The determinants of Internet financial reporting

Responding to the widespread adoption of the Internet and the rapidly growing demands for information from stakeholders, corporations around the world are using the Internet for business and financial disclosures. Internet reporting has the benefits of low cost, wider reach, frequency and speed. Despite these benefits Internet reporting varies across companies and across countries. We study Internet financial reporting (IFR), in particular the presentation and content of IFR, of 660 large companies in 22 countries to identify the firm, and environmental determinants of IFR. The study revealed that firm size, listing on US stock exchanges and technology were firm specific determinants of IFR. Given that IFR is not just about the content of disclosure, but also about employing new presentation methods, the environment of disclosure was included in the research. The overarching disclosure environment of a country was found to be an important environmental driver for IFR presentation and less strongly for IFR content. The presentation aspect of IFR was more associated with the identified determinants than the content of IFR, which suggests that Internet presentation technologies were more related to the determinants than the content of the reports on the company Web sites.     

State lottery in the lab: an experiment in external validity

Experimental Economics - In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this...     

Consumer relationship fading

This paper explores the phenomenon of consumer relationship fading with a series of three adjacent studies. Analyzing two longitudinal behavioral datasets, Study 1 shows that about one-third of the relationships could be described as fading. Drawing on prior work in the marriage disaffection literature, Study 2 defines relationship fading for the consumer marketing context as a process of gradual decline in consumers' intention to continue their relationship with a brand, generally manifested in negative feelings toward the brand, diminishing frequency and/or volume of transactions with it, and initiation of switching intentions. It further identifies disillusion, disaffection, and crossroads as three distinct fading stages, and outlines boundary conditions. Study 3 observes relationship fading through a diary study approach and finds attitude movement in both positive and negative directions between the stages. Further, while positive attitudes generally decline over the course of the fading trajectory, negative emotions peak at the penultimate fading stage and then level off at the final, crossroads stage. By defining and analyzing consumer relationship fading, we improve understanding of an under-researched, large segment of consumers.     

Cost efficiency and endogenous regulatory choices: evidence from the transport industry in France

Journal of Regulatory Economics - We study the impact of different regulatory designs on the cost efficiency of operators providing a public service, exploiting data from the French transport...     

The Lindahl equilibrium in Schumpeterian growth models

The main motivation of the paper is to determine the social value of innovations in a standard scale-invariant Schumpeterian growth model, which explicitly introduces knowledge diffusion over a Salop (Bell J Econ 10(1):141–156 1979) circle. The social value of an innovation is defined as the optimal value of the knowledge inherent in this innovation. We thus have to price optimally knowledge. For that purpose, contrary to what is done in standard growth theory, we complete the markets using Lindahl prices for knowledge. The Lindahl equilibrium, which provides the system of prices that sustains the first-best social optimum in an economy with non rival goods, appears as a benchmark. First, its comparison with the standard Schumpeterian equilibrium à la Aghion and Howitt (Econometrica (60)2:323–351 1992) enables us to shed a new light on the issue of non-optimality of the latter. Second, the Lindahl equilibrium also allows us to revisit the issue of R&D incentives in presence of cumulative innovations. Finally, this benchmark may be a first step to understand how knowledge is exchanged in new technology sectors.     

The Effect of Pricing on Demand and Revenue in Federal Reserve ACH Payment Processing

Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper, we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a measure of the responsiveness of ACH demand to price changes. Various methods are employed to estimate the demand elasticities to determine how robust the estimates are. During the period 1985–1996, the Federal Reserve lowered the per-item price of interregional ACH, while the per-item price of intraregional ACH stayed constant. We take advantage of this unique pattern of historical price changes implemented by the Federal Reserve to estimate the effect of price changes on demand for ACH.We find that the volume of ACH processed by the Federal Reserve responds to changes in per-item fees, but the increase in volume that results from a price decline is very small and not statistically significantly different from 0, except in the case of debit origination. The results suggest that the Federal Reserve cannot expect to generate substantial additional volume by lowering its prices further. However, commercial banks may be able to increase the volume demanded by lowering their own ACH fees. We also examine how volume growth initiated by a price cut affects unit costs. Given the relatively large-scale economies found for ACH, volume growth leads to lower unit costs. However, to outweigh the revenues lost as a result of a price decline, ACH volume would have to increase by an amount much greater than our estimates indicate is likely. Consequently, a decline in per-item ACH fees likely would lead to lower net revenues.     

Developing a sustainability ethic in leaders

The triple bottom line of fiscal, social, and environmental success considerably alters how organizations (and stakeholders) measure sustainable success. More important, however, is the conceptual shift required to understand and successfully lead organizations within this increasingly accepted paradigm. This article uses a mixed‐methods approach to explore the conceptual development of a sustainability ethic in aspiring leaders. More specifically, the authors report research examining the curriculum and pedagogy of a leadership education effort, in this case a college‐level course, aimed at effecting change in both individual aspiring leaders and their immediate community. The article describes the philosophical and research base for the curriculum and specific activities with their pedagogical approach. Results show evidence of increased awareness, importance, and commitment to sustainability as well as changes in how students conceptualize sustainability leadership. Findings offer insights for further developing leadership education for sustainability.     

Does Age Exacerbate the Gender-Wage Gap? New Method and Evidence From Germany, 1984–2014

ABSTRACT

Given theoretical premises, the gender-wage gap adjusted for individual characteristics is likely to vary according to age. This study adapts John DiNardo, Nicole M. Fortin, and Thomas Lemieux's (1996) semi-parametric technique to disentangle year, cohort, and age effects in adjusted gender-wage gaps. The study relies on a long panel of data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) covering 1984–2015. The results indicate that, in Germany, the gender-wage gap increases over a birth cohort's lifetime, including in the post-reproductive age for some birth cohorts. The results suggest that age and gender are overlapping handicaps in the labor market and call for a policy intervention.     

Fishing and consumption patterns of anglers adjacent to the Oak Ridge Reservation,Tennessee: higher income anglers ate more fish and are more at risk

The risks from consuming self‐caught fish are receiving international attention because of high levels of contaminants in some species. The ethnic, income, and educational differences in fishing and fish consumption patterns of 202 anglers fishing along the Clinch River arm of Watts Bar Reservoir adjacent to the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) or along Poplar Creek within ORR boundaries were analyzed to understand how to design a risk communication strategy. Because of elevated PCB concentrations in striped bass (Morone saxatilis), catfish (Ictalurus spp.), and sauger (Stizostedion canadense) due partly from contaminants released from the ORR in East Tennessee, the Clinch River arm of Watts Bar Reservoir is under a fish consumption advisory, while portions of Poplar Creek are under advisories because of mercury. Most studies find that a high proportion of anglers eat their catch, and people with lower incomes and less education generally eat more self‐caught fish than others fishing in the same region. Calculating fish consumption individually for each person indicated that a considerable number of people ate more fish from the study area than the amount used to calculate risks when developing fish consumption advisories, and people who ate fish more often usually ate larger portions. Unlike previous studies of fish consumption, this study indicated that a smaller proportion of anglers ate their fish, and those that ate the most were the high income anglers for this fishing population, rather than those with lower incomes. This suggests that risk communication strategies must include site‐specific information on the population at risk from fish consumption, and that targeting only low income, low education anglers will miss some people who are most at risk.     

Comparing perceptions of the important environmental characteristics of the places people engage in consumptive,non-consumptive and spiritual activities

Managers, risk assessors, tribal leaders, public policy makers, and the public are increasingly interested in the characteristics of natural habitats where people like to engage in recreational, subsistence, or spiritual activities. Such data are critical for making decisions about human and ecological risk deriving from contaminants, as well as resource protection and land use. In this study we examined the perceptions of Native Americans and Caucasians about the natural places they prefer to engage in consumptive, non-consumptive, and spiritual activities which might expose them to contamination or other stressors. Subjects were interviewed at Post Falls and Fort Hall in Idaho, Cookeville in Tennessee, and at two sites in Long Island, New York, and northern New Jersey. Our objectives were to determine differences in perceptions as a function of category of activity, type of activity, location, and ethnicity. The data indicate that: (1) the highest rated characteristics were unpolluted water, lack of radionuclides that present a health risk, clean air, and no visible smog in the air; (2) all four were among the top-rated ones for each of the four sites; (3) all four were among the top-rated ones for places to perform consumptive, non-consumptive, and spiritual activities; (4) at each site, mean ratings were lowest for spiritual activities; (5) where there were differences, Native Americans rated all characteristics as more important than did Caucasians; and (6) where there were differences, ratings in New Jersey/New York were lower than those from respondents elsewhere. There are many statistically significant response differences between Native Americans and Caucasians, but overall one is impressed by the similarity in relative rankings. These perceptions will be helpful to risk assessors and risk managers in evaluating risk and potential solutions, to land managers for managing environmental resources, and to public policy managers for evaluating how people view natural environments.