The relationship between liquidity,corporate governance,and firm valuation: Evidence from Russia

This paper examines the hypotheses that liquidity improves corporate governance, and better governance enhances valuation of Russian firms. We find a positive causal relationship between measures of liquidity and corporate governance. Additionally, we document the strong positive impact of corporate governance on valuation. Our results are economically significant. For example, we document that a 10% decrease in the proportion of zero return days implies a 0.34% increase in transparency and disclosure, which in turn leads to a 9.6% increase in firm valuation. Our research findings shed light on the important role of liquidity in improving corporate governance and valuation.     

Stock price reaction to public and private information

I use Easley and O’Hara's [1992, Journal of Finance 47, 577–604] private information-based trading variable, PIN, together with a comprehensive public news database to empirically measure the effect of private and public information on the post-announcement drift. I show that stocks associated with high PIN, consensus public news surprises, and low media coverage experience low or insignificant drift. Thus not all information acquisition variables have the same effect on the market's efficiency. Whether information is public or private is irrelevant; what matters is whether information is associated with the arrival rate of informed or uninformed traders.     

Principal researcher and project manager: who should drive R&D projects?

In this paper, it is analyzed the hypothesis that in R&D the principal researcher (PR) is accepted as the coordinator or project manager (PM), carrying out the search for financing and to manage contracts, resources, cost, time, scope, risk and uncertainty, communication, stakeholders and so on, in addition to internal research activities. Thus, this study tries to verify this hypothesis through a major literature review in different types of projects developed by university, but also with a look to industry and industry-university cooperation. Two case studies are also analyzed, centered in its R&D project management maturity level. It is concluded that there is an important issue in projects’ success and in the time spent by PR in management, work for which they are under trained; while at the industry there is a greater approach to project management by the proximity of the innovation projects to other industrial projects. Following these initial findings and according to the case study results, it is proposed that R&D Projects in universities would be separated into two synergistic knowledge areas: R&D Management and Project Management. It is also recommended to allocate them to two distinct roles, where they could add value to R&D through their better knowledge and skills.     

Voting in small committees

We analyze the voting behavior of a small committee that has to approve or reject a project proposal whose return is uncertain. Members have diverse preferences: some of them want to maximize the expected value, while others have a bias towards project approval and ignore their information on the project value. We focus on the most efficient use of scarce information when members cannot communicate prior to voting, and we provide insights on the optimal composition of the committee. Our main result is that the presence of biased members can improve the voting outcome, by simplifying the strategies of unbiased members. Thus, committees with diverse members perform as well as homogeneous committees, and even better in some cases. In particular, when value-maximizing members outnumber biased members by one vote, the optimal equilibrium becomes unique.     

The Effects of Accent,Differentiation, and Stigmatization on Spokesperson Credibility in Radio Advertising

ABSTRACT

The authors analyze how a spokesperson's accent influences his or her credibility and its dimensions in the field of radio advertising. Two versions of a radio program were designed in which an ad hoc radio spot was inserted into a commercial block (standard accent [SA] versus local accent [LA]) that was tested on a sample of 987 radio listeners. The findings have implications for the spokesperson selection, given that the effect of accent on credibility depends on the listeners’ perception of their own accent and on accent stigmatization. Moreover, the SA obtains the highest evaluations of credibility.