The impact of environmental management systems on financial performance in fashion and textiles industries

With rising environmental concerns from consumers and stakeholder groups, environmental management has become an important responsibility for today's fashion and textiles manufacturers. The production of fashion and textiles related products often requires high levels of energy and water consumption, and emits large quantities of pollutants to the environment. Therefore, the adoption of environmental management systems (EMSs) is important and could have a significant impact on these firms' operational performance. This study presents empirical evidence on the performance impact of EMS adoption in the fashion and textiles related industries (FTIs). Although EMSs have emerged as a passport to business in the FTIs, their actual impacts on firms' financial performance have not been explored. We reveal that the adoption of ISO 14000, the most popular EMS, improves manufacturers' profitability in the FTIs over a three-year period as measured by return-on-assets (ROA). Based on our sample, we find that profitability improvement started during the implementation stage and continued at least one year after the firm obtained ISO 14000 certification. We also find that profitability improvement is mainly due to improvement in cost efficiency, measured by return-on-sales (ROS). Specifically, certified firms improved up to 2.9% in ROA and 3.3% in ROS over the three-year period since they implemented ISO 14000. We conclude that there is a positive impact of EMS adoption on firms' financial performance in the FTIs.     

Bridging knowing and learning: a suggestion for accounting education

This teaching note describes an exercise which appears to prompt students to reflect on their learning. The exercise is based on five pairs of words concerned with knowing and learning: (1) learn/study, (2) educate/train, (3) know/understand, (4) teach/tutor, and (5) student/pupil. The exercise may appear trivial, even frivolous, but when successful, it can compel students to reflect, often for the first time, on the meaning and purpose of their educational experience. Frequently, students make explicit previously unarticulated views and feelings about the process and content of their educational programmes.     

Gathering Data for Archival,Field, Survey,and Experimental Accounting Research

In the published proceedings of the first Journal of Accounting Research Conference, Vatter [1966] lamented that “Gathering direct and original facts is a tedious and difficult task, and it is not surprising that such work is avoided.” For the fiftieth JAR Conference, we introduce a framework to help researchers understand the complementary value of seven empirical methods that gather data in different ways: prestructured archives, unstructured (“hand‐collected”) archives, field studies, field experiments, surveys, laboratory studies, and laboratory experiments. The framework spells out five goals of an empirical literature and defines the seven methods according to researchers’ choices with respect to five data gathering tasks. We use the framework and examples of successful research studies in the financial reporting literature to clarify how data gathering choices affect a study's ability to achieve its goals, and conclude by showing how the complementary nature of different methods allows researchers to build a literature more effectively than they could with less diverse approaches to gathering data.     

The impact of forced divestments on parent company stock prices: Buy on the rumor,sell on the news?

We measure how warnings of expropriation and forced divestments of private property affect the stock prices of parent companies. We use a unique database of 116 events in 12 countries from 2005 to 2013. Our results show that different types of warnings have significant negative effects on stock prices, and the largest effect is from a warning that takes the form of a transitory permit revocation. In the case of forced divestments, we find a significant negative impact when a permit is permanently revoked. However, nationalizations are associated with a positive market reaction.     

Stock market reactions to monetary policy surprises under uncertainty

This article investigates how uncertainty impacts the effect of monetary policy surprises on stock returns. Using high-frequency US data, we demonstrate that stock markets respond more aggressively to monetary policy surprises during periods of high uncertainty. We also show that uncertainty asymmetrically influences the transmission of positive and negative monetary policy surprises to stock market prices. The amplifying effect of uncertainty is found to be stronger for expansionary shocks than for contractionary shocks. Our robustness analysis confirms that financial uncertainty has a significant role in shaping the influence of monetary policy on the stock market.     

A Dynamic Analysis of Fixed- and Adjustable-Rate Mortgage Terminations

This paper provides a side-by-side comparison of loan-level statistical models for fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages. Multinomial logit models for quarterly conditional probabilities of default and prepayment are estimated. We find that the estimated impacts of embedded option values for prepayment and default are generally quite similar across both FRM and ARM loans, providing additional empirical support for the basic predictions of the options theory. We also find that differences in estimates of conditional probabilities of prepayment and default associated with mortgage age, origination period, original LTV, and relative loan size, indicate the continued significance of these other economic and demographic factors for empirical models of mortgage terminations.     

关于加速河北省工业化进程若干问题的研究

本文对不同工业化国家的工业化道路进行了考察 ,对河北省工业化阶段进行了判断和反思 ,分析了未来国际国内发展趋势和环境变化对河北省工业化道路的影响 ,指出了今后河北省工业化中应特别注意的几个问题 ,提出了加速河北省工业化进程的几点建议。     

房地产开发企业动态能力的维度结构与实证研究

在已有研究基础上,提出房地产开发企业动态能力的概念内涵和三维度结构模型,通过探索性因子分析和验证性因子分析,对其维度结构进行提炼和验证。实证分析表明,房地产开发企业动态能力包含组织学习、整合重构、组织变革三大维度,且维度结构具有较好的可靠性和有效性,从而为国内“新常态”下房地产开发企业动态能力的培育和提升奠定基础。     

Market reactions to ECB policy innovations: A cross-country analysis

Regulators have been paying increasing attention to governing and steering market fluctuations, with their role in shaping the economic cycle being ever more crucial. The combined effect of the financial and sovereign debt crises, as well as the approach to the zero lower bound, has made actions even more pressing, forcing the European Central Bank to resort to unconventional instruments to revive the economies and counter deflationary pressures. By using a combined event study and panel regression methodology, we investigate whether European Monetary Union equity markets react heterogeneously to standard and non-standard European Central Bank policy innovations. Our results show that conventional policies unevenly affect financial indices in the Eurozone and, hence, are bound to generate asymmetries that reflect on real economies, while unconventional measures, albeit with different intensities, exercise a homogeneous pressure on all markets. Our evidence highlights the beneficial impact of unconventional measures and suggests that they can play a useful role even in non-crisis times.     

Risk management in local authorities: An application of Schatzki's social site ontology

Prior research has devoted limited attention to studying changes in organisational risk management (RM) practices. This is despite continuous dissatisfaction from academics and practitioners with organisations' ability to manage risks. We draw on Schatzki's social site ontology to study RM practices of two New Zealand local authorities that both experienced (earthquake) risk events and whose RM practices could be expected to change. We extend recent research utilising Schatzki, by finding that practical intelligibility and general understanding mutually affect each other in the organising of practices. Further, we extend Nama and Lowe’s (2014) addition to Schatzki by highlighting the importance of including teleological structures and accounting devices into the mutually constitutive relationship between general understanding and affectivity. Finally, we contribute to RM literature by proposing that changing the general understanding (in addition to the mere implementation of RM tools) is an important way of making RM change fundamental and sustainable.