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This study sets out to examine whether small and mid‐cap fund performance is related to fund manager human capital characteristics including tenure, investment experience, education (MBA designation), professional training (CFA), and gender.

Based on a sample of 1,004 small and mid‐cap equity funds identified on the Morningstar database as of 31 December 2005, several statistical tests were applied which consider fund performance, risk, expenses, and turnover simultaneously.

Depending on the benchmark, an optimal size of managed mutual funds is determined that ranges between $US1.43 billion and $US3.89 billion.

The results suggest that there are some systematic cross‐sectional differences in fund performance that can be attributed to differences in managerial human capital characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide empirical information about the past loss experience in major US crop insurance programs, and documents the impacts of ratings changes through time on the premiums and exposure to participants. The losses are also examined within the structure of the current SRA to identify impacts on insurance companies and the government by fund designation.

- The study uses RMA Summary of Business data and methods consistent with the use of loss-cost ratemaking to analyze loss performance across years with different starting prices and volatilities. Additionally, the RMA premium quoting system was replicated across years with the ability to adjust only one feature at a time to isolate the impacts of changes in individual rating elements from changes in market conditions. Tabulations are provided in map and table form to present the loss ratios through time, in aggregate across time, and within each of the possible funds in which exposures are held. Additionally, the tools developed allow a direct tabulation of the farmer-level premium impacts of individual changes in the policy premium system, and of changing conditions over time.

Corn and soybeans represent dominant shares of aggregate policy premiums and liability, and also are the crops that underwent the greatest degree of revision in rates over the recent past both due to rate study implications, and to loss rate experience. Despite commonly made arguments that payments associated with the drought of 2012 “more than wiped out all historic gains,” it appears that insurance worked very much as intended and that the loss ratios through time are within reasonable ranges of targets. Fund designation, and the separation under the most recent SRA of Group 1 and Group 2 states substantially dampened the loss sharing and ability to capture gains by private companies, and leads to fairly low rates of return on a pure fund-loss sharing basis for insurance companies. Finally, despite the extreme losses of 2012, the aggregate performance of corn relative to the remainder of the program exhibits lower than average loss rates both in aggregate and on a scale-adjusted basis.

The study provides an important means to isolate and assess implications of rate changes, and to associate causes of losses with rate charges. Additionally, the structure of the SRA, and possible future versions of the SRA are informed by both the aggregate, and the normalized performance results provided. And, the relative performance of major row, crops even with recent extreme losses, appears appropriate or positive to insurance companies after considering the impacts of the SRA on company exposure. In total, the evidence points toward appropriate movement toward target overall loss ratios in the US crop insurance program.

This paper provides an extensive empirical evaluation of ratings for major crop insurance policies and provides a unique means to decompose sources of changes in premiums and rates across locations and through time. It also provides an evaluation of the performance of crop insurance post-SRA in a manner that allows both totals and scale-adjusted performance to be assessed.

Investors have done sin stocks exclusion in the portfolio as negative screening of socially responsible investment. The impact of sin stock exclusion has brought different results for an investment portfolio; therefore, the investment manager fully decided on sin stocks investment. This research observes the relationship between sin stock proportion and fund managers’ education background. An investment manager’s educational background influences both financial performance and socially responsible behavior. Equity funds are chosen since they made up most of the Indonesian investment market. Proportion is used as a calculation of investment managers’ characteristics. The fixed effect model is applied in the panel data regression method. The study finds a significant negative relationship between sin stock proportion in asset allocation and investment managers’ education level. The research contributes to the literature on sin stocks in Indonesia concerning investment managers’ education background and among the first that observe all holdings in financial reports.

This study seeks to identify how professional accountants in France are educated in sustainability; we examine the French accounting programs in regard to sustainability accounting education recommendations.

We analyze a variety of documents to ascertain what comprises the typical accounting education program in France. Additionally, we conduct five interviews of various stakeholders to understand the importance of sustainability accounting and education in the French context.

We note an interesting paradox in the French context: while the government requires the reporting and auditing of corporate sustainability information, we find that sustainability is not greatly present in the government-funded French accounting education program. We determine that the government’s power in setting the education agenda combined with its budget restrictions and ability to defer responsibility to other parties has resulted in this paradox in the French setting.

This research draws attention to the consequences of society ignoring sustainability education for professional accountants.

This paper contributes to the discussion on how to educate responsible professional accountants and the implications for the planet if accountants are not trained in sustainability.

This research contributes to the important domain of sustainability accounting education. We also explore additional implications for the accounting profession and the general public.

The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) recently proposed a global consulting credential involving a diverse set of professions including accountancy, business law, and information technology. The proposal was widely debated in the professional literature, and was a divisive issue among CPAs. In late 2001, the AICPA membership voted against any further commitment to the credential. The purpose of this paper is to examine the global credential initiative in an effort to understand why professional jurisdictional claims may fail at the theorization stage.

The paper relies primarily on a qualitative review and analysis of archival materials and published articles and commentaries relating to the global credential project.

The analysis indicates that the AICPA failed to establish either the pragmatic or moral legitimacy of the proposed credential in the eyes of the audiences. This failure appears to be attributable to the sociopolitical environment in which the credential was promoted, and to flaws in the rhetoric used by the AICPA to articulate its jurisdictional claim.

The paper demonstrates the importance of legitimacy to the ability to successfully theorize institutional changes.

This paper investigates how the AICPA theorized the global credential knowledge claim, and how theorization failed to persuade the audiences to support the credential.

To provide an overview of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) recently adopted rule 22e-4 (Rule 22e-4) under the Investment Company Act of 1940, as amended (1940 Act) regarding investment company liquidity risk management programs.

Reviews and summarizes the specific requirements of Rule 22e-4 to better enable investment companies and their boards to comply by the general compliance date of December 1, 2018 (smaller complexes have until June 1, 2019).

The SEC clarifies that each fund should tailor its particular Program to ensure that it is adequately assessing and managing its specific liquidity risk based on its investment strategies and risks; however, it is not expected that a fund would eliminate all adverse impacts of liquidity risk. In addition, under the final rule, while the board does have certain duties and responsibilities with respect to certain aspects of a fund’s Program, the SEC pared back much of what had been in the Proposing Release to ensure that the board’s role remains one of oversight and not management.

Although the compliance date does not occur for almost two years, funds and their boards should begin reviewing the Rule 22e-4 requirements now and developing their Program.

Practical guidance from experienced investment management attorneys that provides insight into expectations for compliance with Rule 22e-4.

Fund‐raising has become a more important part of the job of academic library directors. Small college libraries with small staffs must devise methods to raise funds, which are not burdensome for any one staff member. Endowed book funds are described here as such a vehicle for fund‐raising. The case described, now 25 years in place, has raised an endowment of over $6 million.

The study systematically analyses the path dependency and path-shaping of borrowed education policy, tracing it from the global through the national to individual schools. It also revisits the case schools after five years to map the school level policy paths.

Recently, path-dependency heuristics have drawn attention in predicting educational policy trajectories. However, these studies are primarily theoretical, and those empirical studies do not capture what happens at the school level. This paper fills the research gap by presenting a model that synthesises the research from diverse fields and is informed by findings from a longitudinal case study of educational outsourcing in public schools in Hong Kong and Korea.

The findings highlight path dependency interactions across educational levels diachronically and synchronically, while aptly incorporating the creative ways school leaders exercise their agency therein. The paper concludes with new insights into policy trajectory and education outsourcing.

The study substantiates and extends previously suggested theoretical models on the paths of travelling educational policies and identifies the factors that shape the paths. It also sheds light on how school leaders navigate the structures that constrain their actions or create a new path and pursue their educational goals.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the operating characteristics as well as risk and performance measures of all available self-proclaimed socially responsible funds (hereafter SRFs) in the USA over the ten-year (2007–2016) period. The first research question addressed is: Do SRFs perform as well as the average of all mutual funds in their respective categories? The second research question addressed is: Are SRF expense ratios correlated with fund performance?

This study analyzes all socially responsible equity mutual funds, as self-reported to Morningstar. This paper empirically compares operating characteristics and performance measures of SRFs relative to category averages in the US mutual fund industry. Operating characteristics include expense ratios and annual turnover rates. Performance measures include conventional return, risk and risk-adjusted return measures.

Although prior research suggests that socially responsible investing (SRI) indexes and SRI-friendly stocks have favorable returns, this study finds that these self-proclaimed SRFs underperform the average of all mutual funds in matched equity categories. However, this study demonstrates that a simple filter based on expense ratios can identify those SRFs that will enable investors to do quite well while doing good.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, the authors report that self-proclaimed SRFs, as a whole, have not generated competitive returns relative to other mutual funds in the same categories over the past ten years. This result contradicts the notion that socially responsible investors do not give up return performance when investing with their conscience. Second, the authors find that those SRFs with expense ratios in the lowest quartile of their respective category have significantly higher risk-adjusted returns and significantly lower turnover than category averages. Thus, by focusing on SRFs with low-expense ratios, socially responsible investors can do quite well while doing good.

The application of a specific word processor to one library's acquisitions fund accounting and reporting functions is described. The fund structure, report formats, and mangagement data reports have been designed locally for the specific needs of a specific library. The system provides flexibility for accommodating different requirements at other institutions.