Burnout among university accounting educators in Australia and New Zealand: determinants and implications

Increased teaching workloads combined with pressures to publish in limited outlets has intensified the burnout potential among accounting educators in Australia and New Zealand. However, amongst the few studies on tertiary accounting education, the focus has so far been only on burnout arising from student contact intensity. We broaden this literature by examining how other worklife characteristics contribute to burnout. Based on 158 responses from Australian and New Zealand accounting academics, we find evidence for emotional exhaustion due to high workload. However, professional efficacy continues to remain high. Qualitative responses offer deeper insights on how various burnout factors are interrelated.     

Portfolio Selection and Optimization with Higher Moments: Evidence from the Indian Stock Market

The Markowitz portfolio optimization model, popularly known as the Mean-Variance model, assumes that stockreturns follow normal distribution. But when stock returns do not follow normal distribution, this model wouldbe inadequate as it would prescribe sub-optimal portfolios. Stock market literature often deliberates that stock returns are non-normal. In such context the Markowitz model would not be sufficient to estimate the portfolio risks. The purpose of this paper is to expand the original Markowitz portfolio theory (mean-variance) via adding the higher order moments like skewness (third moment about the mean) and kurtosis (fourth moment about the mean) in the return characteristics. The research paper investigates the impact of including higher moments using multi-objective programming model for portfolio stock selection and optimization. The empirical results indicate that the inclusion of higher moments had a considerable impact in estimating the returns behavior of portfolios. The portfolios optimized using all the four moments, generated higher returns for the given level of risk in comparison to the returns of the Markowitz model during the study period 2000–2011. The results of this study would be immensely useful to fund managers, portfolio managers and investors as it would help them in understanding the Indian stock market behavior better and also in selecting alternative portfolio selection models.     

Crisis costs and debtor discipline: the efficacy of public policy in sovereign debt crises

Recent debate on the reform of the international financial architecture has highlighted the potentially important role of the official sector in crisis management. We examine how such public intervention in sovereign debt crises affects efficiency, ex ante and ex post. Our results shed light on the scale of capital inflows and the implications for debtor country output of such a regime. The efficacy of measures such as officially sanctioned stays on creditor litigation depend critically on the quality of public sector surveillance and the size of the costs of sovereign debt crises.     

The integration substitute: the role of controls in managing human asset specificity

As the integration solution to the problem of specific assets cannot be replicated on human asset specificity because slavery is illegal, economic theory states that control systems substitute for integration through a balanced structure to help align diverse interests. To understand the intricate design features of the balance, we examine a case‐study firm. For low human asset specificity, the restriction and segregation of usable decision rights link with standards. However, incentives are traced to individuals only to the extent task deviations do not create relevant future costs that are difficult to be self‐corrected. For high specificity, incentives are related to outputs rather than outcomes, because outcome variations reduce the attractiveness of maintaining the balance. Subjective assessment is used as an efficient alternate ‘balancing’ solution and decision control is shared when available subjective data are inadequate.     

Trade Size Preference of Informed Traders in Indian Equity Markets

This study utilized high frequency transactions data to analyze the trade size preference of informed traders in Indian equity markets. It is observed that informed traders at an aggregate level adopt stealth trading strategy, wherein they prefer medium sized trades over large sized trades in order to camouflage their private information. However, the stealth trading behavior varies across stocks, wherein informed traders prefer more large sized trades on firms that are part of an index compared to non-index firms. Trading behavior also varies across other market conditions. It has been noted that informed traders prefer large sized trades during periods of high market thickness, negative returns, and low volatility. This study also provides a rationale for such varied behavior of informed traders.     

CEO Influence and Executive Compensation

The sales-maximization hypothesis and the shareholder wealth-maximization hypothesis have been suggested in prior finance literature to explain the determinants of CEO pay. This paper proposes that CEO influence over the board is an additional explanation for the size of CEO pay. Evidence from the 1989–1991 period indicates that CEO pay is positively related to measures of CEO influence over the board. Results of this study suggest that CEO salary levels are mostly a function of CEO influence over the board, the growth in sales and the size of the firm.     

Medical travellers’ perspectives in selecting in-patient services at selected private hospitals in Sri Lanka

The Sri Lankan government has clear plans to develop medical tourism as an industry. Availability of high-quality medical professionals and accredited hospitals has encouraged medical travellers to come to Sri Lanka and to expand the medical tourism industry in the country. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe medical travellers’ perspectives in seeking in-patient services at selected four private hospitals in Sri Lanka. Foreign national in-patients (n?=?252) were interviewed using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. The response rate was 93.25%. The majority (68.1%) were Maldivians followed by Indians (20.4%) and 51.1% sought surgical care. Availability of high-quality medical professionals (94.2%) and accredited hospitals (81.3%), easy visa (90.2%) were top reasons to select Sri Lanka. Medical travellers faced difficulties in communication (37.4%), transport (31.9%), accommodation (57%) and finding quality food (41.7%). The study recommends improvement of infrastructure and support services for medical travellers and that private hospitals obtain international accreditation to improve medical tourism potentials.     

Speed-profile-based road segmentation for accident occurrence modelling for hilly terrains

Modelling the accident occurrences per unit length of the road requires segmentation of road stretch. In the case of hilly terrains, homogeneity-based approach results in extremely small sections thus creating a biased accident data. This result is due to the high variations in geometry along the length of the road stretch. Constant length sections do not consider the effect of road's characteristics, hence may lead to undesirable results. It is hypothesized that the speed profile of a vehicle moving in free-flow conditions is governed by the road geometry as well as the road side environment. In this paper, a new methodology based on speed profile of a test vehicle (passenger car) has been proposed for segmenting a road stretch passing through hilly terrain. Comparative analysis of the results obtained from the constant length segmentation approach and the proposed approach shows that the later approach is producing statistically better results. Relatively more parameters were found to be statistically significant in the model based on speed-profile-based segmentation. Grade length, which could be one of the major parameters in hilly terrains, was found to be statistically significant only in the model based on speed-profile-based segmentation.     

FUNDING EXTERNALITIES, ASSET PRICES AND INVESTORS' 'SEARCH FOR YIELD'

This note presents a simple model that nests the 'excess liquidity' and 'savings glut' hypotheses of the debate on the recent asset price boom. It clarifies the notion of investors' 'search for yield' and shows how financial frictions influence asset price dynamics.