The R&D-abnormal return anomaly: a transaction cost explanation

Previous research finds a positive and significant relation between current increases in R&D expenditures and future abnormal stock returns. While the existence of this anomalous pattern is well-established, its underlying causes are the subject of much debate. Recent research also shows that transaction costs can lead to apparent market anomalies such as the post-earnings-announcement drift. We combine these two lines of research and posit that the positive relation between R&D increases and future abnormal stock returns is due to transaction costs. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that abnormal returns on R&D-based, zero-net-investment portfolios disappear after incorporating standard measures of transaction costs. Overall, our results show that the R&D-abnormal return anomaly is more likely due to transaction costs than to the alternative hypotheses of market inefficiency or omitted risk factors.     

Married couple work participation and earnings elasticities: evidence from tax data

This paper uses administrative tax panel data to estimate work participation and earnings elasticities of married couples by exploiting variation in tax policy. Not only may individuals alter labor supply by working more or less in response to changes in tax policy, they may also alter reported earnings or shift income between taxable and tax-deferred compensation. As a result, in addition to estimating the standard extensive and intensive labor supply elasticities, we also examine elasticities by type of income (wage earnings vs. self-employment earnings) and compensation (taxable vs. tax-deferred). We find that wives have more elastic work participation and earnings than husbands. Furthermore, self-employment income is more responsive to net-of-tax price changes than wage earnings for both husbands and wives, suggesting that it is easier for the self-employed to alter their work hours, work intensity, and/or reported income than wage earners. Finally, we find that wives respond to changes in the net-of-tax price of earnings by altering the amount of earnings subject to current-year taxes through adjustments of tax-deferred contributions to employer-provided retirement accounts.     

Supervisor–Subordinate Guanxi and Employee Work Outcomes: The Mediating Role of Job Satisfaction

In this study, we attempt to explain the divergent results found in the relationships between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and employee work outcomes. Specifically, we propose that the relationships between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and participatory management, turnover intentions, and organizational commitment are mediated by job satisfaction. Based on the data collected from a sample of 196 employees of three local manufacturing firms in Zhejiang Province, China, we found that job satisfaction fully mediated the effects of supervisor–subordinate guanxi on participatory management and intentions to leave, but partially mediated the relationship between supervisor–subordinate guanxi and organizational commitment. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Business process optimization using the ant colony system

Process optimization is a key consideration in workflow management. Implementing an efficient workflow may improve customer satisfaction and enhance productivity of an enterprise. Many optimization tools have been introduced to solve scheduling problems in the manufacturing environment, but most of them have not drawn much attention of decision makers for workflow analyses. This is mainly due to the difference between business operations and manufacturing processes that the process optimization tools cannot be directly applied for analyzing business workflows. Scholars have associated the attributes of workflow in the business environment with those of scheduling concepts to facilitate the use of job shop scheduling techniques for solving workflow problems. However, there is still not much discussion on the use of metaheuristic algorithms for workflow analyses. This paper proposes the use of a systematic approach that entails the ant colony optimization algorithm for identifying the best task sequence in support of processing time analyses. The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated with a case example. The result shows that a better operation sequence in terms of shorter processing duration can be obtained by the proposed approach.     

The effects of food-related personality traits on tourist food consumption motivations

This study explores the motivational dimensions underlying food consumption in tourism, and to examine the effects of two food-related personality traits, namely food neophobia and variety-seeking, on these motivational dimensions. A tourist food consumption motivational scale was developed and seven motivational dimensions were identified: novelty and variety, authentic experience and prestige, interpersonal and culture, price/value and assurance, health concern, familiarity and eating habit, and sensory and contextual pleasure. Both food neophobia and variety-seeking were found to have significant effects on various motivational dimensions. The implications of the findings for practice and future research are discussed.     

Islamic Work Ethic,innovative work behaviour,and adaptive performance: the mediating mechanism and an interacting effect

This study’s focus is on the relationship between Islamic Work Ethic (IWE) and adaptive performance with the mediating role of innovative work behaviour (IWB) and moderating role of ethical leadership among hospitality sector employees in Pakistan. Data were collected using questionnaires from 257 employees working in various hotels across Pakistan. Results indicate that IWE significantly predicts adaptive performance both directly and indirectly through IWB. In addition, results also confirm the moderating role of ethical leadership between IWE and IWB. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Impacts of innovativeness and attitude on entrepreneurial intention: among engineering and non-engineering students

This study attempted to explore the impacts of attitudinal antecedents on students’ entrepreneurial intention. Comparisons between students of engineering and non-engineering backgrounds and gender groups were made. Total of 998 students from universities in Hong Kong were surveyed, leading to a number of highlights in the study. First, it is found that the learning motivation strongly correlates with innovativeness, which in return affects the entrepreneurship intention. Second, the educational measures designed for senior year students would be slightly different from those for junior year students, whilst the junior year students may need more facilitation to motivate their learning. Thirdly, the ‘innovativeness’ of engineering students is found significantly and strongly correlated to ‘self-efficacy’ and significantly to ‘attitude’. The ‘attitude’ of engineering students is found more significantly contributing to their ‘entrepreneurial intention’. The interesting results show that for engineering students, though perceiving higher levels of innovativeness, ‘attitudes’ and ‘entrepreneurial intention’, the critical attributes in determining ‘entrepreneurial intention’ are ‘attitudes’ and ‘self-efficacy’. Fourthly, attitudes seem a lot more influencing to the entrepreneurial intention among female students, whilst ‘innovation’ is the a lot more influencing among male students. There are some limitations in this study, such as the sample size and survey design. In order to secure a high level of content validity, some items of the constructs are excluded possibly due to the sample size and the uneven numbers of the different sample groups. Future study is recommended to include students from different countries in order to have more representative results, and the research model could be further extended to explore the effects of other demographic parameters.     

Competitive bidding with a bid floor

We study competitive bidding with an explicit bid floor, motivated by minimum wage legislation and minimum labor standards. We derive the equilibrium strategies in, and compare the expected procurement costs among, the first‐price, second‐price, English, and Dutch auctions in a private‐cost model. For the English auction, we also consider a variant in which each seller can terminate the auction by jumping down to sell at the price floor. We find that the first‐price auction and the aforementioned jump‐down English auction lead to a lower expected procurement cost than under the second‐price auction and the standard English auction.