Is customer satisfaction a relevant metric for financial analysts?

This study examines the effects of customer satisfaction on analysts' earnings forecast errors. Based on a sample of analysts following companies measured by the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), we find that customer satisfaction reduces earnings forecast errors. However, analysts respond to changes in customer satisfaction but not to the ACSI metric per se. Furthermore, the effects of customer satisfaction are asymmetric; for example, analysts are more willing to use good news (i.e. an increase in customer satisfaction information) than bad news (i.e. a decrease in satisfaction). Similarly, customer satisfaction reduces negative deviation more than positive deviation of the analysts' forecasts from actual earnings. Furthermore, the effects of customer satisfaction depend upon the base level of satisfaction that the firm has achieved. Finally, the effects of customer satisfaction on analysts' forecast errors differ across firms with volatile satisfaction scores and those with stable satisfaction scores. We discuss the implications of our results for marketers and participants in financial markets.     

The Tracking of Environmental Costs: Motivations and Impacts

Abstract

Most accounting systems separately capture and accumulate one portion of the overall environmental costs of firms, while the remainder is embedded in other cost pools, such as general overhead costs or administrative costs. Little empirical evidence has been provided to explain the impacts of cost accounting systems that make a larger portion of firms' total environmental costs visible. The aim of this study is to conceptually and empirically examine the relationships among the tracking of environmental costs (TEC) by firms, their environmental motivations, and the impacts in terms of environmental and economic performance. Using survey data from a large sample of manufacturing firms, the results suggest two main conclusions. First, the TEC has an indirect influence on economic performance through environmental performance. Second, this indirect effect is influenced by the environmental motivations of the firm. More specifically, this indirect effect is greater (lesser) for firms whose motivations are predominately business-oriented (sustainability-oriented).     

Entrepreneurship and social norms about thrift versus sharing: the Chinese-Tahitian experience

This article establishes a link between entrepreneurship and a new ‘cultural dimension’: thrift vs. sharing. This cultural dimension measures what is the overriding social norm in a group: thrift or sharing. Our first hypothesis states that long winters with annual harvests fostered thrift while foraging and tropical horticulture and continuous harvesting fostered sharing. Our second hypothesis states that thrift promotes entrepreneurship, while sharing hampers it. We find empirical support for both hypotheses when comparing indigenous Polynesians and the Hakka Chinese minority in Tahiti, French Polynesia.     

Tax Holidays and the International Capital Market

The paper shows how a tax holiday may signal to a skepticalcapital market that the future level of taxation will be moderate.After the signal has informed investors that the host countrygovernment is a low-spender, the tax profile flattens out, correspondingto a tax reform stage. Contrary to the recent literature on taxholidays, this model assumes that: the capital market is perfectlycompetitive; sunk costs are captured by a convex cost function,instead of fixed costs; taxation is distortionary, not lump-sum;and the government maximizes a welfare function rather than taxrevenue.     

Seasoned equity offerings by small and medium-sized enterprises

Most analyses of small firms’ decision to seek outside equity financing and the conditions thereof concern private firms. Knowledge of the risk and return of entrepreneurial ventures for outside investors is consequently limited. This paper attempts to fill this gap by examining the Canadian context, where small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are allowed to list on a stock market. We analyze seasoned equity offerings launched by SMEs over the last decade. These public issuers can be considered low quality firms with poor operating performance. Managers issue equity before a large decrease in operating and stock market performance. Individual investors do not price the stocks correctly around the issue and incur significant negative returns in the years following the issue. This is particularly true for constrained issuers. We confirm that entrepreneurial outside equity attracts lemons and that individual investors cannot invest wisely in emerging ventures. Probably as a consequence of individual investors’ lack of skill and rationality, the cost of outside equity financing of Canadian public SMEs is abnormally low.     

Time,uncertainty and trade flows

This paper quantifies the impact of international transport time on bilateral trade flows in goods using previously unexploited information drawn from a large data set on international parcel delivery times. In line with previous work, we find that an extra day spent in international transit reduces bilateral trade by just under 1% at the sample median. In addition, and for the first time in the literature, we examine the impact of time-related uncertainty, which requires traders to hold costly inventories or build costly redundancies into supply chains. We find that a one day increase in international transport time uncertainty reduces bilateral trade flows by just over 1%. Splitting the sample into developing and developed countries shows that international transit time matters primarily for south–south trade, whereas uncertainty is relatively more important for north–north trade. Using new data on trade in intermediate versus final goods, we also find some evidence that time and uncertainty both matter more for movements of intermediates of the type that takes place within global value chains.     

Help with solving technological problems in project activities

In France, project activities figure predominantly in technology education. The general idea behind learning based on project activity is to allow the pupil to get involved in the activity in question, with the pupil tackling real situations rather than ones of an abstract nature. But too often, we notice that the pedagogical strategies used by teachers in project activities are not particularly effective from a learning point of view. What must be done in order to render project work in technology teaching genuinely effective? In this article, we make the following suggestion: if specific help, based on the pupil’s level of understanding of the activity relating to technologically based problem solving in project work, is made available by the teacher, then project activity can become much more effective from a learning point of view. By using situations highlighting project activities in the technology teaching domain, we analyse the knowledge used by pupils. We then present the specific help used by the teacher as well as the resulting effects upon student activity. We highlight the fact that if specific help conceived as a result of analysing student activity is put in place, the pupil learns more effectually.