Using accounting earnings and aggregate economic indicators to estimate firm-level systematic risk

Review of Accounting Studies - We revisit the literature on using accounting earnings to estimate firm-level systematic risk, using macroeconomic indicators rather than listed-firm indexes to...     

Correction to: using accounting earnings and aggregate economic indicators to estimate firm-level systematic risk

Review of Accounting Studies - A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11142-021-09637-1     

International capital structure differences among the G7 nations: a current empirical view

Historical research domestically and internationally suggests that differences in capital structures exist for industry classification, firm size and nationality. However, the data for most of these previous studies are based on book values, include a limited number of countries, are not up-to-date, and specifically do not cover the period of the late 1980s when there were important developments in the globalization of financial markets. In addition, no single study specifically compares all seven of the world's major industrial nations (G7 Nations). Financial theory would suggest that in an efficient global market the capital structure of identical firms in different nations would be the same. If international market imperfections still exist through the 1980s, current capital structures and costs may be different among similar firms in different nations; and business advantages (or disadvantages) may provide profits (or costs) to firms incorporated in different countries. The intent of this research is empirically to update the literature with recent international data on both a book value and market value basis and to include for the first time in a single study all the G7 Nations. The results suggest significant financial structure differences still exist among the G7 countries. Specifically, on a market value basis France, Italy and Germany tend to use a higher proportion of total debt, US, UK, Canada and Japan tend to use less debt, and France, Italy and Canada tend to use a higher proportion of institutional debt (non-spontaneous funds) than the US, UK, Japan and Germany.     

Business Economics and the Printing Industry

The printing industry has a large economic footprint that is dispersed through all 50 states. Based on the work of the Center for Print Economics and Market Research of the Printing Industries of America, this paper describes and analyzes the industry’s segments, functions, and processes; macroeconomic drivers and competition; industrial structure; profitability; and prospects.     

Out of sight: problem sequences and epistemic boundaries of medical know-how on glaucoma

This paper analyses the process of knowledge growth in a branch of medical science. It proposes a study on the scientific advances in glaucoma research organized in two parts. The first presents a qualitative overview of the problem sequences that have characterized 150years of medical research in ophthalmology. This is complemented in the second part by a network analysis of scientific publications and collaborations of the last 50years. Medical knowledge, we surmise, is punctuated by patterns of specialization, diversification and coordination that emerge both within and among scientific, technical, institutional and organizational realms.     

ACCOUNTING FOR RISK AVERSION, VESTING, JOB TERMINATION RISK AND MULTIPLE EXERCISES IN VALUATION OF EMPLOYEE STOCK OPTIONS

We present a valuation framework that captures the main characteristics of employee stock options (ESOs), which financial regulations now require to be expensed in firms' accounting statements. The value of these options is much less than Black–Scholes prices for corresponding market-traded options due to the suboptimal exercising strategies of the holders, which arise from risk aversion, trading and hedging constraints, and job termination risk. We analyze the combined effect of all of these factors along with the standard ESO features of multiple exercising rights, and vesting periods. This leads to the study of a chain of nonlinear free-boundary problems of reaction-diffusion type. We find that job termination risk, vesting, finite maturity and non-zero interest rates are significant contributors to the ESO cost. However, we find that in the presence of vesting, the impact of allowing multiple exercise rights on ESO cost is negligible.     

Complex Systems and the Merger Process

This paper considers how some of the generic principles that have emerged in the course of recent study and thinking around complex systems might be applied in a helpful way to the particular context of understanding the nature of the merger process. Theoretically, the paper stresses the connections between the processual and time-dependent nature of learning and knowledge acquisition and the systemic nature of socio-economic development and transformation. When carried into the substantive domain of mergers and their contribution to restructuring in the pharmaceuticals industry, we suggest that the complex systems approach provides a fruitful complement to alternative conceptual frameworks, albeit one which is still at an early stage of development in terms of this particular application.     

Adaptive economic growth

This paper develops an evolutionary theory of adaptive growth,understood as a product of structural change and economic self-transformation,based upon processes that are closely connected with but notreducible to the growth of knowledge. The dominant connectingtheme is enterprise, the innovative variations it generatesand the multiple connections between investment, innovation,demand and structural transformation in the market process.The paper explores the dependence of macroeconomic productivitygrowth on the diversity of technical progress functions andincome elasticities of demand at the industry level, and theresolution of this diversity into patterns of economic changethrough market processes. It is shown how industry growth ratesare constrained by higher-order processes of emergence thatconvert an ensemble of industry growth rates into an aggregaterate of growth. The growth of productivity, output and employmentare determined mutually and endogenously, and their values dependon the variation in the primary causal influences in the system.     

Tomato Farmers and Modernising Value Chains in Indonesia

The tomato value chain in Indonesia has transformed in the last two decades. We assess this transformation here, focusing on small tomato farmers in West Java and the determinants of their market-channel choices (as well as the technology correlates of those choices). These farmers sell to traditional village traders, urban and modern wholesalers, and supermarkets, and they have all invested heavily in irrigation and rely on external inputs. We find differences among farmers selling to different market channels. To wit, non-land assets—especially irrigation—are important to farmers participating in the supermarket, or modern, channel, but farm size affects modern-channel participation only in high-level commercial zones (zones dense in infrastructure and near highways). We also find that modern-channel farmers earn more profit than farmers in other channels but do not necessarily use chemicals more intensively. Yet hardly any farmers sell graded tomatoes; the main ‘capture of rents’ goes to specialised and modernising wholesalers.