Narrative construction of expatriate experience and career cycle: discursive patterns in Finnish stories of international

Expatriate experience is not only a disconnected occasion for cross-cultural anxiety and adjustment but also an important event in the process of self-development and learning. Following this view and arguing for a discursive approach, the paper focuses on ways in which expatriates themselves tell and interpret their development and movement across expatriate career cycle. Meaning systems connecting expatriate job with previous and following work experiences in career stories of Finnish engineers and managers were identified using a combination of narrative and discourse analysis. No evidence was found of an autonomous expatriate discourse but, in contrast, expatriate career cycle was narrated using available organizational repertoires of development and career. Describing and discussing the meaning-making properties of three identified discourses - bureaucratic, occupational and enterprising - the paper emphasizes the organizational environment of expatriate experience while acknowledging the limits of these contemporary career vocabularies in addressing individual learning and change in cross-cultural settings.     

Prediction of bank financial strength ratings: The case of Turkey

Bank financial strength ratings have gained widespread popularity especially after the recent financial turmoil. Rating agencies were criticized because of their ratings and failure to predict the bankruptcy of the banks. Based on this observation, we investigate whether the forecast of the rating of bank's financial strength using publicly available data is consistent with those of the credit rating agency. We use the data of Turkish banks for this investigation. We take a country-specific approach because previous studies found that proxies used for environmental factors (political, economic, and financial risk of the country) did not have any explanatory power and it is hard to find international data for other important factors such as franchise value, concentration, and efficiency. We use two popular multivariate statistical techniques (multiple discriminant analysis and ordered logistic regression) to estimate a suitable model and we compare their performances with those of two mostly used data mining techniques (Support Vector Machine and Artificial Neural Network). Our results suggest that our predictions are consistent with those of Moody's financial strength rating in general.. The important factors in rating are found to be profitability (measured by return on equity), efficient use of resources, and funding the businesses and the households instead of the government that shows efficient placement of the funds.     

Upfront versus rating contingent fees: Implications for rating quality

This paper theoretically investigates whether compensating a credit rating agency (CRA) with an upfront fee, rather than a rating contingent fee, can improve rating quality. I show that an upfront fee delivers the same rating quality as the rating contingent fee if the CRA sets its rating policy before the issuer solicits a rating, whereas it can potentially improve quality if the rating policy is set only after a rating is solicited. These results suggest that the “Franken Amendment” that has been removed from the Dodd-Frank Act might be crucial for the proposed upfront fee regime to improve rating quality.     

Do survey joiners and leavers differ from regular participants? The US SPF GDP growth and inflation forecasts

If ‘learning by doing’ is important for macro-forecasting, newcomers might be different from regular, established participants. Stayers may also differ from the soon-to-leave. We test these conjectures for macro-forecasters’ point predictions of output growth and inflation, and for their histogram forecasts. Histogram forecasts of inflation by both joiners and leavers are found to be less accurate, especially if we suppose that joiners take time to learn. For GDP growth, there is no evidence of differences between the groups in terms of histogram forecast accuracy, although GDP point forecasts by leavers are less accurate. These findings are predicated on forecasters being homogeneous within groups. Allowing for individual fixed effects suggests fewer differences, including leavers’ inflation histogram forecasts being no less accurate.     

参军经历会导致农村青年收入溢价吗?——以CFPS2010调查9628个样本为例

文章基于CFPS2010调查的9628个农村男性数据，研究参军经历对个人收入的影响，并以"家庭成分"作为工具变量去除了内生性问题引起的估计偏误。研究发现：参军经历显著增加了个人收入，在控制其他变量后，农村退伍军人的收入高于没有参军者35.5%。进一步分析表明，（1）农村退伍军人更容易获得城镇就业机会，而城镇就业显著提高了个人收入；（2）农村退伍军人拥有更广泛的社会网络，而社会网络也显著促进了个人收入。因此，文章创新地发现了参军经历通过"城镇就业"和"社会网络"两个中介渠道影响个人收入。     

Blurred stars: Mutual fund ratings in the shadow of conflicts of interest

Using unique data on trading commission payments to mutual fund rating companies (MFRCs) by mutual funds in China, this paper investigates whether the conflicts of interest arising from trading commission payments bias MFRCs’ mutual fund star ratings and hence affect their informativeness. We find the rating of a mutual fund is more optimistic when the MFRC either (i) receives trading commission fees from the mutual fund or (ii) can potentially receive fees in the future. The paper further shows that the usefulness of ratings in terms of predicting a fund’s future performance is negatively impacted by conflicts of interest. There is also evidence that investors can see through the problem, responding less enthusiastically (in terms of fund flows) to the ratings of conflicted MFRCs. We further find that the introduction of a rating qualification system that aims to improve mutual fund rating quality exacerbates the rating bias.     

Book Review Section

J. Hoggett and L. Edwards Accounting in Australia
K. Langfield‐Smith, H. Thorne and R. W. Hilton Management Accounting. An Australian Perspective
B.M. Cunningham, L.A. Niokolai and J.D. Bazley Accounting—Information for Business Decisions
M. Greenstein, and T.M. Feinman Electronic Commerce: Security, Risk Management and Control     

企业集团开展风险投资的组织模式研究

组织模式是国际大企业集团成功开展风险投资的重要保证。基于理论和案例的分析表明:虽然目前风险投资的四种组织模式服务于不同企业集团的战略发展目标,但主流模式及其做法,仍可为我国大企业集团开展风险投资提供经验借鉴。     

基于体验视角的忻州顿村温泉旅游

本文以国内外温泉旅游相关研究入手,通过分析忻州顿村温泉旅游的发展现状、存在的问题、发展的机遇以及面临的各种挑战,进而提出科学规划温泉资源的开发、改革管理体制、深入挖掘温泉文化内涵、创新温泉旅游产品以及加大宣传力度等相应的发展对策,从而使顿村温泉旅游产品更具竞争力,赢得更广阔的市场。