Economic consequences of financial reporting changes: diluted EPS and contingent convertible securities

This paper examines the economic consequences of changes in the financial reporting requirements for contingent convertible securities (COCOs). Using a sample of 199 COCO issuers from 2000 to 2004, we find that issuers are more likely to restructure or redeem existing COCOs to obtain more favorable accounting treatment when the financial reporting impact on diluted earnings per share (EPS) is greater and when EPS is used as a performance metric in CEO bonus contracts. These results provide new evidence that managers are willing to incur costs to retain perceived financial reporting and compensation benefits. We also present evidence of significantly negative stock returns around event dates associated with the financial reporting changes, consistent with investor anticipation of the agency costs associated with the rule change.

房屋共享经济下保险保障的新选择

近几年来,共享经济热潮兴起带来了我们生活和消费方式的改变,共享单车、共享房屋等已经被越来越多的人接受和使用。在这场变革中,我们看到了共享经济带来的便利,但作为保险人的视角,同业也关注这一新模式下的潜在风险。     

Firm Accrual Quality Following Restatements: A Signaling View

We consider whether and how firms improve their financial reporting credibility following a restatement by comparing two alternative views. The compliance view predicts that firms simply correct errors to comply with regulations; the signaling view predicts that improvements are broader to allow firms to signal higher reporting quality and thereby reduce information uncertainty. We find that accrual quality improves significantly following the restatement and that this improvement is observed for both earnings and non‐earnings error restatements. We also find that the extent of real earnings’ management decreases significantly. Further, we find that improvements in accrual quality are higher for firms with CEO turnover and higher incentives to improve, but lower for firms switching to an auditor of lower quality. Collectively, our findings suggest that firms signal improved reporting credibility following a restatement through higher accruals quality and lower real earnings management.     

interpreting slavery Tourism

This inquiry explores the manner in which tourists endow a former slave plantation with meaning by promoting or demoting its cultural authority. Drawing on the encoding/decoding model, this study utilizes interviews to examine the ways in which tourists decode the plantation by acquiescing or negating the preferred cultural text through the adoption of dominant, negotiated or oppositional readings. The findings indicate that as active recipients of the preferred reading tourists interpreted/decoded the plantation in dichotomous polarized ways based on the meaning structures and knowledge frameworks of the interpretive communities within which they are situated. In essence, the decoding process, much like the encoding process is viewed as constituting an array of dominant ideologies.     

Innovation and productivity in the food vs. the high-tech manufacturing sector

ABSTRACT

The food sector is considered a mature industry characterized by low research and development (R&D) intensity. Nevertheless, food companies face numerous challenges and cannot do without innovation activity if they want to keep their competitiveness. In this study, we examine the impact of innovation on labor productivity in European food companies and compare it to results for firms operating in high-tech sectors. The central motivation of our study is that the low R&D intensity observed in the food sector should be mirrored in different productivity effects of innovation when compared to the high-tech sector. We use microdata from the European Union's ‘Community Innovation Survey’ (CIS) and apply an endogeneity-robust multi-stage model that has been applied by various recent studies. Our results point out major differences between the examined subsectors. While we find strong positive effects of innovation on labor productivity for food firms, we find insignificant effects in the high-tech sector. This might suggest that the returns to innovation might be best evaluated separately by sector rather than for the manufacturing sector as a whole.     

Competition and Cooperation in the Small Firm Sector

This paper examines the nature of economies of scale in the small firm sector and aims to provide new insight into the economic efficiency of small firm industrial districts. The theoretical analysis identifies the role played by collective external economies of scale that are realised through cooperation over input activities. Using game theory it is shown that cooperation can emerge both as a result of rational profit maximising behaviour and as a result of institutional and cultural environments that encourage cooperation and trust. The implications for industrial policy are discussed in the concluding section.     

南加州大学马歇尔商学院警惕“害群之马”

通过十年来对人类粗暴言行的研究,我们发现,工作场所常见（而且通常被容忍）的反社会行为,对公司的杀伤力比经理人想象得要更为严重。主管恶言相向,个别员工争功推过,居心不良者散播流言,私下搞小圈子排挤同事等等,类似的行为都会给组织发展带来难以磨灭的消极影响,但通常只有直接受害者本身才知晓这种伤害。     

Comparisons of the structure and infrastructure of Chinese and Indian Science and Technology

A comparison was made of the research output literatures of India and China. Both bibliometric and computational linguistics approaches were used in the comparison. China has rapidly outpaced India in both volume and citation performance of publications. China's rapid publication growth rate over the past two decades is continuing, while India's is re-starting after a relatively dormant period of almost two decades.     

Customer acceptance of RFID technology: Evidence from the German electronic retail sector

Radio frequency identification (RFID) represents a novel technology that promises to deliver various benefits for customers in retail settings. However, up until now RFID technology has seldom been tested and drivers of customer acceptance remain unclear. Against this background, the present multi-method study seeks to explore customer acceptance of RFID technology at a German electronic retail corporation with regard to the technology acceptance model (TAM). Our results add to the literature as follows. First, RFID technology has predominantly been analyzed in business-to-business settings, whereas we analyzed an electronic retailing company and explored the customers’ point of view. Second, the TAM could be confirmed on the basis of a stratified random sample of 206 costumers for the present retail setting. In particular, we show that ease of use and security concerns are relevant. Third, despite the overall appropriateness of the TAM, refinements to the model seem to be needed. Therefore, we identify the overall attitude of customers toward novel technologies and data security to be of particular importance. Implications are discussed and future research options are sketched out.     

Skewness and Kurtosis Implied by Option Prices: A Correction

Corrado and Su (1996) provide skewness and kurtosis adjustment terms for the Black‐Scholes model, using a Gram‐Charlier expansion of the normal density function. In this note we provide a correction to the expression for the skewness coefficient and illustrate the effect on call option prices of the error found.