There's an app for that: The impact of reminder apps on student learning and anxiety

Today's students experience increased anxiety around school and have difficulty keeping track of course assignments. The authors conceptually develop and empirically test a model of the impact of a homework reminder mobile application (app) on executive function skills and learning outcomes with undergraduate business students. The findings suggest that perceived usefulness of Homework Suite Planner app positively predicted students' executive functioning by increasing their organization and time management. Increases in executive functioning due to the Homework Suite app led to more completed assignments, lower anxiety about forgetting homework assignments, and greater overall learning satisfaction with the course. Future research and implications for higher education instructors are discussed.     

Pictures vs. reality: Roles of disconfirmation magnitude,disconfirmation sensitivity,and branding

This study aims to increase our understanding of the effects of food pictures in formulating customers’ expectations and performance evaluation, which, in turn, affect customer satisfaction, trust, and behavioral intentions in the restaurant context. Extending the expectancy disconfirmation theory, we have conducted three experimental designed studies involving a total of 1105 customers. Specifically, study 1 explores three disconfirmation magnitudes (low, moderate, high) and their impact on customer evaluations and behaviors. Study 2 demonstrates the interactive effects of disconfirmation magnitude and branding on customer trust, suggesting that branding mitigates the negative effect of disconfirmation magnitude on trust. Study 3 includes individual differences of disconfirmation sensitivity to explain the variation of the expectancy disconfirmation model, revealing that customers with higher disconfirmation sensitivity are less likely to be satisfied and trust a restaurant as the disconfirmation magnitude increases. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided.     

Excess sensitivity and borrowing constraints: Evidence from Iranian households

In contrast to the findings of simple rational expectations permanent income hypothesis models, empirical studies show that income changes can help predict consumption change. This is dubbed as excess sensitivity in the macroeconomic literature. We use Iranian household data to investigate the excess sensitivity using civil servant status as a proxy for borrowing constraints. We observe that the excess sensitivity is different among different panels. Much less excess sensitivity is observed for government employees who have better access to finance due to the structure of the labour market and banking system in Iran. Our proxy variable to divide data, which is the working status of the head of the household, does not suffer from endogeneity problems evident in the previous literature. The results of this study indicate that the actual consumption profile of a constrained household is suboptimal and hence deepening financial access can decrease the welfare loss of this suboptimality.     

ROBUST PORTFOLIOS AND WEAK INCENTIVES IN LONG‐RUN INVESTMENTS

When the planning horizon is long, and the safe asset grows indefinitely, isoelastic portfolios are nearly optimal for investors who are close to isoelastic for high wealth, and not too risk averse for low wealth. We prove this result in a general arbitrage‐free, frictionless, semimartingale model. As a consequence, optimal portfolios are robust to the perturbations in preferences induced by common option compensation schemes, and such incentives are weaker when their horizon is longer. Robust option incentives are possible, but require several, arbitrarily large exercise prices, and are not always convex.     

企业社会资本、融资约束与投资——现金流敏感性研究

利用企业社会资本理论,以2007-2010年在深圳中小板上市的352家上市公司为样本,研究企业社会资本与融资约束对投资——现金流敏感性的共同影响,结果表明：企业社会资本显著影响投资——现金流敏感性,企业社会资本越大的企业其投资——现金流敏感性也越高;在企业社会资本相同大的条件下,融资约束低的企业比融资约束高的企业有更高的投资——现金流敏感性;在企业社会资本相同小的条件下,投资——现金流敏感性的变化随着融资约束程度的减小呈现U型。     

中国上市公司融资约束指数设计与评价

选取我国上市公司2000～2006年期间的财务数据,分别采用Logistic回归模型和多元判别分析法,构建了两个反映公司外部融资约束程度的融资约束指数——LFC和DFC指数。实证结果表明,两个指数均具有较高的判别能力,LFC指数的判别正确率为94.90%,DFC指数的判别正确率为90.00%,这两个指数的相关系数为0.709。在此基础上,借助于财务理论研究中广泛应用的投资—现金流敏感性工具,间接地对两个指数进行了实证检验。结果表明,流动性约束投资模型比Q投资模型能够更好地解释上市公司的投资行为;尤为重要的是,无论是以LFC指数还是以DFC指数为标准,高融资约束公司的投资—现金流敏感性均显著高于低融资约束公司。     

高管继任来源与高管薪酬差距的激励效应——基于中国上市公司的检验

基于中国上市公司数据检验高管继任来源对高管薪酬差距的激励效应,结果表明,无论核心高管继任来自内部还是外部,薪酬差距对业绩的激励作用都显著支持锦标赛理论;薪酬差距对业绩的激励作用与高管外聘比例正相关,即高管外聘比例较高时,锦标赛理论适用,而高管内部继任比例较高时,则行为理论具有较强的解释力。这为研究高管薪酬差距提供一个新视角,上市公司要合理安排核心高管和高管团队继任制度,进而考虑高管激励制度的整体设计。     

家族企业公司治理模式对上市公司价值的影响

广东家族控制的上市公司的管理模式,主要有未聘用职业经理人、管理者和职业经理人并行,但家族控制、完全聘用职业经理人管理模式三种,目前有一半以上的企业未聘用职业经理人。通过比较三种不同公司治理模式,其中聘用职业经理人并实现所有权和控制权的完全分离是一种不错的选择;而采用聘用职业经理人但家族仍控制企业经营权的管理模式时,企业价值在总体平均上比由家族单独控制还要低。     

银行市场集中度对银行信贷渠道影响的实证分析

利用1996—2007年间的银行贷款及国内生产总值等数据,深入探讨银行信贷市场集中度与银行信贷渠道作用的关系。通过构建一个银行市场结构与贷款及存款利率之间关系的模型,并在“更大的市场集中度导致较低的贷款和较高的贷款率”的假设前提下,发现随着银行集中度的增加,银行借贷对于利率（即货币政策指标）的敏感度下降。因此,货币当局对银行业市场结构的变化应该保持随时关注。另外,应对不同类型贷款（农业贷款、工商业贷款、房地产贷款或建筑业贷款）给予关注,分析货币政策冲击对不同类型的贷款所造成的影响。