How advanced is the strategy paradigm? The role of particularism and universalism in shaping research outcomes

As the field of strategy reaches its 25th anniversary, we examine how far the field has progressed during that time. Both management and strategy research have been characterized as being in an early stage of development. We draw on Kuhn's ( 1996 ) paradigm development model, which posits a connection between a field's stage of maturity and research processes and outcomes, to assess the maturity of the strategy field. We conduct two studies. The first is a cross‐discipline comparison of productivity norms for university faculty. The second study examines longitudinal research outcomes for a sample of 945 strategy faculty. Our results indicate that strategy has the attributes of both an early stage and mature field: while overall research norms are low relative to other fields, they are driven far more by merit‐based than non‐merit factors. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Short-Sale Restrictions and Price Clustering: Evidence from SEC Rule 201

We provide a novel test of information-based theories of price clustering by examining trade, order, and the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO) quote price clustering during periods when information is removed from the market. We use a natural experiment of short-sale restrictions resulting from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Rule 201 to more effectively determine the impact of information on price clustering. We find evidence of increased price clustering for trades, orders, and NBBO prices during short-sale restrictions. Overall, our findings indicate that short-sale restrictions harm the price discovery process and lead to a reduction in market efficiency.     

Decomposing the market,industry, and firm components of profitability: implications for forecasts of profitability

Academics and practitioners frequently highlight that overall market and industry performance is an important aspect of a firm’s profitability. However, few studies allow for the decomposition of a firm’s profitability into market, industry, and idiosyncratic components, and those that do often assume that the market and industry components are cross-sectional constants. In this study, we allow for variation in firm-specific sensitivities to market, industry, and idiosyncratic economic shocks, and then assess whether and when this decomposition results in improved forecasts of profitability. For the overall sample, we find significant improvements in terms of the magnitude of forecast errors and the frequency with which forecasts based on the decomposed values are superior versus forecasts using only total profitability. Across the sample as a whole, decomposing profitability in the forecasting process results in more accurate forecasts greater than two-thirds of the time (increasing to almost 80% within certain subsamples). Our results provide strong support for the role that firm-specific measures of market and industry profitability play in predicting a firm’s future performance, as well as highlighting settings where the decomposition provides the greatest benefit in terms of predicting future changes in profitability.     

Impacts of household loan regulation on financial stability: evidence from Korea

The paper examines whether banking regulations and monetary policy contributed to controlling the fragility of household debt in Korea. The results show that housing loan regulations such as debt to income regulation contributed to a lower household debt delinquency ratio. Lowering the target interest rate provided additional stabilisation of the delinquency ratio. It is recommended that the government adopt an appropriate mix of regulation and monetary policy to control household financial fragility. The financial supervisory services need to be involved in managing debt to income regulation and minimising financial instability and financial market distortions. Further, the monetary authority has to adopt a more effective position in controlling the real lending interest rate and the delinquency ratio of household loans. Such a policy mix will improve effectiveness in controlling financial fragility, especially at a time of financial crisis.     

MODELLING A REGIME‐SHIFTING BEVERIDGE CURVE

This paper offers new insights into Beveridge curve analysis by modelling the unemployment–vacancy rate relationship within a Markov regime‐switching environment in which the probabilities of curve‐shifting are determined endogenously by shift factors. Shift factors include structural factors such as labour market participation and net migration, while cyclical variables include GDP growth, the real rate of interest, and labour productivity. This approach enables us to estimate regime‐specific parameters and to assess the role played by these factors in influencing the transition probabilities of switching between regimes. Using New Zealand data, we show that increases in the participation rate have shifted the Beveridge curve inward, while increases in net migration have shifted the curve outward.     

Secured debt and managerial incentives

Financial theory holds that firms can control agency costs through the use of short-term and secured debt. We examine the relation between the use of secured debt and the incentive of the manager to increase the risk of the firm, as measured by vega. We find that firms utilize secured debt to a lesser extent when managerial volatility sensitivity is higher. Our results suggest that these same firms employ short-term debt as the primary tool to control risk-shifting. Managers with a high risk appetite avoid secured debt, but appear to do so without compromising the interests of the shareholders.     

Credibility in Loss Reserving

This article proposes using credibility theory in the context of stochastic claims reserving. We consider the situation where an insurer has access to the claims experience of its peer competitors and has the potential to improve prediction of outstanding liabilities by incorporating information from other insurers. Based on the framework of Bayesian linear models, we show that the development factor in the classical chain-ladder setting has a credibility expression: a weighted average of the prior mean and the best estimate from the data. In the empirical analysis, we examine loss triangles for the line of commercial auto insurance from a portfolio of insurers in the United States. We employ hierarchical model for the specification of prior and show that prediction could be improved through borrowing strength among insurers based on a hold-out sample validation.     

Digital gaming culture in Vietnam: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

New information and communication technologies continue to spread rapidly into the Asian marketplace, which has led to new patterns of leisure consumption, one of the most popular being digital gaming. However, in Vietnam there is limited research on gaming as a leisure activity. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of digital gaming in Vietnam to better understand how it is practiced in this culture. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five gaming industry figures and gamers. Thematic analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis. The findings indicate that glocalisation, socialised gaming practices and competitiveness characterise the Vietnamese gaming experience. The distinct culture of Vietnam combined with globalised gaming consumption habits has created new modes of play culture, and hence leisure experiences that are growing in pervasive and influential ways.