Measuring securities litigation risk

Extant research commonly uses indicator variables for industry membership to proxy for securities litigation risk. We provide evidence on the construct validity of this measure by reporting on the predictive ability of alternative models of litigation risk. While the industry measure alone does a relatively poor job of predicting litigation, supplementing this variable with measures of firm characteristics (such as size, growth, and stock volatility) considerably improves predictive ability. Additional variables such as those that proxy for corporate governance quality and managerial opportunism do not add much to predictive ability and so do not meet the cost–benefit test for inclusion.     

Il mercto interbancario dei depositi: Previsione a breve e gestione della riserva obbligatoria

La capacità di fare previsioni sul mercato monetario è un punto cruciale nella gestione ottima di tesoreria di una banca, anche in virtú della possibilità di mobilizzare parte della riserva obbligatoria presso la Banca d’Italia. In questo studio viene mostrato come l’uso congiuuto di tecniche di previsione per i tassi a breve e la costruzione di un modello decisionale per la gestione della liquidità, basato sulle previsioni, permettano Alla banca di attnare una politica piu attiva con risultati globalmente positivi, in termini di interessi percepiti. A tal tine viene proposta una classe di previsori detti caolici e impostato un problema di decisione dinamica per la gestione ottima della riserva obbligatoria. Infine, si mostra un’applicazione di tale strategia sui tassiOvernight.     

Ad processing and persuasion: The role of brand identification

This article examines the relationship between ad learning and ad-based persuasion; it proposes that consumer identification of the advertising brand positively affects attitude toward the ad, which in turn enhances positive brand attitudes. A model integrating learning and attitudinal responses to ads was tested with aggregate readership recognition scores and attitudinal measures for different ads. Results suggested that identification of the advertiser is a crucial operation in ad processing. Ads that facilitated identification of the brand appeared credible, which contributed to enhancing their persuasive impact. Neither the degree of overall attention devoted to an ad previous to brand identification, nor subsequent extensive elaboration of the ad's copy, affected ad or brand attitudes. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Do upscale restaurant owners use wine lists as a differentiation strategy?

The present paper studies various criteria used by upscale restaurant owners to differentiate their restaurants and to define their positioning. In particular, we studied several wine list attributes. Through a cluster analysis and a correspondence factor analysis based on different objective wine list characteristics, we obtain two main differentiated profiles of restaurants according to the relative importance of their wine list in comparison with food menu: wine selection and complementarity. Upscale restaurants need to define their positioning strategy and elaborate their wine lists according to their strategy.     

Unobserved Heterogeneity or Measurement Errors? Testing for Correlated Effects with Measurement Errors *

This paper addresses the problem of endogenous regressors due to the presence of unobserved heterogeneity, when this is correlated with the regressors, and caused by regressors’ measurement errors. A simple two‐stage testing procedure is proposed for the identification of the underlying cause of correlation between regressors and the error term. The statistical performance of the resulting sequential test is assessed using simulated data.     

Third time right? The EC's third action programme for women

Amid the welter of “new initiatives” from Brussels promoting social integration is a programme for women which appears to offer something new. Nothing in the way of new money, nor novel employment projects, rather a distinctly feminist flavour: “equality” is now to be integrated “into general mainstream policy”; grassroot action - organisation at the local and regional level - is required; working life has to be “reconciled” with family responsibilities and, finally, “women's unequal representation in all spheres of decision making” has to be addressed.

How far this rhetoric will translate into enhanced employment prospects for women, especially women in this country, is nevertheless highly problematic.     

Wages and the City. Evidence from Italy

We analyze empirically the impact of urban agglomeration on Italian wages. Using micro-data from the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth for the years 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2002 on more than 22,000 employees distributed in 242 randomly drawn local labor markets, we test whether the structure of wages varies with urban scale. We find that every additional 100,000 inhabitants in the local labor market raises earnings by 0.1 percent. The use of a geographical approach enables us to state that this effect decays very rapidly with distance, losing significance beyond approximately 12 kilometers. We also find that urbanization does not affect returns to experience and that it reduces returns to education and to tenure with current firm, while providing a premium to worker supervisors.     

Does Networking with Colleagues Matter in Enhancing Job Performance?

The present study empirically investigates the link between network properties and job performance using a sample of 121 middle managers from Beijing, China. The primary objective is to examine how characteristics of the person and the job moderate the effects of networks on self-rated performance. This study contributes to the network literature by investigating both the impact of network characteristics in terms of information accessibility and diversity on job performance and the interaction effects of gender, managerial rank, and functional areas of the ego with the network characteristics.     

The role of attribution theory in control systems

In this paper we develop a revised model of the management control process in light of attribution theory. Attribution theory describes how people seek and use information to structure and to control their social environment. We examine how and why people cognitively interact with feedback information contained in performance reports in making expectancy and variance investigation decisions. We also discuss conflicts that a superior and a subordinate may have due to different attributions used to explain behavior.