Workforce Diversity and Religiosity

Journal of Business Ethics - Workforce diversity has received increasing amounts of attention from academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we examine the empirical association between a...     

The Effect of Prior Probability on Skill in Two-Group Discriminant Analysis

Although the weights in a discriminant function (both linear and quadratic) are independent of group prior probabilities, the performance of the classifier (on the training and validation data) is sensitively dependent on these often unknown probabilities. After reviewing some defects of a popular measure of performance in the situation where the group sizes are naturally disproportionate, three alternative measures of performance (or association) are considered and it is shown that the behavior of the measures as a function of group prior probability is different between measures. Consequently, the optimum choice of the group prior probability depends on the specific measure of performance. Among the measures considered, only two measures - the index of mean square contingency and the Heidke Skill Statistic - are found to be well defined in the disparate-group size situation, and are, therefore, recommended. An empirical data set, dealing with delinquency among high school students is employed to illustrate all of the findings.     

Television Viewing and High School Mathematics Achievement: A Neural Network Analysis

This study examines the relationship between mathematics achievement and television viewing. The data consist of 13,542 high school seniors from the High School and Beyond project conducted by U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. A feed-forward neural network is employed as a nonlinear model. A curvilinear relationship is found, independent of viewer characteristics, parental background, parental involvement, and leisure activities, with a peak at about one hour of viewing, and persistent upon the inclusion of statistical errors. It is further shown that for low-ability students the curvilinearity is replaced with an entirely positive correlation across all hours of television viewing.     

Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect Information Asymmetry?

In this study, we examine the empirical association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and information asymmetry by investigating their simultaneous and endogenous effects. Employing an extensive U.S. sample, we find an inverse association between CSR engagement and the proxies of information asymmetry after controlling for various firm characteristics. The results hold using 2SLS considering the reverse side of information asymmetry influencing CSR activities. The results also hold after mitigating endogeneity based on the dynamic panel system generalized method of moment. Furthermore, the CSR–information asymmetry relation is amplified in high-risk firms due to managers’ efforts to build a good reputation. Last, we find that CSR engagement is inversely associated with reputational risk measure and lower predicted value of reputational risk is positively associated with lower information asymmetry measures. We interpret these results as supporting the stakeholder theory-based, reputation-building explanation that considers CSR engagement as a vehicle to build and maintain firm reputation thereby enhancing the information environment.