The influence of the financial press on stockholder wealth: the case of corporate governance

This study examines the impact that the publication of ratings of boards of directors by the business press has on stockholder wealth. We report findings from an event study of price reactions to the publication of Business Week's 1996 and 1997 ratings of boards of directors of U.S. corporations. As hypothesized, favorable ratings resulted in significant positive abnormal returns after controlling for market effects and confounding events, with only novel information explaining statistical variance. Contrary to expectations, unfavorable ratings also resulted in positive abnormal returns. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Gender Differences in Managerial Careers: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

This longitudinal study of mid-career managers compared the career progression of men and women during the 1990's. Unlike the subjects of many earlier studies, these men and women had similar education and experience profiles. Womens income changes were less than men's and reflected the greater financial strides and greater returns from promotions for men prior to 1995. The income gaps between men and women were explained by gender differences in career determinants, such as work hours, career interruptions, and having a nonemployed spouse. There was evidence of subtle forms of workplace discrimination against women in the past but not over the most recent four-year period. Women's family situations, however, continued to present obstacles to progression. In addition, a recent decline in women's priorities for promotion, a predictor of actual promotions, signalled an impending decrease in their rate of promotion relative to men's.     

Flight Capital as a Portfolio Choice

This article sets flight capital in the context of portfoliochoice, focusing on the proportion of private wealth that isheld abroad. There are large regional differences in this proportion,ranging from 5 percent in South Asia to 40 percent in Africa.The authors explain cross-country differences in portfolio choiceusing variables that proxy differences in the risk-adjustedrate of return on capital. They apply the results to three policyissues: how the East Asian crisis affected domestic capitaloutflows; the effect of the International Monetary Fund–WorldBank debt relief initiative for heavily indebted poor countrieson capital repatriation; and why so much of Africa's privatewealth is held outside the continent.     

A bargaining perspective on strategic outsourcing and supply competition

This article considers the outsourcing choice of a downstream firm with its own upstream production resources or assets. The novelty of the approach is to consider the outsourced function as involving resources consistent with the resource‐based view of the firm. From a bargaining perspective, we characterize a downstream firm's decision whether to outsource to an independent or to an established upstream firm. In so doing, the downstream firm faces a trade‐off between lower input costs afforded by independent competition, and higher resource value associated with those who can consolidate upstream capabilities. We show that this trade‐off is resolved in favor of outsourcing to an established firm. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Willingness to pay for pST-treated pork

The progress in porcine somatotropin (pST) application justified an assessment of consumer acceptance of pST-treated pork. A survey of the Atlanta metropolitan area, USA, collected information about consumer attitudes toward lean pork produced with biotechno-logically developed pST. A qualitative dependent variable model was used to identify socioeconomic consumer characteristics influencing the willingness to pay for lean pork. The model was modified to account for the selectivity bias of the sample data. Results indicate that frequent pork consumers were willing to pay more for lean pork produced using pST in contrast to respondents who frequently ate beef, were older, and had relatively high income. Probabilities associated with the willingness to pay a specific premium were calculated. In general, the average respondent was willing to pay an additional 18¢ per kg of lean pork produced using pST.     

The effect of questionnaire length on survey response

Survey textbooks suggest that long questionnaires should be avoided, and a careful reading of the available empirical evidence confirms the negative effects of substantial length on both response rates and the quality of those responses which are obtained. Data is presented from a lengthy survey in Britain in 1987. Analysis of reasons for nonresponse to this survey suggest that length may indeed have been a significant disincentive to respond for many. However, no effect of length was found on item quality as measured by the number of responses given to open-ended questions. Unexpectedly, the variance in number of responses was greater when the questions were asked later in the questionnaire. The results are interpreted as resulting from the greater power that respondents gain as the survey proceeds.