STOCK PRICE DYNAMICS IN OVERLAPPED MARKET SEGMENTS: INTRA AND INTER-INDUSTRY CONTAGION EFFECTS

This study examines stock price dynamics of contagion effects in overlapping markets using an exponential ARCH (Autoregressive Conditional Hetero-scedastic) model. Specifically, the stock price dynamics among the oil and oil-related industries of the US are examined to see how stock price movements in one industry affect those of the related industries. The results suggest that when the amount of price innovations is larger than the expected amount, volatility of stock returns will be affected. The results further show that this influence comes from the oil-service industry and spreads to the oil industry and the gas industry. That is, inter-industry contagion effects do exist. In addition, when the firms of the oil industry are grouped into three size categories - large, medium and small - the results indicate that the source of contagion is from the large and the small oil firms. The influence of their price innovations spread to medium-sized oil firms, the oil-service industry and the gas industry. That is, the inter-industry and intra-industry contagion effects exist simultaneously.     

Accounting Practice Harmony, Accounting Regulation and Firm Characteristics

Harmonization of accounting standards has been the subject of many initiatives taken at international, regional and national levels in recent years. Policy makers advancing this idea believe that accounting regulation harmony will lead to practice harmony. The literature in the area of accounting harmonization also generally relies on a similar belief.
Comparing accounting regulations and accounting practices of two countries that are pursuing a program of harmonization, Australia and New Zealand, revealed some association between the levels of regulation harmony and practice harmony. Although this indicates that regulatory harmony can improve practice harmony, the association is 'noisy', suggesting that there are also other factors affecting practice harmony. Evidence adduced here shows that accounting practice harmony is also associated with firm-specific characteristics.     

20-F reconciliations and investment recommendations by financial professionals

As part of the U.S. regulatory requirements, non-U.S. companies registered on U.S. stock exchanges (‘foreign registrants’) are required to compile financial reports that comply with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (‘GAAP’) or provide a reconciliation of non-U.S. GAAP financial statements to U.S GAAP (20-F reconciliation). The objective of this study is to determine if identical information with respect to U.S. GAAP may be evaluated differently depending on whether the 20-F reconciliation information is presented in a positive (20-F reconciliation gain) or negative (20-F reconciliation loss) way. The research results indicate that the financial professionals' investment recommendations were significantly lower for a firm when it reports a reconciliation loss relative to when it reports a reconciliation gain or when it reports under U.S. GAAP, although the financial results were identical in all cases. Further, consistent with Bradshaw [Bradshaw MT. How do analysts use their earnings forecasts in generating stock recommendations? Account Rev 2004;79(1):25-50.], the financial professionals' expectations of earnings growth were significantly and positively associated with their investment recommendation.     

Revisiting the Satisfaction–Loyalty Relationship: Empirical Generalizations and Directions for Future Research

This extensive literature review highlights the state of the art regarding the relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty, both attitudinal and behavioral. In particular, it brings to light several issues that should be carefully considered in analyzing the efficacy of customer satisfaction in explaining and predicting customer loyalty. In fact, for many years companies all around the world have heavily invested in customer satisfaction in the hope of increasing loyalty, and hence, consequently, profitability. But after having gone through a detailed analysis, it is clear that this link it is not as strong as it is believed to be and customer satisfaction is not enough to explain loyalty. In fact, the major findings of this review are captured in the form of a few empirical generalizations. We generalize that, while there is a positive relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty, the variance explained by just satisfaction is rather small. Models that encompass other relevant variables as moderators, mediators, antecedent variables, or all three are better predictors of loyalty than just customer satisfaction. Further, the satisfaction–loyalty relationship has the potential to change over time. Similar weaker findings are uncovered and the study offers specific guidelines on who, when, and how much to satisfy. Finally, suggestions for future research to explore this domain are offered.     

Foreign ownership and the enforcement of corporate governance reforms

This study examines whether a stronger corporate governance enforcement regime influences the investment decisions of foreign portfolio investors in an emerging market context. Using a natural experiment provided by an Indian corporate governance regulatory reform introduced in 2000, but for which stricter sanctions for non-compliance were imposed in 2004 our results provide strong evidence that governance reforms that include stricter sanctions for non-compliance lead to higher foreign ownership. Depending on specifications, the difference-in-differences estimates show that, on average, the effect is up to 2.8% increased foreign ownership post regulatory reform of 2004. The paper adds to the debate on simultaneity between foreign ownership and corporate governance as we show that in the context of an emerging market corporate governance regulations are extremely important in attracting foreign investors. In the context of prevalence of weak enforcement (of existing regulations) in emerging markets, this study provides empirical support to the notion that strictly enforcing the existing governance regulations has the potential to attract higher level of foreign investment. The results suggest that policy measures aimed at attracting foreign investors in emerging markets should not only concentrate on adopting the best international corporate governance practices but should also signal strong enforcement of these regulations by assigning significant penalties for non-compliance.

     

Living under value chains: The new distributive contract and arguments about unequal bargaining power

In the 1980s and 1990s, during the high-water mark of Washington Consensus development, rural sociologists and geographers critical of contract farming described contract as a legal fiction—one that imagines formally equal and voluntary relations between large firms and small farmers and hence that functions purposefully to obscure unequal social relations. Today, however, development planners, who argue for contract farming as an integral part of value chain agriculture, describe unequal bargaining power as a problem for rural development to solve. Our article analyzes how proponents have domesticated what was once a radical critique of contract farming—a phenomenon that we suggest tells of value chain development more broadly. Via a qualitative case study of India, we describe how a range of actors—development planners, state officials, and farmers—now all make arguments about unequal bargaining power and yet hold disparate understandings of what bargaining inequalities mean and what reforms should therefore follow. More specifically, we show how and why common reform proposals—for contract regulation and farmer aggregation—remain constrained by the inequalities they would challenge and thus why farmers themselves speak different possibilities to the problem of unequal bargaining power.