Does Accounting Conservatism Discipline Qualitative Disclosure? Evidence From Tone Management in the MD&A*

We investigate whether accounting conservatism, which has been found to be effective in constraining management opportunism in other settings, constrains upward tone management (UTM) in the Management's Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) portion of the 10-K filing. We hypothesize that conservatism makes it harder for managers to opportunistically downplay bad news and magnify good news when discussing current performance. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that UTM is negatively associated with several accounting conservatism proxies. Additionally, we hypothesize and find that this association is stronger for firms where managers have higher incentives to manipulate tone. In supplemental analyses, we find evidence to suggest that our results are not due to an endogenous relationship between conservatism and UTM. We also find that conservatism neither encourages downward tone management (DTM) nor constrains managers from conveying real information about future good news. Together, our results suggest that accounting conservatism improves disclosure narratives.     

DEFINING SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

A management construct cannot be used effectively by practitioners and researchers if a common agreement on its definition is lacking. Such is the case with the term “supply chain management”—so many definitions are used that there is little consensus on what it means. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to examine the existing research in an effort to understand the concept of “supply chain management.” Various definitions of SCM and “supply chain” are reviewed, categorized, and synthesized. Definitions of supporting constructs of SCM and a framework are then offered to establish a consistent means to conceptualize SCM. Antecedents and consequences of SCM are identified, and the boundaries of SCM in terms of business functions and organizations are proposed. A conceptual model and unified definition of SCM are then presented that indicate the nature, antecedents, and consequences of the phenomena.     

USER INFLUENCE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FORECAST ACCURACY,APPLICATION AND LOGISTICS PERFORMANCE

When companies develop and apply more accurate forecasts in their planning and management activities, they have the potential to improve performance throughout their organization and across the supply chain. To realize these improvements, however, companies must (1) implement techniques and practices that improve forecast accuracy, and (2) integrate the more accurate forecasts into their planning and management activities. While much research has focused on accomplishing the first of these requirements, few studies have investigated the important role that user's play in the application of forecasts for logistics planning and management. This article establishes a connection between forecast performance, user perceptions of the quality of forecasts they receive, the extent that they use the forecasts and the resulting impact on logistics performance.     

LOCAL WELL‐POSEDNESS OF MUSIELA’S SPDE WITH LÉVY NOISE

We determine sufficient conditions on the volatility coefficient of Musiela’s stochastic partial differential equation driven by an infinite dimensional Lévy process so that it admits a unique local mild solution in spaces of functions whose first derivative is square integrable with respect to a weight.     

Strategic trade policy: a review of the theoretical debate

This paper reviews the recent debate on strategic trade policies, whose main conclusion is that while the real world may be far from the condition of perfect competition considered by standard theory, free trade remains the best ruleofthumb policies. In the second part of the paper several issues are reviewed which suggest that the debate is far from complete. Two aspects, in particular, require closer scrutiny: (i) the implications of multiple equilibria and pathdependency phenomena in a world in which innovation activities have crucial effects on trade performance; (ii) the problems of collective action associated with the constitution of a free trade régime.     

Dealing with the Proliferation of Bilateral Free Trade Agreements

Bilateral free trade agreements (BTAs) have been proliferating. The outcome of this proliferation of often overlapping BTAs and plurilateral free trade agreements (PTAs) is described as the spaghetti bowl effect or, in the Asian region, the noodle bowl effect. This is costly, and welfare reducing. How do we remedy the situation? In this paper, we consider the various options proposed in dealing with the spaghetti bowl, and assess their ability to do so. A general limitation of these proposals is their tendency to group all kinds of BTAs together, treating them as a homogeneous group. Thus, the proposals ignore underlying differences in motivation in forming BTAs. To overcome this, we develop a taxonomy for classifying BTAs by motivation before considering the effectiveness of the different remedies proposed. We find that each proposal has its pros and cons, and can cater for different types of BTAs. Thus, a combination of the various proposals may be warranted, even in the event of an expeditious and bona fide conclusion to the Doha Round.     

LeNS China:A Chinese learning network on sustainability for the development and diffusion of teaching materials and tools on design for sustainability

It is a shared opinion that sustainable development requires a system discontinuity, meaning that radical changes in the way we produce and consume are needed. Within this framework there is an emerging understanding that an important contribution to this change can be directly linked to decisions taken in the design phase of products, services and systems. Design schools have therefore to be able to provide design students with a broad knowledge and effective Design for Sustainability tools, in order to enable a new generation of designers in playing an active role in re-orienting our consumption and production patterns. This paper presents the intermediate results of the LeNS China, the Learning Network on Sustainability of Chinese design Higher Education Institutions aiming at curricula development on Design for Sustainability. The project is a regeneration of the LeNS Asian-European multi-polar network project financed by the European Commission. LeNS China is taking in consideration the local needs, interests and opportunities could represent a significant enabling platform capable to sensitise, support and empower a new generation of Chinese design educators, designers and entrepreneurs to reach design practice throughout an open collaborative learning approach. The paper will firstly introduce the LeNS project and its ethos, and then the LeNS China network will be described in terms of the state of the art of design for sustainability and its education in China, the scope and the objective, the results achieved so far and the next steps.