A Middle Class Image of Society

We studied undercoverage and nonresponse in a telephone survey among the population of the City ofGroningen, the Netherlands. The original sample, drawn from the municipal population register,contained 7000 individuals. For 37 percent of them, the telephone company was unable to produce a validtelephone number. Of those with a known telephone number, 49 percent did not answer the telephone orrefused to cooperate. As a result, the final respondents comprised merely 32 percent of the originalsample. To study distributional bias, we used individual-level data compiled from municipal records asour benchmark. Bivariate as well as multivariate analyses showed the undercoverage to be stronglyrelated to all sociodemographic variables studied, except gender. Nonresponse was related to age, countryof origin, marital status, and household size and composition, but not to gender, unemployment, socialassistance benefit, and education. Both undercoverage and nonresponse contributed to a strong middleclass bias in the final data set: middle-aged and older, economically secure people, of Dutch origin andliving with others in a household are overrepresented, while persons in disadvantaged and marginalpositions, such as the young, people of foreign stock, the unemployed, persons depending on publicincome support and singles are underrepresented.     

Earnings Announcements: Good News for Institutional Investors and Short Sellers

In this paper, we consider the trading behavior of institutional investors and short sellers around earnings announcements. The results suggest that institutional investors, and to a lesser extent short sellers, successfully anticipate earnings news. In the period immediately after the earnings announcement, both types of traders are active in the market and trade in response to the earnings announcement. In particular, short sellers are quick to increase their short positions when a company releases bad news. Institutional traders also trade in response to the news; however, they take longer to react.     

Notes and Communications

Educational institutions in the Netherlands have some degree of economic independence. Their management decisions are not guided completely by a budget system, but in part also by a market mechanism. Still, budget management is crucial as survival is not primarily determined by the amount of equity capital, but by the annual funding received from the government. For the evaluation of capital management, a capitalization factor is introduced to measure the amount of capital employed by an educational institute in relation to its annual income. It can signal possible inefficiencies reflected in excessive capital assets. Actual budget and capital management is assessed with the help of four financial indicators. There appears to be scope for improvements in financial policies and some recommendations are offered on how to attain them.     

Rare disaster risk and the expected equity risk premium

Consistent with the predictions of rare disaster models, we find that a proxy for the time‐varying probability of rare disasters helps to explain fluctuations in expectations of the equity risk premium. Our proxy for disaster risk is a recently developed measure of global political instability, and the expected market risk premium is from Value Line analysts' expected stock returns. Consistent with long‐run risk models, uncertainty about expected GDP growth and expected consumption growth is also significantly positively related to the expected market risk premium. We obtain similar results when we use the earnings–price ratio and the dividend–price ratio as proxies for the expected market risk premium.     

Financial and Economic Management in Autonomized Dutch Public Organizations

Alongside with the introduction of New Public Management, many governmental organizations in the Netherlands were autonomized. The aim of this paper is to analyze the changes in financial and economic management that accompanied these autonomizations. Case research was carried out in six public organizations. The financial management of these organizations improved somewhat after the autonomization. However, there were hardly any real changes in the economic management. The paper gives an overview of the changes in financial and economic management. It also discusses what factors might have prevented the realization of the planned changes in the (financial and) economic management.     

Expropriation through loan guarantees to related parties: Evidence from China

We identify and analyze a sample of publicly traded Chinese firms that issued loan guarantees to their related parties (usually the controlling block holders), thereby expropriating wealth from minority shareholders. Our results show that the issuance of related guarantees is less likely at smaller firms, at more profitable firms and at firms with higher growth prospects. We also find that the identity and ownership of block holders affect the likelihood of expropriation. In addition, we use this sample to provide new evidence on the relation between tunneling and proxies for firm value and financial performance. We find that Tobin’s Q, ROA and dividend yield are significantly lower, and that leverage is significantly higher, at firms that issued related guarantees.     

The influence of quality cues and typicality cues on restaurant purchase intention

Prior research on cue management has dominantly focused on cues consumers use to infer product quality. Only a few studies have dealt with cues that allow consumers to infer category typicality. Connecting these research streams we show how different cues affect both product quality and category typicality assessments, how these perceptions interact, and how they influence purchase intention. Results of this conjoint experiment among 113 restaurant patrons indicate that typicality cues can also serve as inferences for quality, and that cues influence purchase intentions via their effect on perceived typicality rather than on perceived quality. Once a consumer has determined the usage situation and his inherent consumption goals, he is much more inclined to search for the cues such as table setting that signal the subcategory that is expected to satisfy these goals, than finding cues such as guidebook rating that are diagnostic of product quality (only). After carefully addressing typicality cues which are instrumental in stressing points of parity, brand managers can use quality cues to show the product's points of difference in a category.     

Performance Management in Universities: Effects of the Transition to More Quantitative Measurement Systems

The measurement of research and teaching performance is increasingly common within universities, driven probably by the rise of New Public Management (NPM). Although changing over time and varying from country to country, NPM involves the use of private sector methods in the public sector. Traditionally, performance measurement in universities has had a developmental role – helping individuals to improve their (future) performance. However, the new systems seem more judgemental – i.e. seeking to quantitatively evaluate (past) performance. We study performance measurement in two Accounting and Finance groups – one in the Netherlands and one in the UK. In both we see an increasing use of judgemental forms of performance evaluation and, in particular, the use of more quantitative performance measures. The use of these more judgemental quantitative systems is seen to have various effects. Although these systems emphasise objective quantitative measures, they relocate subjectivities (usually at a greater distance from the subject), rather than remove them. This creates uncertainty and anxiety about how the systems are used. There is a danger that the new systems could inhibit creativity in teaching and limit contributions to the world outside the university. Furthermore, they could damage creativity and innovation in accounting research – as researchers play safe in getting the publications they need. As we are both researchers and practitioners in this area, we should be challenging these trends and pointing to the dangers for research (and teaching) in our field.     

Performance Implications of IJV Boards: A Contingency Perspective

This study draws from the corporate governance literature to investigate the implications of board involvement for international joint ventures (IJVs). We extend recent corporate governance research on the value of board involvement by investigating unique sources of complexity related to the nature of the IJV. We argue and find that board involvement can enhance the performance of IJVs, particularly for collaborations that are complex in nature due to their broad functional scope as well the level of market overlap between IJV parents. We complement recent research on joint venture control that has focused on the antecedents and types of control, as well as studies on formal (e.g. contractual safeguards and monitoring) and informal governance mechanisms (e.g. trust) by providing empirical evidence that IJV board involvement is valuable when directors undertake their control and coordination responsibilities. We advance corporate governance research by providing evidence that joint ventures possess several unique characteristics that shape the value of board involvement, thereby showing that applications of corporate governance theory to joint ventures are useful, but should be made with care.