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Contractors of different scales, operating in different construction industries of varying institutional and economic settings, have different considerations when making bid or no-bid and mark-up decisions. Focusing on the large and medium-sized contractors in the Jilin province, China, the purpose of this study is to examine important factors affecting their decision to bid (d2b) and mark-up decisions and investigate differences between large and medium-sized contractors in evaluating the importance of the various factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions.

This study used a survey design for timely data collection from a large population. Contractors’ bidding attitudes was collected using an online survey questionnaire with a list of 40 key factors. Statistical analytical methods were applied for comparing the two groups of contractors.

The results of this study indicate that factors related to client conditions are most critical for both large and medium-sized contractors in their d2b and mark-up decisions. The results also show statistically significant differences between the two groups of contractors on a subset of factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions. The large contractors have placed more emphasis on projects' potential financial and strategic benefits. Another notable finding is that both groups of contractors have placed great emphasise on “government legislations” in their d2b and mark-up decisions.

These findings should be interpreted in consideration of several limitations. Firstly, the sample size is relatively small, and the focus was on a single province in the China construction industry. Next, this study only explores differences between large and medium-sized contractors in evaluating the importance of the various factors affecting their d2b and mark-up decisions.

Contractors could refer list of critical factors in competing for jobs in Jilin province or other provinces of similar institutional and economic settings. Construction clients, on the other hand, should consider the list of critical factors in the formulation of their competitive tendering procedures, thus enhancing the efficiency in their procurement of construction services.

Research on contractors’ bidding decision-making in the context of Chinese construction industry remains scarce; the research findings have implications for the industry stakeholders.

The authors of this study aim to investigate possible explanations of the prevalence of price clustering in the final offer prices of mergers and acquisitions (M&A).

The authors use final offer price in M&A deals to investigate the price clustering phenomena. The authors used regressions and logistic regressions to examine potential factors that might affect pricing strategy by looking into one-time acquirers and experienced serial acquirers.

Price clustering increases with negotiation uncertainties characterized as competitive bidding, number of bidders, challenged deals and duration. Moreover, the authors find persistent price clustering in experienced serial acquirers that are more experienced and better equipped with handling uncertainties, suggesting a preference of using round numbers regardless of levels of uncertainties. The authors' evidence shows that price clustering results from a combination of Harris' (1991) costly negotiation hypothesis where round prices may be used to lower search costs and psychological bias and preference.

The authors appear to be the first to investigate alternative theories that support M&A offer price clustering behavior, finding that both the costly negotiation and psychological bias and preference theories apply to M&A final price formation. Thus, the authors' major contribution, specific to the M&A process, is a clarification of physical and psychological factors associated with bidding and negotiation behavior. The authors are confident that the authors' study impacts conventional knowledge regarding M&A deal negotiation strategies, including bidding behavior, contract negotiation, financial analysis, management practices and risk management.

This study aims to investigate whether the cash flow forecasts (CFF) of analysts can disseminate valuable information to the information environments of companies.

The author uses empirical archival methodology to conduct differences-in-difference analyses.

It is found that information asymmetry decreases in the treatment group following the initiation of CFF during the postperiod, which is consistent with the hypothesis of this paper.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first among the cash flow forecast studies to demonstrate the usefulness of CFF in the mitigation of information asymmetry, a friction that is widespread in capital markets.

This paper aims to analyze the dependence structure between the Green Sukuk Spread in Malaysia and uncertainty factors from January 1, 2017, to May 23, 2023, covering two main periods: the pre-COVID-19 and the COVID-19 periods.

This study contributes to the current literature by explicitly modeling nonlinear dependencies using the Regular vine copula approach to capture asymmetric characteristics of the tail dependence distribution. This study used the Archimedean copula models: Student’s-t, Gumbel, Gaussian, Clayton, Frank and Joe, which exhibit different tail dependence structures.

The empirical results suggest that Green Sukuk and various uncertainty variables have the strongest co-dependency before and during the COVID-19 crisis. Due to external uncertainties (COVID-19), the results reveal that global factors, such as the Infect-EMV-index and the higher financial stress index, significantly affect the spread of Green Sukuk. Interestingly, in times of COVID-19, its dependence on Green Sukuk and the news sentiment seems to be a symmetric tail dependence with a Student’s-t copula. This result is relevant for hedging strategies, as investors can enhance the performance of their portfolio during the COVID-19 crash period.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the dependency structure between Green Sukuk and uncertainty factors. It is relevant for market participants seeking to improve their risk management for Green Sukuk.

The purpose of this study is to compare market reactions to the change in the demand by index funds between large and small company stocks by examining the transition of the S&P 500, S&P 400 MidCap and S&P 600 SmallCap indexes from market capitalization to free-float weighting. This unique information-free event allows not only avoiding confounding information signaling and investor awareness effects but also comparing the effect of the decrease in demand on stocks of different sizes.

This study uses the event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the full-float adjustment day. It also tests for significant changes in institutional ownership and liquidity. Multivariate regressions are used to examine the relation of liquidity changes and price elasticity of demand to the cumulative abnormal returns around the full-float adjustment day.

This study finds significant decreases in stock price accompanied with significant increases in trading volume on the full-float adjustment day, and significant gains in quasi-indexer institutional ownership and liquidity. The main finding is that cumulative abnormal returns around the event period are related to changes in the number of quasi-indexer and transient institutional shareholders, not to changes in liquidity or price elasticity of demand.

This study provides the first comprehensive comparison analysis of stock market reactions to the decline in demand between large and small company stocks. As an important implication for future studies of the index effect, changes in institutional ownership should be considered in the analysis.

Demonstrate proof-of-concept for conducting NFL Draft trades on a blockchain network using smart contracts.

Using Ethereum smart contracts, the authors model several types of draft trades between teams. An example scenario is used to demonstrate contract interaction and draft results.

The authors show the feasibility of conducting draft-day trades using smart contracts. The entire negotiation process, including side deals, can be conducted digitally.

Further work is required to incorporate the full-scale depth required to integrate the draft trading process into a decentralized user platform and experience.

Cutting time for the trade negotiation process buys decision time for team decision-makers. Gains are also made with accuracy and cost.

Full-scale adoption may find resistance due to the level of fan involvement; the draft has evolved into an interactive experience for both fans and teams.

This research demonstrates the new application of smart contracts in the inter-section of sports management and blockchain technology.

This paper aims to investigate and formulate several business models (BM) for various energy communities (EC) members: prosumers, storage facilities, electric vehicle (EV) charging stations, aggregators and local markets.

One of the flexibility drivers is triggered by avoiding the cost and maximizing value that consists of delivering a service such as increasing generation or reducing consumption when it is valued most. The transition to greener economies led to the emergence of aggregators that aggregate bits of flexibility and handle the interest of their providers, e.g. small entities such as consumers, prosumers and other small service providers. On one hand, the research method consists of formulating six BM and implementing a BM that includes several consumers and an aggregator, namely, scheduling the household electricity consumption (downstream) and using flexibility to obtain revenue or avoid the cost. This is usually performed by reducing or shifting the consumption from peak to off-peak hours when the energy is cheaper. Thus, the role of aggregators in EC is significant as they intermediate small-scale energy threads and large entities' requirements, such as grid operators or retailers. On the other hand, in the proposed BM, the aggregators' strategy (upstream) will be to minimize the cost of electricity procurement using consumers’ flexibility. They set up markets to buy flexibility that is valued as long as their costs are reduced.

Interesting insights are revealed, such as when the flexibility price doubles, the deficit coverage increases from 62% to 91% and both parties, consumers and retailers obtain financial benefits from the local market.

One of the limitations of using the potential of flexibility is related to the high costs that are necessary to implement direct load control. Another issue is related to the data privacy aspects related to the breakdown of electricity consumption. Furthermore, data availability for scientific research is limited. However, this study expects that new BM for various EC members will emerge in the future largely depending on Information Communications and Technology developments.

An implementation of a local flexibility market (LFM) using 114 apartments with flexible loads is proposed, demonstrating the gains obtained from trading flexibility. For LFM simulation, this study considers exemplifying a BM using 114 apartments located in a multi-apartment building representing a small urban EC situated in the New England region in North America. Open data recorded in 2016 is provided by UMassTraceRepository.

As a novelty, six BM are proposed considering a bottom-up approach and including various EC members.

Socioeconomic aims and impacts are an explicit part of the UK City of Culture (UKCoC) application, bidding, delivery and evaluation stages. This article engages with existing debates on evaluating cities of culture and introduces perspectives from critical data studies to examine the collection and analysis of different data for the purposes of the CoC application and evaluation processes.

The meta-methodological concept of accompanying researcher is used to analyse the experiences of researchers based within a city bidding for UKCoC 2025 in dialogue with the evaluation reports from past UKCoC host cities.

Findings are analysed under three themes: defining data morsels; local histories and infrastructures of data generation and sharing; and resources, capacities and expertise for data generation and evaluation. The discussion examines data still to be generated and/or brought into relation; tensions around data and measurement; and how constructing an evaluation baseline is generative—creating new organisations, relationships and practices.

The conceptual and methodological approach and empirical findings will be relevant for academic, policymakers and practitioners engaging with cultural evaluation.

In focussing on the bidding stage in real time through the accompanying researcher position, this article presents original empirical insights into the process of creating a baseline for cities of culture evaluation. The conceptual originality of this article is in using critical data studies to explain strategies of data generation and analyse data relations and frictions.

This study aims to explore the failures of Tunisian secondary corporate bond market liquidity to understand the determinants of corporate bond market liquidity at large.

We adopted a qualitative approach to studying the Tunisian Stock Exchange. Dealers’ perceptions were collected through semi-structured face-to-face interviews; the data was recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed.

Secondary corporate bond market failures are due, in part, to microstructural choices – especially the use of an over-the-counter market as a trading venue. The absence of a corporate bond yield curve, a narrow investor base, market participants’ lack of financial education and authorities’ attitudes are equally responsible.

This study is useful to researchers, policymakers and practitioners, as it identifies microstructural and other factors affecting the Tunisian secondary corporate bond market. We interviewed only Tunisian dealers while ignoring other categories of market participants. Furthermore, a focus group discussion could have improved our understanding of the determinants of the Tunisian secondary corporate bond market.

This paper aimed to qualitatively discuss several issues related to the Tunisian secondary corporate bond market. To date, little academic research has addressed this topic in the illiquid and non-transparent corporate bond markets.

The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stock market liquidity and firm dividend policy within a market implementing the tax imputation system. The main aim is to understand how the tax imputation system influences the relationship between firm dividend policy and stock market liquidity within a cross-sectional framework.

This paper investigates the relationship between stock market liquidity and the dividend payout policy under the full tax imputation system in the Australian market. This study uses the Generalized Least Squares regressions with firm- and year-fixed effects.

In contrast to the negative relationship between the liquidity of common shares and the firms' dividends documented in countries with the double tax system, the study reveals that in Australia, the dividend payout ratios are positively associated with liquidity after controlling for various explanatory variables with both the contemporaneous and lagged time periods. Such a finding is robust to the use of alternative liquidity proxies and to the sub-period tests and remains during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

The insights derived from this study have significant implications for various stakeholders within the economy. The findings provide regulators with valuable insights to conduct a more holistic assessment of how the tax system impacts the economy, especially concerning the dividend choices of firms. Within the context of a full tax imputation system, investors can make investment decisions without factoring in the taxation impact. Simultaneously, firms can be relieved of concerns about losing investors who prioritize liquidity, particularly when a high dividend payout might not align optimally with their financial strategy.

This study contributes to the literature by extending the literature on the tax clientele effects on dividend policy, providing evidence that the tax imputation system can moderate the impact of liquidity on dividend policy. This study examines the impact of the dividend tax imputation system on the substitution effect between dividends and liquidity.