Gibrat’s Law with Mild Nonrandom Growth

Gibrat’s Law (GL) has repeatedly failed to gain full empirical confirmation in specific industries. This study offers a deliberately favorable opportunity for full confirmation in the truckload sector of the U.S. trucking industry where firms are highly homogeneous. As such, most nonrandom determinants of growth remain very similar for all firms, so significant differences in growth rates are not expected. Still, there is only incomplete support: (1) long term growth rates are not equal for all firms, but the differences are small and not size-related except for the smallest firms, and (2) the size distributions better approximate lognormal when the smallest firms are excluded, but in no case does the variance rise over time. This suggests that for most other industries, where nonrandom growth should be much stronger, GL would seem unlikely to play more than a minor role in portraying actual firm growth or the evolution of market structure.     

The Subprime Crisis and African Americans—Response

These remarks constitute a response to Sandra Philip’s consideration of the subprime mortgage crisis and African Americans. While Philip’s analysis of the recent collapse of the sub-prime mortgage market and its impact on African Americans is insightful and poignant, the scope of the analysis does not consider the role that race, inequality, political economy and stratification may have had. This response considers Philip’s treatment of the subprime crisis within a broader political economy context whereby the legacy of race, inequality and stratification may have provided incentives for financial institutions to engage in racially predatory lending practices that increased the level of risk—which ultimately caused the collapse of the subprime mortgage market, and the attendant financial crisis.     

Bootstrapping the Box–Pierce Q test: A robust test of uncorrelatedness

This paper describes a test of the null hypothesis that the first K autocorrelations of a covariance stationary time series are zero in the presence of statistical dependence. The test is based on the Box–Pierce Q statistic with bootstrap-based P-values. The bootstrap is implemented using a double blocks-of-blocks procedure with prewhitening. The finite sample performance of the bootstrap Q   test is investigated by simulation. In our experiments, the performance is satisfactory for samples of n=500$n=500$. At this sample size, the differences between the empirical and nominal rejection probabilities are essentially eliminated.     

Evaluating expectations of <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>-statistics by the Steffensen inequality

By combining the Moriguti and Steffensen inequalities, we obtain sharp upper bounds for the expectations of arbitrary linear combinations of order statistics from iid samples. The bounds are expressed in terms of expectations of the left truncated parent distribution and constants that depend only on the coefficients of the linear combination. We also present analogous results for dependent id samples. The bounds are especially useful for L-estimates of the scale parameter of the distribution.     

Economic crisis: Management and innovative development issues

This article discusses the reasons for Russia’s vulnerability to the factors of the economic crisis. We propose a conception based on A.A. Bogdanov’s general theory of crisis and I. Shumpeter’s economic cycles. The concept involves crisis management as an alternative to traditional anticrisis approaches and the basis of a strategy for recovering from a crisis and the long-term innovative development of the economy.     

THE APPLICATION OF INTANGIBLE ASSET ACCOUNTING AND DISCRETIONARY POLICY CHOICES IN THE UK FOOTBALL INDUSTRY

This paper investigates the use of intangible asset accounting and the selection of accounting policies in the football industry, an environment where discretionary choices were available concerning accounting for transfer fees. Additionally, companies in this dynamic and socially influential industry are unique in recognising investments in human resources on the balance sheet. Proxies representing the level of tax costs, equity depletion, underwriter pressure and auditors used are found to have significant associations with policy selection. This contributes to the debate over the role of discretionary choices, particularly regarding the accounting treatment available for intangible assets, in financial reporting.     

税收竞争与地区环保财政支出: 传导机制及其检验

分析税收竞争、资本流动及环保支出的关系并提出假说;在此基础上建立空间杜宾模型,并使用2007-2016年省级数据系统地考察税收竞争对政府环保支出的影响机制。研究结果表明：地区间环保支出存在显著的空间溢出效应,税收竞争与地区环保支出正相关;地区间环保支出存在明显的策略性互动;资本存量是税收竞争影响环保支出的一个主要传导渠道。     

Factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds: a review of the literature

Previous empirical studies have identified several factors that seem to play a role in determining purchase intent in virtual worlds; three-dimensional online environments in which users interact while represented by their avatars. So far however, a clear overview of these factors is lacking, and the question that remains is what factors affect purchase intent most. Therefore, this study aims to create an overview of factors that influence users’ purchase intent in virtual worlds, and to subsequently identify the most influential factors. To conduct this review, relevant literature was gathered using a variety of search engines and keywords. An article had to explicitly study factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds in order to be included in this review. This search method resulted in a selection of twelve relevant articles that were used for further analysis. Results show that perceived enjoyment, social influence, customization and ease of use are important factors that influence purchase intent in virtual worlds. Enjoyment of the virtual world, beliefs and attitudes of others, avatar customization, and easy-to-use virtual world applications can thus increase users’ willingness to purchase products in the virtual world. Practical implications as well as limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Waqf,perpetual charity,in a general system theory of tawhidi metascience

This article is premised on the intercausal socioeconomic embedded model of ethical design of perpetual charity in Islam called waqf. Such a model is formalized according to the theory of unity of knowledge in the light of the Primal Ontology of Divine Oneness called Tawhid in the Qur'an. Tawhid is argued to be the only foundational Law of Islam respecting “everything.” The implications of such an epistemic treatment in respect of waqf as an example of the whole class of charities in Islam is shown to be unlike the dissociative and human opinionated nature of what has now come to be known as “shari'ah‐compliance.” The Islamic shortfall of “shari'ah‐compliance” and its segmentation as opposed to organically unified synergy between the socioeconomic and moral/ethical variables of the objective criterion called the Well‐being Function have deprived the entire study of the present days' Islamic economics, finance, and banking from its true epistemological core of Tawhid as Law. To restore this true foundation in Islamic thought, a theory of metascience of Tawhid is presented. Waqf in Malaysia is studied as an example from the perspective of Tawhidi unity of knowledge, contrary to its existing dissociative presence in the ethically exogenous socioeconomic treatment under “shari'ah‐compliance.”     

Franchising in African markets: Motivations and challenges from a Sub‐Saharan African country perspective

The purpose of this article is to explore and understand the motivations and challenges of franchising in an African economy. While interest in franchising is increasing in African markets, there is a paucity of research on franchising from the perspective of local African firms participating in these international relationships. The motivations and challenges of franchising from the perspective of African businesses have not been largely investigated so far. Using in‐depth interviews, we allow motivations and challenges at play to emerge. Convenient and snowball sampling techniques were used for choosing the unit of analysis, which resulted in four respondent firms. A thematic approach was adopted for analyzing the data from the field. Support services, brand name, and franchisor's experience are identified to be the motivations for franchising. Financial assistance from the franchisor, demand, and competition also play a key role in an African firm's decision to franchise. Legal constraints and infrastructure constraints were the key challenges faced by franchisees in Ghana. The findings of this study may hold for franchisees in other African markets. However, contextual differences may be considered in the application of these findings.