Information and Investor Behavior Surrounding Earnings Announcements

The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of annual earnings announcements on the market through the order flow data in addition to the usual transaction data. In this respect, examining order flow data can potentially reveal valuable information that is not available from transaction data. In fact, the data allow us to test hypotheses about asymmetric information and investor behavior and to test if the behavior varies with investor sophistication. In addition, the paper tries to identify the determinants of the impact on a firm's value using assumptions about investor behavior.     

In the Wake of New Media: Connecting the Who with the How of Strategizing Communication

In this article we argue that although there has been an intensified exploration of how organizations strategize within the field of strategic communication, there seems to be a key component missing, namely questioning who these organizations are and become in the process of strategizing. Strategic communication implicitly, perhaps even unintentionally, continues to rely on a classical understanding of organizations as “social units (or human groupings) deliberately constructed and reconstructed to seek specific goals” (Etzioni, 1964, p. 3). Assuming rather than exploring who the organization is, we argue, hinders a full explanation of how strategic communication works. Aiming to tackle this issue, we first present three ways in which the classical understanding of organizations is being theoretically challenged by organization studies and empirically challenged by new media, arguing that organizations are networked, sociomaterial, and contingent processes of meaning formation. Then we examine how the reconceptualization of the organization influences the concept of strategic communication, advocating that strategies should be seen as collaborative and networked flows (the how) of shared decision making by both human and nonhuman actors (the who). Finally, we discuss how this affects the notion of strategic action, and hence, strategic communication, asking what strategic action is and who performs it.     

Antecedents of customer loyalty in residential energy markets: Service quality,satisfaction, trust and switching costs

A conceptual framework is proposed that analyses the effect of perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, trust in the energy provider and perceived switching costs on customer loyalty in residential energy markets. Three distinct dimensions of perceived service quality are identified: technical quality of core services, technical quality of peripheral services and service process quality (functional service quality). The proposed model is tested within the scope of a representative survey of Spanish residential energy customers. Regarding the dimensions of service quality, the results indicate significant effects only of service process quality on satisfaction and, indirectly, on customer loyalty. Loyalty effects of further variables in the model are significant.     

The Co-Presence of Clarity and Ambiguity in Strategic Corporate Communication – An Exploratory Study

The purpose of this article is to examine the co-presence of clarity and ambiguity in the formulation, interpretation and implementation of corporate communication strategies. Following a growing scholarly interest in how ambiguity can be seen as a productive strategic resource in strategy work, this article focuses on the interdependency of clarity and ambiguity in corporate communication strategies. Through an exploratory study, using interpretive discourse analysis of interviews with employees at a corporate communication department, the present article analyses how the employees perceived the writing, reading, and enactment of their organisation’s new corporate communication strategy. The analysis reveals that the employees sometimes use shared understandings to produce ambiguity in relation to engagement and responsibility, and how they use ambiguity to create a shared understanding of objectives and practices. Though this co-presence might cause the members to feel a lack of ownership, it does not impede the department’s ability to execute strategy-work.     

Reducing Costs of Censuses in Norway Through Use of Administrative Registers

The purpose and methodology of the Norwegian census has changed considerably during the last 35 years. While the census was previously the main source of socio-demographic information, it is to day just one of several sources. After an identification number for each individual was introduced and used in various administrative registers, the dominating role of the census has changed dramatically. For some years it has been the policy of Statistics Norway to collaborate with various governmental agencies in order to use administrative registers in statistics production. This policy has been supported politically, and a new Statistics Act has been useful in these efforts. The purpose of this paper is to present the strategy and methodology used to produce statistics in general, census statistics in particular, when based on a combined use of administrative registers and directly collected data. Experiences from Norwegian censuses since 1960 will be presented.     

Wages and Teachers’ Hours of Work

This paper seeks to estimate the effect of teachers net marginal wages on their working hours, on the basis of a survey of Dutch teachers. The resulting uncompensated wage elasticity is significantly positive and has an average value of 0.2 for males and 0.4 for females. However, a general wage increase is a rather costly solution to teacher shortages. Alternatively, working full-time can be made attractive for part-time teachers by providing a premium for full-time teachers. This kind of premium provides part-time teachers with a stronger incentive to work full-time, as the negative income effect does not occur. Simulation results show that such a premium produces an effect that is almost seven times as large as a general wage increase.     

On the Use of Auxiliary and Paradata for Dealing With Non‐sampling Errors in Household Surveys

In this paper, we consider the use of auxiliary and paradata for dealing with non‐response and measurement errors in household surveys. Three over‐arching purposes are distinguished: response enhancement, statistical adjustment, and bias exploration. Attention is given to the varying focus at the different phases of statistical production from collection, processing to analysis, and how to select and utilize the useful auxiliary and paradata. Administrative register data provide the richest source of relevant auxiliary information, in addition to data collected in previous surveys and censuses. Due to their importance in effective dealings with non‐sampling errors, one should make every effort to increase their availability in the statistical system and, at the same time, to develop efficient statistical methods that capitalize on the combined data sources.     

Improving the response rate and quality in Web-based surveys through the personalization and frequency of reminder mailings

Internet shares some characteristics of survey making with traditional media, especially postal mail. However, there are considerable differences that justify a different focus on administration and make existing knowledge of the traditional media not directly applicable to Internet. Research is therefore necessary to discover how Web-based surveys operate under different conditioning factors, so that general behavioral patterns can be established in order to improve the administration and results of such surveys. This study thus centers on two of the parameters that can influence responses to Web-based surveys, which are personalization and the frequency of reminder mailings distributed among the sample population. The results obtained show a positive influence of personalized e-mail messages on response rate and the need to use a lower frequency for studies aiming at increasing the response rate in the shortest possible time; and longer frequency (and personalized) when the aim is to have the respondents complete the full questionnaire.     

Combining Data from Surveys and Administrative Record Systems. The Norwegian Experience

At Statistics Norway administrative data have been extensively used in order to improve the quality of survey data. Various techniques have been used to reduce sampling variance and/or to reduce the effects of non-response. In the present article some of the most commonly used methods are being presented, and based on empirical rather than theoretical evaluations, we give our conclusions concerning their potentials and limitations.     

Multi-tranche securitisation structures: more than just a zero-sum game?

This paper explains multi-tranche structuring and the yield that securitisation bonds offer by incorporating several factors into a comprehensive model. Results indicate that the degree of complexity of multi-tranche securitisation structures is related to market completeness and solving information asymmetry problems. We also find that the complexity of multi-tranche structure enables the yield offered by triple-A bonds to be reduced but not the average yield, concluding that tranching is a zero-sum game. This research uses a database comprising of all the MBS and ABS issues (1993–2011) in Spain, one of the world’s main securitisation markets. Analysing this long period has allowed us, for the first time, to contrast the Great Financial Crisis (GFC) disruptive effect on the analysed relationships in the securitisation market.