Corporate Social Responsibility as a Strategic Shield Against Costs of Earnings Management Practices

We highlight how Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be strategically used against the negative perception from earnings management (EM). Using international data, we analyse the effect of CSR and EM on the cost of capital and corporate reputation. Results confirm that CSR strategy is positively valued by investors and other stakeholders. Contrary to EM, CSR has a positive effect on corporate reputation and lowers the cost of capital. In addition, we also find that the favourable effect of CSR on cost of capital is consistently more intense in firms that show signs of EM indicating that the market does not identify when CSR practices are used as a strategy to mask EM. We also demonstrate how institutional factors influence the above relationship.     

WHO WILL RETURN AND WHEN? AN ANALYSIS OF RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRANTS IN INDIA*

An analysis of temporary migration in India is presented. In particular, the author examines, within a multivariate context, the importance of various socioeconomic factors that influence the future plans of rural-urban migrants and their intended timing of return to the rural area. The data are from a 1975-1976 survey of 1,615 migrant heads of households in Delhi.     

On the specification and estimation of macro rural-urban migration functions: with an application to Indian data

The authors suggest several extensions and modifications to the existing specifications of macro migration functions as suggested by Todar through a more careful investigation of the micro theory underlying migration decisions. They use a probabilistic migration model to examine internal migration in India and present evidence that migration tends first to rise and then to fall as rural income rises     

Contribution to a public good under subjective uncertainty

This paper examines how voluntary contributions to a public good are affected by the contributors' heterogeneity in beliefs about the uncertain impact of their contributions. It assumes that contributors have Savagian preferences that are represented by a two‐state‐dependent expected utility function and different beliefs about the benefit that will result from the sum of their contributions. We establish general comparative statics results regarding the effect of specific changes in the distribution of beliefs on the (unique) Nash equilibrium provision of the public good, under certain conditions imposed on the preferences. We specifically show that the equilibrium public good provision is increasing with respect to both first‐ and second‐order stochastic dominance changes in the distribution of beliefs. Hence, increasing the contributors' optimism about the uncertain benefit of their contributions increases aggregate public good provision, as does any homogenization of these beliefs around their mean.     

Binge watching: An exploration of the role of technology

Watching television shows in quick succession on the Netflix and Amazon Prime platforms is on the rise. Although widespread, this binge watching behavior has received limited attention from marketing academics. The current study conceptualizes binge watching needs and examines their effect on the gratifications obtained from binge watching. We apply the lens of uses and gratifications (U&G) theory for model development and test the model empirically, using data from two cities in India. We add a new category of needs, namely technology-related needs, to the existing psycho-sociological-related needs (named as content-related needs in this paper) present in plain-old-television studies (POTS). We find that a technology-related need—that is, modal experience (the presence of media content in various formats leading to superior experience)—significantly impacts gratification from binge watching. We also find a strong moderating effect of self-control, used in previous studies of binge-eating and binge-shopping, in which the effect of modal experience, navigability and parasocial interaction need gratification is heightened for consumers who have low levels of self-control. We build on these findings to suggest implications for marketers, advertisers, and consumer-advocacy groups.     

Information flow,expectations and job search: rural-to-urban migration process in India

"Probabilistic migration models assume that search for urban jobs is entirely an urban-based activity and that employment in free-entry activities is a transitional phase during which migrants are actively searching for formal sector employment. This paper tests the empirical validity of these assumptions using data, collected by the author in a sample survey in Delhi [India] in 1975-76, on 1,400 migrants from rural areas." Evidence is presented "that the migration process postulated in probabilistic models is not realistic in the case of Delhi. Over one-half of the sample had moved to Delhi after lining up specific jobs; a sizeable proportion expected to enter on arrival activities generally considered to be characterized by freedom of entry; and the majority of entrants into free-activities did not search for alternative employment and were engaged in the same activities at the time of the survey."     

Civil war and economic growth: the case for a closer look at forms of mobilization

This paper explores the idea that the lack of robust evidence on the growth impact of civil war could partially be a consequence of considering civil war as a unified conceptual category, regardless of the ordinate of group identity invoked in mobilizing for war. To do so, we distinguish explicitly between episodes of internal conflict where contestants mobilized along the lines of ethnicity and ones where mobilization occurred along other markers of group identity. Using alternative definitions of civil war and System GMM estimation to address the endogeneity of conflict and per capita income, we obtain a negative contemporaneous impact of non-ethnic civil war on economic growth over the period 1975–2005. By contrast, the impact of ethnic war is statistically insignificant.     

The Contribution of Wheat to Australian Agriculture from 1861 to 1939

The influence of agriculture on Australia's nineteenth and twentieth century economic development is well known. While wool's contribution is rightly celebrated, the contribution of agricultural crops has received less attention. This paper focuses on one major staple, wheat, from 1861 to 1939. Both patent data and a new measure of technological progress, the cumulative number of wheat varieties tested for local adoption, are used to quantify the contribution of agricultural innovation to growth. We find innovation in this sector made an important contribution to the growth of total factor productivity over the period.     

Financial development and the instability of open economies

This paper introduces a framework for analyzing the role of financial factors as a source of instability in small open economies. Our basic model is a dynamic open economy model with a tradeable good produced with capital and a country-specific factor. We also assume that firms face credit constraints, with the constraint being tighter at a lower level of financial development. A basic implication of this model is that economies at an intermediate level of financial development are more unstable than either very developed or very underdeveloped economies. This is true both in the sense that temporary shocks have large and persistent effects and also in the sense that these economies can exhibit cycles. Thus, countries that are going through a phase of financial development may become more unstable in the short run. Similarly, full capital account liberalization may destabilize the economy in economies at an intermediate level of financial development: phases of growth with capital inflows are followed by collapse with capital outflows. On the other hand, foreign direct investment does not destabilize.