Factors associated with price reactions and analysts’ forecast revisions around SEC filings

We investigate the extent to which rapid accessibility of financial reports filed electronically through the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system has affected the ability of investors and security analysts to use accounting data in pricing decisions and forecasting. Consistent with prior research, we find evidence confirming that stock price reactions to SEC filings are significant in the EDGAR period but not the pre-EDGAR period. We also find significant revisions in analysts’ one-quarter-ahead earnings forecasts around SEC filings dates in both the pre-EDGAR and EDGAR periods. The price and forecast revision evidence indicates that financial analysts have used SEC filings all along. However, it is the advent of EDGAR that has allowed individual investors to also use 10-K and 10-Q filings. Cross-sectional analyses indicate that in the EDGAR period, trading volume around the preceding earnings announcements may influence individual investors to react to SEC filings. In contrast, variables such as the earnings surprise and the level of total accruals attract the attention of financial analysts. Interestingly, analysts appear to have been less likely in the pre-EDGAR period to bear the cost of searching out each SEC filing to identify those with large total accruals, which are known only after examining the SEC filing itself.     

Consequences of Price Discrimination in Health Care

Atlantic Economic Journal -     

Black banks: A survey and analysis of the literature

The analysis of the role of black banks in black economic development began in the early 1970s. At that time the focus was on the profitability of these institutions. Since then both the number of black banks and the research on their performance have increased significantly. This article reviews the recent literature on black banks in order to provide a conceptual framework for policies that will promote their growth and prosperity. The authors conclude that there is a clear need for future research in every area relating to black banks.     

The right mind-set for managing information technology

Too many managers in the West are intimidated by the task of managing technology. They tiptoe around it, supposing that it needs special tools, special strategies, and a special mind-set. Well, it doesn't, the authors say. Technology should be managed-controlled, even--like any other competitive weapon in a manager's arsenal. The authors came to this conclusion in a surprising way. Having set out to compare Western and Japanese IT-management practices, they were startled to discover that Japanese companies rarely experience the IT problems so common in the United States and Europe. In fact, their senior executives didn't even recognize the problems that the authors described. When they dug deeper into 20 leading companies that the Japanese themselves consider exemplary IT users, they found that the Japanese see IT as just one competitive lever among many. Its purpose, very simply, is to help the organization achieve its operational goals. The authors recognize that their message is counterintuitive, to say the least. In visits to Japan, Western executives have found anything but a model to copy. But a closer look reveals that the prevailing wisdom is wrong. The authors found five principles of IT management in Japan that, they believe, are not only powerful but also universal. M. Bensaou and Michael Earl contrast these principles against the practices commonly found in Western companies. While acknowledging that Japan has its own weaknesses with technology, particularly in white-collar office settings, they nevertheless urge senior managers in the West to consider the solid foundation on which Japanese IT management rests.     

What's So Special About a Special Ethics for Business?

In business ethics literature, debate over a special ethics generally has framed examination of the rules governing business. By constructing a dilemma faced by proponents of a special ethics, I argue that this framing is misguided. Proponents must adopt either an insular or a derivative conception. The former, the view that business is insulated from moral rules, is problematic because arguments used to support it force proponents to accept the idea that each aspect of life is insulated from moral rules. This idea, however, renders philosophically insignificant the claim that business has a special ethics. Proponents no longer make a claim about business, but, rather, a relativistic claim about ethics in general. The derivative conception is the view that business is a set of circumstances that bear on the application of moral rules. This, however, is true of each aspect of life, and is simply an application of the principle 'ought implies can'. The result is that there is nothing special about this sense of a special ethics. Despite lacking specialness, however, the derivative conception provides proper framing for examination of the rules governing business. It subjects business to moral rules, but, also, accounts for the challenging circumstances businesspersons face.     

Procedural protectionism: The American trade bill and the new interventionist mode

Zusammenfassung Administrativer Protektionismus: Das amerikanische Handelsgesetz und die neue Art des Interventionismus. - Der Verfasser beschreibt die ?nderungen des US-Handelsrechts, die durch das “Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act” von {dy1988} eingeführt wurden. Er sagt voraus, da\ das neue Au\enhandelsgesetz zu einer Zunahme der Handelsbeschr?nkungen fuhren wird, weil es den einheimischen Firmen leichter gemacht wird, Au\enhandelsprotektion zu erlangen, sei es mit Hilfe der Ausweichklausel, der Antidumpingvorschriften, der Ausgleichsz?lle und Ma\nahmen gegen unfaire Handelspraktiken. Der Verfasser stellt fest, da\ die Zunahme des administrativen Protektionismus dieser Art den Rückgang des offenen Protektionismus (in Form von Z?llen und Quoten) wieder aufhebt. Die Tendenz zu mehr Protektionismus. und die Wirkungen früherer Verfahrens?nderungen zeigen sich darin, da\ die amerikanischen Trade Remedy Laws im Laufe der letzten Dutzend Jahre verst?rkt in Anspruch genommen wurden.

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Resumen Proteccionismo procesal: la Ley de Comercio de los EE.UU. y el nuevo intervencionismo. - El autor describe los cambios en las leyes comerciales de los EE.UU. después de la sanción de la “Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act” de 1988. Predice que la nueva ley aumentará las barreras al comercio al facilitate a las empresas locales la obtención de protección bajo las cláusulas de escape y las disposiciones relativas al antidumping, a las tasas compensatorias y a prácticas comerciales injustas. El autor subraya que un aumento de la protection procesal de este tipo deja sin efecto la reducción de la protección abierta en calidad de aranceles y contingentes. La tendencia hacia un mayor proteccionismo y los efectos de cambios procesales ocurridos en el pasado se evidencian en el creciente recurso a las leyes comerciales estadounidenses en los últimos doce a?os.

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Résumé Protectionisme par procédure: la loi commerciale des Etat-Unis et le mode du nouvel interventionisme. - L’auteur décrit les changements dans le droit commercial des Etats-Unis qui ont été introduits par ?The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act? de l’année 1988. Il prédit que cette nouvelle loi augmentera les barrières commerciales en rendant plus facile aux entreprises américaines d’obtenir la protection par la clause de résiliation et les dispositions concernant l’antidumping, les tarifs douaniers compensateurs et les pratiques commerciales déloyales. L’auteur observe que l’augmentation de protection par procédure compense le déclin de la protection évidente en forme des tarifs et des quotas. La tendance vers un protectionisme plus répandu et les conséquences des changements de la procédure au passé se sont manifestées dans l’usage croissant des lois de remède commerciales américaines pendants la dernière douzaine d’années.

     

The market for preferences

Learning processes are widely held to be the mechanism by whichboundedly rational agents adapt to environmental changes. Weargue that this same outcome might also be achieved by a differentmechanism, namely specialisation and the division of knowledge,which we here extend to the consumer side of the economy. Wedistinguish between high-level preferences and low-level preferencesas nested systems of rules used to solve particular choice problems.We argue that agents, while sovereign in high-level preferences,may often find it expedient to acquire, in a pseudo-market,the low-level preferences in order to make good choices whenpurchasing complex commodities about which they have littleor no experience. A market for preferences arises when environmentalcomplexity overwhelms learning possibilities and leads agentsto make use of other people's specialised knowledge and decisionrules.     

Stakeholder value analysis: a methodology for intergrating stakeholder values into corporate enviromental investment decisions

Increasingly, decision‐makers in industry are being faced with complex investment decisions created and made emotive by diverse stakeholder expectations. Investments with the potential to have an impact on a company's environmental performance are a prime example of this since they are driven by multidimensional impacts, many of which are difficult to quantify in scientific and monetary terms. This paper presents a stakeholder value analysis (SVA) model, which can be used to address such problems, using a multiple‐attribute decision methodology. This decision tool has been developed and validated through a series of industrial applications, one of which is outlined here. This application describes the use of the tool in a company context whereby stakeholders from within the company are canvassed for their priorities and views. The SVA tool is used not only to guide and support this process but also to analyse the data and consequently produce output decision metrics, which express the preferences of all relevant stakeholders and which can therefore be more confidently used to support the final decision. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.