Do goodwill impairments affect audit opinions? Evidence from China

There has been a steady growth of goodwill impairments in the Chinese stock market since the adoption of the impairment approach in accounting. The influence of goodwill impairments on a firm’s financial position and profitability give reason to doubt its current and future performance. We examine whether auditors, as a crucial external monitor, identify the information risks of goodwill impairments and express their concerns about financial reporting quality in their audit opinions. Using a sample of firms listed on China’s A-share market from 2007 to 2017, we test the association between goodwill impairments and the type of audit opinion received in the same financial period. Our findings are as follows. First, the probability of receiving a modified opinion increases with the amount of goodwill impairments. Second, the positive association between goodwill impairments and modified audit opinions is driven primarily by earnings management risks. Third, this positive association is more salient when auditors are industry experts and there is no auditor–client mismatch. Fourth, auditors are more sensitive to the amount of goodwill impairments than to their mere existence. Overall, we document that auditors perceive goodwill impairments as a signal of information risks and communicate their concerns to investors to avoid litigation.     

All work intensity is not created equal: Effort motives,job satisfaction and quit intentions at a grocery chain

Prior research has shown that the well-being of employees engaged in intensive work can vary with the discretion their jobs afford regarding how and when to carry out the work. This article explores a different avenue. It argues that well-being also varies with employees’ individual motives for working intensively. The article introduces self-determination theory to the domain of work intensity and focuses on two hypotheses. The first is whether intensive work driven by explicit or implicit incentives is more positively associated with an employee's job satisfaction than intensive work driven by job demands. The second is whether intensive work driven by intrinsic motives is more positively associated with job satisfaction than that driven by explicit or implicit incentives. In both these cases, the article also examines whether equivalent effects exist on (reduced) quit intentions. Original data from a major Greek grocery chain provide corroborative evidence that is robust to a rich set of covariates, including increasingly demanding adjustments for job discretion. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of why differences in well-being exist among employees performing intensive work, with implications for workers and employers.     

Patterns of Investor-State Dispute Settlement Decisions

This paper examines the pattern of settlements, investor wins and state wins in investor-state dispute settlement cases, focusing on the impact of arbitration rules, the resources and experience of the litigants, the type of treaty breach under investigation, and the pattern of state intervention. Logistic regression results show that settlements are more likely when investors do not disclose their allegations publicly, when the host state has been involved in a greater number of past cases, and when the respondent state has a higher control-of-corruption rating. Panel awards to investors are more likely in cases of alleged direct expropriation and less likely for indirect expropriation. Panel decisions favoring the state increase with higher per capita income and rule-of-law ratings.     

Liking what others “Like”: using Facebook to identify determinants of conformity

In this paper we explore the micro-level determinants of conformity. Members of the social networking service Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We set up a natural field experiment to test whether users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before. To find out to what extent conformity depends on group size and social ties we use three different treatment conditions: (1) one stranger has Liked the content, (2) three strangers have Liked the content, and (3) a friend has Liked the content. The results show that one Like from a single stranger had no impact. However, increasing the size of the influencing group doubled the probability that subjects expressed positive support. Friendship ties were also decisive. People were, on average, four times more likely to press the Like button if a friend, rather than a stranger, had done so before them. The existence of threshold effects in our experiment clearly shows that both group size and social proximity matters when opinions are shaped.     

Cuba,Trade Dependency and the GATT/WTO System

Cuba sought economic independence from the U.S. and its reliance on sugar exports after its 1959 revolution, but subsequently developed new dependency relationships. In the meantime, Cuba remained inside the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), despite conducting most of its trade outside it. This paper explores the political economy of Cuba’s participation in the GATT and later the World Trade Organization (WTO). Documents show that Cuba sought to use its participation to gain new markets and influence in the developing world. While Cuba has gained little economically from its participation, in recent years it has diversified its exports and trade partners, and its trade interests now align more closely with WTO rules. Economic reforms will be necessary in order for Cuba to benefit.     

Analysis of the Efficacy of Public Spending on Research and Development in State Programs

This paper presents an approach to assessing the efficacy of public spending on research and development in state programs. At present, there is a need to develop a unified approach to the analysis and evaluation of the efficacy of such spending from the perspective of participants in state programs (federal executive bodies). The proposed approach does not allow evaluating the efficacy of public spending on the development of research areas assigned to the authors.     

Competition and cooperation in the exploitation of the groundwater resource

We study the exploitation of a common groundwater resource, first as a static and then as a differential game, in order to take into account the strategic and dynamic interactions among the users of the resource. We suppose that firms can form coalitions or can decide not to cooperate. The non-cooperation regime is characterized by pumping that lead to depletion of the aquifer; the cooperation preserves the resource. Open-loop and feedback equilibria have been computed and compared in order to characterize the existence of cooperators and defectors in water resources management.