Balance Sheet Management: The Case of Short-Term Obligations Reclassified as Long-Term Debt

We investigate potential management of balance sheet ratios by a sample of firms that reclassify short-term obligations to long-term debt and subsequently declassify that debt (return it to the current liability section). Although aggregate measures of liabilities and equity remain unchanged when firms reclassify (declassify), the practice does increase (decrease) reported measures of liquidity, such as the current ratio, and long-term leverage. Our results suggest that firms reclassify and declassify to smooth reported liquidity and leverage, relative to the prior year and to industry benchmarks. Our evidence is also consistent with firms working around restrictive debt covenants.     

Decomposition of inflation and its volatility: A stochastic approach

This paper presents a decomposition of inflation and its volatility. According to the traditional quantity theory of money, the rate of inflation is decomposed into three components: the rate of change in the money supply, plus the rate of change in the velocity of circulation, minus the rate of change in real output. We derive a generalization of this decomposition by postulating that the rate of change of money supply, velocity, and output follow diffusion equations. Using stochastic calculus techniques, two expressions are obtained decomposing inflation and its volatility as a sum of several economically important terms. We also use two sets of U.S. data to illustrate these decompositions with actual numbers.     

Critical accounting as an epistemic community: Hegemony,resistance and identity

In this paper I discuss the School of Accounting and Finance's epistemic community, which has been a result of the vision of Professor Michael Gaffikin. The distinguishing feature of this epistemic community is the critique of accounting which rejects positivist ideologies and its claims to objective knowledge. As a member of this epistemic community, I present a critical reflexive ethnography and question the role of identity of the self and of the epistemic community. I consider the importance of resistance, particularly in the light of national research evaluation ‘initiatives’. I conclude that hegemony, or the potential of hegemony, is a necessary condition for the epistemic community to sustain its identity.     

Customer positivity and participation in services: an empirical test in a health care context

Many service interactions require customers to actively participate, yet customers often do not participate at levels that optimize their outcomes, particularly in health care. To gain insight into how customers shape a service experience with highly uncertain outcomes, we construct a model on the broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. The model is used to empirically assess how situation-specific emotions and customer participation during a health care service experience affect perceptions of the service provider. The model is tested using data from 190 medical clinic customers. Consistent with theory, results reveal that as customers’ relative affect levels become more positive, levels of participation increase as well. In turn, higher levels of positivity and participation improve customer perceptions of the quality of the service provider and satisfaction with the co-produced service experience. Implications of this research focus managers on designing services to help clients manage their emotions in ways that facilitate positivity and participation and thus improve service perceptions.     

Whose business is it anyway? Closing the gender gap in entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines how gender may account for productivity gaps across enterprises. First, using data from six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the article demonstrates that the extent and significance of any productivity gap by gender depends critically on the criteria used to classify an enterprise. Using a definition of ‘female participation in ownership,’ there are few differences in average performance measures. However, a 12% productivity gap emerges when a tighter definition, based on decision-making control, is used. Second, the article examines which entrepreneurial characteristics (education, management skills, experience and the motivation for being an entrepreneur) are most associated with higher productivity. The findings reveal that there are some gender gaps in the prevalence of these characteristics, but that these do not account for the overall gender productivity gap. Rather, while women benefit as much as men from education and management skills, there are non-linear impacts by gender in the benefits of having a family background in entrepreneurship; sons rather than daughters benefit from having a father that was an entrepreneur or from joining a family enterprise.     

'We are nurses, we are supposed to care for people': professional values among nurses in NHS Direct call centres

This paper explores the interpretive negotiation of professional values by nurses working in a large public-sector organisation in the UK, namely the NHS Direct (NHSD). Reported are findings from a number of case studies of NHSD, undertaken in response to calls for more research into so-called professional call centre settings.     

Text Services and Universal Service Obligations

NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking -