Roads out of poverty? Assessing the links between aid,public investment,growth, and poverty reduction

This paper presents a dynamic macroeconomic model that captures key linkages between foreign aid, public investment, growth, and poverty. Public capital is disaggregated into education, core infrastructure, and health. Dutch disease effects associated with aid are accounted for by endogenizing changes in the relative price of domestic goods. The impact of shocks on poverty is assessed through partial elasticities and household survey data. The model is calibrated for Ethiopia and changes in the level of nonfood aid are simulated. The amount by which (nonfood) aid should increase to reach the poverty targets of the Millennium Development Goals is also calculated, under alternative assumptions about the degree of efficiency of public investment.     

Retail Banking and Customer Behaviour: A Study of Self Concept,Satisfaction and Technology Usage

Prior research has investigated the effects of self-image congruence on satisfaction and brand preference. With the help of empirical research, the paper argues that, while self-image congruence may be related to customer satisfaction in a normal context, it may not necessarily affect satisfaction levels when customers are using technology-based self-services. Furthermore, during encounters involving self-service technologies, customers might experience satisfying or dissatisfying incidents which may not be related to their overall satisfaction and brand preference levels. The paper discusses implications for brand managers in the retail banking sector and suggests future research directions.     

A study of employee affective organizational commitment and retention in Pakistan: the roles of psychological contract breach and norms of reciprocity

Abstract

Social exchange theory and notions of reciprocity have long been assumed to explain the relationship between psychological contract breach and important employee outcomes. To date, however, there has been no explicit testing of these assumptions. This research, therefore, explores the mediating role of negative, generalized, and balanced reciprocity, in the relationships between psychological contract breach and employees’ affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. A survey of 247 Pakistani employees of a large public university was analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques, and provided excellent support for our model. As predicted, psychological contract breach was positively related to negative reciprocity norms and negatively related to generalized and balanced reciprocity norms. Negative and generalized (but not balanced) reciprocity were negatively and positively (respectively) related to employees’ affective organizational commitment and fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, affective organizational commitment fully mediated the relationship between generalized and negative reciprocity and employees’ turnover intentions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Effects of Illegal Behavior on the Financial Performance of US Banking Institutions

This study investigates whether financial performance is affected by corporate violations of laws and regulations. In a sample of 128 publicly traded banks that were subject to enforcement actions by US regulatory authorities over a 20-year period, we observed a significant negative market reaction pursuant to the violations. However, the market reaction did not vary meaningfully in accordance with the severity or repetitiveness of the violation. The results of this study are in conformity with previous research on industries other than banking, notably with regard to negative market reaction. This confirms that shareholders in the banking industry react in a manner considerably similar to their counterparts in other industries.     

An unprecedented privatisation of mandatory standard-setting: The case of European accounting policy

The EU-member States have long intended to harmonise their respective accounting rules in order to facilitate the comparison between European companies. This process was brutally accelerated by a 2002 regulation announcing that as of 2005, listed companies would be required to comply with the accounting standards enacted by the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board), a private body which, until then, had no public mandate.After having tried to harmonise internally the respective standards of its members, the EU has thus decided to resort to private subcontracting, an even more puzzling decision when one realizes that at the time, the EU had simply no statutory control means on the IASB.Building on this striking episode of privatisation of the regulatory process, we first examine the structure and governance of the IASB, and the process leading to the transplantation of its norms into EU law. In a second part, we argue that while diverse, the reasons behind such relinquishment of public authority lie primarily within the EU itself. In a third part, we show that in the area of accounting, such transfer of competences went well beyond known forms of delegation to private sector. In a final part, we discuss the subsequent—and so far successful attempt of the EU to reassert its authority as well as its agenda in this area.     

The Effect of IFRS Adoption and Investor Protection on Earnings Quality Around the World

This study examines the effects of mandatory IFRS adoption and investor protection on the quality of accounting earnings in forty-six countries around the globe. The results suggest that earnings quality increases for mandatory IFRS adoption when a country's investor protection regime provides stronger protection. This study extends the current literature that shows that accounting practices are influenced by country-level macro settings. The results highlight the importance of investor protection for financial reporting quality and the need for regulators to design mechanisms that limit managers' earnings management practices.     

The financial costs of political uncertainty: Evidence from the 2016 US presidential elections

The victory of Mr. Donald Trump came as a surprise to a wide range of market participants. Some of the elements of his economic plan were envisaged to affect all US sectors. This paper assesses the reactions of disaggregated US stock market to the 2016 US presidential election results, and possible deregulation that is to follow after his inauguration. We find that the different US sectors were significantly and varyingly influenced by the election result, and were greatly reactive during the days after the inauguration. This underscores that uncertainty tends to persist and even rises since the President-elect took office.     

Developing the e-scape software system

Most innovations have contextual pre-cursors that prompt new ways of thinking and in their turn help to give form to the new reality. This was the case with the e-scape software development process. The origins of the system existed in software components and ideas that we had developed through previous projects, but the ultimate direction we took with e-scape evolved through a sometimes scary but always fascinating collaboration with TERU at Goldsmiths University of London. The literature refers to ‘agile development’ (Highsmith 2002) and it is certainly a good name for the process we undertook with TERU. It is tempting to believe that one can specify a system, agree it with the clients, and then build it. But not so, … or at least not so in this case. We of course did draw up detailed specifications, but as soon as we started to build it, we or the TERU team would see how much better it could be if only we could just …. In the end, understanding of what is required evolves as the understanding of what is possible develops. So specifications morphed from do-able to maybe; from the firm ground of known technologies to the more shaky territory of the half-known and the “I’ve read about that somewhere”. But the underlying reality was always time and money. The system had to work robustly with enough time ahead of the national pilots for the TERU team to do all the necessary trials and training in schools. And it had to be done within fixed costs agreed at the outset. In this paper I outline the principal challenges that we met along the way and summarise our approach to resolving them.