The living company

What can explain the longevity gap between a company that survives for centuries--the Swedish company Stora, for example, which is more than 700 years old--and the average corporation, which does not last 20 years? A team at Royal Dutch/Shell Group explored that question. Arie de Geus, a retired Shell executive, writes about the team's findings and describes what he calls living companies-organizations that have beaten the high mortality rate of the average corporation. Many companies die young, de Geus argues, because their policies and practices are based too heavily on the thinking and language of economics. Their managers focus on producing goods and services and forget that the organization is a community of human beings that is in business--any business--to stay alive. In contrast, managers of living companies consider themselves to be stewards of a long-standing enterprise. Their priorities reflect their commitment to the organization's long-term survival in an unpredictable world. Like careful gardeners, they encourage growth and renewal without endangering the plant they are tending. They value profits the same way most people value oxygen: as necessary for life but not the purpose of it. They scuttle assets when necessary to make a dramatic change in the business portfolio. And they constantly search for new ideas. These managers also focus on developing people. They create opportunities for employees to learn from one another. Such organizations are suited for survival in a world in which success depends on the ability to learn, to adapt, and to evolve.     

Service Quality,Competition, and Regulatory Policies in the Postal Sector

This paper presents a simple model which illustrates the possible policy- and welfare-implications of endogenous product selection in the postal sector. The cost of a unit of mail depends on its "quality" (e.g., speed of delivery) and on the type and location of the addressee (firms, urban households, and rural households). Senders have inelastic demands and differ in their willingness to pay for quality. Addressees are passive but their utility may affect social welfare. Two operators play a two-stage game, first choosing qualities and then prices. We first show that the equilibrium with two private (profit maximizing) operators results in an inefficient provision of quality. Then, we consider the mixed (Nash) equilibrium with one private and one (welfare maximizing) public operator. If the budget constraint of the public firm is not binding, this equilibrium is shown to be first-best efficient even if social welfare accounts for the utility of addressees. If the budget constraint is binding, the mixed equilibrium is not efficient but yields a higher level of welfare than the private equilibrium. Finally, we study the impact of minimum quality standards within our setting.     

Measuring financial risks with copulas

This paper is concerned with the statistical modeling of the dependence structure of multivariate financial data using the concept of copulas. We select some special copulas and identify the type of dependency captured by each one. We fit copulas to daily returns and simulate from the fitted models. We compare the effect of the choice of copula on risk measures and assess the variability of one-step-ahead predictions of portfolio losses. We analyze extreme scenarios and fit extreme value copulas to the block maxima and minima from daily returns. The stress scenarios constructed are compared to those obtained using models from the extreme value theory. We illustrate the usefulness of the copula approach using two stock market indexes.     

Announcement effects of bank mergers in Europe and the US

We investigate the announcement effect of large bank mergers in the European and US stock market. Cumulative abnormal returns are calculated on the basis of the performance vis-à-vis the market and a sector index. Mergers result in small positive abnormal returns. Target banks realize significantly higher returns than bidders. In many respects, there is a difference between the announcement effects of European bank mergers compared to those in the US.     

Business cycles in emerging economies: the role of interest rates

We find that in a sample of emerging economies business cycles are more volatile than in developed ones, real interest rates are countercyclical and lead the cycle, consumption is more volatile than output and net exports are strongly countercyclical. We present a model of a small open economy, where the real interest rate is decomposed in an international rate and a country risk component. Country risk is affected by fundamental shocks but, through the presence of working capital, also amplifies the effects of those shocks. The model generates business cycles consistent with Argentine data. Eliminating country risk lowers Argentine output volatility by 27% while stabilizing international rates lowers it by less than 3%.     

An international study of internal audit function quality

We investigate organisational and environmental factors that influence firms’ incentives to develop high-quality internal audit functions (IAFs) by using a unique international sample formed by matching proprietary data from a global internal auditor survey with public data obtained from Worldscope. Concerning organisational factors, we find that a positive relationship exists between IAF quality and firm complexity and confirm that complex firms have a higher demand for monitoring and advising and, therefore, a greater need for formal controls. In addition, IAF quality is positively related to board monitoring and audit committee diligence but negatively associated with CEO power, which suggests that IAF quality is influenced by other key players in corporate governance. Regarding environmental factors, we document that IAF quality is positively associated with industry competition, which implies that a firm’s incentive for a high-quality IAF is enhanced when confronted with greater environmental uncertainty. Furthermore, IAF quality has a significantly positive relationship with our self-constructed index of IAF requirements included in national corporate governance codes, which indicates that strong home-country corporate governance codes play a role in fostering IAF development.     

Chebyshev interpolation for parametric option pricing

Recurrent tasks such as pricing, calibration and risk assessment need to be executed accurately and in real time. We concentrate on parametric option pricing (POP) as a generic instance of parametric conditional expectations and show that polynomial interpolation in the parameter space promises to considerably reduce run-times while maintaining accuracy. The attractive properties of Chebyshev interpolation and its tensorized extension enable us to identify broadly applicable criteria for (sub)exponential convergence and explicit error bounds. The method is most promising when the computation of the prices is most challenging. We therefore investigate its combination with Monte Carlo simulation and analyze the effect of (stochastic) approximations of the interpolation. For a wide and important range of problems, the Chebyshev method turns out to be more efficient than parametric multilevel Monte Carlo. We conclude with a numerical efficiency study.     

The potential of integrated reporting to enhance sustainability reporting in the public sector

This paper examines the influence of integrated reporting (IR) on the sustainability reporting practices of a state-owned enterprise through a content analysis of their reports and interviews with report preparers. The findings show a steady increase in the quantity and quality of sustainability disclosures. In 2012, the organization chose to adopt the IR framework in order to enhance sustainability reporting for all stakeholders. The IR process resulted in a more balanced disclosure of material aspects of sustainability. However, while IR has the potential to enhance public sector sustainability reporting, inter-generational equity issues were ignored.     

Bank net interest margins,the yield curve,and the 2007–2009 financial crisis

Using quarterly call report data from 2000 to 2016, we reexamine the relationship between net interest margins (NIM) and the yield curve for more than 5,500 U.S. commercial banks. In the full sample, yield curve and RGDP growth have positive effects on NIM, while inflation and deposit‐to‐loan ratios (D/L) have negative effects. Splitting the sample around the 2007–2009 crisis, we show the impact of yield curve and RGDP growth on NIM increasing during the “recovery” (2009Q3 to 2016Q4), and inflation and D/L changing signs. Positive effects of yield curve on profits vary with bank size and change over time.