The Ethical Mutual Fund Performance Debate: New Evidence from Canada

Although the academic interest in ethical mutual fund performance has developed steadily, the evidence to date is mainly sample-specific. To tackle this critique, new research should extend to unexplored countries. Using this as a motivation, we examine the performance and risk sensitivities of Canadian ethical mutual funds vis-à-vis their conventional peers. In order to overcome the methodological deficiencies most prior papers suffered from, we use performance measurement approaches in the spirit of Carhart (1997, Journal of Finance 52(1): 57–82) and Ferson and Schadt (1996, Journal of Finance 51(2): 425–461). In doing so, we investigate the aggregated performance and investment style of ethical and conventional mutual funds and allow for time variation in the funds’ systematic risk. Our␣Canadian evidence supports the conjecture that any␣performance differential between ethical mutual funds and their conventional peers is statistically insignificant.      

Helpful Reviewers in TripAdvisor,an Online Travel Community

Online communities need a critical mass for communication, information, and entertainment and should provide useful information for their members in order to obtain this critical mass. The abundance of online travel reviews increases cognitive costs of travelers, and travelers use extrinsic cues to judge the quality of online reviews to eliminate costs associated with the information process. Of various cues used in online environments, this study examined an online reputation system in TripAdvisor.com and profiled the reviewers who post helpful reviews in the online travel community. The key findings include that helpful reviewers are those who travel more, actively post reviews, belong to any age and gender groups, and give lower hotel ratings. This study adds to research of online travel reviewers by characterizing helpful information creators among online content creators.     

Saddlepoint approximations to the mean and variance of the extended hypergeometric distribution

Conditional inference on 2 x 2 tables with fixed margins and unequal probabilities is based on the extended hypergeometric distribution. If the support of the distribution is large, exact calculation of the conditional mean and variance of the table entry may be computationally demanding. This paper proposes a single‐saddlepoint approximation to the mean and variance. While the approximation achieves acceptable accuracy for ordinary practical purposes, an alternative saddlepoint approximation is provided that gives much closer to exact results. It improves the accuracy of current approximations to up to more than four powers of ten.     

The impact of sourcing enterprise system use and work process interdependence on sourcing professionals’ job outcomes

We examine sourcing professionals’ work context to conceptualize how they use sourcing enterprise systems (SESs) and to understand when SES use results in positive/negative job outcomes. We differentiate between SES use for supplier selection and supplier governance, identify sourcing professionals’ work process interdependence as a moderator for the impacts of SES use on job satisfaction, and suggest job satisfaction mediates the impacts of SES use on job performance. We conducted a field study of sourcing professionals’ SES use at one of the largest consumer product companies in the United States, which has implemented an SES to innovate its sourcing professionals’ work processes. Based on our analysis of the survey and qualitative data we collected, we found the impacts of both types of SES use (1) to be negative on job satisfaction when work process interdependence was high, (2) to be positive on job satisfaction when work process interdependence was low, and (3) to be mediated by job satisfaction for job performance. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature at the intersection of information systems and operations management as well as for the information technology enabled innovation of sourcing processes and, more generally, complex business processes.     

Towards a better understanding of the financial donor: an examination of donor behaviour in terms of value structure and demographics

While marketing academics have long advocated the application of marketing principles by not-for-profit organisations, a review of the literature suggests that attempts to segment financial donors have primarily concentrated on demographic variables. Recently, there have been moves to gain a better understanding of more psychographic influences on individuals' propensity to contribute to charities. It is proposed that the concept of values offers potential for enhancing this understanding. Findings confirm some earlier studies in that demographics such as age, education and household income significantly discriminate between heavy and light donors. Additionally, ten of the initial 56 values tested contribute to the overall discriminant model obtained. The profiles obtained suggest that distinct promotional strategies, with emphasis on different reasons for donating, may appeal to the two groups. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Performance comparisons in fundraising – the case of fundratios

Fundraisers need to be able to compare results if they are to judge the success of their different programmes and schemes. But any such comparisons are fraught with difficulties. This paper reviews the experience of what is almost certainly the longest running scheme for comparing fundraising performance anywhere in the world. It describes the way it has developed, the challenges it has faced and the ways in which its figures are used, drawing on the views of a wide range of participants. It concludes by highlighting the prospects and possibilities now open to the scheme, and its longer-term significance for nonprofit managers. Copyright © 1999 Henry Stewart Publications     

Estimating Transition Probabilities from a Time Series of Independent Cross Sections

This paper considers the implementation of a nonstationary, heterogeneous Markov model for the analysis of a binary dependent variable in a time series of independent cross sections. The model, previously considered by M offitt (1993), offers the opportunity to estimate entry and exit transition probabilities and to examine the effects of time-constant and time-varying covariates on the hazards. We show how ML estimates of the parameters can be obtained by Fisher's method-of-scoring and how to estimate both fixed and time-varying covariate effects. The model is exemplified with an analysis of the labor force participation decision of Dutch women using data from the Socio-economic Panel (SEP) study conducted in the Netherlands between 1986 and 1995. We treat the panel data as independent cross sections and compare the employment status sequences predicted by the model with the observed sequences in the panel. Some open problems concerning the application of the model are also discussed.     

The Size of Firms and R&D Investment

We construct an industry-equilibrium model in which it is costly for consumers who have previously purchased from one firm to switch to competitors. This gives firms a certain degree of market power over their established customers. The equilibria we identify under these conditions have the following properties: (1) there is a nontrivial size distribution of firms, although firms are intrinsically identical, (2) larger firms make higher profits, (3) larger firms spend more on R&D, (4) larger firms charge (on average) lower prices, and (5) profits are positively correlated over time. These properties match empirical regularities concerning the manufacturing and retail sectors in the U.S. economy.     

Permanent and transitory wages of British men, 1975–2001: year,age and cohort effects

We examine the mean and variance–covariance structure of log-wages over calendar time and the life cycle of British men, hereby controlling for birth cohort effects. We attribute the strong increase in mean log-wage during the 1980s and 1990s to a rise in mean log-wage with the year of birth. This rise is diminishing with the year of birth, which implies lower wage inequality between cohorts with the year of birth. Wage inequality has increased during the 1980s and early 1990s and remained fairly stable in the second half of the 1990s. The year effects, however, show increasing wage inequality up to 2001, mainly due to a strong rise in transitory wage inequality. Transitory wages are strongly correlated over time and an increase in transitory wage inequality therefore has highly persistent inequality consequences. The stable wage inequality in the second half of the 1990s is attributed to lower within-cohort wage inequality for the younger cohorts. The age effects show that permanent wage inequality increases with age, in particular up to age 30 and over age 50. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.