Overpaid acquisitions and goodwill impairment losses — Evidence from the US

The purpose of this study is to shed light on the reliability of accounting goodwill numbers by examining whether many goodwill impairment losses arise from overpayment for the target at the time of the acquisition, rather than from a subsequent deterioration of goodwill values. A second related objective is to assess whether the goodwill impairment test introduced by SFAS 142 improved the ability of accounting standards to timely capture situations in which the amount of goodwill is overstated and should thus be written down.     

Do powerful chief executives influence the financial performance of UK firms?

Drawing on a framework from agency theory, we examine the relation between the decision-making power of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and the financial performance of 468 United Kingdom (UK) publicly listed companies (plcs) using a dynamic panel data estimation method for the six years 2003–2008. We measure CEO power using a ‘power index’ which captures the extent to which the autonomy of the CEO to make unilateral decisions could influence firms' financial performance. To test for robustness, our analysis is conducted using different measures of financial performance. Our results reveal that, consistent with previous UK research, CEO power, as defined by CEO-Chair duality, CEO-tenure and CEO share ownership, is negatively related to financial performance. We also find that concentrated ownership is inversely related to the performance of UK plcs. CEO's compensation and board structure, however, do not appear to be related to the financial performance of the UK plcs.     

The Effect of R&D Services Offshoring on Skilled Employment: Firm Evidence

The offshoring of high‐tech services has greatly increased in recent years, with consequences for firms demand for skilled employment in firms. This paper specifically analyses the relationship between R&D offshoring and the demand for R&D employment using firm‐level data for Spanish manufacturing and services companies during the period 2004–11. Estimating different specifications with panel data techniques, we find that this association is statistically positive. In particular, for services firms a 1 percentage point increase in R&D offshoring raises the demand for researchers by about 11 per cent.     

Economic Effects of the Syrian War and the Spread of the Islamic State on the Levant

This paper uses a global computable general equilibrium framework with new detail on six Levant countries – the Arab Republic of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, the Syrian Arab Republic and Turkey – to quantify the direct and indirect economic effects of the Syrian war and the advance of the Islamic State on the Levant. Syria and Iraq bear the brunt of the direct economic costs, while the other Levant countries lose in per capita but not in aggregate terms as the inflows of refugees increase the size of their populations. The war has undermined progress towards deeper regional trade integration, thus adding to varying degrees to the direct costs sustained by the Levant economies and, in the cases of Syria and Iraq, doubling their welfare losses. All Levant countries are foregoing opportunities to expand intra‐Levant trade and the associated gains in economic efficiency. The average welfare effects are not indicative of the distributional effects of war within countries.     

A Calibrated Group Decision Process

In practice most organisational decisions are made by groups that bring into the problem multiple perspectives, both complementary and contradictory. When having a group of decision makers, usually individuals’ preferences are either led to consensus or are aggregated with the use of some function like the median, the arithmetic or geometric mean. We focus in the second case, where individual’s preferences need to be aggregated. Our approach is based on the fact that when two decision makers are asked to give their preference between a pair of criteria using a specific scale, it is possible that they will give slightly different answers, even when they actually have the same opinion. This difference will not affect the case of a single decision maker, as it will be consistent throughout the whole process. However, it can affect a group decision when the values will be used as an input for the aggregation function. A novel approach is presented that enhances group decision making through a group calibration process. The proposed process adjusts individuals’ preferences based on their answers on a set of standardized questions prior to the aggregation phase. The method focuses The whole concept is applied to the group analytical network process method and it is illustrated through a telecommunications project case. The decision under examination concerns the selection of the right place for deploying a new telecom service of a multinational-based telecommunications company where a group of geographically dispersed decision makers form an ad-hoc virtual team in order to select the location for a new technical support centre.     

Keeping track of global trade in real time

This paper builds an innovative composite world trade-cycle index by means of a dynamic factor model for short-term forecasts of world trade growth of both goods and (usually neglected) services. Trade indicators are selected using a multidimensional approach, including Bayesian model averaging techniques, dynamic correlations, and Granger non-causality tests in a linear vector autoregression framework. To overcome real-time forecasting challenges, the dynamic factor model is extended to account for mixed frequencies, to deal with asynchronous data publication, and to include hard and survey data along with leading indicators. Nonlinearities are addressed with a Markov switching model. Pseudo-real-time empirical simulations suggest that: (i) the global trade index is a useful tool for tracking and forecasting world trade in real time; (ii) the model is able to infer global trade cycles very precisely and better than several competing alternatives; and (iii) global trade finance conditions seem to lead the trade cycle, a conclusion that is in line with the theoretical literature.     

Afro-Diasporic women navigating the black ceiling: Individual,relational, and organizational strategies

In this article, we describe how the black ceiling—upheld by the powerful institutional logics of patriarchy and white supremacy, inordinately challenging and interlocking systemic barriers to leadership advancement—leads to the dearth of Afro-Diasporic women in senior corporate leadership positions and pathologizes Afro-Diasporic women as multiple outsiders. As a result, Afro-Diasporic women’s well-being in the workplace is compromised and many adopt coping and survival strategies to navigate a myriad of relational and environmental phenomena, such as spirit murder, emotional taxation, social closure, white privilege, and white fragility. To navigate and ameliorate these dynamics, we advance several individual, relational, and organizational strategies that support Afro-Diasporic women thriving in the workplace.     

Cross-border cooperation: A response to the challenges facing agri-food cooperatives in Southern European countries

All agri-food cooperatives share common interests, irrespective of their geographical borders, which should encourage them to undertake inter-cooperation processes as well as to set up transnational cooperatives. This paper has two objectives. The first is to analyze Spanish and Portuguese cooperative regulations and the Statute for a European Cooperative Society to define how to embark on these processes in the two countries while also pinpointing the conflicts that may arise from the different regulations. Secondly, it seeks to ascertain which Spanish and Portuguese cooperatives have had experience in this field and to characterize them through a multiple-case study, including the rationale for the processes, the advantages and the constraints. The results have revealed five cross-border cooperation categories and show that the Statute for a European Cooperative Society has not had the expected success at the EU level, due to its complexity. However, in general, the lack of expected cross-border cooperative experiences is not due to legal, language or management issues. It is for different reasons. Firstly, cooperatives think that they can achieve the same objectives through inter-cooperative agreements. Secondly, government policies protect the regional nature of their cooperatives, rather than encouraging them to expand their business and therefore their capacity to respond to current challenges.     

Macroeconomic determinants of remittances: evidence from Romania

Given the globalization of the labour market and the promotion of free movement for work, young people are looking for employment opportunities from at least two perspectives – professional careers and socio-economic benefits from employment. In developing countries, such as Romania, the labour market is less attractive, which has led to profound, numerical and structural imbalances, due to external mobility for work. Both new generations of graduates and young people aged up to 40 years, decide to work abroad as a more beneficial individual solution, i.e. remittances. The purpose of this paper is to examine the macroeconomic determinants of remittances to Romania, in order to substantiate public policies on diaspora, to adjust employment policy on the national labour market by promoting incentives to create decent, youth-friendly jobs. Using panel data model we selected several variables with potential influence on remittances level. The results demonstrate that traditional influence’s factors as distance, migration routes diaspora concentration or unemployment rate are, at present, less important than wage gap or tax rate at least for developing origin countries.     

Employability as a compass for career success: development and initial validation of a new multidimensional measure

This article reports the development and initial validation of a multidimensional measure of employability based on the theoretical model of Lo Presti and Pluviano (2016). Four different studies were designed and implemented. Study 1 was a qualitative study that involved a group of 15 labour market experts and aimed at developing the items pool. In Study 2, an exploratory factor analysis of 526 employees was carried out to examine the structure of the employability measure as previously obtained. Study 3 aimed at verifying the employability measure that had emerged from Study 2 through confirmatory factor analysis of 699 employees, resulting in a 28‐item shortened version encompassing the original four employability dimensions. Finally, in Study 4, concurrent and predictive validity of the definitive version of the employability measure were tested on a sample of 712 employees. Implications for vocational guidance and human resource management, as well as future employability research, are discussed.