Career Concerns of Banking Analysts

ArticleThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.We study how career concerns influence banking analysts’ forecasts. Banking analysts’ first (last) earnings forecast of the year is relatively more optimistic (pessimistic) for a bank that could be their future employer. This pattern is not observed when the same analysts forecast earnings of banks unlikely to be their future employer. We use the Global Settlement as an exogenous shock on career concerns and show that this forecast pattern is more pronounced after the Settlement. Moreover, we find evidence that more biased analysts in their forecasts of potential future employers are more likely to move to a higher reputation bank

Retrospective: What drives corporate social performance? The role of nation-level institutions

In our Decade Award-winning article from 2012, we theorized and provided evidence consistent with nation-level institutions having a significant impact on corporate social performance (CSP) variation across companies. By establishing a link between the macro (i.e., country level) and micro (i.e., firm level) levels of analysis and by synthesizing across multiple disciplines including institutional economics, political science, cultural research, and institutional theory, we were able to demonstrate that differences across countries in terms of the political system, the education and labor system, the financial system and the cultural system significantly impacted variation in CSP across companies. In this Retrospective, we briefly discuss our original findings and elaborate on future research directions. Given the weak evidence regarding the impact of the financial system in our original study, we specifically focus on discussing recent developments in the financial system and their implications for research. We suggest additional research opportunities inspired by recent articles by scholars of international business that have extended our original article in important ways

Pay for Environmental Performance: The Effect of Incentive Provision on Carbon Emissions

Corporations are increasingly under pressure to improve their environmental performance and to account for potential risks and opportunities associated with climate change. In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of monetary and nonmonetary incentives provided by companies to their employees in order to reduce carbon emissions. Specifically, we find evidence that the use of monetary incentives is associated with higher carbon emissions. This result holds both in cross-sectional and time-series analysis. Moreover, we find that the use of nonmonetary incentives is associated with lower carbon emissions. Consistent with monetary incentives crowding out motivation for pro-social behavior, we find that the effect of monetary incentives on carbon emissions is mitigated when these incentives are provided to employees with formally assigned responsibility for environmental performance. Furthermore, by employing a two-stage multinomial logistic model, we provide insights into factors affecting companies’ decisions on incentive provision, as well as showing that the impact of monetary incentives on carbon emissions remains significant even when we control for potential selection bias in our sample

Introduction to the Special Section on Business and Climate Change

We are pleased to present this special section of Management Science on 'Business and Climate Change'. We launched the call for papers in 2019 to draw more scholarly attention to the major risks and opportunities that climate change poses for a wide array of companies and industries and for society at large. In the four years since then, we have seen a growing number of examples o the physical manifestations of climate change that scientists had been forecasting for decades, including intensive heat waves, wildfires, hurricanes, and floodin

Size-Resolved Redox Activity and Cytotoxicity of Water-Soluble Urban Atmospheric Particulate Matter: Assessing Contributions from Chemical Components

Throughout the cold and the warm periods of 2020, chemical and toxicological characterization of the water-soluble fraction of size segregated particulate matter (PM) (7.2 μm) was conducted in the urban agglomeration of Thessaloniki, northern Greece. Chemical analysis of the water-soluble PM fraction included water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC), humic-like substances (HULIS), and trace elements (V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Cd and Pb). The bulk (sum of all size fractions) concentrations of HULIS were 2.5 ± 0.5 and 1.2 ± 0.3 μg m−3, for the cold and warm sampling periods, respectively with highest values in the <0.49 μm particle size fraction. The total HULIS-C/WSOC ratio ranged from 17 to 26% for all sampling periods, confirming that HULIS are a significant part of WSOC. The most abundant water-soluble metals were Fe, Zn, Cu, and Mn. The oxidative PM activity was measured abiotically using the dithiothreitol (DTT) assay. In vitro cytotoxic responses were investigated using mitochondrial dehydrogenase (MTT). A significant positive correlation was found between OPmDTT, WSOC, HULIS and the MTT cytotoxicity of PM. Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) showed a good relationship between OPMDTT, HULIS and Cu

The druggability of the ATP binding site of glycogen phosphorylase kinase probed by coumarin analogues

Glycogen phosphorylase kinase (PhK) converts by phosphorylation, the inactive glycogen phosphorylase (GPb) into active GPa in the glycogenolytic pathway. It is a complex enzyme comprising of the catalytic (γ) and three regulatory subunits (α, β, δ) forming a hexadecamer with stoichiometry (αβγδ)4. Several studies have indicated PhK as a promising target for the development of antihyperglycemics as its inhibition blocks glycogenolysis in liver and a potential therapeutic target for cancer against pathological angiogenesis and tumor progression. The identification of compounds that inhibit the kinase through their direct binding to its catalytic site is an effective approach to identify bioactive molecules of therapeutic significance. Towards this, the structure of the N-terminal kinase domain (residues 1–298) of the catalytic γ subunit of PhK (PhKγtrnc) has been determined by X-ray crystallography while staurosporine and indirubin analogues have been characterized as potent inhibitors targeting the ATP binding site. In this study, a series of 38 synthetic analogues of naturally occurring coumarins were screened for inhibition of PhKγtrnc, in vitro, using a photometric assay. The IC50 values of the two most potent compounds were determined for PhKγtrnc and the pharmacologically relevant target, human liver isoform (PHKG2A). Their cellular efficacy and toxicity in HepG2 cells were further assessed ex vivo. Docking experiments and the structural comparison with previously described inhibitors reveal the binding mode of the coumarin scaffold at a no hinge region of the ATP site of PhK and the role of a conserved β3-Lys in binding. The experimental findings provide structural insights with implications to the kinase targeting and drug design