Environmental uncertainty, supply chain relationship quality and performance

Environmental uncertainty is a fact of life in today's supply chains. In this paper we develop a model of environmental uncertainty, supply chain (SC) relationship quality and SC performance. We use data from the electronics sector in Ireland to test our model. Our results provide mixed support for the model, with the moderating role of both demand and supply uncertainty being supported, but technological uncertainty not supported. We reflect on these findings and suggest a research agenda based on our results.     

An evaluation of the red-light camera programme in the city of Dammam,the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

This study evaluated the effectiveness of red-light cameras in Dammam, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Two methods were used to assess changes in crash risk at the intersections at which the red-light camera programme had been operating. Geospatial analysis was used to visualize trends in road crash density over the geographical region of Dammam and a pre--post-camera crash analysis was undertaken. The distribution of injury crashes was greater than that of crashes which included property damage, the latter of which was concentrated around central Dammam. The five red-light cameras installed in 2012 were located outside areas of high-crash and injury density, and the total number of crashes reported in the three-month periods after installation was double that before the cameras were installed. This increase in the number of crashes also occurred at the five comparison sites (without red-light cameras), indicating a null effect. The findings from this study are contrary to previous evaluations of speed management programmes associated with red-light cameras. The study highlights the challenges in obtaining data for such research and illustrates that a reliance on overt, fixed camera's to manage speed is unlikely to deliver significant reductions in road trauma.     

The Challenges of Detection and Enforcement of Insider Trading

Taking advantage of the China’s recent anti-corruption campaign, we attempt to examine the effect of public governance on a firm’s incentive to commit fraud. Using enforcement actions data from the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) from 2004 to 2014, we find that, due to enhanced public governance, firms are less likely to commit fraud in the post-campaign period than in the pre-campaign period. We further show that the effect of public governance is more evident in privately held listed firms, in firms with weak legal environment, and in firms in areas with poor local economies. In addition, we find that older CEOs respond less actively to the public governance caused by anti-corruption regulations. This paper offers clear policy implications for business ethics by indicating that public governance provides external monitoring of corporate decisions.     

Has the productivity of retail food stores really declined?

Despite the fact that other factors of production have been substituted for labor, and that scanner technology has come into widespread use, the BLS index of labor productivity for retail food stores has been declining for sometime. The purpose of this paper is to study this puzzling decline in measured productivity. The results indicate that the decline in the BLS index is due to changes in services offered by retail food stores that are not incorporated into the index, and that productivity increased if these services are accounted for.     

The Disciplining Role of Accounting in the Long-Run

One role of accounting is to discipline softer (more manipulable) sources of information. We use a principal-agent model of hidden actions and hidden information to study this role. In our model, there is both a verifiable signal (a publicly observed output) and an unverifiable signal (a productivity parameter privately observed by the agent). In a one-period setting, the optimal contract does not make use of the agents report on the private signal. However, when the output is tracked over two periods, the agents communication can be valuable. This reversal of results suggests uncovering the disciplining role of accounting may require a long-term perspective.JEL Classification: D82, M41     

Audit committee performance: ownership vs.independence – Did SOX get it wrong?

This study documents a positive relationship between audit committee stock ownership and firm performance in large US firms from 1998 to 2008. This study also finds a positive relationship between changes in ownership and performance. These results persist throughout the sample period, do not weaken after Sarbanes–Oxley and are robust to controlling for endogeneity between ownership and performance. After testing shows that there is no relationship between audit committee independence and firm performance, these findings suggest that audit committee stock ownership is an important corporate governance mechanism and potentially a more relevant variable than audit committee independence from a policy perspective.     

2013 Nobel Prize Revisited: Do Shiller's Models Really Have Predictive Power?

The authors take a critical view of the investment approach advocated by recent Nobel laureate Robert Shiller. A critic of efficient markets theory, Shiller has proposed that investors, when attempting to determine whether the S&P Index is under‐ or overvalued, should use a P/E ratio whose denominator is the 120‐month moving average of the company's EPS. But the authors find that such an approach does not provide consistently superior insights to those provided by conventional PEs—and that, for example, the use of both conventional and Shiller PE multiples would have indicated a highly overvalued S&P not only in early 2000—before the bursting of the dotcom bubble—but also in 1996, when Fed Governor Greenspan spoke prematurely of “irrational exuberance.” The authors also show that both the Shiller PE and the conventional PE ratios fail a critical statistical test: they are not mean‐reverting—and as a consequence, both ratios can be expected to indicate either undervaluation or overvaluation for very long periods of time. Complicating matters, current earnings are useful to investors in predicting future stock prices only insofar as they provide a reliable guide to future earnings and cash flows. And as one would expect in competitive capital markets, even perfect foreknowledge of future earnings is not likely to be much help since, according to the authors' analysis, five‐year earnings explain on average less than 20% of the variation in prices over consecutive five‐year periods.     

日本:彻底清理银行债务

Hirofumi Gomi和Takeshi Go Kimura并不为日本众多国民所知,但在东京银行界来说,他们可非同小可.Gomi是金融服务管理局的头头,而Kimura是位傲慢的前日本银行官员,现任毕马威国际会计公司日本分公司的董事长.     

The impact of narrative disclosure readability on bond ratings and the cost of debt

Prior research on the determinants of credit ratings has focused on rating agencies’ use of quantitative accounting information, but the there is scant evidence on the impact of textual attributes. This study examines the impact of financial disclosure narrative on bond market outcomes. We find that less readable financial disclosures are associated with less favorable ratings, greater bond rating agency disagreement, and a higher cost of debt. We improve causal identification by exploiting the 1998 Plain English Mandate, which required a subset of firms to exogenously improve the readability of their filings. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the firms required to improve the readability of their filings experience more favorable ratings, lower bond rating disagreement, and lower cost of debt. Collectively, our evidence suggests that textual financial disclosure attributes appear to not only influence bond market intermediaries’ opinions but also firms’ cost of debt.     

Using the Delphi method to assess the potential of Taiwan's hot springs tourism sector

The purpose of the present study is to identify the various factors that influence the competitiveness of the hot springs tourism sector. The research draws on the models of Ritchie and Crouch, Dwyer and Kim, and Enright and Newton, who concluded that destination competitiveness is determined by three major components: resources and attractors, destination strategies and environments. The investigation produced both qualitative and quantitative data using the Delphi technique. An expert panel reached consensus about priorities for the development of Taiwan's hot springs tourism sector and provided written justifications for their responses. This paper reports on the qualitative findings of the three‐round Delphi survey and provides a supply‐side perspective on Taiwan's hot springs tourism sector. An examination of the expert comments concluded that the Taiwanese are increasingly concerned with good health and longevity. This emerging characteristic offers new business opportunities for the providers of hot springs tourism experiences to extend their appeal into health protection and medical treatments. However, if they are to achieve sustainable development and ensure high‐quality visitor experiences, hot springs proprietors will need to work closely with local governments and communities to promote sustainable use of natural hot springs and to conduct routine inspections of spa premises. Overall, the future of the hot springs tourism sector appears to be promising. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.