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.     

CSR,Transparency and the Role of Intermediate Organisations

Transparency is a crucial condition to implement a CSR policy based on the reputation mechanism. The central question of this contribution is how a transparency policy ought to be organised in order to enhance the CSR behaviour of companies. Governments endorsing CSR as a new means of governance have different strategies to foster CSR transparency. In this paper we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of two conventional policy strategies: the facilitation policy and the command and control strategy. Using three criteria (efficiency, freedom and virtue) we conclude that both strategies are defective. Most attention is paid to the facilitation strategy since governments nowadays mainly use this. In evaluating this strategy we analyse the Dutch case. As an alternative we introduce a third government policy: the development of a self-regulating sub-system. By construing an analogy with the historical development of corporate financial disclosure, we point out that the vital step in the creation of a self-regulating subsys- tem is the creation of strong informational intermediate organisations.     

Risk Perception in the Short Run and in the Long Run

There is an ongoing controversy in financial economics regarding the role of time horizon in portfolio selection. This problem is relevant in a broader context, wherever consumers or managers make decisions that involve both time and risk. The purpose of this paper is to review recent findings from the decision making literature so as to shed new light on how the short run vs. long run contingency may determine risk taking and perception.     

Central Bank Balance Sheets and the Transmission of Financial Crises

Central banks usually “park” their foreign exchange reserves in safe or highly liquid foreign assets. The paper illustrates that when central banks invest instead in risky foreign assets, then domestic banking crises can cause a crisis in the market for the foreign asset and vice versa. The paper takes its motivation from Asian central banks’ recent appetite for US government agency-debt securities such as those issued by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.     

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.     

GAME THEORY AND THE AUDITOR'S PENALTY REGIME

This paper models the audit as a cooperative game played by the auditor and auditee within a penalty regime imposed by a regulatory authority. The paper investigates the relationship between the penalties set by the regulator and the jointly agreed strategy of the auditor and auditee, and discusses how the penalty regime might be employed so as to induce a particular strategic outcome such as high effort levels on the part of the auditee and/or auditor.     

International diffusion of technology,industrial development and technological leapfrogging

This paper anlyzes how the international diffusion of technology fits historically within the overall process of ‘spurts’ of industrialization and what lessons can be learned by the present industrializing countries in the context of the microelectronics revolution. A review of some of the most important contributions to the technology diffusion literature and their relevance to structural theories of industrial development of economic growth is presented in the first part of the paper. A discussion of international diffusion, especially historical changes in technological leaderships, follows. The paper concludes with a consideration of the implications of diffusion analysis for industrializing countries and argues that the developing countries' potential for technological ‘leapfrogging’ into microelectronics has never been higher.     

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.     

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.     

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.