The Impact of Value Line Special Situations Recommendations on Stock Prices: Evidence From the Over-the-Counter Market

The value to investors of the information provided by the Value Line Investment Service has been the subject of discussion for many years. This paper examines the information content of the recommendations made by the Value Line Special Situations Service to buy (sell) specific stock issues. The advice given by Value Line generates significant abnormal returns to shareholders near its release date. However, when the price response over longer periods is considered, the effect of the recommendations appears to be transitory. Further, there appears to be no difference in the overall price response between listed and over-the-counter securities.     

Knowledge translation and exchange in the Canadian microbial food safety system: A quantitative assessment of researcher awareness,attitude, and activities with government policymakers

Knowledge translation and exchange (KTE) is a process through which research evidence can more effectively inform decision making in policy and practice environments. A telephone survey of Canadian microbial food safety researchers was conducted in 2009 to examine aspects of researcher KTE activities with government policymakers. Overall, researcher awareness of and engagement in KTE activities was high, although engagement was mainly through end-of-research dissemination activities rather than throughout the research process (integrated knowledge translation) and engagement in some high-quality KTE activities was low. Government researchers were significantly more likely to engage in KTE activities with federal policymakers and did so with greater frequency than non-government researchers.     

Monitoring by financial intermediaries: Banks vs. Nonbanks

Recent empirical evidence indicates that captical markers respond positively to debt-financing announcements in the form of loan agreements. Nonbank firms, prompted largely by technological and telecommunications advances, have also entered the commercial lending market in recent years. This article finds evidence that borrowing firms experience positive abnormal returns upon announcing conclusions of loan agreements with nonbank firms. Our evidence suggests that nonbanks have replicated some of the unique attributes formerly enjoyed only by banks.     

Top performing banks: the benefits to investors

In this study, we examine whether superior accounting performance as reported in the annual ABA Banking Journal Top Performing Banks survey translates into higher investor returns. We observe that the announcement effect is more pronounced during the early years of the survey. For the entire survey period and for later sub-periods in which bank holding companies (BHCs) are ranked based on return on equity (ROE), we observe statistically-significant superior holding period returns against both the S&P 500 index and in some cases a matched sample. These results include raw and risk-adjusted returns as well as buy and hold abnormal returns (BHARs). We obtain similar results after controlling for the market return, size, book-to-market ratio, and momentum factors.     

Agency theory and the House bank affair

In one of the worst political scandals of the 1990s, a large number of members of the U.S. House of Representatives wrote checks on nonexistent balances in what has become known as the House bank scandal. Agency theory tells us that the most entrenched members of the House should be more likely to consume excessive perquisites in the form of writing more bad checks. In this paper, we employ a Tobit model to test whether more entrenched members of the House engaged in excessive writing of bad checks. Our results support the agency-theoretic interpretation and confirm that entrenched members were more likely to write a greater number of bad checks.     

Double deprivation: Public and private drug distribution from the perspective of the third world poor

Millions of the world's poor have no access to life-saving drugs. Neither the public nor private drug distribution system caters for their needs. The Third World poor suffer from the unequal distribution of limited public health resources and dangerous sales pressures in the rapidly expanding and largely uncontrolled commercial markets. They lack purchasing power to influence the dynamics of the market which is characterized by a high turnover in profitable, but inessential products and expensive brand-name drugs. Comprehensive national drug policies to rationalize both public and private sectors and improve the availability of essential drugs are urgently needed.     

Implementation of technology and relationships to supply chain performance: apparel manufacturers' perspectives

Apparel manufacturers operate within a distribution channel with suppliers, retailers and consumers. In a competitive market, apparel manufacturers, in transactions with retailers, must make changes. These changes have potential to affect the supply chain and consequently to add or reduce value of products for the retailer. This study investigated changes in products and services associated with implementation of new technologies. A two-stage design used both a qualitative study and a quantitative study. The qualitative study with 10 industry personnel was used to develop the change variable. The quantitative study had US apparel manufacturers (n = 105) respond to a mailed survey about changes their firms had experienced. Findings indicated that implementation of Quick Response (QR) technologies when moderated by the demographics of fashion level, seasonality, and price point of the product did correspond with changes in product offerings and customer services.     

ESTABLISHING A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR REGULATED INDUSTRIES'ACCOUNTING AND ACCOUNTABILITY

The regulation of monopoly utilities represents one of the'new frontiers'between the state and the private sector. Conceptual frameworks developed for profit-making companies are relevant to several of the central issues facing regulatory accounting. However, the role of regulation as a surrogate for the market place brings with it additional complexities for the clear attribution of accountability between the regulated company and the regulator with regard to the investor and the public. This means that key issues on procedures, confidentiality and public access to financial information on the regulated companies, and on the basis of regulatory decisions, must also be addressed within a conceptual framework for regulated industries. Without a general clarification of these issues, the process of regulation will increasingly be judged to be simply discretionary, rather than as publicly accountable.