Voluntary Disclosure and Political Sensitivity: The Case of Executive Remuneration

This study investigates the relation between firm political sensitivity and the quality and quantity of voluntary disclosures, with special reference to the case of executive remuneration disclosures. I study the relation between firm political sensitivity and the quality and quantity of annual bonus plan disclosures, applying two competing (but not mutually exclusive) theories: political cost theory and managerial power theory. Political sensitivity is proxied using the magnitude of the annual bonus rather than firm size, which while popular in existing literature, is not a perfect proxy for political sensitivity (Ball and Foster, 1982, Meek et al, 1995; Cormier et al, 2005). Results reveal a significant positive relation between disclosure quantity and political sensitivity measures, and a significant negative relation between disclosure quality and political sensitivity proxies. This indicates that managers who are more susceptible to political sanctions related to their remuneration tend to disclose higher volumes of lower quality information. Consistent with earlier studies, the results confirm that firm size is related to voluntary disclosure, and the results also reveal that the use of remuneration consultants have a significant positive effect on disclosure quantity but no impact on disclosure quality

Construction management research and the attempt to build a social science

The paper challenges the view that the major theoretical and methodological issues in the social sciences have been resolved and that positivism provides the only sound basis for research in construction. By examining the relationship between specialist discourses and natural language and Weber's failure to provide a basis for objective causal explanations of social action, it is argued that the kind of theorising that Runeson advocates is at best premature and at worst preempts the achievement of a more rigorous and thorough understanding of construction processes. Reporting some empirical research on the design and construction of reinforced concrete structures, the paper seeks to demonstrate some theoretical methodological and practical implications of an interpretive style of research

Regulations, competition and bank risk-taking in transition countries

This study investigates whether regulations have an independent effect on bank risk-taking or whether their effect is channeled through the market power possessed by banks. Given a well-established set of theoretical priors, the regulations considered are capital requirements, restrictions on bank activities and official supervisory power. We use data from the Central and Eastern European banking sectors over the period 1998-2005. The empirical results suggest that banks with market power tend to take on lower credit risk and have a lower probability of default. Capital requirements reduce risk in general, but for banks with market power this effect significantly weakens. Higher activity restrictions in combination with more market power reduce both credit risk and the risk of default, while official supervisory power has only a direct impact on bank risk.Banking sector reform, regulations, competition, risk-taking, CEE banks

Is the Time Allocated to Review Patent Applications Inducing Examiners to Grant Invalid Patents?: Evidence from Micro-Level Application Data

We explore how examiner behavior is altered by the time allocated for reviewing patent applications. Insufficient examination time may hamper examiner search and rejection efforts, leaving examiners more inclined to grant invalid applications. To test this prediction, we use application-level data to trace the behavior of individual examiners over the course of a series of promotions that carry with them reductions in examination-time allocations. We find evidence demonstrating that such promotions are associated with reductions in examination scrutiny and increases in granting tendencies, as well as evidence that those additional patents being issued on the margin are of below-average quality

Quantifying the impact of technical barriers to trade : a framework for analysis

There has been increasing use of technical regulations as instruments of commercial policy in the context of multilateral, regional, and global trade. These nontariff barriers are of special concern to developing countries, which may bear additional costs in meeting mandatory standards. Many industrial and developing countries express frustration with regulations that vary across their export markets, require duplicative conformity procedures, and are continually revised to exclude imports. The authors provide a comprehensive overview of the policy debate and methodological issues surrounding product standards and technical barriers to trade. They begin with a review of the policy context driving demand for empirical analysis of standards in trade, then provide an analytical overview of the role of standards and their relationship to trade. They then review methodological approaches that have been used to analyze standards and theirimpact on trade. Their main interest lies in advancing techniques that are practical and may be fruitfully extended to the empirical analysis of regulations and trade. They discuss concrete steps that could be taken to move forward a practical, policy-relevant program of empirical research. Such steps would include: a) administering firm-level surveys in developing countries; b) devising methods for assessing how much standards restrict trade; and c) establishing econometric approaches that could be applied to survey and microeconomic data, to improve understanding of the role of standards in exports.Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Trade and Services,Trade and Regional Integration

Why do (or did?) banks securitize their loans? Evidence from Italy

This paper investigates the ex-ante determinants of bank loan securitization by using different econometric methods on Italian individual bank data from 2000 to 2006. Our results show that bank loan securitization is a composite decision. Banks that are less capitalized, less profitable, less liquid and burdened with troubled loans are more likely to perform securitization, for a larger amount and earlier.securitization, credit risk transfer, capital requirements, liquidity needs

Competition, quality and contract compliance: evidence from compulsory competitive tendering in local government in Great Britain, 1987-2000

The introduction of competition has frequently been found to cause costs to fall. There has, however, been a question as to whether this was partly achieved at the cost of quality. Auction theory predicts prices would fall more the greater the competition to provide the service. There has been some debate about whether the smaller budgets would make contract compliance more difficult. Evidence is found in support of this hypothesis. We also find some evidence that the better recorded performance of the in-house direct service organisations (DSOs) during this period was due to the information advantage they had from being incumbents