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This study investigates how heterogeneity of product mix and production technology affects the use of responsibility accounting practices, the “unbundling” of products for cost management purposes, and the practice of increasing the number of expense accounts to create homogeneous cost pools. To test these relation‐ships, data were gathered from 31 Texas electric utilities. Analyses find that the more heterogeneous the products offered and the more diverse the production technologies employed, the greater the degree of product unbundling (subdividing products for the purposes of collecting and reporting costs), the more cost centers, and the greater the number of expense accounts.

Empirical accounting research frequently makes use of data sets with a time‐series and a cross‐sectional dimension ‐ a panel of data. The literature review indicates that South African researchers infrequently allow for heterogeneity between firms when using panel data and the empirical example shows that regression results that allow for firm heterogeneity are materially different from regression results that assume homogeneity among firms. The econometric analysis of panel data has advanced significantly in recent years and accounting researchers should benefit from those improvements.

The authors argue that organization design needs to play a more active role in the explanation of differential performance and outline a set of ideas for achieving this both in theoretical and empirical research. Firms are heterogeneous in terms of (1) how well they do things, capturing persistent productivity differences, and (2) how they do things – and both reflect firms’ organization design choices. Both types of heterogeneity can be persistent, and are interdependent, although they have typically been studied separately. The authors propose a simple formal framework – the “aggregation function framework” – that aligns organization design thinking with the emphasis on performance heterogeneity among firms that is characteristic of the strategy field. This framework allows for a more precise identification of how exactly organization design may contribute to persistent performance differences, and therefore what exactly are the assumptions that strategy and organization design scholars need to be attentive to.

This article reviews the quantitative marketing literature on artificial intelligence (AI) through an economics lens. We apply the framework in Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence to systematically categorize 96 research papers on AI in marketing academia into five levels of impact, which are prediction, decision, tool, strategy, and society. For each paper, we further identify each individual component of a task, the research question, the AI model used, and the broad decision type. Overall, we find there are fewer marketing papers focusing on strategy and society, and accordingly, we discuss future research opportunities in those areas.

Accounting comparability has been the subject of significant interest in empirical financial accounting research. Recent literature, particularly that following De Franco et al.’s (2011) influential study, has focused on utilizing the output of the financial reporting process to measure accounting comparability. In this paper, we conduct an early survey of studies using output-based measures of comparability. We provide two distinct contributions to the literature. First, we describe and comment on four important measurement concepts as well as the studies that introduced them. With this methodological contribution, we aim to facilitate the measurement choice for empirical accounting researchers engaged in comparability research. Second, we classify the sub-streams of literature and related studies. In providing this content-related contribution, we sum up what has already been achieved in output-based accounting comparability research and highlight potential areas for prospective research. As a whole, our study attempts to guide empirical researchers who (plan to) undertake studies on accounting comparability in selecting relevant topics and choosing adequate approaches to measurement.

The study aims at reviewing a synthesis of disclosure, transparency, and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) implementation in an attempt to provide directions for future research. Prior research overwhelmingly supports that the IFRS adoption or effective implementation of IFRS will enhance high-quality financial reporting, transparency, enhance the country’s investment environment, and foreign direct investment (FDI) (Dayanandan, Donker, Ivanof, & Karahan, 2016; Gláserová, 2013; Muniandy & Ali, 2012). However, some researchers provide conflicting evidence that developing countries implementing IFRS are probably not going to encounter higher FDI inflows (Gheorghe, 2009; Lasmin, 2012). It has also been argued that the IFRS adoption decreases the management earnings in countries with high levels of financial disclosure. In general, the study indicates that the adoption of IFRS has improved the financial reporting quality. The common law countries have strong rules to protect investors, strict legal enforcement, and high levels of transparency of financial information. From the extensive structured review of literature using the Scopus database tool, the study reviewed 105 articles, and in particular, the topic-related 94 articles were analysed. All 94 articles were retrieved from a range of 59 journals. Most of the articles (77 of 94) were published 2010–2018. The top five journals based on the citations are Journal of Accounting Research (187 citations), Abacus (125 citations), European Accounting Review (107 citations), Journal of Accounting and Economics (78 citations), and Accounting and Business Research (66 citations). The most-cited authors are Daske, Hail, Leuz, and Verdi (2013); Daske and Gebhardt (2006); and Brüggemann, Hitz, and Sellhorn (2013). Surprisingly, 65 of 94 articles did not utilise the theory. In particular, four theories have been used frequently: agency theory (15), economic theory (5), signalling theory (2), and accounting theory (2). The study calls for future research on the theoretical implications and policy-related research on disclosure and transparency which may inform the local and international standard setters.

Based on upper echelons (UE) theory, the purpose of this study is to investigate a conceptualized moderated mediation model for examining the effects of top management team (TMT) heterogeneity and firm value in China through the mediating effect of product diversification, the moderating effect of ownership type between TMT heterogeneity and product diversification and the moderating effect of executive shareholding between product diversification and firm value.

Unbalanced panel data were collected over 5 years with a total of 6,597 observations, organized through the WIND (Wind Economic Database) and CSMAR (China Stock Market and Accounting Research) Database. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and analyzed with stata15.0 software.

The results indicated that product diversification plays a mediating role between TMT heterogeneity and firm value. In China, TMT heterogeneity of non–state-owned enterprises plays a more significant role in promoting product diversification than that of state-owned enterprises; executive shareholding strengthens the relationship between product diversification and firm value.

The characteristic dimension of TMT is seen as a relatively static factor, and it is worth looking at whether a more dynamic system of evaluation and measurement can be established.

This study enriches theoretical research on TMT and contributes to UE theory in several ways. First, we studied the mediation effect of product diversification between TMT heterogeneity and firm value. This extends research on UE theory to possible process variables. Second, considering the influence of the unique institutional environment in China on corporate strategic decisions, the study investigates state-owned and non–state-owned enterprises. Specifically, it looks at the influence of ownership type as a moderating variable between TMT heterogeneity and product diversification. Third, the paper discusses the moderating effect of executive shareholding on the product diversification–firm value relationship. The research contributes to agency theory and expands research on different economic systems by implementing agency theory.

Share pledge is a popular way to raise funds in China, but it aggravates information asymmetry. As an indispensable information intermediary in the financial market, media coverage affects asset price and pricing efficiency and impacts information asymmetry. This study aims to explore the governance role of media coverage as an information intermediary in the share pledge context in China.

Moderating effect and mediating effect analyses are the primary methods used to test the governance role of media coverage. The ordinary least squares model was used to test the relationship between share pledge and market performance and then proved the moderating effect of media coverage toward the corporate market value of pledge firms. Accounting earnings value relevance models were explored to test the path of media coverage on firm market value by mediating effect analysis. At last, subgroup tests were used to verify the heterogeneity of the moderating effect of media coverage.

In the context of share pledge in China, the higher the share pledge ratio, the higher is the market value of listed firms, which verifies the motivation of controlling shareholders to avoid the transfer of control right and the motivation to tunneling. Media coverage has a significant negative moderating effect on the relationship between share pledge rate and corporate value and has a significant impact on the accounting earnings value relevance of share pledge firms. From the perspective of long-term earnings, media coverage reduces the market performance of share pledge firms by reducing the value correlation of accounting earnings information. From the short-term price point of view, media coverage reduces the market performance of share pledge firms by improving the value correlation of accounting earnings information. Furthermore, media coverage has a more significant moderating effect in state-owned share pledge firms and low information transparency and low information disclosure quality firms.

This paper does not distinguish the mode difference of spreading news and the impact of non-pledge media coverage. Also, this paper does not consider factors other than accounting information value relevance when exploring how media coverage affects the corporate market value. Share pledge firms should use media for publicity and play a role in media governance and should actively improve their information disclosure quality, strengthen communication with investors and reduce information asymmetry fundamentally.

This paper diversify the governance choices for share pledge firms and has important implications for firms, investors, information intermediaries and regulators. Media reports play an increasingly important role today, and any reports and predictions of major events may profoundly affect investors’ decisions. Although media reports can make up for the weakness of accounting information disclosure of equity pledge companies in some sense, it is still not a long-term strategy. Equity pledge companies should not only make use of media for publicity and play a role of media governance but also actively improve their information disclosure quality.

This paper focuses on share pledge firms to carry out in-depth research. Based on exploring the influence mechanism of share pledges, the authors find the importance of media governance. This paper expands the literature about the economic consequences of share pledges and provides empirical data for media governance of share pledge firms. This paper innovatively proves the governance role of media coverage from the view of accounting information value relevance. The main innovation point is the long and short-term perspective analysis of the influence of media coverage on the correlation of accounting earnings value. The heterogeneity effect analysis of media coverage also reflects the depth and strong practical guiding significance of this study.

Choice under risk has a large stochastic (unpredictable) component. This chapter examines five stochastic models for binary discrete choice under risk and how they combine with “structural” theories of choice under risk. Stochastic models are substantive theoretical hypotheses that are frequently testable in and of themselves, and also identifying restrictions for hypothesis tests, estimation and prediction. Econometric comparisons suggest that for the purpose of prediction (as opposed to explanation), choices of stochastic models may be far more consequential than choices of structures such as expected utility or rank-dependent utility.

With this study we investigate the preferences of an important category of consumers of organic products (regular consumers of organic food or RCOFs) allowing for preference heterogeneity. A survey instrument was developed to elicit preferences for important qualitative and quantitative attributes of extra virgin olive oil. The survey was administered via questionnaire to a random sample of 198 RCOFs in organic food stores of Naples, Italy. The choice task was organised around a fractional factorial main effects orthogonal design. Each respondent made eight choices to rank‐order nine product profiles in terms of their individual preference. Product attributes included price, origin of production, type of certification and visual appearance. Interestingly, the set of observed responses appears to display significant preference heterogeneity for origin of production and price. Once heterogeneity and correlation among repeated choice by the same respondent are accounted for by means of random‐parameter panel logit models, the fit increases dramatically with respect to the more restrictive fixed‐parameter logit models. Results also suggest that price plays an important role as quality proxy, while visual appearance is not significant in preference modelling and the type of certification programme has a fixed effect.