Ireland's Mining Boom:

Abstract . Over the past 15 years, Ireland has experienced a meteoric rise to prominence in mining. A decade ago output of metallic minerals was virtually non-existent. Today, metal concentrates from Irish mines are valued at $55 million annually, or 4 percent of total national exports. Metals have assumed fourth place among individual export categories. There is no single explanation for the mining boom. Rather, it must be attributed to several interrelated factors. Most notably, these include government tax relief incentives for economic development, recent advances in mining technology, the role played by Canadian exploration companies, and the impetus created by initial ore discoveries. Mining development has impacted significantly on the country, in terms both economic and social. It has bolstered the economy, provided valuable employment, spurred regional development and helped discourage emigration in rural areas. However, owing to a dramatic reversal of national mining policy in 1974, the industry's future is now in some question.     

When does corporate venture capital add value for new ventures?

New ventures face a trade‐off when considering corporate venture capital (CVC) funding. Corporate investors can provide complementary assets that enhance the commercialization of new venture technologies. However, tight links with a particular corporate investor has drawbacks and may constrain new ventures from accessing complementary assets from diverse sources in an open market. Taking this trade‐off into account, we explore conditions under which CVC funding is beneficial to new ventures. Using a sample of computer, semiconductor, and wireless ventures, we find that CVC funding is particularly beneficial for new ventures when they require specialized complementary assets or operate in uncertain environments. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sharing corporate tax knowledge with external advisers

Tax knowledge is critical for companies to comply with tax laws and engage in tax planning and avoidance. Firms rely on external advisers in handling tax issues, however, sharing corporate tax knowledge with external advisers entails both opportunities and risks. We identify four relational factors that are associated with the decision of corporate taxpayers to share knowledge with external tax advisers. Survey data from 221 corporate taxpayers reveals a novel distinction between operational and strategic knowledge sharing. The operational dimension has a functional nature, whereas the strategic dimension has a more intentional character. Accessibility to, and a positive experience with, external advisers enables operational knowledge sharing. When firms perceive specific tax benefits in relation to sharing knowledge, they are more inclined to engage in operational knowledge sharing with external advisers but less prone to strategic knowledge sharing. Instead, strategic knowledge sharing is enhanced when firms have access to, and value the knowledge of their advisers, although this latter factor plays no significant role in explaining operational knowledge sharing. A positive experience with advisers also associates with strategic knowledge sharing. We link our results to other research and discuss implications for regulators considering, or requiring, firm disclosures of corporate tax strategy.     

A new perspective on post‐earnings‐announcement‐drift: Using a relative drift measure

Prior research finds that there is a delayed reaction to both analyst‐based earnings surprises and random‐walk‐based earnings surprises. Focusing on the market reaction from the post‐announcement window, prior studies show that analyst‐based drift is larger than random walk‐based drift. This finding is counter‐intuitive if we believe large, sophisticated investors tend to trade on analysts’ forecast earnings news and thus react faster and more completely than smaller and less sophisticated investors react to random walk earnings news. In this study, we construct a relative measure of post‐earnings‐announcement drift (PEAD) (i.e., drift as a proportion of total market reaction to earnings news) which we refer to as the ‘drift ratio’, and we provide evidence, consistent with our intuition, that analyst‐based drift ratio is smaller (not greater) than random‐walk‐based drift ratio. We find that this difference is more pronounced in more recent periods and for firms with more sophisticated investors. Our approach to measure the PEAD is more intuitive than that in traditional PEAD literature. Our results thus complement existing research findings by utilizing the drift ratio measure to generate new insights about the drift phenomenon.     

The self-financing equation in limit order book markets

The goal of this paper is to present a mathematical framework for trading on a limit order book, including its associated transaction costs, and to propose continuous-time equations which generalise the self-financing relationships of frictionless markets. These equations naturally differentiate between trading via limit and via market orders, as they include a price impact or adverse selection constraint. We briefly mention several possible applications, including hedging European options with limit orders, to illustrate their impact and how they can be used to the benefit of low-frequency traders. Two appendices include empirical evidence for facts which are not universally recognised in the current literature on the subject.

     

Digital assemblages: evidence and theorising from the computerisation of the US residential real estate industry

We develop the concept of digital assemblages in order to advance current theorising on the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are helping to reshape work. The empirical setting is the US residential real estate industry—a ‘living laboratory’ for studying information‐intensive work and the adoption and uses of ICT. We find that real estate agents' uses of ICT are pervasive and suggest that agents now embed themselves more deeply into the transacting of real estate by actively supporting buyers and sellers, rather than acting primarily as information intermediaries. Building from this, we theorise that this ICT use can more coherently be understood as a ‘digital assemblage’ rather than a formal information system. Digital assemblages are characterised as distinct patterns of ICT collections that, in use, are functionally equivalent and structurally similar, relying on standardised and commodified ICT and are neither formally designed nor collectively governed.     

The Winner's Curse Model of Underpricing: A Critical Assessment

The underpricing of Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on equity markets is a well documented phenomenon that has received both theoretical and empirical inquiry. The model which has received most attention in recent years is Rock's (1986) Winner's Curse model. The paper critically evaluates this model and shows that it rests on a number of conflicting assumptions and a form of analysis which is in contradiction with its core hypothesis, and, furthermore, produces propositions that are largely untestable. Thus, any existing empirical support for the model is open to doubt. The paper concludes that further exploration of the underpricing phenomenon is warranted.