The moderating roles of job control and work-life balance practices on employee stress in the hotel and catering industry

This study investigated the relationships among job stressors, coping resources, and job stress. Data were collected from food service employees (n = 255) in the hotel and catering industry. Hierarchical regression showed main significant effects of job demands and job control and three-way (job demands × job control × work-life balance practices) interactions on job stress. The results further demonstrated that high job demands coupled with low job control and the availability of work-life balance practices resulted in a higher level of stress. Implications for Karasek's job demand–control model, managerial practice and future research are provided.     

Activity-Based Segmentation of Canadian Domestic Pleasure Travelers to New Brunswick

The purpose of the study was to conduct a distinctive analysis for segmenting the New Brunswick travel market through empirical examination. Data was obtained from the Consumer Interests, Motivators and Attitudes (CIMA) Surveys conducted by the New Brunswick Ministry of Tourism and Parks. This study examined the travel characteristics, benefits sought from travel to New Brunswick, intention to revisit, interest in various travel activities when traveling and sociodemographic characteristics of 655 visitors and nonvisitors from Quebec, Ontario, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The results showed that the activity-based travelers are classified in three clusters: outdoor lovers, active explorers, and cultural shoppers. Statistically significant differences among three clusters were found in sociodemographic, travel pattern, activity participation, trip planning, and benefit-related variables. The study results indicated that activity was a viable basis for market segmentation and implications existed for product packaging, promotional strategies, and advertising strategies when attracting domestic pleasure travelers in Canada to New Brunswick.     

Coauthorship in academic journals: Implications for international collaboration and alliances

Based on the knowledge-based resource theory of alliance, we analyze coauthorship collaboration. We find that (1) collaboration increases the impact of published articles; (2) articles with nonalphabetical author listing are associated with fewer citations; and (3) barriers to transferring knowledge lowers an article's impact, especially if authors do not take ownership over the article. Coauthors who do not act as if they were senior authors undermine coauthorship collaboration, resulting in lower citations on the article. Our results suggest that articles with alphabetical author listing receive more citations, questioning the norm in journals of some disciplines that advocate nonalphabetical author listing.     

Client corruption culture and audit quality: the conditioning effect of the competitive position of the incumbent auditor

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Prior research suggests that corporate corruption culture captures an audit client’s general attitude towards opportunistic behavior. In this...     

Do uninformed traders move prices? Evidence from the Bank of Japan's ETF purchasing program

Using the Bank of Japan (BoJ) ETF purchasing program as an exogenous shock to stock demand, we find that stocks with a higher BoJ demand experience higher positive abnormal returns on BoJ ETF purchase dates, which only partially revert in the long term. Our findings support the hypothesis that stocks have a downward-sloping demand curve, implying that uninformed traders can cause a permanent shift in price.     

Improving risk classification and ratemaking using mixture-of-experts models with random effects

In the underwriting and pricing of nonlife insurance products, it is essential for the insurer to utilize both policyholder information and claim history to ensure profitability and proper risk management. In this paper, we apply a flexible regression model with random effects, called the Mixed Logit-weighted Reduced Mixture-of-Experts, which leverages both policyholder information and their claim history, to categorize policyholders into groups with similar risk profiles, and to determine a premium that accurately captures the unobserved risks. Estimates of model parameters and the posterior distribution of random effects can be obtained by a stochastic variational algorithm, which is numerically efficient and scalable to large insurance portfolios. Our proposed framework is shown to outperform the classical benchmark models (Logistic and Lognormal GL(M)M) in terms of goodness-of-fit to data, while offering intuitive and interpretable characterization of policyholders' risk profiles to adequately reflect their claim history.     

Exchange Rate Movements and the Distribution of Productivity

This paper examines how movements in the real exchange rate affect the distribution of labor productivity within industries. Appreciations of the local currency expose domestic plants to more competition as export opportunities shrink and import competition intensifies. As a result, smaller less productive plants are forced from the market, which truncates the lower end of the productivity distribution, and surviving plants face a reduction in physical sales (unless they adjust their mark‐up), which, in the presence of scale economies, can lower productivity. Using quantile regression, we find that movements in the exchange rate do, indeed, have distributional effects on productivity.     

The risk in hedge fund strategies: Theory and evidence from long/short equity hedge funds

Theory suggests that long/short equity hedge funds' returns come from directional as well as spread bets on the stock market. Empirical analysis finds persistent net exposures to the spread between small vs large cap stocks in addition to the overall market. Together, these factors account for more than 80% of return variation. Additional factors are price momentum and market activity. Combining two major branches of hedge fund research, our model is the first that explicitly incorporates the effect of funding (stock loan) on alpha. Using a comprehensive dataset compiled from three major database sources, we find that among the three thousand plus hedge funds with similar style classification, less than 20% of long/short equity hedge funds delivered significant, persistent, stable positive non-factor related returns. Consistent with the predictions of the Berk and Green (2004) model we find alpha producing funds decays to “beta-only” over time. However, we do not find evidence of a negative effect of fund size on managers' ability to deliver alpha. Finally, we show that non-factor related returns, or alpha, are positively correlated to market activity and negatively correlated to aggregate short interest. In contrast, equity mutual funds and long-bias equity hedge funds have no significant, persistent, non-factor related return. Expressed differently, L/S equity hedge funds, as the name suggests, do benefit from shorting. Besides differences in risk taking behavior, this is a key feature distinguishing L/S funds from long-bias funds.