Online grocery shopping: the impact of shopping frequency on perceived risk

Online grocery shopping has enjoyed strong growth and it is predicted this channel will continue to grow exponentially in the coming years. While online shopping has attracted an abundance of research interest, examinations of online grocery shopping behaviour are only now emerging. Shopping online for groceries differs considerably from general online shopping due to the perishability and variability of the product, and frequency of the shopping activity. Two salient gaps underpin this research into online grocery shopping. This study responds to calls to investigate the online shoppers’ experience in the context of online purchasing frequency. Second, this study examines the mediating effect of perceived risk between trust and online repurchase intention of groceries. An online survey was employed to collect data from shoppers who were recruited from a multi-channel grocery e-retailer’s database. The online survey, comprising 16 reflective validated scale items, was sent to 555 frequent and infrequent online grocery shoppers. Results find that while customer satisfaction predicts trust for both infrequent and frequent online grocery shoppers, perceived risk fully mediates the effect of trust on repurchase intentions for infrequent online grocery shoppers. Furthermore, path analysis reveals that the developed behavioural model is variant across both groups of shoppers. Theoretically, we provide a deeper understanding of the online customer experience, while gaining insight into two shopper segments identified as being important to grocery e-retailers. For managers, this study tests an online customer behavioural model with actual purchasing behaviour and identifies the continued presence of perceived risk in grocery e-retailing, regardless of purchase frequency or experience.     

Financial Statement Comparability and Idiosyncratic Return Volatility

This study examines the association between financial statement comparability and idiosyncratic return volatility (IRV). A greater degree of comparability lowers information acquisition costs, reduces the uncertainties associated with performance evaluation, and increases the overall quantity and quality of information available to corporate outsiders, which, in turn, helps investors to understand and evaluate the cash flow and performance of firms more accurately. Therefore, we hypothesize a negative association between financial statement comparability and IRV. Using a large US sample from 1981 to 2013, we show that financial statement comparability is associated with lower level of IRV significantly. We also find this association to be more pronounced in a poor information environment. This study contributes to the emerging research that stresses the benefits of financial statement comparability.     

Policy impact assessment in developing countries using Social Accounting Matrices: The Kenya SAM 2014

This paper describes the structure and estimation of a Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of Kenya for the year 2014. Among its specificities, this SAM includes a very high disaggregation of the agri‐food sector and accounts for the double role of households as producers and consumers. Accounting for these characteristics is crucial to provide robust socioeconomic analysis in the context of developing countries. Indeed, this type of database is valuable to perform ex‐ante evaluations of economic policies with various economic models and techniques. In this paper, we present an application with a linear multiplier analysis (backward linkages and value chain decomposition). The results show the capacity of the primary sector in Kenya to generate value added and employment, with this growth distributed more intensely in rural households whose main livelihood is semi‐subsistence agriculture.     

Managerial effect or firm effect: Evidence from the private debt market

This paper provides evidence that the managerial effect is a key determinant of firms’ cost of capital, in the context of private debt contracting. Applying the novel empirical method developed by an earlier study to a large sample that tracks the job movement of top managers, we find that the managerial effect is a critical and significant factor that explains a large part of the variation in loan contract terms more accurately than firm fixed effects. Additional evidence shows that banks “follow” managers when they change jobs and offer loan contracts with preferential terms to their new firms.     

Abnormal real operations,real earnings management,and subsequent crashes in stock prices

We study the impact of firms’ abnormal business operations on their future crash risk in stock prices. Computed based on real earnings management (REM) models, firms’ deviation in real operations (DROs) from industry norms is shown to be positively associated with their future crash risk. This association is incremental to that between discretionary accruals (DAs) and crash risk found by prior studies. Moreover, after Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002, DRO’s predictive power for crash risk strengthens substantially, while DA’s predictive power essentially dissipates. These results are consistent with the prior finding that managers shift from accrual earnings management to REM after SOX. We further develop a suspect-firm approach to capture firms’ use of DRO for REM purposes. This analysis shows that REM-firms experience a significant increase in crash risk in the following year. These findings suggest that the impact of DRO on crash risk is at least partially through REM.     

Volatility Linkages Among Gold Futures in Emerging Markets

We aim to detect the cross-border volatility linkages among gold futures in emerging markets, which still remain an untapped area. China, India, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, and U.S. futures markets are included in the sample. The volatility linkage analyses confirm the existence of volatility transmission among the majority of the sample countries’ gold futures. This article carries vital inferences and implications for policy makers and investors. The policy making is particularly important for China, which is a relatively isolated market. From investors’ perspective, the results indicate that the risk diversification and cross-market hedging opportunities in the emerging gold futures markets are quite limited.     

Land productivity,farm size and returns to scale in Pakistan agriculture

It is by now a commonly accepted proposition that economic development must involve both growth and equity. That in many countries the subsidization of the owners of large farms is inequitable is also acknowledged. However, the debate on the ‘efficiency’ of large versus small farms continues. If the owners of large farms are not using the crop acreage with greater efficiency than are the small farmers and if there are no economies of scale, then the imposition of ceilings on farm size and land redistribution are clearly the right options to consider.The object of this study is to test two hypotheses. First, there is an inverse relationship between land productivity and farm size. Second, there are no economies of scale in agricultural production. The tests are performed by regression analysis on the farm-level data collected from Pakistan by the author in 1974. The merit of this study is that it deals with a country which, with a few other underdeveloped countries, has been a beneficiary of the ‘Green Revolution’. The available studies on Pakistan agriculture are limited to the aggregate analyses. Interregional micro-level studies are almost non-existent.