The impact of funding liquidity on market quality

This study analyzes market quality during the 2007–2008 credit crunch, by examining the impact of funding liquidity on market liquidity and price discovery of S&P 500 exchange-traded funds (i.e., S&P 500 depositary receipts [SPYs]) and index futures (E-minis). The empirical results show that funding liquidity affects market liquidity, and that the impact of illiquidity contagion between SPYs and E-minis was significant during the subprime mortgage crisis. In particular, the contagion effects between the two markets mediate the impact of funding illiquidity on market liquidity during the credit crunch. Considering the influences of other market factors on price discovery, we suggest that E-mini index futures made less contributions to price discovery during the credit crunch compared to normal periods. The empirical finding emphasizes the importance of the contagion effect between ETF and E-mini futures markets, when they suffer from external shocks.     

The impact of reduced pre-trade transparency regimes on market quality

This paper studies the effects of pre-trade quote transparency on spread, price discovery and liquidity in an artificial limit order market with heterogeneous trading rules. Our agent-based numerical experiments suggest that full quote transparency incurs substantial transaction costs to traders and dampens trading activity in an order-driven market. Our finding reveals that exogenous restriction of displayed depth, up to several best quotes, does not benefit market performance. On the contrary, endogenous restriction of displayed quote depth, by means of iceberg orders, improves market quality in multiple dimensions: it reduces average transaction costs, maintains higher liquidity and moderate volatility, balances the limit order book, and enhances price discovery.     

Relating focus to quality and cost in a healthcare setting

Focus in healthcare has been heralded as the next frontier in improving its efficiency and efficacy (Herzlinger 2004). Focus takes several different forms, ranging from standalone specialty centers to a hospital that places a strategic emphasis on a clinical area. We adopt this latter perspective and define focus as a disproportionate emphasis on a particular clinical area in a hospital. We use secondary data from hospitals providing cardiology care in New York State to examine the relationship between focus and performance. We develop two measures of focus. Proportional focus is defined to be the proportion of cases treated in a particular clinical specialty. Expertise focus is defined to be specific evidence that a hospital has taken action to build expertise in treating diseases in that specialty. We operationalize hospital performance along cost and quality dimensions, and we use hierarchical regression to examine the impact of focus on performance. Our results indicate that proportional focus, but not expertise focus, is associated with better cost performance. Quality performance, on the other hand, was associated only with the interaction between proportional focus and expertise focus, which means that only hospitals exhibiting higher levels of both proportional and expertise focus achieve better quality performance. These findings support the notion that not only is focus important in healthcare, but also that researchers and practitioners need to recognize that relationships are contingent on the performance and focus measures used and thus, findings may not be generalizable from one metric to another.     

The impact of supply chain relationship quality on cooperative strategy

This paper focuses on the construct of supply chain relationship quality (SCRQ) and the influence of SCRQ on cooperative strategy. In this paper, we first conceptualize SCRQ from manufacturer-based perspective using interaction approach. Second, we introduce cooperative strategy as a research construct to reflect the strategies both parties took in the further development of business relationships, and use persistence, frequency, and diversity to represent three features of cooperative strategy. A conceptual model incorporating SCRQ and cooperative strategy is examined with data collected from 311 manufacturing firms in West China. The results indicate that SCRQ can be defined as a construct of communication, cooperation, trust, adaptation, and atmosphere, and SCRQ has a significant positive impact on relationship persistence, relationship frequency, and relationship diversity.     

The impact of public regulation on housing quality and on structural changes

This paper represents a theoretical investigation of profit maximizing behavior of a landlord under rent control. The situation envisioned is one that the landlord owns, free and clear, either two housing units ready to merge or one large one ready to convert into two small ones; in each case the units are already in place, such that capital costs are sunk and treated as bygones. Each unit has a technology of production of housing services with a fixed input of quantity of space (shelter) and a variable input of quality, that is affected by physical ageing (non-controllable) and by maintenance (controllable). At starting time t₀, we have a state of quality and a historical state of initial quality Q?_i, at the time the building was built, with the implicit constraint that Q_i(t) < Q?_i, for all t> t₀. The analysis addresses the general question of housing structural changes—conversion or merger—and how these changes are being accelerated under the threat of rent control.     

Business process management in hotels: with a focus on delivering quality guest service

Quality & Quantity - In this study business process management as a tool of improvement service quality is introduced and it is examined that how it can be used to improve service quality in...     

The adaptation of hospitality and retail firms to the NMW: a focus on the impact of age‐related clauses

A lower national minimum wage for 18‐ to 21‐year‐olds and the exclusion of all workers under 18 prompted fears of a distortion in the British labour market and an undermining of training initiatives. Empirical data collected from employers in two low paying sectors, revealing the full utilisation of young workers and under‐utilisation of training initiatives, ensure these fears are not justified and that the government's basis for the lower rate cannot be substantiated.     

The impact of accounting reform on accounting quality: Evidence from Nigeria

The effectiveness of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is dependent on the strength of enforcement of accounting standards in a given country. This study explores the implications of the adoption of IFRS in Nigeria after the enforcement of accounting standards was strengthened. The strengthening of accounting standards enforcement, and the subsequent adoption of IFRS in Nigeria, was recommended by the World Bank to improve the country's regulatory outlook after a capital market crisis in 2007/2008 that was triggered by widespread accounting irregularities. Results indicate that accounting quality declined in Nigeria following the adoption of IFRS; while earnings management increased, timely loss recognition and earnings persistence reduced. Our study contributes to the burgeoning literature on IFRS adoption and concludes that the effect of IFRS adoption is contextual. Therefore, accounting regulatory institutions operating in a similar context to Nigeria should localize IFRS.     

The impact of managerial quality on organizational performance: evidence from German soccer

In this paper we use a novel panel data set from the German premier soccer league (Bundesliga) as a case to show how variations in managerial compensation impact positively upon organizational (team) success. Using stochastic frontier analysis, we find that a team that hires a better quality coach can expect to achieve a higher league points total by reducing technical inefficiency. However, our results also suggest that the market for head coaches may be allocatively inefficient in that coaches are paid below their marginal revenue products. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The impact of institutional quality on manufacturing sectors: A panel data analysis

We use data on Russian regions to examine the effect of institutional quality on institutionally dependent manufacturing sectors in terms of both output levels and growth rates. Unlike the existing literature on this topic, which mostly uses cross-sectional or pooled specifications for either country-level or regional data, we use panel data. This approach allows us to distinguish between short-term and long-term impacts and mitigates endogeneity concerns. As an additional contribution to the literature, we estimate the full marginal effects of institutions on manufacturing sectors with different degrees of institutional dependence. In terms of policy recommendations, our results imply that significant institutional improvements would be needed for the Russian economy to diversify away from heavy reliance on oil and natural gas.     

The impact of employee satisfaction on quality and profitability in high-contact service industries

The extant operations management literature has extensively investigated the associations among quality, customer satisfaction, and firm profitability. However, the influence of employee attributes on these performance dimensions has rarely been examined. In this study we investigate the impact of employee satisfaction on operational performance in high-contact service industries. Based on an empirical study of 206 service shops in Hong Kong, we examined the hypothesized relationships among employee satisfaction, service quality, customer satisfaction, and firm profitability. Using structural equations modeling, we found that employee satisfaction is significantly related to service quality and to customer satisfaction, while the latter in turn influences firm profitability. We also found that firm profitability has a moderate non-recursive effect on employee satisfaction, leading to a “satisfaction–quality–profit cycle”. Our empirical investigation suggests that employee satisfaction is an important consideration for operations managers to boost service quality and customer satisfaction. We provide empirical evidence that employee satisfaction plays a significant role in enhancing the operational performance of organizations in the high-contact service sector.     

The impact of national culture on integrated reporting quality. A stakeholder theory approach

Integrated reporting (IR) is a new corporate‐reporting system that aims to represent the firm's value creation in the short, medium, and long term. In contrast to other disclosure systems focusing on non‐financial dimensions, including social and environmental aspects, IR is characterized by information connectivity. In recent years, integrated reporting has received increasing interest, both academic and professional. However, report quality is still a critical aspect of IR. Although several studies investigate IR, few focus on quality and its determinants. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the impact of national culture, an external determinant, from a stakeholder theory perspective. The results show that IR quality is related to five dimensions of Hofstede—power distance, individualism, masculinity, and indulgence negatively and uncertainty avoidance positively. This study contributes to the relevant literature by analysing an additional factor that influences the quality of corporate reports, namely, national culture. This is the first study that investigates national culture as a determinant of integrated‐reporting quality.     

The impact of online low search costs on firms' incentives to invest in quality

The growing use of the Internet has made search costs lower for consumers. We study the effect of this on the incentives for firms to invest in quality. We assume that there are firms producing high-quality products and others producing low-quality products; we also assume that the market share of the latter is higher than that of the former. Besides, we analyse the changes of both the revenue effect and the quantity effect; we show that they go in the same nonintuitive direction. In other words, when search costs decrease, the incentives to invest in quality increase.     

The impact on the cost of equity capital in the effects of integrated reporting quality

Integrated reporting is a new reporting tool that includes financial and nonfinancial information, which represents a natural evolution of the corporate reporting movement. Although this practice has gained increasing attention in recent years, both from an academic and professional perspective, the quality of the reports still represents a critical aspect due to inadequate investigation. Only a few studies have focused on integrated reporting quality, and contributions on the effects of quality have been even rarer. This study aims to investigate on the impact of integrated reporting quality on the firm's cost of equity capital, owing to the paramount importance of this parameter for firms and investors. Our results highlight that integrated reporting quality has a significantly negative association with the cost of equity capital, suggesting that integrated reporting quality represents an innovative way to reduce the cost of equity. To our knowledge, this is the first study that examines the relationship between integrated reporting quality and a firm's cost of equity.     

A simpler quality of e-life indicator: does the Internet have a positive impact on the quality of life in Taiwan

This research aims to restructure a Simpler Quality of e-Life Indicators (SEQOL) and use this simpler structure to understand whether the usage of computer and Internet will make impacts on quality of life in Taiwan. By using telephone interviews, 3,563 valid respondents, aged 15 and above with Taiwan nationality, were interviewed. After performing exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity assessment, a simpler factor structure of the SEQOL was formed. The new structure contains 24 items categorized into seven domains: Socioeconomic status, Selfesteem, Social competence, Life freedom, Community support, Psychological pressure and physical health. This research also found that gender divide on most domains did not exist. Those who are aged between 35 and 54 exhibit the highest satisfaction. Residents with university degree have the highest satisfaction on their quality of life and the residents of northern Taiwan have the lowest satisfaction. People who having computer at home show higher satisfaction on quality of life in dimensions of overall, Socioeconomic Status, Social Competence, Psychological Pressure, and Physical Health. On overall quality of life, there is no significant difference between Internet user and non user. But, People who having access to Internet show higher satisfaction on quality of life in dimensions of Socioeconomic Status, Social Competence, Psychological Pressure, and Physical Health, oppositely, have lower satisfaction on quality of life in dimensions of Life Freedom and Community Support.