Impact on Firm Liquidity Arising from Outsourcing Decisions as Evidenced by Off-Balance-Sheet Disclosures

International Advances in Economic Research - Based on transaction-cost and resource-based theories (and other approaches), there is an extensive literature on the range of factors that are viewed...     

A social identity perspective of social media's impact on satisfaction with life

Social media platforms have become an (almost) obligatory part of our lives and activities. However, many disadvantages have emerged such as an increase in dependency on social media owing to addictions known as the dark side of social media. The current research seeks to understand the impact of specific aspects of this dark side, viz. social media addiction, fear of missing out, and narcissism, on self-esteem, and their links with an individual's satisfaction with life (SwL). The results of a quantitative survey (n = 260) show the salient impact of these aspects on self-esteem as well as the preponderant role of collective self-esteem in SwL. Academic and managerial implications are discussed.     

Platform Competition With Cash-Back Rebates Under No Surcharge Rules

We analyze competing strategic platforms setting fees to a local monopolist merchant and cash-back rebates to end users, when the merchant may not surcharge platforms’ customers, a rule imposed by some credit card networks. Each platform has an incentive to gain transactions by increasing the spread between its merchant fee and user rebate above its rival's spread. This incentive yields non-existence of a pure strategy equilibrium in many natural environments. In some circumstances, a mixed strategy equilibrium exists where platforms choose fee structures that induce merchants to accept only one platform with equal probability, a form of monopolistic market allocation.     

Provider performance reports and consumer welfare

A provider's performance report consists of his service average outcome and volume. The two variables depend on the provider's private quality type and current demand, but he can raise his average outcome by dumping vulnerable consumers. Prospective consumers infer providers' qualities from their reports. Performance reporting drives some providers to dump consumers when competition is intense, but it may not reveal providers' qualities when their average quality is high. Statistical adjustment aiming at making reports independent of consumer characteristics can lead to more dumping, less informative reports, or both. There is more dumping when volume information is withheld and less dumping when ratings information is coarse.     

Broadband penetration,financial development,and economic growth nexus: evidence from the Arab League countries

This paper examines the mutual relationship between broadband penetration, financial development, and economic growth in the 22 Arab League countries for the period between 2001 and 2013. Financial development (represented by broad money supply, claims on the private sector, domestic credit to the private sector, domestic credit provided by the banking sector, market capitalization, turnover ratio, and traded stocks) is assessed both individually, and by a composite index. Our results reveal that there is a long-run equilibrium relationship between broadband penetration, financial development, and economic growth. Additionally, we use a panel vector autoregression model to reveal the nature of Granger causality between the covariates. The most important insight of this study is the presence of bidirectional causality from economic growth to broadband penetration in the long run. In addition, we find that financial development together with broadband penetration Granger-cause economic growth in the long run.     

Cost and learning efficiency drivers in Australian schools: a two-stage network DEA approach

This article explore performance issues in Australian public schools, using a two-stage DEA network model, which accounts simultaneously for both cost and learning efficiency levels. In the cost efficiency stage, different types of expenses and investments are employed to support a given number of students, teachers and administrative staff. In the learning efficiency stage, these groups of individuals help to produce important outputs related to performance in student tests and school rankings. Results indicate that Australian public schools are heterogeneous. Policy implications are also discussed.     

Continuity Under a Different Name: The Outcome of Privatisation in Serbia

Normally, privatisation is seen as beneficial. This paper considers the case of Serbia – a latecomer in the matter – where privatisation was partly a result of exogenous pressures and where the process has been deemed a failure. In Serbia, a sizeable number of privatised firms were bought by bureaucrats and politicians and all firms were subjected to a period of supervision. We argue that the design of this process allowed rent-seekers to conserve their privileges through asset-stripping, which explains the failure. In order to do so, we perform an empirical analysis of the determinants of liquidation, merger and bankruptcy of privatised firms from 2002 to 2015. We construct a novel data set from primary sources, free of the ‘survivorship bias’ and containing proxies for various types of owners, indirect signs of asset-stripping strategy and a broad range of controls. Our results indicate that firms owned by politicians faced significantly higher risks of bankruptcy, especially after the end of supervision.     

An Approach to a Visual Language for Convective Fluid Flows: Visualization of Geophysical Simulations

It was known that deep within numbers and binary data from simulations of geophysical convective flows resided various patterns. Two models of convective fluid flows were being considered. One was a model of two-dimensional (768 × 256) air convection with finite Prandtl number of one and Rayleigh number of 10⁸?10¹⁰, and another was a model of three-dimensional (up to 120 × 120 × 90) mantle convection with infinite Prandtl number and Rayleigh number of 10⁶?10⁸. Clearly, phenomena existed which superceded each individual dimensionless computer model to provide a piece of information regarding actual fluid flows. The problem was how to find, prove, and communicate these patterns and phenomena for convection simulations with gigabytes of data. In a search for such an analytical and communicative tool, the alternative of visualization was considered. The need for visualization was recognized and discussed. Then, utilizing both two- and three-dimensional models of high Rayleigh number convection, basic techniques of style and content were developed. Applications of the visualization techniques were designed utilizing IBM’s Data Explorer in order to create communicative images and movies, and after the applications, the problems of data storage and transfer became apparent. Throughout the process though, it became clear how important the language of vision actually could be in the geophysics community. In a field in which words such as plumes and internal waves have in ways replaced mathematics as the basic language for science, there is a need for another resource, another language-the visualization of convective fluid flows.