ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES OF MULTINATIONAL TRANSFER PRICING: A U.K. PERSPECTIVE

This paper reports the findings from an empirical study of multinational transfer pricing based on the information provided by 47 British multinational companies. The results indicate that company profit after tax was the key consideration for those companies in formulating their international transfer pricing policies. In addition, they also considered other important variables including the competitive position of their foreign subsidiaries, divisional performance evaluation, and foreign restrictions on repatriation of profits. Six dimensions of environment variables of multinational transfer pricing were also extracted using factor analysis technique.     

UNION EFFECT ON THE USE OF NON‐REGULAR LABOR IN THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA

Our paper aims at analyzing the union effect on the externalization of employment relations, focusing on how labor unions affect management's strategic use of non‐regular labor within the Korean context of industrial relations. Our study presents several interesting implications. Firstly, the unions' motivator role for managerial use of non‐regular labor is more evident than its constrainer role. Secondly, union power exerts a “U‐type” impact on the use of indirect non‐regular labor, while affecting directly employed non‐regular labor in a positive linear way. Thirdly, labor unions in large establishments are more active and influential in representing their members' interests than their counterparts in small establishments with limited financial resources. In particular, the interactive function of the union's power and union leaders' attitudinal inclinations is found to be significant in the negative direction among large establishments.     

On the faustmann solution to the forest management problem

This paper is concerned with optimal solutions to the forest management problem when future utilities are undiscounted. By examining asymptotic properties of such solutions, we find that (i) if the utility function is linear, then the Faustmann periodic solution is optimal; (ii) if the utility function is increasing and strictly concave, an optimal solution converges to the maximum sustained yield solution, which we characterize as a golden rule. These results may be viewed as a possible resolution to the debate in forestry economics about what constitutes an optimal policy in forest management.     

Energy Saving and Tourism Sustainability: Solar Control Window Film in Hotel Rooms

This paper investigates solar control film as an energy saver in the fast growing hotel sector in southern China. It investigates claims made for this low-cost retrofitted material in hotel rooms, calibrating reductions in solar gain in summer. It provides reliable and independent data about the performance and economic viability of solar control film in real hotel environments. The study found that, by limiting solar gain, the film helps limit tourism's impact on global warming and climate change. The paper also foreshadows new technical glazing developments.     

Attitudes towards corporate social responsibility and perceived importance of social responsibility information characteristics in a decision context

This study addressed the questions of perceived importance of social responsibility information (SRI) characteristics in a decision context, as well as the attitudes of institutional investors toward social responsibility involvement. The results showed that SRI presently disclosed in company annual reports did not have any significant impact on institutional investors' decisions. However, if SRI were presented in quantified, financial form, and were focused on product improvement and fair business practices, such information would be perceived as more important for investment decisions. Attitudes toward corporate social responsibility also suggested that institutional investors were not totally opposed to company involvement in social activities. Hai Yap Teoh is associate professor in the Department of Accountancy, The University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. He has published extensively in local and international journals including Accounting, Organizations and Society and The International Journal of Accounting Education and Research. His major areas of research interest include corporate social responsibility and reporting.Godwin Shiu is teaching fellow in the Department of Accountancy, The University of Wollongong, New South Wales, Australia. He is also doing a master's degree in accountancy.     

Can Management Turnover Restore the Financial Statement Credibility of Restating Firms? Further Evidence

This paper investigates the association between management turnover following financial restatements and the probability of subsequent restatements. We find that restating firms that replace management (CEO and/or CFO) are more likely to restate their financial statements again. We also find that subsequent restatements are mainly attributable to the new management. Overall, our results suggest that management turnover following restatements may not be an effective mechanism to remediate financial restatements, but the change to a new management results in a greater possibility of lower earnings quality (i.e., higher probability of subsequent financial restatements and accruals‐based earnings management). Our study supports prior literature's findings that the change in the top management leads to organizational instability and higher accounting information risk. Our findings have implications for internal decisionmaking with regard to top executive replacement.     

A general model to compute activity-based waste disposal costs for health care products

ABSTRACT

Hospitals are large producers of solid waste, of which some is benign, some is extremely hazardous, and much is in between. The cost of segregating and disposing of products in these waste streams is high, and studies have shown there is considerable potential to reduce these costs while simultaneously decreasing environmental impact. In this article we develop an activity-based costing method that assigns waste disposal costs proportionally to each product. By providing disposal cost information at this level of aggregation it is possible to directly influence purchasing decisions, identify priority products for focused interventions, and determine the ratio of a product's purchasing cost to disposal cost. The method is tested on products with different purchasing costs, disposal costs, physical characteristics, and disposal processes.     

Ethnic Minority Analysts’ Participation in Public Earnings Conference Calls

We investigate ethnic minority and nonminority sell-side analysts’ participation in public earnings conference calls. We find that minority analysts are underrepresented in conference call Q&A sessions, and minority analysts who do participate on the calls experience lower levels of prioritization than do nonminority analysts. Minority analysts’ lower participation rates are partially but not fully mediated by characteristics such as experience, work environment, and stock rating favorability. Additionally, firm and conference call fixed effects mediate approximately half the magnitude of lower minority participation rates. Extroverted minority analysts participate at higher rates, but the negative association between minority status and conference call participation is exacerbated when calls are more time constrained, when executive teams are less diverse, and when analysts are from less prestigious brokerage houses. Overall, we document the underrepresentation of minority analysts on earnings conference calls and provide evidence suggesting both analysts’ and managers’ choices influence minority analysts’ participation rates.