The robustness of the Sarbanes Oxley effect on the U.S. capital market

We examine the incidence of new listings and delistings on U.S. stock exchanges and firms’ propensity to delist, as a function of general market conditions, firm fundamentals, and the costs of compliance with the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX). We find that both general market conditions and firm fundamentals explain the delisting incidence and firms’ delisting decisions; while SOX variables are positively associated with firms’ delisting likelihood only when general market conditions are not included in the analyses. Further analyses on the population partitioned into size quintiles suggest that the passage of SOX was not associated with an increase in the likelihood of delisting for any size quintile of firms and that the implementation of SOX section 404 is positively associated with the delisting likelihood for midsized and larger firms. Our empirical evidence is useful to regulators as they consider changes in the imposition and implementation of SOX section 404.     

Impact of earnings performance on price‐sensitive disclosures under the Australian continuous disclosure regime

This study examines the relation between accounting earnings and the frequency of price‐sensitive corporate disclosure under Australia's statutory continuous disclosure requirements. Despite low litigation threats and excepting loss‐making firms, results show that firms with earnings declines (bad news) are more likely to make continuous disclosure than firms with earnings increases (good news). This suggests that market forces and regulators’ scrutiny are sufficient to induce a ‘bad news’ disclosure bias. This study also examines the ‘materiality’ requirement under the continuous disclosure requirements and finds a positive relation between disclosure frequency and the magnitude of earnings news. The earnings–return correlation is positively associated with disclosure frequency for the financial services industry.     

An analysis of the profiles and motivations of habitual commodity speculators

The focus of this study is the habitual speculator in commodity futures markets. The speculator's activity broadens a market, creates essential liquidity, and performs an irreplaceable pricing function. Working knowledge of the profiles and motivations of habitual speculators is essential to both market theorists and policy makers. Responses to a 73-question survey were collected directly from retail commodity brokers with offices in Alabama. Each questionnaire recorded information on an individual commodity client who had traded for an extended period of time. The typical trader studied is a married, white male, age 52. He is affluent and well educated. He is a self-employed business owner who can recover from financial setbacks. He is a politically right-wing conservative involved in the political process. He assumes a good deal of risk in most phases of his life. He is both an aggressive investor and an active gambler. This trader does not consider preservation of his commodity capital to be a very high trading priority. As a result, he rarely uses stop loss orders. He wins more frequently than he loses (over 51% of the time) but is an overall net loser in dollar terms. In spite of recurring trading losses, he has never made any substantial change in his basic trading style. To this trader, whether he won or lost on a particular trade is more important than the size of the win or loss. Thus he consistently cuts his profits short while letting his losses run. He also worries more about missing a move in the market by being on the sidelines than about losing by being on the wrong side of a market move; that is, being in the action is more important than the financial consequences. Participating brokers confirmed that for the majority of the speculators studied, the primary motivation for continuous trading is the recreational utility derived largely from having a market position. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 18:765–801, 1998     

Green Innovation,Managerial Concern and Firm Performance: An Empirical Study

Extant literature, while often suggesting a positive link between green innovation and firm performance, is inconclusive. Moreover, the possibly moderating role of management has not been sufficiently considered. Using a unique dataset sampling 188 manufacturing firms in China, we examine how managerial concern (for green issues) moderates the relationship between green innovation and firm performance. We find that green process innovation and green product innovation both significantly (positively) predict firm performance, when not considering managerial concern for the environment. Once managerial concern is included, we observe that it compounds the positive effect of green process innovation on firm performance – but not product innovation, which no longer explains significant unique variance in firm performance. The findings hold various implications for future research and business policy. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Children’s Snacks,their Ads and Consumer Sovereignty

Abstract

The concept of sovereign consumer preferences is challenged from three sides: child consumers, unhealthy food and advertising. The two theoretical concepts of merit goods and libertarian paternalism are implemented in order to classify situations in which full consumer sovereignty does not apply. An empirical analysis of ads for children’s snacks reveals the libertarian paternalist perspective as helpful for understanding the demand for and justification of ‘soft’ governmental intervention in the case of the advertised snacks, whilst the ads for these snacks may well be demerit goods. The banning or heavy taxation of these ads is therefore advocated.     

Institutions and Capital Structure: The Case of Chinese Property Firms

Different institutional features have been found to affect capital structure decisions, but their connections to corporate finance theories are not always clear. This study aims to assess the predictive power of the agency and pecking order theories in two distinct information environments. The strategy is to compare two similar groups of property firms listed on the Mainland and Hong Kong stock exchanges respectively. Both groups operate in the Mainland property market and are subject to the same tax code, but the degrees of transparency and integrity of the stock markets are weaker for the Mainland-listed firms. We find that factors related to agency conflicts and information asymmetries exert a stronger influence on the capital structure decisions of Mainland-listed firms than on those of the Hong Kong-listed firms. This is confirmed by a test of the agency theory using such corporate governance factors as managerial shareholding and shareholding concentration and by a test of the pecking order theory using an error correction model. A further test on the increments of R-squared in the regression models shows that variables derived from the two theories better explain the variations of the capital structure of Mainland-listed firms than those of Hong Kong-listed firms.     

Public news announcements,short-sale restriction and informational efficiency

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In this paper, we address the question that with differences in opinion in reality, how quickly stocks incorporate news shocks when they are...     

‘The City of Our Dream’: Owambe Urbanism and Low‐income Women's Resistance in Ibadan,Nigeria

Ibadan, Nigeria, has been an outlier in the ranking of world‐class cities. But in the past seven years, amidst the circulating Africa Rising narrative, Ibadan has embarked on what I call an Afropolitan Imagineering project of owambe urbanism. Afropolitan Imagineering refers to the production of new images/narratives of Africa and Africans as world‐class and cosmopolitan. Owambe urbanism is a spatio‐temporal neoliberal project concerning destination, arrival and place‐making, which promises a shared and happy future for all urban dwellers. I argue that this promise of happiness is challenged by low‐income women who are cognizant that a shared and happy future is impossible when little effort is made to address social inequality in the present. They thus refuse to be ‘good’ citizens and invoke an alternative urban futurity through their embodied and imagined resistance.