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This paper aims to provide an analysis of securities class action filings in 2017 along with related trends over time and a comprehensive current view of the securities class action landscape.

The paper details 2017 securities class actions and related trends by measures including the number and size of filings; market capitalization losses; litigation likelihood for US versus non-US exchange-listed companies; status and outcomes of filings (settled, dismissed, continuing); core versus merger and acquisition filings; individual versus institutional investors as lead plaintiffs; and concentration of class action activity by industry sector, stock exchange and court circuit.

The number of federal securities class action lawsuits filed in 2017 reached a record high for the second straight year. The jump was spurred by a sharp increase in lawsuits targeting mergers and acquisitions. The 412 securities class action filings in 2017 represented a more than 50 per cent increase from the previous record of 271 filings in 2016.

This paper details analysis by legal and industry experts.

Money Laundering Reporting Officers (MLROs) carry out day-to-day anti-money laundering (AML) tasks while directors ultimately remain responsible for AML compliance. Therefore, directors’ expectations of what their MLROs do should ideally coincide with what their actual tasks to minimise liability risk. This paper aims to test for gaps between MLROs and their directors in terms of knowledge, expectations and performance of AML tasks. Likewise, it is researched whether MLROs and directors communicate well with regard to MLROs’ tasks.

This paper first develops a model for analysing the dyadic relationship between MLROs and their directors, based on the audit expectation-performance gap. Second, a paired electronic survey of MLROs and directors of German companies was conducted in autumn 2020, testing for participants’ knowledge, expectations and performance of possible AML tasks (n = 136 pairs).

While there is no knowledge or performance gap among MLROs and directors, expectations among them are partially unreasonable and their communication needs to be improved. Additionally, this study suggests that MLROs of German non-financial businesses are less knowledgeable, perform AML duties more poorly, and communicate less effectively with their directors.

Training of MLROs and communication with their directors need to be improved. Especially in the non-financial sector, action is urgently required.

This paper reports the results of the first paired survey of MLROs and their directors, offering unique insights into their relationship and the status of private AML efforts.

This paper aims to analyze and discuss the implications of the August 2010 decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals vacating and remanding to the SEC its December 2008 order approving a proposed fee filed by NYSE Arca, LLC for its depth‐of‐book product ArcaBook. It also seeks to consider the effect on the court's decision of the Dodd‐Frank Act amendments to Section 19(b) of the Exchange Act.

The paper analyzes the evolution of the SEC's policy regarding SRO market data fees including the 1999 Concept Release on Market Information, the Advisory Committee on Market Information, the effects of decimalization and the 2005 adoption of Regulation NMS. It focuses on market data fee policy in connection with the Commission's decade‐long project to increase the role of competition in the US securities markets, culminating in the 2006 NYSE Arca fee filing, the SEC's 2008 order approving those fees and the NetCoalition decision.

The court's decision that a cost analysis is not irrelevant to the SEC's review of proposed SRO fee filings brings clarity and finality to a long‐standing dispute within the Commission and the securities industry and identifies a procedure for reaching an economically sound determination of “fair and reasonable” fees for SRO market data.

A cost‐based analysis of SRO market data fee filings is likely to result in a significant decline in market data revenues for those exchanges that charge fees for their data. For the Commission, cost‐based analysis is likely to require a significant reallocation of its regulatory staff and resources.

The paper presents a useful analysis for securities regulatory lawyers and financial analysts and investors following the stock exchange and financial information industries.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate farm financial stress within the USA over the past 20 years and the agricultural and economic factors which have impacted farm businesses. The effect of the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) on farm financial stress is further evaluated. In particular, Chapter 12 bankruptcies – which can only be filed by farmers – were only a temporary measure until BAPCPA made Chapter 12 a permanent fixture in bankruptcy law.

Chapter 12 bankruptcy filings from 1997 until 2016 are used as a proxy for farm financial stress. Panel fixed effects models are used to determine relevant factors affecting financial stress for farmers from agricultural and macroeconomic perspectives. Further, models incorporating pre- and post-BAPCPA regimes are utilized.

The results show that macroeconomic factors (interest and unemployment rates) are strong predictors of farm bankruptcies for farms while agricultural land values are the only consistent strong predictor among the agricultural factors. When evaluating the post-BAPCPA regime, only agricultural land values continue to be a significant predictor of farm bankruptcies. The findings also indicate a dynamic relationship with agricultural land values, where current year values are negatively related but previous year land values are positively related to bankruptcies.

The authors provide an analysis of the post-BAPCPA regime on farm bankruptcies that has not been evaluated within the literature yet. Further, the findings illuminate discussion on a potentially dynamic relationship with financial stress and agricultural land values.

Three reporting models — Traditional, Western‐narrow and Western‐broad — are scrutinised to delineate the basis of accounting practices for the Pacific Island Countries' (PIC) entities for the years ending 1997–1999. Evidence is obtained about the filing of reports; timeliness of reports; and disclosure patterns. Patterns are measured via examination of twenty Aggregated Accounting Disclosures (AAD) items and sub‐indices. A significant number of entities completely fail to generate annual reports, or are several years behind the reporting cycle or are unwilling to disseminate their reports. The reporting patterns for PIC entities showed an overall AAD disclosure trend of 52% with specific patterns being 76% of Core Statement Accounting (CSA), 42% Financial Related Accounting (FRA) and 40% Non‐financial Related Accounting (NRA) over the three years. The lack of current annual reports and timely reports (at least 50%) fits much more with the Traditional model than with either Western model.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the web‐based tax filing systems of Turkey and South Korea. The comparison is based on user satisfaction which has parameters such as ease of work, adequacy of the amount of information, display speed, convenience to life, job productivity, and help service.

The tax filing systems are presented along with a background of such systems and their usability parameters. The survey instrument that has been prepared for gauging user satisfaction was applied to the users in both countries. The statistical analyses of the results are performed through t‐test and stepwise regression.

The study shows that users in the two countries felt differently in such factors as ease of work, adequacy of the amount of information, display speed, convenience to life, job productivity, and help service. Although Turkey has a complex tax system Turkish users did not find the tax filing system difficult to use and that may be attributable to the fact that they are accounting professionals who frequently use the system.

Electronic tax filing is an important e‐government application that has become increasingly common all over the world. Beyond the usual benefits of e‐government such as reducing transaction costs and providing convenience, electronic tax filing systems are particularly useful for governments to avoid tax evasion and errors. Although, by definition, web‐based tax filing systems of different countries have to be different, universal design parameters of each system and the resulting user satisfaction levels may provide guidelines for new systems.

Unlike other types of information systems, which have been comparatively analyzed in the context of more than one country, this is not applicable to e‐government systems. To the authors' knowledge the present article is the first attempt to compare and analyze two countries' different e‐government systems.

An important but neglected area of investigation in digital entrepreneurship is the combined role of both core and peripheral members of an emerging technological field in shaping the symbolic and social boundaries of the field. This is a serious gap as both categories of members play a distinct role in expanding the pool of resources of the field. I address this gap by exploring how membership category is related to funding decisions in the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI).

The first quantitative study involved a sample of 1,315 AI-based startups which were founded in the period of 2011–2018 in the United States. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 32 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define the boundaries of their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.

The author finds that core members in the newly founded field of AI were more successful at attracting funding from investors than peripheral members and that size of the founding team, number of lead investors, number of patents and CEO approval were positively related to funding. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 30 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.

This study is one of the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to bring empirical evidence that investors adapt their funding strategy to membership categories (core and peripheral members) of a new technological field in their resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, I find that core and peripheral members claim distinct roles in their participation and contribution to the field in terms of technological developments, and that although core members attract more resources than peripheral members, both actors play a significant role in expanding the field’s social boundaries.

Core AI entrepreneurs who wish to attract funding may consider operating in fewer categories in order to be perceived as core members of the field, and thus focus their activities and limited resources to build internal AI capabilities. Entrepreneurs may invest early in filing a patent to signal their in-house AI capabilities to investors.

The social boundaries of an emerging technological field are shaped by a multitude of actors and not only the core members of the field. The author should pay attention to the role of each category of actors and build on their contributions to expand a promising field.

This paper is among the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to study the resource acquisition strategies of entrepreneurs in a newly establishing technological field.

In the intellectual property (IP) and management literature, the question of how external patent attorneys impact patent filings has been understudied. The purpose of this paper is to advance this area of research by examining how the use of external patent attorneys influences the patent filing strategies of firms and what impact firms’ level of experience with the exclusive use of in-house resources has on filing strategies. This study, thus, provides insights into the strategic dimension behind patent filing, a process which is affected by patent attorneys’ work and decision-making processes.

The econometric analysis is based on a patent database of 922,553 patents which is combined with an EPO patent database covering applications from 1990 to 2010. The authors test the hypotheses for this study using patent indicators addressing the impact of in-house firm experience vs the use of external patent attorneys on firm’s filing strategy.

This research finds empirical evidence that external patent attorneys’ work has an effect on patent scope, international scope, and patenting speed. Moreover, it can be shown that external patent attorneys have a positive impact on most filing dimensions, such as patent scope, international scope and the Patent Cooperation Treaty option, whereas the level of in-house firm experience has a negative impact on most filing dimensions. This implies that external patent attorneys seem to pursue a “maximization approach” while experienced firms seem to pursue a more differentiated approach to filing patents, for instance, drafting narrower and more focused patents.

The study suggests that effective filing strategies require an integrated approach between diverse IP stakeholders. More particularly, filing strategies should be communicated and aligned between all actors, including external patent attorneys in order to achieve the targeted patenting output.

The current study develops a patent filing typology, which accounts for patent attorneys’ decision options. In providing insights into patent attorneys’ work and their impacts on intellectual property rights management, the study is a useful complement to prior research, which has predominantly focused on applicants or examiners.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of class action litigation on firms' cost of equity capital.

The paper uses three different models to estimate the cost of equity capital. To separate the impact of lawsuit filings on the cost of equity capital from that of the revelation event, a sample of lawsuits with a long lag between the disclosure events and filing dates was analyzed. Also, a comparison group study was conducted to illustrate the distinct impact of a lawsuit filing on the defendant firm's cost of equity capital. Finally, a multivariate analysis was used to examine the factors that affect the magnitude of such impact.

The paper finds that filing of a class action lawsuit results in a significant increase in the defendant firm's cost of equity capital incremental to the effect of the disclosure event. Additionally, increases in the cost of equity capital after the lawsuit filings are higher when the lawsuits involve generally accepted accounting principle (GAAP) violation and have high merit, and when the defendant firms are small and have high leverage.

Findings in this paper suggest that the filing of a lawsuit brings new information to the market and is likely to increase the defendant firm's cost of equity capital by increasing the perceived risk in corporate governance, information asymmetry and operation.

This paper reveals securities class actions increase the defendant firms' cost of equity capital.

This study aims to examine the role of trust and digital literacy in influencing citizens’ adoption of e-government services.

Grounded in the technology acceptance model (TAM), a research model was developed focusing on e-filing services adoption. Hypotheses were formulated to assess the moderating effect of digital literacy on the relationship between trust and the key TAM determinants of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A questionnaire-based survey of 876 citizens who have used e-filing using the snow-ball sampling technique was adopted to generate data. The data was analyzed using PLS-SEM through the aid of SmartPLS 4 to assess the measurement model and structural relationships.

Trust positively influences perceived usefulness and ease of use, which in turn drive adoption. Additionally, digital literacy significantly moderates the impact of trust on usefulness and ease of use perceptions – the effect is stronger for higher digital literacy.

The study adopted a single country developing economy context limiting cross-cultural applicability. Second, the focus on e-filing adoption precludes insights across other e-government services. Third, the reliance on perceptual measures risks respondent biases and fourth, the study is a cross-sectional survey design.

The findings emphasize multifaceted strategies to accelerate e-government adoption. Nurturing citizen trust in e-government systems through enhanced reliability, security and transparency remains vital. Simultaneously, initiatives to cultivate digital access, skills and proficiencies across population segments need to be undertaken.

This study integrates trust and digital literacy within the theoretical model to provide a more holistic understanding of adoption determinants. It highlights the need for balanced technology-enabled and social interventions to foster acceptance of e-government services.