Blockholder Exit Threats and Financial Reporting Quality

Recent theoretical and empirical studies suggest that blockholders (shareholders with ownership ≥ 5 percent) exert governance through the threat of exit. Blockholders have strong incentives to gather private information and sell their shares when managers are perceived to underperform. To prevent blockholders from selling their shares and the firm from suffering a stock price decline, managers align their actions with the interests of shareholders. As a result of the greater manager‐shareholder alignment, managers' actions are more likely to be in shareholders' best interest, and consequently there is less need for managers to manipulate earnings. Consistent with these predictions from economic theory, we find evidence that as exit threat increases, firms have higher financial reporting quality. Theory also predicts that the impact of blockholders' exit threat on financial reporting quality (FRQ) should increase as the manager's wealth is tied more closely to the stock price, and this is what we find. Our study contributes to the research on the impact of shareholders on FRQ and to an emerging literature on the impact of blockholders in financial markets. Blockholders play an important role in managers' reporting outcomes through their actions as informed investors.     

Do Analysts Matter for Corporate Tax Planning? Evidence from a Natural Experiment

We exploit an exogenous shock to analyst coverage as a result of brokerage house mergers and closures to examine whether financial analysts influence the tax‐planning activities of the firms they cover. Using a difference‐in‐differences design, we find that, on average, firms affected by broker mergers and/or closures experience a reduction in their GAAP (cash) effective tax rates (ETR) of 2.5 percent (2.6 percent), relative to control firms, translating into average tax expense (cash tax) savings of $34 ($35) million. The treatment effect is more pronounced among firms with lower pre‐event analyst coverage. To explore how analysts affect tax planning, we further document that the treatment effect is greater among firms that lose an analyst who provided an implied ETR forecast in the past, suggesting that analysts influence tax planning via their tax‐specific research efforts. In addition, we find that after merger/closure, weakly governed firms increase their use of aggressive tax strategies, and financially distressed firms experience a larger reduction of cash effective tax rates, relative to control firms. Overall, we provide evidence that a shock to analyst coverage sufficiently changes the cost‐benefit trade‐off of tax planning.     

Age heaping and numeracy: looking behind the curtain

Age‐heaping‐based numeracy indicators have served as valuable tools to derive basic human capital estimates, especially for periods where other indicators are unavailable. However, the accuracy of individual age statements usually remains unknown, and due to the lack of precise information it can only be assumed that excessive occurrence of multiples of five in age distributions reflects inferior numerical skills. This article addresses this lacuna by identifying 162 individuals in two independent data sources: self‐reported age statements and independently kept records which are based on family heritage books and church registers. This method makes it possible to identify individual misreporting and the degree of accuracy of each individual. Findings show that not everyone who reported a multiple of five was reporting an incorrect age, nor was it the case that everyone who reported an age that was not a multiple of five was reporting an accurate age. The empirical analysis shows that the commonly used binary numeracy indicator is correlated with the observed degree of accuracy in age statements, and that a more sophisticated occupational background reduces this inaccuracy. These results tentatively suggest that the commonly used binary indicator measuring age heaping is a valuable proxy for numerical skills and occupational background in a population.     

家具企业核心竞争力评价体系研究

在激烈的市场竞争中,企业的核心竞争力成为管理界的研究热潮。在家具市场由卖方市场转为买方市场的今天,对家具企业的核心竞争力进行研究具有一定的现实意义。本文从以客户为中心的角度,将财务绩效融入核心竞争力的评价,构建了家具企业核心竞争力的评价体系。     

Corporate Lobbying and Firm Performance

Corporate lobbying activities are designed to influence legislators, regulators and courts, presumably to encourage favorable policies and/or outcomes. In dollar terms, corporate lobbying expenditures are typically one or even two orders of magnitude larger than spending by Political Action Committees (PAC), and, unlike PAC donations, lobbying amounts are direct corporate expenditures. We use data made available by the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 to examine this more pervasive form of corporate political activity. We find that, on average, lobbying is positively related to accounting and market measures of financial performance. These results are robust across a number of empirical specifications. We also report market performance evidence using a portfolio approach. We find that portfolios of firms with the highest lobbying intensities significantly outperform their benchmarks in the three years following portfolio formation.     

More on Middlemen: Equilibrium Entry and Efficiency in Intermediated Markets

This paper generalizes Rubinstein and Wolinsky's (1987) model of middlemen (intermediation) by incorporating production and search costs, plus more general matching and bargaining. This allows us to study many new issues, including entry, efficiency, and dynamics. In the benchmark model, equilibrium exists uniquely and involves production and intermediation for some parameters but not others. Sometimes intermediation is essential: the market operates if and only if middlemen are active. If bargaining powers are set correctly equilibrium is efficient; if not there can be too much or too little economic activity. This is novel, compared to the original Rubinstein–Wolinsky model, where equilibrium is always efficient.     

A note on how to measure hubbing practices in airline networks

Benefits and costs associated to hubbing practices of airlines are still subject to much debate. In the previous literature, some standard spatial concentration indices have been proposed to measure it. However, we show that these indices are “ill-defined” because they do not take into account the salient characteristic of hubbing: connecting passengers. The purpose of this research is to present a new methodology which avoids the pitfalls of other methods. Our new methodology also analyzes the level of concentration of the connecting passengers studying two different dimensions: hub airports and routes. Finally, we apply our methodology to some US carriers.     

Motivations and Use Context in Mobile Tourism Shopping: Applying Contingency and Task–Technology Fit Theories

Mobile tourism shopping is an emerging market, but there is little theoretically based research on the topic. This study investigates the impact of motivations (value, enjoyment, time saving and mobility) on consumer satisfaction by applying contingency and task–technology fit theories in the mobile tourism shopping context. The results show that value and enjoyment have significant effects on satisfaction. Use context is found to have a full mediating role between time saving and satisfaction as well as between mobility and satisfaction. This study offers theoretical and practical contributions to the tourism literature and mobile tourism industry. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.