchmarks. Firms may benefit by taking their size and past philanthropy into consideration when making corporate philanthropy investment decisions.     

A comparison of job analytic and conventional economic variables as explanations of occupational earnings differentials

Occupational carnings are analyzed in order to determine the relative importance of micro-oriented job analytic variables vis-a-vis more conventional market variables as explanatory factors of earnings differentials. Earnings functions are constructed in order to determine the extent to which these variables can explain occupational earnings differentials. These functions are analyzed by means of both ordinary least squares and ridge regression techniques. Job analytic variables were obtained from the Position Analysis Questionnaire (PAQ), which measures job characteristics that are similar to many job evaluation systems. When these approaches are combined, a comprehensive model can be estimated that reflects the responsibilities, experience, training, skills, job environment, and work regularity characteristics of different occupations as well as conventional economic factors. Although the job analytic variables measure potentially important differences between jobs, the conventional economic variables have greater explanatory power.     

The Role of Corporate Donations in Chinese Political Markets

Many corporations actively engage in political activities to enhance their relationships with politicians, facilitating access to scarce resources and creating competitive advantages. We investigate corporate donations to explore how they initiate interactions between firms and new local leaders in China. Specifically, we propose that political turnover creates unique opportunities for firms to win over new officials via corporate donations, especially in competitive markets. Moreover, we find that firms that make generous donations at the beginning of a new city secretary’s tenure receive more attention from representatives of new local leaders, especially firms that were politically disadvantaged under a predecessor’s governance. Empirical studies on the turnover of city secretaries between 2001 and 2012 in China strongly support our hypotheses. Consequently, this study improves our understanding of how corporate donations initiate social exchanges between firms and politicians.     

Factors Affecting Food Label Complexity: Does the New EU Regulation Satisfy Consumer Issues? An Exploratory Study

There is still a substantial information asymmetry between producers and consumers. Despite the recent EU regulation on labeling to enhance consumer food safety and the existence of a number of certifications on sustainable food products, there remain blind spots in the widely debated consumer information issue. Our study, conducted on primary data processed with a probit model, was aimed at identifying the factors that may affect consumer response in relation to difficulties in interpreting the labels of processed food products. Starting from theoretical models, several factors held responsible for defining the consumer’s knowledge were used as explanatory variables. Our results show that despite changes in the new legislation, there remains the problem of the consumer’s lack of knowledge concerning environmental labeling and product certification.     

The moderating role of a corporate life cycle with the impact of economic value-added on corporate social responsibility: Evidence from China's listed companies

The moderating role of corporate life cycle stages with the impact of relative economic value added (EVA) indicator on corporate social responsibility participation index (CSRPI). Chinese A-share listed companies are investigated. The CSRPI weights are calculated by Analytic Network Process. Fractional regression with interaction is used. The corporate life cycle stages moderate the relationship between relative EVA measure and CSRPI. Surprisingly, this impact is confirmed for companies at non-mature stages, but not for mature companies. Model type, weights and corporate life cycle robustness were confirmed. The findings have implications for stakeholders in understanding companies' social behaviour in the Chinese market.     

Exploring The Foundations Of Trust

We investigate the literature on trust, and identify twenty-two variables associated with trusting behaviour. We model these variables around the four dimensions of probity, equity, reliability and satisfaction, the first two relating to the behavioural and the others to the cognitive elements of trust. An exploratory study finds a high correlation between levels of trust and variables within each of these dimensions. Our model appears to have high explanatory power.     

Income and occupation as explanatory variables: Their power combined vs. separate

This study put a new explanatory variable, relative occupational class income (Y/O), through multivariate analysis in order to test the variable's predictive and marketing segmentation powers. Y/O was tested against income and occupation used separately as explanatory variables. The mid-1960s new-car market was used for the analysis.With respect to the power to predict individual buyer behavior, the new variable did not prove itself to be superior to income and occupation used separately. With respect to market segmentation, however, Y/O often identified more meaningful market segments, where the probability of buyers choosing the new car class involved was obviously much higher (or lower) than was true for the entire market. Whether it would be worthwhile to use the combination variable, Y/O, instead of occupation and income separately as segmentation variables is, nevertheless, a matter of marketing judgment and not of statistical power. It obviously takes time, money, and effort to build a combination variable such as Y/O, and it is often a complex procedure to use and interpret the results from such a variable. In a statistical sense, the difference in power in using Y/O as compared to using occupation and income separately in a multiple regression procedure is trivial. Y/O now needs to be tested as a market segmentation variable on other types of products. Yet, on the basis of the results from this study (and the previous studies involving income versus social class), one wonders if it is not better to use such demographic variables separately as explanatory variables.