B‐TO‐B E‐COMMERCE: A CONTENT ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT OF MOTOR CARRIER WEBSITES

An Internet presence is a critical early component in the process of building towards a fully operational and unified e‐commerce strategy. E‐commerce has significantly impacted logistics/supply chain strategies and the development and implementation of a website have become key issues for many firms within the transportation industry. This study provides an overview of website content within the motor carrier industry. Content analysis was used to assess the site design, informational content, and the interactive content of 152 motor carrier websites, and to compare the features offered on the Top 100 motor carrier firm websites with those offered on the sites of smaller carrier firms.     

Tagging the triggers: an empirical analysis of information events prompting sell-side analyst reports

In order to fulfill their function as information intermediaries in capital markets, sell-side equity analysts regularly issue updated forecasts on the stocks they cover. Quite often, the publication of (revised) analysts’ reports is subject to certain trigger events such as the publication of annual figures or the announcement of an upcoming merger. In this exploratory study, we develop a two-step procedure to identify the core events that trigger the release of analysts’ reports on companies that constitute the Dow Jones EuroSTOXX50 index during the three-year period from 2004 to 2006. These can be grouped into Financial Disclosures, Corporate Management, Corporate Strategy, Business Activity, Operating Environment and Share. The results suggest that sell-side analysts attach great importance to non-financial information events when transforming their earnings estimates into valuation forecasts and stock recommendations. Additionally, we link the information events identified as reasons of issuance to the summary measures disclosed in the reports in order to investigate the relationship between the report trigger and associated analyst reaction. Our findings indicate that the forecasting activity of sell-side analysts is greatly influenced by forward-looking statements made by management, strategy-related news flow, and non-company-specific information relating to the covered firm’s operating environment.     

Crypto quanto and inverse options

Over 90% of exchange trading on crypto options has always been on the Deribit platform. This centralized crypto exchange only lists inverse products because they do not accept fiat currency. Likewise, other major crypto options platforms only list crypto–stablecoin trading pairs in so-called direct options, which are similar to the standard crypto options listed by the CME except the US dollar is replaced by a stablecoin version. Until now a clear mathematical exposition of these products has been lacking. We discuss the sources of market incompleteness in direct and inverse options and compare their pricing and hedging characteristics. Then we discuss the useful applications of currency protected “quanto” direct and inverse options for fiat-based traders and describe their pricing and hedging characteristics, all in the Black–Scholes setting.     

The wage and non-wage costs of displacement in boom times: Evidence from Russia

This paper analyzes the costs of job loss over the years of a booming economy, 2003–2008, using unique data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey. In addition to analyzing standard labor market outcomes, such as forgone earnings, employment, hours worked and wage penalties, our unique data set allows us to investigate additional non-wage costs of displacement, in particular, fringe benefits, the propensity to have an informal employment relationship or a temporary contract. We find that displaced individuals face large foregone earnings following displacement, which are heterogeneous across education and ownership type of firm from which the worker separated. There is no evidence of wage penalties for re-employed displaced workers. However, we find an increased probability of working in informal or temporary jobs if previously displaced and a reduction in the number of benefits.     

Dynamic R&D competition with memory

We consider a differential game of R&D competition and explore the impact of rivalry on the firms' investment behavior over time. Using closed-loop strategies and hence allowing for strategic interactions among rival firms we show that R&D spending by the individual competitor is increased due to competition in the race for priority. This leads us to argue that competitive encounters enhance R&D activities at the same time as increasing efficiency in the race for a technological breakthrough.     

Democracy, size of bureaucracy, and economic growth: evidence from Russian regions

This article considers the impact of sub-national political systems on economic growth by applying the case of Russian regions from 2000 to 2004. It investigates two dimensions of the sub-national systems. First, it studies the influence of democracy on economic performance, providing evidence of a non-linear relationship between democracy and economic growth. Regions with high levels of democracy, as well as strong autocracies, perform better than hybrid regimes. Second, this article considers the influence of the size of the bureaucracy on economic outcomes and confirms the ??grabbing hand?? view on bureaucracy rather than the Weberian idea. Increasing the size of the bureaucracy is associated with a decline in economic performance. In addition, this article analyzes the potential interaction between these two characteristics of sub-national politics as factors of economic growth, but does not establish any robust results.