Financial Misrepresentation and Its Impact on Rivals

This paper examines how the announcement of an accusation of fraudulent financial misrepresentation affects industry rivals of the accused firm. Consistent with the importance of the industry competition effect, we find that rivals in less competitive industries benefit from the event. However, in competitive industries, the information spillover effect dominates the competition effect, resulting in negative returns to rival shareholders following the event. The spillover effect increases in importance with the severity of the accusation and is more important for opaque rivals and for rivals that had positive stock price reactions to past positive earnings surprises of the accused firm.     

Risk assessment for uncertain cash flows: model ambiguity, discounting ambiguity, and the role of bubbles

We study the risk assessment of uncertain cash flows in terms of dynamic convex risk measures for processes as introduced in Cheridito et al. (Electron. J. Probab. 11(3):57–106, 2006). These risk measures take into account not only the amounts but also the timing of a cash flow. We discuss their robust representation in terms of suitably penalised probability measures on the optional σ-field. This yields an explicit analysis both of model and discounting ambiguity. We focus on supermartingale criteria for time consistency. In particular, we show how “bubbles” may appear in the dynamic penalisation, and how they cause a breakdown of asymptotic safety of the risk assessment procedure.     

Towards a General Theory of Good-Deal Bounds*

We consider an incomplete market in the form of a multidimensional Markovian factor model, driven by a general marked point process (representing discrete jump events), as well as by a standard multidimensional Wiener process. Within this framework, we study arbitrage-free good-deal pricing bounds for derivative assets, thereby extending the results by Cochrane and Saá Requejo (2000) to the point process case, while, at the same time, obtaining a radical simplification of the theory. To illustrate, we present numerical results for the classic Merton jump-diffusion model. As a by-product of the general theory, we derive extended Hansen-Jagannathan bounds for the Sharpe Ratio process in the point process setting. *We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius foundation. We thank Anders Forsgren, Krister Svanberg, and Jan Kallsen for a number of very helpful comments. We are very grateful to Mathias Stolpe for providing us with the optimization code used in our numerical example. A number of very helpful comments from the editor and an anonymous referee has greatly improved the paper.     

Ethical aspects of e‐business: the use of codes of conduct

This paper examines the establishment and enforcement of codes of conduct governing the use of Internet technology as a means of providing a basis of trust in the e‐business context. The discussion draws on the findings of a survey of 80 UK organisations, and considers the relationship between factors such as organisation size, type, use of IT, the length of time with an Internet connection and the use of a code of conduct, as well as the specific areas of Internet technology covered by codes of conduct. The paper also investigates the extent of disciplinary cases associated with the misuse of Internet technology, as well as the ownership and responsibility for implementing codes of conduct. The survey results suggest that the use of codes of conduct varies significantly from organisation to organisation, and that those who initiate such codes are not those seen as being responsible for implementing them. The results also indicate that a growing number of employees are disciplined for misuse of facilities offered by Internet technology.     

Seeing sustainability in business operations: US and British food retailer experiments with accountability

This article compares how food retail industries in Britain and the United States are facing sustainability challenges. The British and US industries are in different stages of maturity in identifying and responding to sustainability. Some UK retailers have begun developing broad‐based accountability systems that may aid them to see sustainability in their business operations. By examining what retailers are doing, how accountability systems can inform retailers and the business case for accountability, this article argues that retailers can gain significant business advantages with strategies to improve accountability. Compared with their American counterparts, British retailers may be better placed to deal with sustainability issues in future. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

THE FUNDING OF TRADITIONAL ORGANISED CRIME IN RUSSIA

The changed economic and political situation in Russia since the 1990s brought about a qualitative transformation of Russian organised crime, particularly in organisational and behavioural patterns. In particular, a pronounced shift from violent crime towards economic crime is being observed. Criminals try to establish and exercise control over legitimate businesses via corrupt politicians, local authorities and/or law enforcement officials. A tendency towards the consolidation of criminal groups within given territories is also discernible, whilst there are signs of increased interregional integration among different criminal organisations.     

International joint ventures,HRM and viable knowledge migration

International joint ventures (IJVs) are an increasingly popular form of voluntary co-operation between organizations of different sizes, sectors and geographical locations to satisfy strategic purposes and manage increasingly complex business environments. However, international joint ventures may fail, and HRM plays an important role in their success or failure. From a systems perspective, IJVs offer several kinds of complexity which may contribute to the generation of conflict and failure. The paper proposes that we explore the role of HRM in IJVs through viable systems theory, especially in relation to knowledge migration and organizational learning. The theory presented distinguishes between the cognitive, organizing and behavioural domains of the IJV as a system in the analysis of the relationship between types of worldview and behaviour in IJVs. It proposes a model of viable knowledge development in IJVs and its relationship to HRM, involving knowledge migration, appreciation and action, leading to organizational learning, and identifies directions for future research.     

ON FINITE DIMENSIONAL REALIZATIONS OF TWO-COUNTRY INTEREST RATE MODELS

This paper explores how consistent two-dimensional families of forward rate curves can be constructed on an international market. Applying the approach in Björk and Christenssen (1999) and Björk and Svensson (2001) , we study when a system of inherently infinite dimensional domestic and foreign forward rate processes in a two-country economy with spot (forward) exchange rate possesses finite dimensional realizations. In the system with the forward exchange rate, the forward interest rate equations are supplemented by a third infinite dimensional stochastic differential equation representing the forward exchange rate dynamics. We construct and fit consistent families to observed Euro and USD yields as well as the forward (spot) EUR/USD exchange rate.     

The role of data limitations,seasonality and frequency in asset pricing models

We demonstrate that the estimates of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) parameters significantly differ across samples, which are based on different days of the week (representing different seasons). Our evidence suggests that the “noise” in the data is not an issue. We also show that parameter differences for mixed samples, which contain information on different seasons, are too small to distort statistical analysis. This is so because parameter estimates converge to some values (but not necessarily to the true values) for high frequencies or as the sample size becomes large. Our evidence suggests a possibility that the CAPM may hold empirically if seasonality in the parameters of the population model are taken into consideration.