Is Land Titling in Sub-Saharan Africa Cost-Effective? Evidence from Madagascar

Formalizing land rights has been promoted as a way to encourageagricultural investment and stimulate land markets, yet littleis known about the benefits of such policies in Sub-SaharanAfrica, where the preconditions for success are less favorable.The analysis uses a large sample of plots from an intensivelytitled rice-growing area of Madagascar and compares land-specificinvestments, land productivity, and land values for titled anduntitled plots cultivated by the same household. Having a titlehas no significant effect on plot-specific investment and correspondinglylittle effect on land productivity and land values. These resultsare broadly consistent with a simulation of a theoretical modelof investment under expropriation risk calibrated to the samedata. A cost–benefit analysis suggests that the currentsystem of formal titling should not be extended in rural Madagascarand that any new system of land registration would have to bequite inexpensive to be worthwhile.     

Corporate ownership and control in Victorian Britain

Using ownership and control data for 890 firm‐years, this article examines the concentration of capital and voting rights in British companies in the second half of the nineteenth century. We find that both capital and voting rights were diffuse by modern‐day standards. However, this does not necessarily mean that there was a modern‐style separation of ownership from control in Victorian Britain. One major implication of our findings is that diffuse ownership was present in the UK much earlier than previously thought, and given that it occurred in an era with weak shareholder protection law, it somewhat undermines the influential law and finance hypothesis. We also find that diffuse ownership is correlated with large boards, a London head office, non‐linear voting rights, and shares traded on multiple markets.     

Consumer evaluations of movies on the basis of critics' judgments

Moviegoers commonly use film critics as information sources. This article proposes that consumers engage in a causal analysis of the reasons behind critics' judgments and recommendations about new movies before making their own evaluations. An experimental study was conducted where critic's style, critic's predisposition toward the film director, degree of agreement between the critic's judgment and that of other critics, reputation of the critic, reputation of the film director, and critic's judgment direction were manipulated in a mixed within‐subjects factorial design. A summary movie review was constructed for each condition of the factorial design. Viewer's movie evaluations were assessed with the use of four evaluative bipolar scales. Three of the five research hypotheses were fully supported. Consistent with the predictions of attribution theory, it was found that consumers' evaluations of a new movie are more likely to follow the judgment of a film critic when this judgment does not conform to the critic's style (H1), when the judgment is inconsistent with the critic's predisposition toward the film director (H2) and when other critics' judgments show favorable consensus (H3). The other two research hypotheses were partially supported. The impact of the film director's reputation on consumer evaluations (H5) was significant only when the movie reviews were positive, whereas the impact of the critic's reputation (H4) was significant only in the case of negative reviews. The results are interpreted within the framework of attribution theory. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Seek or destroy? Examining value creation and destruction in behaviour maintenance in social marketing

This article presents an empirical investigation of how behaviour maintenance is supported or hindered through value creation and destruction in social marketing. Using a longitudinal, netnographic approach, we identify and examine the key facilitators and barriers encountered during the maintenance of physical and mental health behaviours. Data were collected over a 12-week observation period via Twitter from a sample of 242 participants. A total of 5212 tweets were analysed using content and thematic analysis facilitated by NVivo software program. The findings identify key barriers to and facilitators of behaviour maintenance at the individual level (downstream), meso level (midstream), and policy level (upstream) that have an influence on value creation and destruction in social marketing. These findings demonstrate the importance of employing a strategic and integrated approach to social change management.     

Automatic Enrollment and Its Relation to the Incidence and Distribution of DC Plan Contributions: Evidence from a National Survey of Older Workers

Automatic enrollment has been widely embraced for raising employee participation in 401(k) plans. However, the empirical evidence on the effect of automatic enrollment on plan contributions and retirement saving overall is still imperfect. Using nationally representative data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we find that although automatic enrollment is associated with a higher proportion of workers participating in DC plans, automatically enrolled workers are less likely to contribute to their DC plans and contribute on average less than their voluntarily enrolled counterparts. In contrast, employers of auto‐enrolled workers on average contribute more to their employees' accounts than do the employers of voluntarily enrolled workers. Even so, the combined effect is that the total annual contribution rates of automatically enrolled older workers are 1.6 percentage points lower than those of voluntarily enrolled workers.     

International Financial Reporting Standards in an Emerging Economy: Lessons from Romania

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are a reference point for the modernisation of accounting models in emerging economies. Previous literature documents a diverse IFRS experience, especially among emerging economies. The IFRS implementation strategy and local institutional characteristics shape the way in which the standards are used in practice. We use the Romanian case to illustrate the effect of various contextual factors, some historical, on the process and outcomes of IFRS implementation. We show that IFRS implementation can follow a different pattern in emerging economies.     

THE IDIOSYNCRATIC PATTERN OF RUSSIAN CORPORATE DIVIDEND POLICY DURING ITS FORMATIVE ERA

In general, the dividend payout pattern for Russian corporations during their formative period from 1998 to 2006 was seemingly independent of company earnings, size, growth opportunities and capital structure, as such firm policies appear not to conform to any of the main extant dividend payout theories. The only exception we find is that of utility firms, which were inclined to pay consistent dividends. Utility firms tended to be partly owned by the state and were subject to price regulation. Consequently, they may have had limited investment prospects. Our findings suggest that dividend payout policies in non‐market economies may be driven by non‐traditional determinants, such as the state's overall industrial strategy.     

Bank Debt and Corporate Governance

In this paper, we investigate the disciplining role of banksand bank debt in the market for corporate control. We find thatrelationship bank lending intensity and bank client networkhave positive effects on the probability of a borrowing firmbecoming a target. This effect is enhanced in cases where thetarget and acquirer have a relationship with the same bank.Moreover, we utilize an experiment to show that the effectsof relationship bank lending intensity on takeover probabilityare not driven by endogeneity. Finally, we also investigatereasons motivating a bank's informational role in the marketfor corporate control.