The use of Web sites as a disclosure platform for corporate performance

Adopting a stockholders' interests' perspective, we explore three related questions: (1) What are the scope and patterns of corporate performance disclosure on the Internet? (2) What are the determinants of the extent and scope of corporate performance disclosure on the Internet? (3) Is corporate performance disclosure on the Internet relevant for valuation of a firm's earnings? Corporate performance disclosure relates to corporate actions and initiatives that directly affect society and, ultimately, stockholders' wealth. We focus on Web (HTML) disclosure. Our sample comprises Canada's largest publicly-traded firms, many of which are also SEC registrants. The extent and scope of web disclosure by these firms is rated using a coding grid. Regarding the first question, three disclosure patterns emerge: (1) firms providing disclosure about innovation, development and growth also tend to report about customer value as well as maintaining a Web site with good capabilities (business-related disclosure), (2) disclosure about human/intellectual capital is linked to social responsibility disclosure (social-related disclosure) and, (3) the disclosure of financial performance and corporate governance practices are both closely linked together (financial-related disclosure). Regarding the second question, firms apparently take into account variables proxying for information costs and benefits accruing to stockholders when determining the extent of their Web disclosure. Finally, regarding the third question, a firm's web-based performance disclosure appears to affect its earnings valuation multiple, although in a differential manner according to the nature of the information being conveyed.     

An Examination of the Quality of Jobs in the Call Center Industry

This paper examines jobs in the information society and the new economy, taking as its focus the call center industry. More specifically, the study analyzes the degree of variability of the quality of call center jobs. In order to achieve this objective, an index of job quality is generated, and an empirical analysis of the characteristics of jobs in call centers is carried out. This allows us to determine the level and variability of quality of jobs in this sector and to establish whether the reality of these jobs is as good as the forecasts for work in the new economy.      

Implementing a corporate environmental strategy: establishing coordination and control within multinational companies

This article presents the results of an empirical study that investigated coordination and control within multinational companies over six key aspects of their environmental strategy. Specifically, it first examines the level of centralization of these key issues. Second, it investigates whether there is a positive relation between three variables associated with organizational complexity and the level of centralization of the environmental issues. Statistical analyses of the data obtained from a sample of 98 North American multinationals were conducted. The study's results revealed that most companies have adopted a global environmental standard to govern their worldwide business activities that is supported by strong central controls over both environmental performance evaluation of facilities and decisions regarding the development of environmental programs. Results also revealed that there are limited links between organizational complexity and most aspects of the environmental strategy. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Income Inequality and Health: Do the Equivalence Scales Matter?

The aim of this paper is to explore the relationship between income inequality and health in the European Union countries using new data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). The heterogeneity of the households has been approached using different equivalence scales. A variety of different model specifications were tried using different dependent variables such as life expectancy at birth and child mortality. The results give support to the influence of income inequality on health indicators using aggregate data and panel techniques, and show the sensitivity of the Gini index to the equivalence scale considered.     

广州市民休闲生活的调查与研究

本文通过对广州市民的实地问卷调查，在分析广州市民构成的基础上，着重研究：广州市民休闲生活状况和对休闲生活的评价及需求情况。市民对休闲生活的评价与需求，一方面，调查市民对目前休闲生活的满意度并分析影响其休闲生活质量的主要原因；另一方面，了解市民对自身未来的休闲方式、休闲空间的意向，以及对政府和社会在城市休闲建设方面所持的期望与建议。     

Monetary equilibria over an infinite horizon

Summary. Money provides liquidity services through a cash-in-advance constraint. The exchange of commodities and assets extends over an infinite horizon under uncertainty and a sequentially complete asset market. Monetary policy sets the path of rates of interest and accommodates the demand for balances through open market operations or loans. A public authority, which, most pertinently, inherits a strictly positive public debt, raises revenue from taxes and seignorage, and it distributes possible budget surpluses to individuals through transfers. Competitive equilibria exist, under mild solvency conditions. But, for a fixed path of rates of interest, there is a non-trivial multiplicity of equilibrium paths of prices of commodities. Determinacy requires that, subject to no-arbitrage and in addition to rates of interest, the prices of state-contingent revenues be somehow determined.Received: 16 April 2003, Revised: 16 January 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D50, E40, E50.We are grateful to Pietro Reichlin, Rabah Amir, Tomoyuki Nakajima, Armando Dominioni and Leo Ferraris for helpful discussions and their reading of preliminary drafts. The usual disclaimer applies. An earlier version was circulated as [4].     

Empirical Analysis of Indirect Network Effects in the Market for Personal Digital Assistants

We present a framework to measure empirically the size of indirect network effects in high-technology markets with competing incompatible technology standards. These indirect network effects arise due to inter-dependence in demand for hardware and compatible software. By modeling the joint determination of hardware sales and software availability in the market, we are able to describe the nature of demand inter-dependence and to measure the size of the indirect network effects. We apply the model to price and sales data from the industry for personal digital assistants (PDAs) along with the availability of software titles compatible with each PDA hardware standard. Our empirical results indicate significant indirect network effects. By July 2002, the network effect explains roughly 22% of the log-odds ratio of the sales of all Palm O/S compatible PDA-s to Microsoft O/S compatible PDA-s, where the remaining 78% reflects price and model features. We also use our model estimates to study the growth of the installed bases of Palm and Microsoft PDA hardware, with and without the availability of compatible third party software. We find that lack of third party software negatively impacts the evolution of the installed hardware bases of both formats. These results suggest PDA hardware firms would benefit from investing resources in increasing the provision of software for their products. We then compare the benefits of investments in software with investments in the quality of hardware technology. This exercise helps disentangle the potential for incremental hardware sales due to hardware quality improvement from that of positive feedback due to market software provision.     

Suspension of Convertibility versus Deposit Insurance: A Welfare Comparison

This paper introduces risk-averse preferences in Chariand Jagannathan (1988). A first motivation for thisextension is to give a positive role for a financial intermediaryin the economy, who offers risk-sharing contracts to liquidityseeking individuals. In this framework, both information-inducedan pure panic runs will occur. The second motivation is tocomplete Chari and Jagannathan's welfare analysis by comparingsuspension of convertibility and deposit insurance, given theirrelative benefits and costs (of randomization in meeting liquidityneeds or deadweight taxation). It is shown that the choice betweenthe two contracts depends on the level of risk aversion, theintertemporal discount factor and the attributes about theunderlying technology.