Willingness to Pay for Agricultural Land Preservation and Policy Process Attributes: Does the Method Matter?

This article examines relationships between willingness to pay for land preservation and policy process attributes. The approach departs from traditional welfare assessments in that it does not constrain attributes of the policy process to be utility-neutral. Results indicate policy process attributes may influence utility in some circumstances, even after controlling for the influence of land use outcomes often correlated with specific policy techniques. Results further imply that in some cases, even comprehensive specification of land use outcomes by stated preference instruments may be insufficient to prevent systematic shifts in willingness to pay related to unspecified, yet assumed, policy process attributes.     

Customer response to dissatisfaction: A synthesis of literature and conceptual framework

Business-to-business customers who are dissatisfied with services or products may respond by voicing complaints, by exiting the transaction relationships, by spreading negative word-of-mouth (WOM) about their experiences, and/or by continuing the transactional relationships as they are. The authors synthesize extant customer (dis)satisfaction response behaviors in the organizational buyer behavior literature, and discuss within-firm and third-party recipients of voicing and negative WOM. A model of customer response behavior is disclosed featuring possible influences of exit, voice, loyalty, and negative WOM: number of alternative suppliers, past complaint response behavior, number of years in relationship, and type of purchase. Propositions are provided on the effects of influence variables on response behavior relationships.     

Managing Stock Option Expense: The Manipulation of Option‐Pricing Model Assumptions*

This paper examines whether firms that voluntarily recognize stock option expense in their financial statements manage that expense downward more than firms that do not recognize the expense by adjusting option‐pricing model assumptions. To examine this issue, I collect option‐pricing model assumptions from fiscal year 2002 for both a sample of firms that voluntarily recognize stock option expense (“recognizing firms”) and a sample of control firms that do not (“disclosing firms”). The empirical results suggest that recognizing firms manage the recognized stock‐based compensation expense reported in their financial statements downward more than do firms that only disclose the expense. Additional analyses reveal that recognizing firms assume a lower level of volatility than disclosing firms in the option‐pricing model calculations; however, I find no evidence that recognizing firms manage the dividend yield and risk‐free interest rate assumptions more than disclosing firms. The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) recently issued Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123(R), which requires the expensing of the fair value of stock options, so these results may be of interest to capital‐market participants and the FASB as they assess the reliability of stock option expense as determined by option‐pricing models.