Privacy in E-Commerce: Development of Reporting Standards, Disclosure, and Assurance Services in an Unregulated Market

Government regulation of financial reporting by publicly listed firms, coupled with a punitive regime for violation of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), has been in place in the United States for seven decades. Whether this regime is effective or useful is an open question, especially in the absence of data on the behavior of unregulated economies. Privacy disclosure in e‐commerce is essentially an unregulated environment with some parallels to financial disclosure. A study of privacy standards, disclosures practices, and demand for audits can help accountants and security regulators project the consequences of a competitive regime sans regulation for accounting standards, disclosure and audit practices. In this article we set up a framework for such a study, gather data from the field, and analyze privacy standards, privacy disclosure practices, and the effectiveness of opt‐out practices of 100 high‐traffic e‐commerce Web sites. We observe four diverse sets of privacy standards (TRUSTe, BBB Online, WebTrust, and PWC Privacy) competing in this market, attracting clienteles of their own as reflected in privacy policies and the disclosure of such policies. With a few exceptions, actual disclosure and opt‐out practices correspond reasonably well to stated policies in e‐commerce. There is little evidence that the prevailing competitive regime induces a race to the bottom with respect to privacy standards and disclosures. We explore the implications of these results for the consequences of a competitive regime for regulation of financial reporting.     

The role of self selection, usage uncertainty and learning in the demand for local telephone service

Telephone services are often characterized by the presence of ‘fixed’ plans, involving only a fixed monthly fee, as well as ‘measured’ plans, with both fixed fees and per-unit charges for usage. Consumers are faced with the decisions of which plan to choose and how much to use the phone and these decisions are not, in general, independent. Due to the presence of a time lag between plan choice and usage decisions, consumers are uncertain about usage at the plan-choice stage. We develop a structural discrete/continuous model of plan choice and usage decisions of consumers that accounts for such uncertainty. Prior research has also found that consumers switch less often from fixed plans to measured plans to gain from potential savings than vice versa. Consumer uncertainty regarding their mean usage levels and different rates of learning by consumers in the two plans is a potential explanation for this phenomenon. We extend our discrete/continuous model to account for consumer learning about their mean usage and estimate different rates of learning for the two types of plans. We estimate our model using data from the 1986 Kentucky local telephone tariff experiment. Even in the absence of any price variation over time, we are able to measure the price elasticities both of usage and of choice of plan. Using our parameter estimates, we simulate the effects of the introduction of a metered plan in a market with only a fixed plan and vice versa, on both firm revenues and consumer surplus. We also find that consumers learn very rapidly if they are on the measured plan but learn very slowly when they are on the fixed plan. We investigate an alternative assumption on the nature of the learning process in which only consumers in the measured plan have an opportunity to learn. We find that our empirical results are robust to this change of specification. We conduct counterfactual simulations to simulate enhanced calling plans from the firm and consumer points of view. Additional simulations to measure the value of information in this category are also carried out. We compute the value of both complete information, where the entire uncertainty about future usage is resolved, as well as that of limited information, where the consumer's uncertainty about mean usage is resolved, but the uncertainty about specific month-to-month usage remains. We find that the value of information is modest. We also find that a large proportion of the value of information is that about the mean usage, with the value of the information about a specific month's usage being relatively small.

Economics, Psychology, and Social Dynamics of Consumer Bidding in Auctions

With increasing numbers of consumers in auction marketplaces, we highlight some recent approaches that bring additional economic, social, and psychological factors to bear on existing economic theory to better understand and explain consumers' behavior in auctions. We also highlight specific research streams that could contribute towards enriching existing economic models of bidding behavior in emerging market mechanisms. This paper is based on the special session at the 6th Triennial Invitational Choice Symposium, University of Colorado Boulder, June 2004 (co-chaired by the first two authors).     

Dynamic relationships among R&D,advertising, inventory and firm performance

Firms’ spending on R&D, advertising, and inventory holding affect firm performance, which in turn affects future spending in each of these three areas. Effective allocation of resources across R&D, advertising, and inventory holding is challenging since an understanding of their dynamic inter-relationships is necessary. Past research has not examined these spending issues simultaneously. We estimate inter-relationships among the effects of firms’ R&D spending, advertising spending, and inventory holding on sales and firm value (as measured by its Tobin’s Q) using a vector auto regression model of a panel of publicly listed U.S. high technology manufacturing firms. Insights from the computation of long-term effects indicate that advertising spending and inventory holding increase sales, while R&D spending does not, and advertising and R&D spending increase firm value, while inventory holding does not. In addition, firm spending in all three functions is positively affected by sales but negatively by firm value. We discuss the implications of the study for marketing literature and managerial practice.     

Is There a Link Between Money Illusion and Homeowners’ Expectations of Housing Prices?

Money illusion is a behavioral bias in which a person thinks in terms of nominal rather than real values. This article reports homeowners’ responses to a survey designed to measure the extent of money illusion as well as homeowners’ expectations regarding home valuations. Our survey respondents suffer from money illusion, yet they have reasonable expectations of home prices. Our analysis did not identify any unique individual characteristic that correlates with homeowners’ choices and suggests that the relationship between money illusion and mispricing is subtle and multifaceted.     

Developing the selection and valuation capabilities through learning: The case of corporate venture capital

The objective of this paper is to examine the impacts of experience intensity, experience diversity and acquisitive experience on the development of selection and valuation capabilities that help the parent (investor) company generate higher short-term financial returns and improve long-term strategic performance. Based on our analysis of 2110 cases of CVC investments in the VenureXpert data base, we find that industry diversity of a CVC program's experience is positively related to its selection of portfolio companies with relatively high financial potential. The CVC program's experience intensity, stage diversity of its experience, and syndication improve its selection of portfolio companies with greater strategic potential. In addition, stage diversity may enhance valuation capability. We also find that experience accumulation is more effective when a CVC program invests in a portfolio company in the later stage rather than in the early stage.     

Adverse effects of uniform written reporting standards on accounting practice,education, and research

When transactions have multiple attributes, achieving uniformity in their classification depends on whether similarities or dissimilarities are of interest; uniformity with respect to both is not possible. The pursuit of uniform written standards at the expense of social norms diminishes the effectiveness of financial reporting in stewardship and governance, and in keeping the security markets informed. A shift to written standards discourages thoughtful classroom discourse on alternatives which develop professional judgment. It also engenders ‘‘by the book” attitudes and drives talent away from accounting programs and, ultimately, from the accounting profession. Judgment and personal responsibility being the hallmarks of a learned profession, the dominance of uniform written standards weakens the claim that accounting programs belong in universities alongside architecture, dentistry, engineering, law, and medicine. Uniformity discourages research and debate in academic and practice forums and promotes increasingly detailed rule-making. It shuts the door on learning through experimentation, making it difficult to discover better ways of financial reporting through practice and comparison of alternatives. Improved financial reporting calls for a careful balance between written standards and unwritten social norms.     

The Impact of Activity-Based Costing on Managerial Decisions at Insteel Industries—A Field Study

In this field-based study, we interview top- and middle-level managers at Insteel Industries and conduct statistical analysis of firm-level data in order to shed light on whether activity-based costing (ABC) provides new information to managers and whether activity-based management (ABM) significantly influences product and customer-related decisions. We find that after the ABC analysis, Insteel undertook a number of process improvements that resulted in significant cost savings. Additionally, Insteel displayed a higher propensity to discontinue or increase prices of products and discontinue customers that were found comparatively unprofitable in the ABC study. Thus we provide empirical evidence that ABC influences both strategic and operational managerial decisions.