The contribution of product quality to competitive advantage: impacts on systematic variance and unexplained variance in returns

In our study, we argue that product quality may enhance competitive advantage, leading to increased returns but a reduction in variance in returns. More specifically, based on our analyses of strategy‐related theories, we propose a model in which a positive relationship is predicted between relative product quality and relative market share and between relative product quality and returns. An inverse association is predicted between quality and both systematic variance and unexplained variance in returns. Finally, relative product quality is expected to indirectly lower the variance in returns but enhance returns through the link between product quality, market share, and direct costs. Our findings are generally supportive of the model’s stipulations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Above board? Interlocking directorates and corporate contagion in 1980s Australia

The 1980s were an outrageous time in Australia's business history. This paper re-examines this era of misconduct, assessing the role of interlocking directorates for corporate governance of diversified business groups. Professional interlocked executives—those with professional training, executive status and mobility between member firms—enabled the takeover culture of the time, and allowed managers to ignore promised strategic benefits and redirect associated firms towards speculative share ownership. These results demonstrate the importance of board independence for corporate governance, and the way that expertise has been weaponised within managerial capitalism to encourage trust in risky and exploitative corporate structures.     

CEO compensation structure and firm performance

The objectives of our study are to estimate a model of ‘efficient’ compensation structure based on firm characteristics and test the performance consequences of deviation from the efficient compensation structure. Our results are based on 3503 firm years for the period from 1999 to 2005. The results suggest that firms whose CEOs receive compensation inconsistent with their firm characteristics have a lower performance compared to those firms whose CEOs’ compensation is consistent with their firms’ characteristics. Our measure of performance is based on both accounting and market‐based performance measures. Overall, our study provides some important new insights into the links between CEO compensation structure and firm performance.     

Exchange rate forecasting: the errors we’ve really made

We examine the real-time forecasting performance of standard exchange rate models, using dozens of different vintages of data. Favorable evidence of long-horizon exchange rate predictability for the DM and Yen found in Mark (American Economic Review 1995;85:201-218) is present in only a two-year window of data vintages around that originally used. Approximately one-third of the improved forecasting performance over a random walk is eventually undone by data revisions. We also find the models consistently perform better using original release data than fully-revised data, and sometimes forecast better using real-time forecasts of future fundamentals instead of actual future fundamentals, contradicting a cherished presumption dating back to Meese and Rogoff (Journal of International Economics 1983;14:3-24).