Managements' views on share buy‐backs: an Australian survey

Share buy‐backs are a relatively new concept in the Australian business environment. This study surveys managements' motivations and various other aspects concerning share buy‐back activity. The results reveal that these motivations vary across the five different types of buy‐backs. For on‐market buy‐backs the most relevant motivations are to improve financial performance (i.e., earnings per share) and financial position (i.e., net asset backing per share) followed by signalling of future expectations or underpricing. Interestingly, managements' response regarding the relevant motivations is similar regardless of whether their companies had conducted a buy‐back or not. This provides evidence of widespread support for the relevant motivations. In addition, Australian managers believe that they are familiar with the potential benefits and legislative requirements of buy‐backs, but that their shareholders often do not understand or are not favourably disposed towards buy‐back events. Finally, two major explanations are identified for the initial conservatism towards buy‐backs. Those explanations are (i) legal complexity and cost and (ii) the perceived negative disposition of the sharemarket towards buy‐backs.     

Homeowners Insurance With Bundled Catastrophe Coverage

We estimate the demand for homeowners insurance in Florida and New York with indicated loss costs as our proxy for the quantity of real insurance services demanded. We decompose the demand into the demand for coverage of catastrophe perils and the demand for noncatastrophe coverage and estimate these demand functions separately. Our results are relatively consistent in New York and Florida, including evidence that catastrophe demand is more price elastic than noncatastrophe demand. We also find evidence that consumers value options that expand coverage, buy more insurance when it is subsidized through regulatory price constraints, and consider state guaranty fund provisions when purchasing insurance.     

Composing Urban Orders from Rubbish Electronics: Cityness and the Site Multiple

What do cities look like when rubbish electronics are the vehicle with which they are explored? This article is an experiment designed to offer a response to that question, and in doing so to productively intervene in the conversation about ‘cityness', ‘metrocentricity' and ‘subaltern urbanism'. We intervene by following flows of rubbish electronics and the action that enacts them as waste and value, drawing on fieldwork in Dhaka, Singapore, Accra and Canada's Greater Golden Horseshoe. Our intervention is an experiment in writing an urban geography of rubbish electronics as a site multiple. We show how following the circulation of rubbish electronics offers a manyfolded synopsis of cities: urban enclaves of high finance and the information economy are also industrial waste producers. Peri‐urban industrial zones are also managers of brands, legal liability and corporate public relations. Cities off the map are also urban innovation systems, while waste is rekindled as value and accumulated as poison. Thereby we suggest how a sensitivity to the site multiple may be a helpful way of grappling with shifting ontology and the performativity of our research practices in urban studies.     

Fama–French in China: Size and Value Factors in Chinese Stock Returns

We investigate the size and value factors in the cross‐section of returns for the Chinese stock market. We find a significant size effect but no robust value effect. A zero‐cost small‐minus‐big (SMB) portfolio earns an average premium of 0.61% per month, which is statistically significant with a t‐value of 2.89 and economically important. In contrast, neither the market portfolio nor the zero‐cost high‐minus‐low (HML) portfolio has average premiums that are statistically different from zero. In both time‐series regressions and Fama–MacBeth cross‐sectional tests, SMB represents the strongest factor in explaining the cross‐section of Chinese stock returns. Our results contradict several existing studies which document a value effect. We show that this difference comes from the extreme values in a few months in the early years of the market with a small number of stocks and high volatility. Their impact becomes insignificant with a longer sample and proper volatility adjustment.     

Chinese Students’ Perceptions of the Teaching in an Australian Accounting Programme – An Exploratory Study

ABSTRACT

This exploratory study is designed to elicit and understand the views of Mainland Chinese students concerning their learning experience in an Australian accounting education programme. The article contributes to the literature by investigating the issues and implications associated with international students’ perceptions of teaching, as little research has been undertaken in this context. Data were obtained from focus group interviews at two Australian universities, comprising students who had no prior experience of Western education. Based on an adaptation of Ramsden's 2003 model [Learning to teach in higher education (2nd ed.). London: Routledge], the data show that the students’ educational experience in China has a direct and negative influence on their perceptions of the teaching and learning experience in Australia. The negativity is particularly strong for entry-level students but dissipates to some extent with time. Issues concerning teachers’ enthusiasm, commitment, delivery skills and students’ expectations also emerged as important factors affecting student perceptions.     

Who Will We Recruit? Targeting Deep‐ and Surface‐Level Diversity with Human Resource Policy Advertising

Research on targeted recruitment has focused on targeting applicants with surface‐level attributes such as underrepresented demographic groups. The present study extends targeted recruitment research by examining how advertising human resource policies might be useful for targeting both surface‐ and deep‐level attributes. Specifically, the current study uses an experimental design to examine the impact of work‐family, diversity, and employee development policies on the job‐pursuit intentions of working adults in the United States. We examined surface‐ (demographic characteristics; e.g., race) and deep‐level differences (attitudes or values; e.g., diversity values) as predictors of whether participants intend to pursue jobs with firms advertising these human resource (HR) policies. Deep‐level differences consistently predicted job‐pursuit intentions for all three HR policies, but only marginal support was obtained for surface‐level variables as predictors. Findings suggest that targeted recruitment based on deep‐level attributes may be more successful than targeted recruitment based on surface‐level factors.     

Drivers and barriers of corporate social responsibility in the tourism industry: The case of Malawi

ABSTRACT

In developing countries, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes help in uplifting local communities by complementing governments’ efforts in providing public services in areas such as education, health, environment and security. But in the tourism industry, CSR has also been closely linked to responsible tourism in which tourism operators’ focus on protecting resources that attract tourists for business sustainability. This paper examines the drivers and barriers of CSR adoption in the tourism industry in Malawi. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews and thematically analysed. The study reveals that the major drivers of CSR in the tourism industry in Malawi are community expectations, management values and commitment, cost reduction, natural and cultural resource management, competitive advantage and company size. The barriers to CSR adoption include lack of resources, lack of clear CSR policy and government support, lack of coordination, mismanagement of CSR resources by communities and lack of awareness.     

Earnings changes associated with relaxing the reconciliation requirement in non-U.S. firms’ SEC filings

We investigate the changes in earnings information content and earnings attributes for non-U.S. firms listed in U.S. equity markets following the 2007 relaxation of the SEC requirement to reconcile IFRS earnings and stockholders’ equity to U.S. GAAP in annual regulatory filings. We analyze a sample of non-U.S. firms listed on U.S. exchanges from 2005 to 2008 that use IFRS, and compare them to non-U.S. firms that continue to use domestic GAAP or U.S. GAAP. Prior literature finds no changes in informativeness following the regulatory change for IFRS-using firms. However, when we partition the IFRS-using firms into two groups based on their history of providing reconciliation information, we find that firms which previously provided more information about the differences between their reporting GAAP and U.S. GAAP had significant increases in the information content of their earnings. In contrast, there is no change in earnings informativeness for firms that provided less informative reconciliations. We regard the reconciliation informativeness as a proxy for firms’ efforts to provide more informative disclosures, which is driven by their disclosure incentives. We also document that the change in the information content of earnings for more informative reconcilers was contemporaneous with a change in earnings attributes for these firms. Consistent with no change in earnings informativeness for less informative reconcilers, there is little change in their earnings attributes. Our results underscore the importance of incorporating disclosure incentives when examining the consequences of a regulatory change.     

Rational early exercise of call options: Australian evidence

Alpert (2010) develops a detailed analysis of the conditions for rational early exercise of call options in the presence of taxes. Using Alpert’s analysis as the theoretical framework, we examine the early exercise of call options in Australia over the period from 1 January 2001 to 30 June 2008. We find that exercises occurring on the last cum‐dividend trading day can be fully explained by non‐tax reasons, whilst taxation is a potential explanation for a large proportion of the early exercises that occur at other times.