Spillover of corporate governance standards in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

In cross-border acquisitions, the differences between the bidder and target corporate governance (measured by newly constructed indices capturing shareholder, minority shareholder, and creditor protection) have an important impact on the takeover returns. Our country-level corporate governance indices capture the changes in the quality of the national corporate governance regulations over the past 15 years. When the bidder is from a country with a strong shareholder orientation (relative to the target), part of the total synergy value of the takeover may result from the improvement in the governance of the target assets. In full takeovers, the corporate governance regulation of the bidder is imposed on the target (the positive spillover by law hypothesis). In partial takeovers, the improvement in the target corporate governance may occur on voluntary basis (the spillover by control hypothesis). Our empirical analysis corroborates both spillover effects. In contrast, when the bidder is from a country with poorer shareholder protection, the negative spillover by law hypothesis states that the anticipated takeover gains will be lower as the poorer corporate governance regime of the bidder will be imposed on the target. The alternative bootstrapping hypothesis argues that poor-governance bidders voluntarily bootstrap to the better-governance regime of the target. We do find support for the bootstrapping effect.     

The Equity Market Risk Premium and the Valuation of Overseas Investments

There is little agreement among academics or practitioners about how to measure the size of the equity market risk premium, particularly when it relates to investments in emerging markets. Using monthly equity returns for 22 developed and 24 emerging markets covering the period 1976–2006, the authors find that developed capital markets have experienced significant increases in their degree of integration with the U.S. and world market indexes, while emerging markets remain at least partly segmented from those of the U.S. and the world. For countries that are reasonably well integrated into global capital markets, the authors suggest using the U.S.—based equity market risk premium. But when valuing investments in emerging markets, they recommend use of the Capital Asset Pricing Model adjusted for political risk and a measure of co‐movement between the foreign and U.S. stock markets. The authors also remind readers that the equity market risk premium is supposed to be a forward‐looking measure, and that the common practice of inferring the future from the past can be misleading, particularly in the case of rapidly developing emerging markets.     

Corporate governance quality: Trends and real effects

This paper constructs a composite index of corporate governance quality, documents its evolution during the 1994–2003 period in selected emerging and developed economies, and assesses its impact on growth and productivity of the economy and its corporate sector. Our investigation yields three main findings. First, corporate governance quality in most countries has overall improved, although in varying degrees and with a few notable exceptions. Second, the data exhibit cross-country convergence in corporate governance quality with countries that score poorly initially catching up with countries with high corporate governance scores. Third, the impact of improvements in corporate governance quality on traditional measures of real economic activity—GDP growth, productivity growth, and the ratio of investment to GDP—is positive, significant and quantitatively relevant, and the growth effect is particularly pronounced for industries that are most dependent on external finance.     

Extreme Value Analysis of Mortality at the Oldest Ages: A Case Study Based on Individual Ages at Death

In this article, the force of mortality at the oldest ages is studied using the statistical tools from extreme value theory. A unique data basis recording all individual ages at death above 95 for extinct cohorts born in Belgium between 1886 and 1904 is used to illustrate the relevance of the proposed approach. No leveling off in the force of mortality at the oldest ages is found, and the analysis supports the existence of an upper limit to human lifetime for these cohorts. Therefore, assuming that the force of mortality becomes ultimately constant, that is, that the remaining lifetime tends to the Negative Exponential distribution as the attained age grows is a conservative strategy for managing life annuities.     

Intermediaries,Credibility and Incentives to Collude

A seller contracts and potentially colludes with a certification intermediary. We investigate the intermediary’s incentives to collude, her pricing strategy, and the extent to which buyers rely on the intermediary’s announcements. The probability of collusion is an endogenous variable, determined by the intermediary’s pricing strategy. The extent to which the market relies on the intermediary’s reports, the certification price and the intermediary’s profit decrease as the intermediary becomes less patient. By making certification mandatory, the intermediary loses her ability to screen out low‐quality sellers, which increases the probability of collusion.     

The Dutch Grey Market

When-issued trading concerns transactions in securities that have not yet been issued. This paper investigates the Dutch “grey market” for when-issued shares prior to stock splits, using a unique hand-collected data set. Market makers are more likely to set up a when-issued market when the underlying firm is larger, the relative trading volume of the stock is higher, and the stock return is less volatile. The when-issued securities trade at a small premium over the regular shares during the weeks prior to the stock split, but this when-issued premium disappears in the last days of trading.     

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随着企业对性能、成本和能源控制方面的要求越来越高，一种能够有效共享资源、应用程序、软件和信息的平台——云计算技术应运而生。为了在有线或无线基础设施上充分发挥分布式计算模式的优势，企业和云服务供应商都需要可靠和高性能的智能物理网络层，以便在所需环境中实现可管理性和可快速扩展性。     

Problem‐solving strategies for small‐scale emerging commercial mango farmers in Venda

This article describes the prevailing farming system of emerging small‐scale commercial mango farmers in the Venda region of the Northern Province of South Africa. Analyses based on intensive group discussions with farmers and prioritisation of their problems using a ‘problem tree/objective tree'framework, as well as comparisons with adjacent commercial mango farmers, enabled the development of operational support strategies. This study followed a new (for South Africa) participative approach. The first step of the Objective Oriented Intervention Planning (OOIP) approach to Logical Framework Analysis (LFA) is a problem tree; the next is to convert the problem tree into an objective tree in order to identify alternative strategies for alleviating constraints and problems. These are then summarised in the LFA matrix. This methodology is described here.     

HR practices and affective organisational commitment: (when) does HR differentiation pay off?

We argue that differentiating HR practices across employees leads employees to compare their situation with colleagues to assess the favourability of HR practice outcomes (e.g. money). These perceptions can be negative (i.e. feeling set back), neutral (i.e. feeling treated the same) or positive (i.e. feeling advantaged). Data from 13,639 Belgian employees showed that perceived favourability of HR practice outcomes is positively associated with affective organisational commitment, but the relationship is attenuated at positive levels. Thus, differentiation may be a double‐edged sword as the losses among employees feeling set back may temper, neutralise or even outweigh the benefits among those feeling advantaged. The relationships found were especially salient for work practices (e.g. autonomy) compared with economic practices (e.g. bonuses). Developmental practices were found to be least suited for differentiation across employees. No evidence of a moderating role of employees’ preference for equality (vs. differentiation) was found.     

Career anchors: A comparison between organization‐assigned and self‐initiated expatriates

In the present study, based on the theory of fit, we have tested hypotheses on a sample of 303 French expatriates, comparing career anchors between assigned and self‐initiated expatriates. We found that lifestyle and internationalism are both very important anchors for assigned as well as self‐initiated expatriates, although most anchors differ among these groups. Furthermore, we have introduced a measure of the internationalism career anchor that presents promising psychometric characteristics. Our results provide important theoretical and practical implications. In particular, they show that both assigned expatriates and self‐initiated expatriates can be engaged in a boundaryless career. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.