Relationship between cost of equity capital and voluntary corporate disclosures

The relationship between disclosure and cost of equity capital has always been interesting not only for managers, but for investors as well. Economic theory suggests that by increasing the level of corporate reporting firms not only increase their stock market liquidity, but they also decrease the investors’ estimation risk, arising from uncertainty about future returns and payout distributions. Utilizing the Residual Income Valuation Model, the implied cost of capital is estimated for a sample of 121 Swiss listed, non-financial companies adopting a finite horizon version of the residual income valuation model. The results show that firms on the Swiss market can reduce their cost of equity capital by increasing the level of their voluntary corporate disclosures. The results persist even after controlling for various firm specific risks, such as firm size or financial leverage and regardless of company’s reporting strategy (conservative or aggressive)

The impact of executive payment on firm performance of the financial enterprises in China

Using a panel of Chinese commercial banks over the 2001-2009 period, this study explores the relationship between executive pay and performance, as well as, the comparison of pay-performance sensitivity between managers and directors. Several methods were employed to estimate the relation, with control variables of size and ownership, based on alternative measures of performance. Our analyses revealed that the performance of non-performing loan ratios and ROE have significant effect on director’s compensation. On the contrary, no relation between bank performance and managers compensation was found, and neither any impact of compensation changes on performance. Moreover, according to our results the state control ownership can lower the pay-performance sensitivity. As a conclusion, this research supports that government regulations on bank performance rating and executive compensation are necessary

Economic evaluation of pharmacogenomic-guided antiplatelet treatment in Spanish patients suffering from acute coronary syndrome participating in the U-PGx PREPARE study

BackgroundCardiovascular diseases and especially Acute Coronary Syndrome (ACS) constitute a major health issue impacting millions of patients worldwide. Being a leading cause of death and hospital admissions in many European countries including Spain, it accounts for enormous amounts of healthcare expenditures for its management. Clopidogrel is one of the oldest antiplatelet medications used as standard of care in ACS.MethodsIn this study, we performed an economic evaluation study to estimate whether a genome-guided clopidogrel treatment is cost-effective compared to conventional one in a large cohort of 243 individuals of Spanish origin suffering from ACS and treated with clopidogrel. Data were derived from the U-PGx PREPARE clinical trial. Effectiveness was measured as survival of individuals while study data on safety and efficacy, as well as on resource utilization associated with each adverse drug reaction were used to measure costs to treat these adverse drug reactions. A generalized linear regression model was used to estimate cost differences for both study groups.ResultsBased on our findings, PGx-guided treatment group is cost-effective. PGx-guided treatment demonstrated to have 50% less hospital admissions, reduced emergency visits and almost 13% less ADRs compared to the non-PGx approach with mean QALY 1.07 (95% CI, 1.04-1.10) versus 1.06 (95% CI, 1.03-1.09) for the control group, while life years for both groups were 1.24 (95% CI, 1.20-1.26) and 1.23 (95% CI, 1.19-1.26), respectively. The mean total cost of PGx-guided treatment was 50% less expensive than conventional therapy with clopidogrel [euro883 (95% UI, euro316-euro1582), compared to euro1,755 (95% UI, euro765-euro2949)].ConclusionThese findings suggest that PGx-guided clopidogrel treatment represents a cost-effective option for patients suffering from ACS in the Spanish healthcare setting.Personalised Therapeutic

Characteristic elements of "Mediterranean Diet": the consumption of vegetables and legumes in Greece (1950-2005)

on).This paper describes the dietary consumption of vegetables and legumes in Greece during the period 1950 to 2005. All dimensions of alimentary consumption patterns of vegetables and legumes are examined here with a specific focus on: a) their natural characteristics; b) technical features of the production process (primary, secondary and tertiary transformation processes); and c) socio-economic attributes of these patterns of consumption (i.e. consumption features of the different economic, social, professional, demographic and geographic layers of the population)

Audit firm rotation, audit firm tenure and earnings conservatism

This study aims to contribute to the debate around the possibility of mandating audit firm rotation. Specifically, it examines conservatism as an attribute of earnings quality, which has not attracted particular attention in the auditor rotation research. Applying regression analyses on a sample, which consists of U.S. firms for the period 1980-2006, our findings indicate that conservatism in reported earnings increases after the rotation of the audit firm. However, our results lack significance. Moreover, our results indicate that conservatism in reported earnings decreases as the tenure of the audit firm lengthens. Consequently, mandating audit firm rotation might have a positive impact on conservatism and thus on the quality of reported earnings. However, additional analysis shows that this impact might not have existed in the later part of the sample period