Political change and informality

This paper examines informality during the political and economic turmoil that accompanied the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt. The paper focuses on unprotected employment and the extent to which it changed by educational level immediately after the January Uprising of 2011. We find that over time and particularly after the revolution, informal employment has increased for both high‐ and low‐educated workers, albeit through different paths: high‐educated workers were more likely to be stuck in informality, while low‐educated formal workers were more likely to lose their contracts. The increase in informal employment in the wake of the Arab Spring is more pronounced for the high‐educated. The results suggest a high level of rigidity in the Egyptian labour market, even in the wake of the Arab Spring.     

Perceptions of Quality and Household Water Usage: A Representative Study in Jacksonville,FL

International Advances in Economic Research - When faced with the fear of low-quality tap water, households are motivated to seek out and use alternatives. This study investigated the role of...     

Recursive residuals for linear mixed models

Quality & Quantity - This paper presents and extends the concept of recursive residuals and their estimation to an important class of statistical models, Linear Mixed Models (LMM). Recurrence...     

Is There a Trade-Off Between Accrual-Based and Real Earnings Management Activities in the Presence of (fe) Male Auditors?

Journal of Business Ethics - Prior research suggests that the presence of high-quality auditors (i.e. proxied by audit firm characteristics) constrains accrual-based earnings management, but it...     

How costly is the Sarbanes Oxley Act? Evidence on the effects of the Act on corporate profitability

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was intended to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures. However, critics have argued that the costs of SOX far outweigh its intended benefits. Prior studies based on stock-price reactions to SOX-related events document mixed evidence on the expected impact of SOX. In contrast, we provide evidence on the net realized costs of SOX by examining its impact on operating profitability. We find that average cash flows decline by 1.3% of total assets after SOX. These costs are more significant for smaller firms, for more complex firms, and for firms with lower-growth opportunities. Annually, these costs range from $6 million for smaller firms to $39 million for larger firms. Further, we document that net SOX-related costs are not limited to one-time expenses associated with internal-control design and implementation. In aggregate, for the 1428 firms in our sample, these costs amount to about $19 billion per year. Profitability is lower for up to four years post-SOX. To our knowledge, ours are the first estimates of the realized net costs imposed by SOX.     

The nexus between sectoral FDI and institutional quality: empirical evidence from Pakistan

This study investigates short- and long-run bidirectional causality between institutional quality and sectoral-level FDI in Pakistan by using the ARDL technique. The results confirm that long-run bidirectional causality exists between institutional quality and aggregate FDI. The in-depth sectoral-level FDI analysis substantiates the presence of long-run bidirectional causality between institutional quality and FDI in services and manufacturing sectors, while no long-run causality is observed between institutional quality and FDI inflows in primary sector. Furthermore, the results in the study reveal short-run bidirectional causality only between institutional quality and manufacturing FDI and report insignificant short-run causal link between institutional quality and FDI in primary and services sectors. The overall findings of the study suggest that in the long-run institutional quality attract FDI and FDI inflows, particularly to manufacturing and services sectors, significantly enhance the quality of institutions in Pakistan.     

Trade liberalization and industrial growth in Pakistan: a cointegration analysis

Using the framework of an endogenous growth model, this study empirically analyses the relationship between trade policies and industrial growth in Pakistan during the period 1973–1995. The cointegration and error correction modelling approaches have been applied. The empirical results suggest that there exists a unique long-run relationship among the aggregate growth function of industrial value added and its major determinants of the real capital stock, the labour force, real exports, the import tariff collection rate and the secondary school enrolment ratio. The short-term dynamic behaviour of Pakistan's growth function of industrial value added has been investigated by estimating an error correction model in which the error correction term has been found to be correctly signed and statistically significant.     

Motivations for corporate social responsibility reporting by MNC subsidiaries in an emerging country: The case of Bangladesh

While many studies of the motivations behind the corporate social responsibility reporting (CSRR) practices of large corporations have been reported internationally, few have focussed on multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries. Most importantly, we still do not know how host country institutional norms, or parent corporation policies, influence MNC subsidiaries embarking upon CSRR. By integrating legitimacy theory (LT) and neo-institutional theory (NIT) explanations, this paper offers a theoretical framework for investigating the CSRR practices of MNC subsidiaries in general, and provides empirical evidence on the nature and motivations of subsidiaries’ CSRR practices in Bangladesh, a developing country. Employing a case study method and using qualitative data, the study finds that CSRR practice in Bangladeshi MNC subsidiaries is limited, consisting mainly of employee information. This observation mirrors the overall CSRR trend in Bangladesh. A desire for internal legitimacy emerges as the primary motivation for CSRR practice in MNC subsidiaries. In particular, the external host country environment of the Bangladeshi subsidiaries seems to be a major limitation in the development of CSRR.     

Stock price informativeness and analyst coverage

We examine whether more analyst coverage translates into more informative stock prices and apply this to both developed and emerging markets. We measure price informativeness using the association between current stock returns and future earnings. We argue that more informative stock prices contain more information about future earnings. Results indicate that analysts' activities do not contribute to the impounding of future earnings information into current stock prices, in accordance with the view that analysts are outsiders who do not have full access to firm‐level information. We also find that analysts specialize according to industry and that “industry expertise” is limited to developed countries. Overall, our evidence is consistent with the explanation that analysts focus on gathering and mapping industry‐ and market‐level information (macroeconomic information) into stock prices. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.