the impact of national culture on software piracy this paper examines the impact of the level of economic development income inequality and five cultural variables on the rate of software piracy at the country level the study finds that software piracy is significantly correlated to gnp per capita income inequality and individualism implications for anti piracy programs and suggestions for future research are developed

investor protection and equity markets we present a simple model of an entrepreneur going public in an environment with poor legal protection of outside shareholders the model incorporates elements of becker s j political econ 106 1968 172 crime and punishment framework into a corporate finance environment of jensen and meckling j financial econ 3 1976 305 we examine the entrepreneur s decision and the market equilibrium the model is consistent with a number of empirical regularities concerning the relation between investor protection and corporate finance it also sheds light on the patterns of capital flows between rich and poor countries and on the politics of reform of investor protection r 2002 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

does corporate social responsibility matter in asian emerging markets this study addresses the question whether corporate social responsibility csr matters in asian emerging markets based on csr scores compiled by credit lyonnais securities asia we assess the csr performance of major asian firms over a period of 3 years from 2001 to 2004 the results show that there is a positive and significant relation between csr and market valuation among asian firms we further find that csr is positively related to the market valuation of the subsequent year more importantly asian firms are rewarded by the market for improving their csr practice

price promotions cause impatience in this research the authors propose that incidental exposure to price promotions can cause downstream impatience in an unrelated domain specifically price promotions trigger reward seeking a ge

the dating game do managers designate option grant dates to increase their compensation we provide evidence of two variants of a dating game that entails picking a grant date ex post that is after the board s compensation decision is made back dating picking a date before the board decision date and forward dating waiting after the board decision date to observe the stock price behavior consistent with back dating we find stock return behavior around the grant date to be positively related to reporting lag in the promptly reported sample we find stock return behavior and the pattern of reporting lags consistent with forward dating our calculations show that managers can obtain economically significant benefits by playing the dating game

is integrated reporting determined by a country s legal system an exploratory study in recent years companies responsibilities towards society have expanded significantly and former business models have been revised in line with a more pluralist approach which takes stakeholders sustainability business ethics and transparency into account these considerations are increasingly reflected in corporate sustainability reporting i e statements reflecting the impact of business practices related to economic environmental and social perspectives however the data contained in such documents are reported independently of the financial aspects implying a disconnection between the three pillars of business strategy in order to avoid this shortcoming some leading companies have developed integrated reporting which expresses the interconnections between a firm s strategy governance performance and prospects as well as the contexts within which it operates the aim of this paper is to examine the influence of one of the most important institutional factors the legal system on the development of integrated reports the analysis of a non balanced sample of 750 international companies for the years 2008 2010 in which a logit methodology is applied to panel data reveals the impact of this institutional factor the results show that companies located in civil law countries and where indices of law and order are high are more likely to create and publish a broad range of integrated reports thus favouring decision taking by the different stakeholders on the basis of these findings two policy recommendations are proposed first it may be necessary to establish national laws and protection mechanisms to promote and ensure holistic transparency second managers must be able to decide on the appropriate disclosure practices in the context of their own legal environment in order to obtain maximum benefits from their decisions the results should be considered as having only preliminary value due to the limited number of firms that disclose this typology of reporting and because of the limitations of the data sample

local institutions audit quality and corporate scandals of us listed foreign firms using data on shareholder initiated class action lawsuits in the us i investigate the corporate scandals of us listed foreign firms the shareholders of scandal firms suffer considerable loss in both the short term and the long term i document that firms domiciled in countries with weak institutions are more likely to be embroiled in corporate scandals but such a relation can be moderated by the presence of big 4 auditors investors automatically adjust for undiscovered misconduct when valuing the stocks of non scandal firms i e the spillover effect investors rely on the audit quality to form their expectations about the severity of undiscovered misconduct and thus impose less negative spillovers on firms with big 4 auditors especially when the firms are from countries with weak institutions taken together my results suggest that listing on us exchanges does not fully compensate for weak local institutions voluntarily bonding to a more stringent audit process has an incremental effect on protecting shareholder interests and enhances the confidence of investors in firms financial integrity

management ownership and market valuation an empirical analysis we investigate the relationship between management ownership and market valuation of the firm as measured by tobin s q in a 1980 cross section of 371 fortune 500 firms we find evidence of a significant nonmonotonic relationship tobin s q first increases then declines and finally rises slightly as ownership by the board of directors rises for older firms there is evidence that q is lower when the firm is run by a member of the founding family than when it is run by an officer unrelated to the founder

contextual influences on perceptions of merchant supplied reference prices two contextual variables that have theoretical roots in information processing attribution and social judgment theories were manipulated along with three levels of merchant supplied reference price in a 2 2 3 analysis of variance design results support the hypothesized effects of consistency and distinctiveness as contextual variables that influence internal price standards and purchase evaluations the three price levels resulted in a curvilinear pattern of results for the purchase evaluation and source credibility dependent variables as hypothesized however contrary to assimilation contrast theory the impact of the merchant supplied reference price on estimates of normal and fair prices was monotonic

promotion signal proxy for a price cut evidence suggests that some consumers react to promotion signals without considering relative price information we adopt petty and cacioppo s elaboration likelihood model elm to explain this behavior in terms of the elm s peripheral route to persuasion in which the promotion signal is taken as a cue for a price cut experimental results show that low need for cognition individuals react to the simple presence of a promotion signal whether or not the price of the promoted brand is reduced but that high need for cognition individuals react to a promotion signal only when it is accompanied by a substantive price reduction

framing the deal the role of restrictions in accentuating deal value we propose that consumers use the presence of a restriction i e purchase limit purchase precondition or time limit as a source of information to evaluate a deal in a series of four studies we present evidence suggesting that restrictions serve to accentuate deal value and act as promoters of promotions we begin by using aggregate level scanner data to test our hypothesis that a sales restriction e g limit x per customer results in higher sales via three subsequent experiments we then investigate contextual and individual factors moderating this effect study 2 suggests that restrictions only have a positive effect for low need for cognition individuals study 3 explores the potential mediating role of deal evaluations on purchase intent across discount levels study 4 examines the effect of three types of restrictions purchase limits time limits and purchase preconditions across discount levels and explores the underlying beliefs driving these effects an integrative model across studies demonstrates the robustness of the restriction effect and supports the premise that restrictions work through signaling value implications for how consumers determine promotional value are discussed

corruption and the role of information several studies have explored how certain economic and cultural variables affect a country s corruption level this study extends previous research by not only considering these variables but also taking into account the impact that information and communication technology can have on corruption the results indicate that the greater the access to information the lower the corruption levels therefore bridging the digital disparity across countries can also serve to lessen national corruption levels

culture income and co2 emission given the devastating effects of global warming the problem of human induced climate change and in particular carbon dioxide emissions has been high on the global policy agenda in this study we examine the relationship between national culture carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth in the framework of the environmental kuznets curve ekc applying system gmm panel estimator across 69 developed and developing countries we confirm the existence of ekc and show that culture significantly affects the income emission relationship moreover the effects of the six cultural dimensions on ekc can be collapsed into two i masculinity power distance and indulgence move the ekc upward and shift the income turning point to the left and ii individualism uncertainty and long term orientation move the ekc downward while shifting the income turning point to the right the impact of culture on ekc remains also robust for alternative specifications future policy and global initiatives in sustainable development should incorporate the multidimensional impact of culture on national behavior towards environment and economic growth a relationship that has been largely ignored in economic decision making models

global software piracy searching for further explanations this paper identifies that information and communication technology ict has a negative effect on software piracy rates in addition to consolidating prior research that economic development and the cultural dimension of individualism also negatively affect piracy rates using data for 59 countries from 2000 to 2005 the findings show that economic well being individualism and technology development as measured by ict expenditures explain between 70 and 82 of the variation in software piracy rates during this period the research results provide important implications for policy makers and business practitioners to help reduce software piracy

the impact of cross national carriers of business ethics on attitudes about questionable practices and form of moral reasoning the study explores the impact of cross national carriers of ethics on attitudes about questionable business practices and form of moral reasoning across mexican spanish and u s mbas results show substantial agreement across cultures on twelve personally most objectionable practices while form of moral reasoning varied significantly social cognitive theory is used to address the theoretical and practical implications

the maximum entropy distribution of an asset inferred from option prices this paper describes the application ofthe principle of maximum entropy to the estimation of the distribution of an underlying asset from a set of option prices the resulting distri bution is least committal with respect to unknown or missing information and is hence the least prejudiced the maximum entropy distribution is the only information about the asset that can be inferred from the price data alone an extension to the principle of mini mum cross entropy allows the inclusion of prior knowledge of the asset distribution we show that the maximum entropy distribution is able to accurately fit a known density given simulated option prices at different strikes

can foreign firms bond themselves effectively by renting u s securities laws abstract the study tests the functional convergence hypothesis which states that foreign firms can leapfrog their countries weak legal institutions by listing equities in new york and agreeing to follow u s securities law evidence shows that the sec and minority shareholders have not effectively enforced the law against cross listed foreign firms detailed evidence from mexico further shows that while some insiders exploited this weak legal enforcement with impunity others that issued a cross listing and passed through an economic downturn with a clean reputation went on to receive privileged long term access to outside finance as compared with legal bonding reputational bonding better explains the success of cross listings

what determines mutual fund trading in foreign stocks abstract we examine the portfolio rebalancing measured by the equity churn rate of mutual funds from 29 countries based on annual stockholdings over the 1999 2006 period we find that funds more often trade the stocks of companies located in countries with higher degree of information asymmetry and are less familiar to fund managers after we control for the effects of stock market development and investor protection consistent with the behavioral bias fund managers more often rebalance stocks in foreign markets that perform well this bias is exacerbated when fund managers are less familiar with and less informed about those markets

influences on software piracy evidence from the various united states abstract examining socio economic influences on software piracy in the united states we find a negative relationship between software piracy and income tax burdens and economic freedom a 1 increase in per capita income correlates with a 0 25 reduction in piracy

the asymmetric effect of discount retraction on subsequent choice this article examines the subsequent impact of a temporary price discount on brand preference after the promotion is retracted theorizing that price salience has an impact on price sensitivity we propose that the effects of retracting a discount depend on the promoted brand s regular price quality positioning in a first experiment in which we track consumer choices across a sequence of choice occasions we show that retracting a discount posted by a higher quality higher price brand is detrimental to that brand in contrast a discount posted by a lower quality lower price brand is capable of enduringly diverting consumers away from high end brands a second experiment relies on process measures to provide evidence for the underlying price salience mechanism a third experiment tests our hypotheses with real incentives and offers additional support for our price salience theory by testing its most peculiar behavioral implication

coupon value a signal for price in this article the author proposes that consumers use the value of a coupon to estimate price study 1 shows that the higher the percentage discount the higher the perceived price study 2 demon

fighting software piracy which governance tools matter in africa this article integrates previously missing components of government quality into the governance piracy nexus in exploring governance mechanisms by which global obligations for the treatment of iprs are effectively transmitted from international to the national level in the battle against piracy it assesses the best governance tools in the fight against piracy and upholding of intellectual property rights iprs the instrumentality of ipr laws treaties in tackling piracy through good governance mechanisms is also examined findings demonstrate that 1 while all governance tools under consideration significantly decrease the incidence of piracy corruption control is the most effective weapon 2 but for voice and accountability political stability and democracy ipr laws treaties are instrumental in tackling piracy through government quality dynamics of rule of law regulation quality government effectiveness corruption control and press freedom hence the need for a policy approach most conducive to expanding development is to implement an integrated system of both iprs and corollary good governance policies moreover our findings support the relevance of good governance measures in developing countries wishing to complement their emerging ipr regimes

the signaling effect of corporate social responsibility in emerging economies what signals do firms in emerging economies send to stakeholders when they adopt corporate social responsibility csr practices we argue that in emerging economies firms that adopt csr practices positively signal investors that their firms have superior capabilities for filling institutional voids from an institution based view we hypothesize that the institutional environment moderates the signaling effect of csr on a firm s financial performance based on a sample of firms from ten asian emerging economies we find a positive relationship between csr practices and financial performance this positive relationship is stronger in the less developed capital market than in the more developed one the financial benefits of csr practices are also more salient in the low information diffusion market than in the high one we emphasize that signaling theory and the institution based view can jointly contribute to the csr literature

embedded premium promotion why it works and how to make it more effective in this paper we define an embedded premium ep as an enhancement that involves a social cause added on to a product or service we characterize ep as a sales promotion strategy and juxtapose it with traditional approaches such as discounts and rebates across three experiments using a nationwide internet panel and employing stated measures and model based inference we find that at low denominations ep is more effective than an equivalent price discount we describe how an ep s social association may influence consumer choice quite differently than price promotions and contrary to the asymmetric price promotion effect documented in the promotions literature we find that ep benefits an unknown brand more than a known brand our hierarchical bayes approach uncovers heterogeneity in ep effectiveness that can be explained by affinity toward the focal charity personal motivations and demographic markers an identifiable segment of individuals prefer the other over self suggesting possible ep optimization and segmentation strategies two such strategies customization and coverage are empirically tested and the former is shown to be very effective our findings have broad implications for brand managers with regard to resource allocation and ep program return on investment roi as well as important social welfare implications

trade liberalization corruption and software piracy as multinational firms explore new and promising national markets two of the most crucial elements in the strategic decision regarding market entry are the level of corruption and existing trade barriers one form of corruption that is crucially important to firms is the theft of intellectual property in particular software piracy has become a hotly debated topic due to the deep costs and vast levels of piracy around the world the purpose of this paper is to assess how laissez faire trade policies and corruption affect national software piracy rates using invisible hand theory as well as literature from the fields of international strategy and ethics formal research hypotheses are posited and tested results suggest that corruption mediates the relationship between economic freedom and software piracy implications for multinational managers and researchers are also addressed

the generalized extreme value distribution abstract this paper determines the type of asymptotic distribution for the extreme changes in stock prices foreign exchange rates and interest rates to find the correct limiting distribution for the maximal and minimal changes in market variables a more general extreme value distribution is introduced using the box cox transformation both the generalized pareto distribution of pickands ann stat 3 1975 119 and the generalized extreme value distribution of jenkinson q j r meteorol soc 87 1955 145 are strongly rejected in favor of the newly proposed box cox gev distribution

the antidirector rights index revisited the antidirector rights index has been used as a measure of shareholder protection in over a hundred articles since it was introduced by la porta et al law and finance 1998 journal of political economy 106 1113 55 a thorough reexamination of the legal data however leads to corrections for thirty three of the forty six countries analyzed the correlation between corrected and original values is only 0 53 consequently many empirical results established using the original index may not be replicable with corrected values in particular the corrected index fails to support three widely influential claims that shareholder protection is higher in common than in civil law countries that shareholder protection predicts stock market size or ownership dispersion and that weak corporate governance explains the extent of exchange rate depreciation during the asian financial crisis of 1997 1998 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies all rights reserved for permissions please e mail journals permissions oxfordjournals org oxford university press

a retailer promotion policy model considering promotion signal sensitivity recent research suggests that the signal e g sign or marker with a point of purchase promotion will stimulate a significant sales increase regardless of whether or not that signal is accompanied by a price cut this paper develops a model of retailer profitability that incorporates this promotion signal sensitivity in a field test the profitability of the promotion policy prescribed by this model is compared to the profitability of two other promotion policy setting paradigms a model based policy that does not consider promotion signal sensitivity and one prescribed by industry experts the test results support the proposed model its policy generates 11 more category profit per unit than the model based policy and 12 more than the industry experts implications for retailers and future research are discussed

internal capital markets and corporate politics in a banking group we analyze proprietary internal capital allocation data from a large retail banking group consisting of member banks and a headquarters organization we find that capital allocations from headquarters compensate for deposit shortfalls on the bank level suggesting that the headquarters offers deposit smoothing to member banks we then analyze how the distribution of influence within the group relates to capital allocations and lending behavior more influential banks are allocated more funds from headquarters and their loan growth is less sensitive to their deposit base the effects of influence are stronger if banks have a greater demand for deposit smoothing

sharing sustainability how values and ethics matter in consumers adoption of public bicycle sharing scheme this study investigates the antecedents and mechanisms of consumers adoption of a public bicycle sharing scheme pbss as a form of shared sustainable consumption drawing on marketing ethics and sustainability literature it argues that cultural and consumption values drive or deter the adoption of pbss through the mediating mechanism of ethical evaluation this study tests its hypotheses using a sample of 755 consumers from one of the largest pbss programs in china the results confirm the significance of collectivism man nature orientation materialism and face consciousness as key determinants of the adoption of pbss interestingly these values play mixed roles in influencing pbss adoption it also finds that such values and beliefs need to be effectively translated into ethical evaluations of pbss adoption and need to be addressed in the specific social context thus ethical evaluation constitutes a cognitive strategy that allows consumers to justify and defend their adoption of sustainability practices the results suggest that a desirable sustainability program needs to not only cater to the cultural and psychological motivations of consumers but also reflect the social norms and social context in which the sustainability practices and consumers are embedded

voting power in the proxy process abstract the likelihood that a firm will enact a management sponsored antitakeover charter amendment depends on ownership structure this implies that the adoption of antitakeover amendments may be anticipated then announcement returns provide a biased estimate of wealth effects an estimator that corrects for the bias induced by anticipation indicates that the enactment of an antitakeover amendment is associated with a statistically significant decrease in shareholder wealth the voting power of employee stock ownership plans and the chief executive officer plays a prominent role in determining whether a firm will adopt this type of takeover defense

financial freedom and bank efficiency evidence from the european union this paper investigates the dynamics between the financial freedom counterparts of the economic freedom index drawn from the heritage foundation database and bank efficiency levels we rely on a large sample of commercial banks operating in the 27 european union member states over the 2000s after estimating bank specific efficiency scores using data envelopment analysis dea we develop a truncated regression model combined with bootstrapped confidence intervals to test our main hypotheses results suggest that the higher the degree of an economy s financial freedom the higher the benefits for banks in terms of cost advantages and overall efficiency our results also show that the effects of financial freedom on bank efficiency tend to be more pronounced in countries with freer political systems in which governments formulate and implement sound policies and higher quality governance

law finance and firm growth we investigate how differences in legal and financial systems affect firms use of external financing to fund growth we show that in countries whose legal systems score high on an efficiency index a greater proportion of firms use long term external financing an active though not necessarily large stock market and a large banking sector are also associated with externally financed firm growth the increased reliance on external financing occurs in part because established firms in countries with well functioning institutions have lower profit rates government subsidies to industry do not increase the proportion of firms relying on external financing the corporate finance literature suggests that market imperfections caused by conflicts of interest and informational asymmetries between corporate insiders and investors constrain firms in their ability to fund investment projects the magnitude of these imperfections depends in part on the effectiveness of the legal and financial systems because these systems differ across countries the literature implies that there should exist systematic cross country differences in firms ability to obtain external capital to finance investment in this paper we examine whether the underdevelopment of legal and financial systems does prevent firms in some countries from investing in potentially profitable growth opportunities in particular we focus on the use of long term debt or external equity to fund growth see our earlier work demirgut kunt and maksimovic 1996a which compares firms financial structures in developed and developing countries and finds the greatest difference to be in the provision of long term credit we estimate a financial planning model to obtain the maximum growth rate that each firm in our thirty country sample could attain without access to long term financing we then compare these predicted growth rates to growth rates realized by firms in countries with differing degrees of development in their legal and financial systems our approach enables us to identify specific characteristics of the legal and financial systems that are associated with long term financing of firm growth thus we provide a micro level test of the hypoth

property rights protection corporate transparency and growth in countries with secure property rights corporate transparency improves investment efficiency and increases growth by alleviating information asymmetry however in countries with insecure property rights greater transparency can increase the risk of government expropriation therefore some firms that would benefit most from transparency cannot take full advantage of it as they set sub optimal transparency levels using data from 59 industries in 69 countries we find that in countries with weak property rights protection industries that would benefit the most from transparency exhibit worse investment efficiency and grow more slowly than industries that can efficiently operate at minimal levels of transparency

ownership concentration in privatized firms the role of disclosure standards auditor choice and auditing infrastructure we rely on a unique data set to estimate the impact of disclosure standards and auditor related characteristics on ownership concentration in 190 privatized firms from 31 countries accounting transparency can help alleviate the agency conflict between minority investors and controlling shareholders which is evident in the extent of ownership concentration since the expropriation of corporate resources by insiders hinges on these private benefits remaining hidden after controlling for other country level and firm level determinants we find weak no evidence that extensive disclosure standards auditor choice reduce ownership concentration in contrast we provide strong robust evidence that ownership concentration is lower in countries with securities laws that specify a lower burden of proof in civil and criminal litigation against auditors consistent with ball s 2001 predictions collectively our research implies that minority investors worldwide value legal institutions that discipline auditors in the event of financial reporting failure over both the presence of a big five auditor and better disclosure standards

disentangling the incentive and entrenchment effects of large shareholdings this article disentangles the incentive and entrenchment effects of large ownership using data for 1 301 publicly traded corporations in eight east asian economies we find that firm value increases with the cash flow ownership of the largest shareholder consistent with a positive incentive effect but firm value falls when the control rights of the largest shareholder exceed its cash flow ownership consistent with an entrenchment effect given that concentrated corporate ownership is predominant in most countries these findings have relevance for corporate governance across the world

economic development legality and the transplant effect abstract we analyze the determinants of effective legal institutions legality using data from 49 countries we show that the way the law was initially transplanted and received is a more important determinant than the supply of law from a particular legal family countries that have developed legal orders internally adapted the transplanted law and or had a population that was already familiar with basic principles of the transplanted law have more effective legality than countries that received foreign law without any similar predispositions the transplanting process has a strong indirect effect on economic development via its impact on legality while the impact of particular legal families is weaker and not robust to alternative legality measures

national culture economic development population growth and environmental performance the mediating role of education literature on ethical behavior has paid little attention to the mechanism between macro environmental variables and environmental performance this study aims at constructing a model to examine the relationships which link cultural values population growth economic development and environmental performance by incorporating the mediating role of education the multiple linear regression model was employed to test the hypotheses on a 3 year pooled sample of 51 countries empirical results conclude that national culture economic development and population growth would significantly influence environmental performance directly in addition through the mediating effect of education population growth and national culture would significantly affect environmental performance indirectly these findings provide theoretical and managerial implications for constructing the mechanism of cultural values and ethical behavior in general and environmental management in particular

how corporate governance affect firm value evidence on a self dealing channel from a natural experiment in korea abstract prior work in emerging markets provides evidence that better corporate governance predicts higher market value but very little evidence on the specific channels through which governance can increase value we provide evidence from a natural experiment in korea that reduced tunneling is an important channel korean legal reform in 1999 changed the board structure of large firms assets 2 trillion won relative to smaller firms in event studies of the reform events we show that large firms whose controllers have incentive to tunnel earn strong positive returns relative to mid sized firms in panel regressions over 1998 2004 we also show that better governance moderates the negative effect of related party transactions on value and increases the sensitivity of firm profitability to industry profitability consistent with less tunneling

behind the scenes the corporate governance preferences of institutional investors we survey institutional investors to better understand their role in the corporate governance of firms consistent with a number of theories we document widespread behind the scenes intervention as well as governance motivated exit these governance mechanisms are viewed as complementary devices with intervention typically occurring prior to a potential exit we further find that long term investors and investors that are less concerned about stock liquidity intervene more intensively finally we find that most investors use proxy advisors and believe that the information provided by such advisors improves their own voting decisions

an extreme value approach to estimating volatility and value at risk this article determines the type of asymptotic distribution for the extreme changes in u s treasury yields the thin tailed gumbel and exponential distributions are strongly rejected against the fat tailed frechet and pareto distributions the empirical results indicate that the volatility of maximal and minimal changes in interest rates declines as time to maturity rises yielding a downward sloping volatility curve for the extremes the article proposes an extreme value approach to estimating value at risk and shows that the statistical theory of extremes provides a more accurate approach for risk management and value at risk var calculations than the standard models

cultural dimensions ethical sensitivity and corporate governance the economic globalization process has integrated different competitive markets and pushes firms in different countries to improve their managerial and operational efficiencies given the recent empirical evidence for the benefits to firms and stakeholders of good corporate governance cg practice it is expected that good cg practice would be a common strategy for firms in different countries to meet the increasingly intense competition however this is not the case this study examines the differences in cg practices in firms across different countries using the concept of ethical sensitivity through the regression analysis of 271 firms in 12 countries and regions it is found that hofstede s cultural dimensions can explain the differences in cg practices furthermore the results demonstrate the influence of culture on ethical sensitivity which eventually determines the cg practices in different regions

do countries matter for voluntary disclosure evidence from cross listed firms in the us this paper explores the likelihood and consequences of voluntary disclosure proxied by management earnings forecasts for a sample of 1005 cross listed firms in the us from 40 countries over the period 1996 2005 our study is grounded in a three tiered conceptual framework that relies on insights from and implications of institutional theory agency theory and bonding theory to explain the costs and benefits associated with voluntary disclosure consistent with institutional theory and agency theory our results indicate that disclosure likelihood increases with the strength of cross listed firms home country legal institutions and is also influenced by us listing type product market internationalization and ownership structure further our results show that voluntarily committing to us disclosure practice is associated with lower information asymmetry which supports reputational bonding theory overall our study provides a costs and benefits framework to understand voluntary disclosure practices in an international context our work also presents evidence that home country institutions still matter when foreign firms migrate into the us financial market which highlights the importance of country level institution development

an alternative explanation for lower repeat rates after promotion purchases several authors have observed that average repeat rates are lower after a promotion purchase one interpretation of this result is that a media coupon or cents off promotion undermines the consumer

how does law affect finance an examination of equity tunneling in bulgaria abstract we model and test the mechanisms through which law affects tunneling and tunneling affects firm valuation in 2002 bulgaria adopted legal changes which limit equity tunneling through dilutive equity offerings and freezeouts following the changes minority shareholders participate equally in equity offerings where before they suffered severe dilution freezeout offer price ratios quadruple and tobin s q rises sharply for firms at high risk of tunneling the paper shows the importance of legal rules in limiting equity tunneling the role of equity tunneling risk as a factor in determining equity prices and substitution by controlling shareholders between different forms of tunneling

does trade globalization induce or inhibit corporate transparency unbundling the growth potential and product market competition channels abstract trade globalization may affect corporate transparency via multiple channels with potentially opposite signs we aim to empirically disentangle these channels by tracking evolution of corporate transparency for 4061 listed firms in tradable sectors in 49 countries during 1992 2005 by using detailed tariff schedules we measure changes in growth opportunities and product market competition enabled by foreign and domestic trade liberalizations respectively on the one hand higher growth opportunities engendered by foreign trade reforms are disproportionately associated with better corporate transparency in industries that depend more heavily on external financing on the other hand greater product market competition engendered by domestic tariff reductions has no significant impact on corporate transparency

what do firms disclose and why enforcing corporate governance and transparency in central and eastern europe this version may 10 2005 jel classification codes g15 g18 key words corporate governance ownership concentration transition economics disclosure enforcement site stockholm school of economics the data collection for this paper was financed through the swedish hungarian business research council anete pajuste also acknowledges financial support from cerge ei foundation under a program of the global development network the authors have benefited from comments by stijn claessens colin mayer and participants at the ecgi

institutional interest ownership type and environmental capital expenditures evidence from the most polluting chinese listed firms this study empirically examines whether firms environmental capital expenditures impact institutional investors investment decisions in the chinese market we particularly examine the impact of ownership type on the relationship of environmental capital expenditures and the behavior of different types of institutional investors by classifying institutional investors into two categories short term and long term investors in addition this study further investigates whether environmental capital expenditures related to ownership type increase firm value we find that long term institutional investors tend to invest in state owned firms soes making environmental capital expenditures results also indicate that with governmental backing and encouragement the market value of soes making more environmental capital expenditures is likely to increase however no similar results are found for non soes

promotional bundles and consumers price judgments when the best things in life are not free a series of experiments examined the amount that consumers were willing to pay for products bundled together in a promotion describing one of the disparate products in the bundle as free decreased the price consumers were willing to pay for each product when sold individually however a freebie offer did not influence the overall price for the bundle of disparate products a finding robust across two different settings and populations the differential effect of freebies is explained by varying judgment difficulty with the price being easier to arrive at for just a single product than for the combination consistent with this explanation factors that influence judgment difficulty the salience of the company s motive for offering the freebie and time pressure to make a judgment moderated the effects of a free offer on the amount consumers were willing to pay

harmonizing iprs on software piracy empirics of trajectories in africa in the current efforts of harmonizing the standards and enforcement of iprs protection worldwide this paper explores software piracy trajectories and dynamics in africa using a battery of estimation techniques that ignore as well as integrate short run disturbances in time dynamic fashion we answer the big questions policy makers are most likely to ask before harmonizing iprs regimes in the battle against software piracy three main findings are established 1 african countries with low software piracy rates are catching up their counterparts with higher rates implying despite existing divergent iprs systems convergence in piracy rate could be a genuine standard setting platform 2 legal origins do not play a very significant role in the convergence process 3 a genuine timeframe for standardizing iprs laws in the fight against piracy is most likely between a horizon of 4 8 years in other words full 100 convergence within the specified horizon will mean the enforcements of iprs regimes without distinction of nationality and locality policy implications and caveats are discussed

when do price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations the authors investigate the conditions in which price promotions affect pretrial brand evaluations a price promotion is theorized to be informative about brand quality when it stands out because i

to steal or not to steal firm attributes legal environment and valuation data on corporate governance and disclosure practices reveal wide within country variation that decreases with the strength of investors legal protection a simple model identifies three firm attributes related to that variation investment opportunities external financing and ownership structure using firm level governance and transparency data from 27 countries we find that all three firm attributes are related to the quality of governance and disclosure practices and firms with higher governance and transparency rankings are valued higher in stock markets all relations are stronger in less investor friendly countries demonstrating that firms adapt to poor legal environments to establish efficient governance practices

an analysis of the impact of economic wealth and national culture on the rise and fall of software piracy rates a number of studies have investigated and found a significant relationship among economic wealth hofstede s national culture dimensions and software piracy rates spr no study however has examined the relationship between economic wealth culture and the fact that national sprs have been declining steadily since 1994 using a larger sample than has previously been available 57 countries we confirm the expected negative relationship between economic wealth culture individualism and masculinity and levels of software piracy the rate of decline in software piracy however is found to be a cultural phenomenon with two factors power distance pdi and uncertainty avoidance uai working in opposition similar results are found for a subset of 37 relatively poor countries this suggests that while the rise in economic wealth seen for most countries should lead to a reduction in software piracy the rate of decline is determined by cultural factors global strategies for dealing with software piracy are discussed

professional accountancy organizations and stock market development this study investigates the relationship between the ethical educational and disciplinary development of professional accountancy organizations paos in a given country and the development of that country s stock market using a comprehensive measure based on the responses of the major paos in 36 countries to a questionnaire designed by the international federation of accountants to assess the development of paos internationally we find a significantly positive association between the development of paos and stock market development in addition we find the positive association between the development of paos and stock market development to be more pronounced in countries with higher levels of investor protection a stronger public enforcement environment or lower levels of corruption suggesting the importance of complementary institutions in the relationship between paos and stock market development we also find that better developed paos are associated with better quality financial reporting finally our result also shows that relative to the investigation and discipline mechanism and educational requirements imposed by paos the ethical development of a country s professional accountants appears to have the strongest positive association with a country s stock market development

to pirate or not to pirate a comparative study of the ethical versus other influences on the consumer s software acquisition mode decision consumers of software often face an acquisition mode decision namely whether to purchase or pirate that software in terms of consumer welfare consumers who pirate software may stand in opposition to those who purchase it marketers also face a decision whether to attempt to thwart that piracy or to ignore if not encourage it as an aid to their software s diffusion and policymakers face the decision whether to adopt interventionist policies which are government centric or laissez faire policies which are marketer centric here in order to assess the decision making of all three of these stakeholders we focus on the consumer s point of view as central and examine it by considering on a comparative basis the ethical dimension versus other dimensions including economic legal and other salient consumer behavior considerations based on a survey of 689 software consumers conducted over the internet the results indicate that ethics as a factor is embedded in a multidimensional set of determinant factors influencing software piracy including attitudes legal aspects social support perceptions of economic loss and age policy and research implications based on these findings are provided

the moral legitimacy of intellectual property claims american business and developing country perspectives private property forms the bedrock of the business society relationship in a market economy in one way or another most societies limitwhat people can claim as property as well as theextent of claims they can make regarding it in the international arena today intellectual property rights are a focal point of debate many developing countries do not recognize the monopoly claims of patents and copyrights asserted by business as legitimate this paper reviews contemporary areas of dispute and then presents the tasks facing the construction of a fair intellectual property rights regime