“Will They Merge?” – Financial Event-Related Information Processing in Social Media

A merger is a complex process and for investors it represents a situation of uncertainty on many levels. Investors may engage in online information exchange in order to reduce informational uncertainty. Social media can facilitate effective information exchange among investors. Drawing on the concepts of information processing and sense-making, I investigate information processing activities on blogs related to merger-related uncertainty. Furthermore, I investigate information generation, information depth, and the variety of information provided by blogs related to the completion likelihood of a merger. The analysis shows that financial event-related uncertainty can be related to information processing activities in social media

Initial Evidence from the German Audit Market

This study investigates the economic auditor–client dependency issue by examining the association between abnormal audit fee pricing and audit quality. Our study is the first to analyze this phenomenon empirically for the institutional setting of German IFRS firms by using a sample of 2,334 firm- year observations for the period from 2005 to 2010. Our empirical results demonstrate that positive abnormal audit fees are negatively associated with audit quality and imply that the audit fee premium is a significant indicator of compromised auditor independence due to economic auditor–client bonding. Audit fee discounts generally do not lead to a reduced audit effort, or respectively, audit quality is not impaired when client bargaining power is strong. The association of positive abnormal audit fees and audit quality is robust to different audit quality surrogates such as absolute discretionary accruals, financial restatements, and meeting or beating analysts’ earnings forecasts

Integrationsaspekte der Simulation: Technik, Orgnisation und Personal, Karlsruhe, 7. und 8. Oktober 2010 = Integration Aspects of Simulation: Equipment, Organization and Personnell, Karlsruhe, 7th and 8th October 2010

Die Integration technischer, organisatorischer und personalorientierter Aspekte in Simulationsverfahren ist das Leitthema der 14. Fachtagung der Arbeitsgemeinschaft Simulation (ASIM) innerhalb der Gesellschaft für Informatik, die vom Institut für Arbeitswissenschaft und Betriebsorganisation im Oktober 2010 ausgerichtet wurde. Der vorliegende Tagungsband gibt somit einen vertiefenden Einblick in neue Entwicklungen und Beispiele guter Praxis der Simulation über den deutschsprachigen Raum hinaus

DRIVERS OF INFORMATION QUANTITY: THE CASE OF MERGER-ACQUISITION EVENTS

Business and research likewise acknowledge the potential and economic value of information exchange in social media (i.e. the quality and the quantity of user-generated content). While existing research has mainly focused on the analysis of the impact of online information exchange, little attention has been devoted to the drivers of information exchange in social media related to major business events. In this study we explore drivers of information exchange relating to such events. In the context of merger-acquisition events, we posit that firm visibility based on firm characteristics and information needs triggered by the event itself influence the information quantity generated in social media. We test these hypotheses using a rich data set that includes a wide range of social media types and platforms. Our results show that both firm visibility and information needs are driving information quantity in social media in the context of corporate actions. Both of these driving factors are highly significant in explaining the information quantity in social media