Using corporate social responsibility performance to evaluate financial disclosure credibility

Due to the paucity of immediate and direct information about financial disclosure credibility, it is often difficult for investors to assess the credibility of financial disclosures (e.g. whether reported earnings are biased). Given this situation, the present study proposes and finds that investors use additional cues, such as information about corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance, to form overall impressions about management's honesty, credibility, and trustworthiness. Similar to other findings in the halo effect literature, we find that these overall impressions subsequently influence both investors' assessments of financial disclosure credibility and the prices they are willing to pay for a company's stock. The findings support the theoretical framework on financial disclosure credibility by (1) showing that management credibility is an important tool that investors use to assess disclosure credibility and (2) suggesting that management credibility is a multidimensional latent construct for which CSR performance can be one of several relevant indicators.     

Invertible and non-invertible information sets in linear rational expectations models

Rational expectations solutions are usually derived by assuming that all state variables relevant to forward-looking behaviour are directly observable, or that they are “…an invertible function of observables” (Mehra and Prescott, 1980). Using a framework that nests linearised DSGE models, we give a number of results useful for the analysis of linear rational expectations models with restricted information sets. We distinguish between instantaneous and asymptotic invertibility, and show that the latter may require significantly less information than the former. We also show that non-invertibility of the information set can have significant implications for the time series properties of economies.     

A nonlinear approach to US GNP

A univariate nonlinear model is estimated for US GNP that on many criteria outperforms standard linear models. The estimated model is of the threshold autoregressive type and contains evidence of asymmetric effects of shocks over the business cycle. In particular the nonlinear model suggests that the post-1945 US economy is significantly more stable than the pre-1945 US economy.     

Online Investors: Do the Slow Die First?

We analyze 1,607 investors who switched from phone-based toonline trading during the 1990s. Those who switch to onlinetrading perform well prior to going online, beating the marketby more than 2% annually. After going online, they trade moreactively, more speculatively, and less profitably than before—laggingthe market by more than 3% annually. Reductions in market frictions(lower trading costs, improved execution speed, and greaterease of access) do not explain these findings. Overconfidence—augmentedby self-attribution bias and the illusions of knowledge andcontrol—can explain the increase in trading and reductionin performance of online investors.     

Video games and the political and cultural economies of health-entertainment

Focusing mainly on the company Nintendo, this paper examines the political economic and cultural forces underpinning the video game industry’s recent interest in merging entertainment and health promotion. This is a trend best exemplified in sexagenarian actress Helen Mirren’s endorsement of Nintendo’s fitness-themed game Wii Fit Plus. In one sense, ‘health-entertainment’ is deemed a product of the coercive laws of competition that impress the need for reinvestment and innovation as a way of warding off industry rivals. Nintendo’s turn to health promotion is from this perspective an extension of the ‘console wars’ that in the past drove gaming companies to pursue verisimilitude on screen in hopes of attracting (young male) consumers. In another sense, the present moment offers an ideal time to direct innovation towards the issues of health and healthy ageing in particular, as the cultural logics of healthism and the ‘third age’ both emphasise the virtues of ‘healthy’ and autonomous consumer activity. As such, Nintendo has pursued aesthetic simplicity but kinaesthetic realism as a way of extending the appeal of video gaming beyond the male youth demographic. In examining the implications of these developments, it is argued that health and entertainment, as independent constructs, are conceptually reimagined through their integration with one another. The pursuit of entertainment is made ‘responsible’, thereby remedying the concern that video gaming is an unhealthy activity. The pursuit of health, meanwhile, becomes a matter of playful, technology-enhanced and ultimately consumption-based experience.     

Rumble的酒吧——Wood&Wood创造的佛蒙特州酒馆的标志

Sparky Potter和他的妻子Peggy一起自1972年开始运作Wood&Wood标识公司思想火花迸发一个想法,并最终用来满足需求。奥斯卡汉默斯坦(Oscar Hammerstein)明智地说:“如果你没有一个梦想,还何谈让他实现呢?“这种水平的头脑风暴,帮助我们的企业成功了将近四十年。     

Financing new venture exporters

This paper investigates the demand for, and access to, financing for young small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The work compares, theoretically and empirically, two sets of new firms—those that export and those that do not export—as to the frequency with which they seek and obtain external financing. The work hypothesizes that new growth firms and new exporter firms are especially likely to seek external financing yet less likely to obtain financing. Empirical findings confirm these expectations, demonstrating that young growth firms were more likely than non-growth firms to seek all forms of capital and exporters were particularly likely to apply for equity and trade credit. Commercial lenders were less likely to approve loan applications from early stage growth firms, and especially so for applications from young, growth-oriented SME exporters. The implications of these results for research and public policy are discussed.     

Developing cross-cultural competencies through international corporate volunteerism

We propose three features of cross-cultural experiences, contextual novelty, project meaningfulness and social support, facilitate the development of cross-cultural competencies. Using a longitudinal design, the employees in Study 1 participated in an international corporate volunteerism program designed with all three features. These results found a positive change over time in cross-cultural competencies. Results of Study 2, also longitudinal, suggest that the participants’ post-assignment cross-cultural competencies are the highest: (1) when employees with higher baseline cross-cultural competencies work in high contextual novelty (i.e., international location) and (2) when employees with lower baseline cross-cultural competencies work in low contextual novelty (i.e., domestic location).