Assessment of the environmental sustainability of restaurants in the U.S.: The effects of restaurant characteristics on environmental sustainability performance

ABSTRACT

This paper investigated the current levels of environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. to determine whether a restaurant’s proclivity for environmental sustainability depended on its characteristics such as chain affiliation or restaurant type.

A web-based survey was administered to 2,500 top-level restaurant managers, from which a total of 218 responses were judged as usable. The data were analyzed using independent

sample t-tests and ANOVA. This study presents an in-depth account of the environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. based on an evaluation of top-level managers. This study also highlights the differences in restaurant environmental sustainability across different restaurant segments.     

Can commodity futures risk factors predict economic growth?

This paper examines whether commodity futures risk factors can predict future economic growth. We test risk factors capturing various spot or term premia and find that only three factors capturing term premia on the basis-momentum, basis, and change in slope are robust predictors for future economic growth, especially for long horizons. Our findings highlight the importance of the term premia, rather than the spot premia on which the literature has mainly focused. Moreover, we find that possible explanations for predictability of commodity factors—the intertemporal asset pricing model and information diffusion explanation—are all inconsistent with our empirical results.     

Does an Audit Judgment Rule Increase or Decrease Auditors' Use of Innovative Audit Procedures?

The current audit environment encourages auditors to conduct defensive auditing procedures in lieu of using new, innovative, and potentially more effective audit procedures, due to concerns these procedures may be second-guessed in litigation or by audit inspectors such as the PCAOB. As a result, auditors may prefer traditional “generally accepted” procedures over innovative procedures that are potentially more effective. We test recent proposals that an Audit Judgment Rule (AJR) encourages the use of innovative, and potentially more effective, audit procedures analogous to the similar Business Judgment Rule that affords legal protections to corporate directors. Under an AJR, litigators or audit inspectors could not second-guess auditor judgments, even if they perceive that alternate judgments would have ordinarily been reached, provided the auditor's judgment was made in good faith and in a rigorous manner. However, the AJR's requirements that auditors must defend the rigor of their innovative judgments could potentially backfire and lead auditors to select more traditional procedures. Under the framework of goal activation theory, we conduct an experiment with audit managers and seniors and find that an AJR makes auditors less likely to select innovative audit procedures, particularly when audit risk is high. They do so despite believing the innovative procedures to be more effective than the traditional procedures. Findings from a supplementary experiment with experienced auditors further suggest that national office affirmation of the reasonableness of the procedures does not help overcome this effect. Overall, our findings suggest that an AJR may have the unintended consequence of further increasing auditors' focus on more traditional, and potentially less effective, audit procedures.     

Determinants of organizational performance: some implications for top executive leadership in Korean firms

ABSTRACT

Leadership, although commonly assumed to be greatly significant, is not typically studied in terms of structural characteristics accounted for in organizational performance. The effect of top executive leadership is explored here as a key factor that reflects organizational characteristics by offering a new framework and presenting an empirical test of Korean business firms. This research can be possibly made by focusing on the size of the leadership which explicates the difference between structural, resource and contextual variables in organizations. The multivariate regression analysis shows that firm size, leadership, debt and export significantly affect organizational performance, as measured by net income. The mechanism of Korean business firms needs to readjust to the new environment for organizational performance.     

Detections of changes in return by a wavelet smoother with conditional heteroscedastic volatility

In this paper, we propose two estimators, an integral estimator and a discretized estimator, for the wavelet coefficient of regression functions in nonparametric regression models with heteroscedastic variance. These estimators can be used to test the jumps of the regression function. The model allows for lagged-dependent variables and other mixing regressors. The asymptotic distributions of the statistics are established, and the asymptotic critical values are analytically obtained from the asymptotic distribution. We also use the test to determine consistent estimators for the locations of change points. The jump sizes and locations of change points can be consistently estimated using wavelet coefficients, and the convergency rates of these estimators are derived. We perform some Monte Carlo simulations to check the powers and sizes of the test statistics. Finally, we give practical examples in finance and economics to detect changes in stock returns and short-term interest rates using the empirical wavelet method.     

融资约束下企业社会责任信息披露质量与创新持续性

利用2012-2016年我国中小板企业数据,实证研究了不同类型企业社会责任信息披露质量对创新持续性的影响路径。结果显示,对股东、员工的责任信息披露质量能显著缓解融资约束,从而正向影响企业创新持续性;对供应商、客户、消费者、社会和环境的责任信息披露质量只能部分缓解融资约束,但仍正向促进企业创新持续性;国有性质的中小板企业对社会责任信息披露质量更加敏感。以上结论说明,我国中小板企业应注重履行并披露对不同利益相关者的社会责任信息,这对于企业缓解融资约束、维持创新持续性具有积极作用。     

Trading costs and price discovery

The price discovery roles of a set of related markets or securities have been investigated in many different settings where trading costs effect is often commingled with other trading arrangement factors. In Hong Kong, regular futures and mini futures contracts as well as their underlying spot asset are all traded on a same electronic trading platform. The trading arrangements thus provide us with a unique setting where we can isolate the impacts of transaction costs on price discovery. Using Hasbrouck’s (J Finance 50:1175–1199, 1995) information share approach, it is found that in Hong Kong, the regular futures contracts market plays a dominant role in price discovery while the mini futures and cash index markets play minor roles. The results in this paper provide an unequivocal support to the trading costs hypothesis.     

金融危机启示:金融一体化监管趋势下的保险监管

任何一次危机的爆发都是风险释放的过程,研究危机更重要的是关注风险的积累过程。因此,分析危机前的风险积累过程,查找危机产生的原因,对防范和化解危机具有现实意义。本文通过对新近发生的美国次贷危机进而延伸到对10年前亚洲金融危机分析,以及全球金融一体化监管最新演进趋势的借鉴,论述我国保险监管组织架构的未来展望。     

发展森林保险的政策研究

林业是国民经济的重要基础产业,也是为社会提供生态产品的重要公益事业,但是林业生产面临巨大的自然灾害风险。森林保险是重要的林业风险保障机制,但由于其准公共产品的性质和信息不对称等原因,森林保险在我国的发展历经曲折,严重滞后于林业发展对风险保障的巨大需求。通过对森林保险的经济学分析和对国外森林保险制度的研究和借鉴,本文认为建立政策性森林保险机制对于我国森林保险事业的发展具有重要的意义,并提出了相应的政策建议。     

Shopping plans,buying motivations,and return policies: impacts on product returns and purchase likelihoods

Product return behavior and factors that contribute to product returns are an under-researched area, despite significant importance to manufacturers and retailers. The current research attempts to fill the gap by focusing on two factors that shape consumer purchase behavior: (1) whether purchases are planned or unplanned, and (2) whether hedonic or utilitarian motivations drive purchases. The findings show that purchase plans and buying motivations have distinctive and interactive impacts on pre-purchase concerns, self-estimated likelihood of returning purchases, and purchase intentions with or without return policies. When hedonic motivation drives purchases, unplanned (vs. planned) purchases lead to higher return concerns, higher return likelihood, and lower buying intentions. When utilitarian motivation drives purchases, planned and unplanned purchases have comparable return concerns, return likelihood, and buying intentions. This interaction effect on buying intentions dissipates when a lenient return policy is offered.