The Ethics of Marketing Good Corporate Conduct

Companies that contribute to charitable organizations rightly hope that their philanthropic work will also be good for the bottom line. Marketers of good corporate conduct must be especially careful, however, to market such conduct in a morally acceptable fashion. Although marketers typically engage in mild deception or take artistic license when marketing goods and services, these sorts of practices are far more morally troublesome when used to market good corporate conduct. I argue that although mild deception is not substantially worrisome with respect to the marketing of most goods and services, it is a far greater moral blunder to use such methods in the marketing of good corporate character. These erode trust and demonstrate alack of adequate respect for the moral good. In light of these concerns, I suggest that such practices must be re-examined when applied to the marketing of corporate character and good conduct. Finally, I develop a revised set of ethical guidelines that are needed in order to address the problems peculiar to the marketing of morally praiseworthy behavior.     

CAN STOCK MARKET LIBERALIZATION IN EMERGING ECONOMIES MITIGATE LEGAL SYSTEMS DEFICIENCIES?

We document positive valuation effects around the time of stock market liberalization. We find that the valuation effects are larger for countries with civil law traditions compared with countries with common law origins. Similarly, we find that countries with weaker shareholder protections exhibit greater market valuation increases compared with countries with stronger shareholder protections. The results reinforce the importance of country legal systems and of shareholder protections in determining the quality of corporate governance systems and financial market outcomes. The findings suggest that stock market liberalization may mitigate deficiencies in the existing institutional environments not supportive of effective corporate governance systems.     

The effects of partnership quality on business process outsourcing success in Malaysia: key users perspective

This paper proposes a theoretical framework to investigate the impact of partnership quality and other variables—business understanding, commitment, communication, relationship age and top management support—on outsourcing success. Data were gathered from a survey of nine banks, from which 105 respondents participated in this study. The results indicate that partnership quality may serve as a key predictor of outsourcing success. Partnership quality was found to be influenced positively by business understanding, commitment, communication and top management support. However, relationship age was found to be not significantly related to outsourcing success. The implications of these findings are further elaborated.     

An Analysis of the Financing Decisions of REITs: The Role of Market Timing and Target Leverage

This paper examines the role of capital market conditions and target leverage on the marginal financing decisions of Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), which include both capital raising and capital reduction activities. We investigate the relevance of a hybrid hypothesis whereby REITs have target leverage, but they also choose and time their marginal financing decisions according to the capital market conditions. The empirical results suggest that target leverage behavior plays a secondary role to market timing behavior in the financing decisions of REITs. In particular, we find strong and consistent evidence that REITs exhibit market timing behavior in terms of when and what type of capital to issue or reduce. Such market timing practices, motivated by attempts to take advantage of capital market conditions, may shift the firms away from their target leverage. However, we observe that in the long run, most REITs do move their capital structure towards the target debt level.     

The Effect of Client Fee Dependence on Audit Independence

This paper examines the effect of client fee dependence on the independence of audit firms. For the largest 25 audit firms for which fee revenue and total revenue could be determined, three research approaches were used to identify whether inappropriate audit opinions are being issued to large-fee clients. All situations identified by an audit opinion prediction model as having a high probability of qualification were duly qualified. It was found that for the top 25 audit firms, the level of fee dependence from any one client was substantially below the level suggested in auditing standards. In summary, the investigation was unable to identify any instances of fee dependence impairing the independence of auditors.     

The Impact of Labor Market Regulations

This article investigates the impact of labor market regulationsin a setting with incomplete compliance. It takes as its startingpoint the limited evidence regarding the distortionary costsof labor market regulations and argues that there may existnatural limits to the efficiency losses engendered by such regulations.The article reviews some stylized facts regarding labor marketbehavior, presents an analytical model that may explain suchbehavior, and provides a checklist for assessing the distortionaryimpact of regulations such as minimum wages.     

BEYOND RATE OF RETURN: REORIENTING PROJECT APPRAISAL

Traditional approaches to project appraisal fail in practiceto address two fundamental questions: whether a project belongsin the public or the private sector; and what effect any externalassistance associated with the project has on the country'sdevelopment. The first issue is of general interest to bothnational policymakers and international donors. If the governmentprovides a good or service that would otherwise have been providedby the private sector, the net contribution of the public projectcould be low. The second issue is of particular concern to donors.If financial resources are fungible, the project being appraisedmight well have been undertaken with out external financing.In this case, donor funds are actually financing some other,unappraised project. Both cases argue for a shift in the emphasisof project evaluation away from a concern with precise rate-of-returncalculations and toward broader sectoral analyses and publicexpenditure reviews. In this context, three areas critical forproper project appraisal include a consideration of the rationalefor public intervention, the fiscal impact of the project, andthe fungibility of external assistance.      

Post-earnings-announcement Drift: Some Preliminary Evidence for the UK

This paper tests for the presence of post-earnings-announcement drift on the London Stock Exchange using data for seven half-years for a constant sample of 206 quoted companies. Separate results are presented for interim and final earnings announcements and the results are disaggregated by firm size. Overall, we find evidence of significant drift for the earnings announcements of small firms but not for the announcements of large firms.