Debt,diversification and earnings management

In this article we use panel-estimation techniques to calculate discretionary accruals (DAC) and to produce a better understanding of the nature of the relation between debt and earnings management. Consistent with the transparency hypothesis (which suggests that diversification increases the complexity of firms’ activities and reduces their transparency to outsiders), we find that for less-diversified (more transparent) firms, debt reduces positive discretionary accruals, whereas in relatively more-diversified (less transparent) firms the impact of debt becomes positive. Our paper shows that marginal increases in debt provide the incentives for managers to manipulate earnings, and diversification provides the needed context for this accounting practice to be possible. We have also found that only in the sub-sample of aggressive firms, those that manage discretionary accruals with enough magnitude to increase income, do lenders exert their control. Some firms, however, take advantage of diversification to avoid this control. Our findings are robust to several earnings-management measures and methodologies.     

Brazil's Experiment with Corporate Governance

The adoption of special listing segments by the São Paulo Stock Exchange in the year 2000 was an important step forward for the Brazilian equity market. Bovespa's introduction of the Novo Mercado and its Special Corporate Governance Levels 1 and 2 provided concrete, standardized certification of corporate commitments to higher governance standards that could be readily observed and verified by all market participants. What evidence do we have that this experiment in corporate governance has been a success? One indication is the performance of the Brazilian stock market itself, along with its ability to attract foreign investors. From 2002 to mid‐2008, the market capitalization of Bovespa companies increased by over 700%, while average daily volume grew almost tenfold. And as of June 2008, international investors represented 37% of total value, up from 26% in 2002. What's more, the growth in the three differentiated governance segments has been even more remarkable. Starting with 15 companies in 2001, the special governance segments had a total of 161 listings by early 2009. And by the end of 2008, the companies listed in the three differentiated segments accounted for more than 60% of Bovespa's total market capitalization and 73% of all trades. Perhaps even more telling, over 70% of the Brazilian IPOs issued between 2001 and 2008 were placed in the special governance segments. In this article, the authors summarize the findings of their study of the reaction of stock prices to the announcement by 31 Brazilian companies of their intent to list on one of the special governance exchanges. Their analysis showed that the companies choosing to list in these segments experienced an increase in both the value and the liquidity of their shares. In light of this evidence, such corporate decisions can be seen as functioning as publicly verifiable signals of commitment to greater transparency and investor protection. And the fact that the listing requirements of the special segments are stricter than those of Brazilian securities legislation means that stock exchanges—and the companies that choose to list on them— effectively have the option to initiate or lead investor protection reforms, as opposed to just complying with them. Thus, in countries where governance legislation is weak and the progress of reform is slow, stock markets can play a key role in helping companies differentiate themselves through exchange‐defined governance codes.     

Addendum: Gender discrimination and intergenerational transmission of preferences

The paper ‘Gender discrimination and intergenerationaltransmission of preferences’ was published in Oxford     

Bottom-up framework for cost allocation to services in telecommunication networks

Communications service providers (CSP) supply information, transport and passive infrastructure services that rely on the deployment of multiservice networks. To attain service cost reductions, the planning and design of those networks is essential, so that the total cost of the network ownership (TCO) is minimized. In this paper, we propose a bottom-up calculation framework for the allocation of the TCO cost components (i.e. capital and operational expenditures) to the services supplied by a CSP. For this, the framework is formulated within the context of the network life-cycle. Our method provides the level of abstraction required for the calculation of the three basic service cost contributors, namely, direct, shared and common costs. Moreover, it outlines the role of network planning in the design of an efficient network infrastucture, and in the calculation of the TCO. Based on this, we show how the stand alone, fully allocated and long-run incremental costs of a service can be calculated. Besides the determination of service cost drivers, the framework is useful to evaluate the cost-efficiency of competing technologies. To illustrate this, we study the allocation of the infrastructure costs for a CSP offering transport services with an optical network. By designing the infrastructure with fixed-grid and flex-grid technologies, it is shown that in both cases the main service cost driver is determined by the transponders installed. The results show that fixed-grid fits well for the provisioning of high speed constant bit-rate transport services, whereas flex-grid is a good candidate for transport services with bursty traffic patterns.     

Separation of Ownership and Management: Implications for Risk‐Taking Behavior

Issues associated with the relation between the separation of ownership and management and risk‐taking behavior have been considered in an array of studies, with varying results. Due to the wide variety of ownership structures present, the property–casualty insurance industry provides an excellent setting to test the conflicting hypotheses related to separation of ownership from management and risk taking behavior. Employing a large sample of property–liability insurance companies over the period of 1996–2004, we empirically test the alternative hypotheses regarding the implications of separation of ownership from management for firms’ risk taking behavior. The empirical tests include the ownership structures specified in prior research as well as a more detailed classification scheme. We find that each ownership structure is significantly different from every other ownership structure in terms of risk.     

Macroeconomic news, announcements, and stock market jump intensity dynamics

This paper examines the effect of macroeconomic releases on stock market volatility through a Poisson-Gaussian-GARCH process with time-varying jump intensity, which is allowed to respond to such information. The day of the announcement, per se, is found to have little impact on jump intensities. Employment releases are an exception. However, when macroeconomic surprises are considered, inflation shocks show persistent effects while monetary policy and employment shocks reveal only short-lived effects. Also, the jump intensity responds asymmetrically to macroeconomic shocks. Evidence on macroeconomic variables relevance in explaining jump dynamics and improving volatility forecasts on event days is provided.     

Earnings Smoothing,Executive Compensation,and Corporate Governance: Evidence From the Property–Liability Insurance Industry

Unlike studies that estimate managerial bias, we utilize a direct measure of managerial bias in the U.S. insurance industry to investigate the effects of executive compensation and corporate governance on firms’ earnings management behaviors. We find managers receiving larger bonuses and stock awards tend to make reserving decisions that serve to decrease firm earnings. Moreover, we examine the monitoring effect of corporate board structures in mitigating managers’ reserve manipulation practices. We find managers are more likely to manipulate reserves in the presence of particular board structures. Similar results are not found when we employ traditional estimated measures of managerial bias.     

An Empirical Examination of Stakeholder Groups as Monitoring Sources in Corporate Governance

Insurers are formally and informally monitored by a variety of stakeholders, including reinsurers, agents, outside board members, and regulators. While other studies have generally examined these stakeholders separately, they have not accounted for the fact that there is some relation among the stakeholder groups, and the presence of these groups is likely to be jointly determined. By empirically controlling for these potential interrelations, we create a more complete assessment of the impact of these stakeholders/monitors on insurers’ risk taking. Specifically, we find that the presence of some stakeholders offsets the degree or presence of others, and that most stakeholders/monitors are associated with a reduction of overall firm risk.     

Extension services,product quality and yields: the case of grapes in Argentina

This article studies the impact of publicly subsidized agricultural extension services on yields and product quality. We use panel data from grape producers in Mendoza, Argentina to estimate the impacts of farmer trainings. We find a negative overall impact on yields and evidence of a positive average impact on the adoption of higher‐quality grape varieties. By analyzing the dynamic pattern of the estimated effects, we find evidence of a temporary decrease in yields suggesting the existence of an adjustment process following the introduction of higher‐quality grapes. The overall negative effect on yield is driven by a sharp drop in the year of participation. This fades after year one, and two to three years after treatment we observe increases in higher‐quality grape production. Findings reinforce the importance of temporal dimension of extension services.     

GOAL PROGRAMMING AND MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION-MAKING IN FARM PLANNING: SOME EXTENSIONS

This paper is the sequel to a previous article by Romero and Rehman on the role of multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques, particularly goal programming (GP), in farm planning. This assessment of the potential usefulness of the MCDM paradigm is carried further and now covers the extensions to GP and other related methodologies such as multiobjective programming, compromise programming, multigoal programming and generalised GP. Later analysis is focused on methods of dealing with uncertainty and risk in farm planning models, by demonstrating how game theoretic principles and the MOTAD approach (along with its main variant, target MOTAD) can be incorporated within the MCDM framework.