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The purpose of this paper is to assess the degree to which auctioning the right to provide universal service is a viable option in developed countries with high teledensity and near ubiquitous fixed line and mobile networks. The paper also aims to provide signposts on the types of issues regulators need to consider and resolve when designing auctioning mechanisms for the competitive provision of universal service.

The paper examines the nature and scope of universal service, the approaches that have been used to identify the costs of universal service provision and the difficulties in using an auction process to allocate the right to provide universal service in countries with near ubiquitous network infrastructure. Australia is used as a case study on the difficulties of using auctions to encourage new entry in universal service areas served by a powerful incumbent. The paper also examines the types of issues regulators need to resolve when designing auction mechanisms for universal service provision.

The paper concludes that for developed countries, it is unclear whether the use of auctions for the provision of universal service will have the desired effect of ensuring a market‐based approach to service provision. This is because the risks associated with becoming an alternative universal service provider are likely to outweigh the benefits of doing so. Further, the risks faced by an alternative universal service provider are not borne by the incumbent operator thus further increasing the disincentive to bid for the right to provide universal service. The paper also concludes that the practical design of the universal service rights and obligations which will be attached to a winning bidder's license conditions is an extremely important mechanism by which some of the risks to potential universal service providers can be overcome.

The paper stimulates thinking about whether universal service auctions are a viable means of providing universal service in developed countries. In presenting empirical evidence of the difficulties in using auctions to introduce competition in universal service provision, the paper may provide valuable input to the regulatory proceedings associated with introducing universal service contestability arrangements that are currently being conducted in various countries.

There is evidence that students who attend Technical and Further Education (TAFE) prior to entering higher education underperform in their first year of study. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of self-efficacy in understanding the performance of students who completed TAFE in the previous year in a first year subject of microeconomics in a dual sector university in Melbourne, Australia.

The study utilises data collected by surveys of 151 students.

A student’s self-efficacy is positively associated with their marks in a first year subject of microeconomics. However, the relationship between final marks and self-efficacy is negative for those students who attended TAFE in the previous year suggesting that they suffer from the problem of overconfidence. When holding self-efficacy constant, using econometric techniques, TAFE attendance is found to be positively related to final marks.

The findings are exploratory (based on a small sample) and lead to a need to conduct cross institutional studies.

The research points to the need for early interventions so that TAFE students perform well in their first year of higher education. It also points to potential issues in the development of Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL) programs.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the inter-related impact of attendance at TAFE in the previous year and self-efficacy on the subsequent academic performance of TAFE students.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the intellectual capital (IC) reporting practices of the Bangladeshi pharmaceutical industry, one of the most significant industries to the Bangladeshi economy. It investigates the extent and qualitative characteristics of IC disclosures made by listed pharmaceutical companies in Bangladesh.

Data are gathered through a content analysis of the 2006 annual reports of 16 pharmaceutical companies quoted on the Dhaka Stock Exchange. The content analysis is performed by IC topic (i.e. categories and subcategories) and three semantic properties of IC disclosure: first, format (i.e. discursive, numerical but non-monetary, numerical-monetary and visual); second, news-tenor (i.e. positive, neutral and negative); and three, time-orientation (i.e. forward-looking, non-time-specific and past-oriented).

Results suggest a clear awareness among the Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies of the significance of IC in corporate value creation and a commitment to publicly communicating IC. Some evidence is found of the need to manage stakeholder relationships, and legitimacy and impression management motives underpinning the management's desire to disclose IC. Also, proprietary cost theory explains the variation in the disclosure of types of IC. The Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies did not adopt a consistent framework for IC reporting. A lack of consistency in reporting IC was also evident as the extent and subcategories of IC disclosures varied among companies. The findings indicate the Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies may not have properly measured and managed their IC.

There are two main limitations specific to this study. First, it only provides a snapshot of IC disclosure practices of Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies in 2006. Changes may have taken place since then that would have affected the IC-intensity and IC utilisation of these entities. Second, the study's sample is limited due to its focus on one industry. However, it is representative of the population as it includes more than two-thirds of Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies. This limitation affects the ability to conduct statistically meaningful analyses for testing any hypotheses relating to IC disclosure.

This is the first study on IC reporting practices of Bangladeshi pharmaceutical companies. Unlike most prior studies on IC disclosure practices, this study measures the quality of disclosures by analysing their semantic properties. The paper highlights the need for building organisational competencies in managing, measuring and reporting IC in Bangladesh.

Problems arose in the “market for information” (MFI) during the “dot.com” boom, the Enron case, Northern Rock failure and during the great financial crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009. This paper aims to extend the understanding of the MFI through field research and theoretical sources. It also aims to understand the MFI during relatively stable periods and during periods of rapid change, crisis and failure. It seeks to use these insights to propose changes to reduce the possibilities for negative change and problems in the MFI.

Field studies are used to develop an “empirical narrative” for ongoing MFI structures, processes and outcomes during relatively stable periods. The paper develops a “theoretical narrative” to extend the understanding of the MFI empirical insights.

The paper reveals that the MFI structure that includes knowledge and social context is central to ongoing MFI economic processes for MFI agents. Outcomes include changes in markets, firms and others. Changes and problems are means to understand interactions between the MFI social structure, knowledge, actions and outcomes as they rendered visible the previously invisible issues.

The paper shows that a coherent combination of new empirical narrative and theoretical narrative is essential to develop a critical stance, new policy prescriptions and new regulations to deal with problems and changes in the MFI. This provides the frame to propose changes in the “world of knowledge” and in (concentrated and elite) social and economic structures in the MFI. It proposes: making explicit shared knowledge in the MFI, monitoring change processes and promoting active formal learning.

This paper aims to investigate how sell-side analysts form expectations on, analyse, and communicate the effects of corporate acquisitions.

The paper reports on case studies of three listed firms who are frequent acquirers. The case data comprise semi-structured interviews and content analysis of analyst reports and corporate reports.

The paper reports three sets of findings. First, the analysts viewed acquisitions as heterogeneous events and, therefore, also treated acquisitions differently depending on factors such as size and acquisition strategy and the perceived “authenticity” of the acquisition (i.e. whether parts of the acquisition would be more accurately described as organic growth and regular capital expenditure (CAPEX) investments). Second, the authors find that analysts struggle with analysing the effects of acquisitions at the announcement date because of a mismatch between the analysts’ need of and the analysts’ access to relevant information. Although clients demand evaluations of announced acquisitions, relevant accounting information is not published until much later and the information at hand only allows for cursory analyses. Finally, the authors find that the analysts’ valuation models were too inflexible to fully incorporate the effects of the acquisition. In sum, the analysts, therefore, developed acquisition-driven investment cases without supporting accounting information and without converting expected acquisitions into forecasts.

By adopting a qualitative case study research design, the paper contributes to the ongoing efforts to open the “black-box” of sell-side analyst behaviour. In particular, the unique research design focusses on effects related to specific corporate events (acquisitions) rather than analysts’ everyday work.

The purpose of this paper is to test the performativity of intellectual capital (IC) from the perspective of sell-side analysts, a type of actor who consumes and creates IC information and in whose practice IC information plays a significant role.

The empirical component of the study comprises a narrative analysis of the text of a large corpus of sell-side analysts’ initiation coverage reports. The authors adopt Mouritsen’s (2006) performative and ostensive conceptualisations of IC as the theoretical framework.

The authors find that the identities and properties of IC elements are variable, dynamic and transformative. The relevance of IC elements in the eyes of analysts is conditional on the context, temporally contingent and bestowed indirectly. IC elements are attributed to firm value both directly, in a linear manner, and indirectly, via various non-linear interrelationships established with other IC elements, tangible capital and financial capital.

This study challenges the conventional IC research paradigm and contributes towards a performativity-inspired conceptualisation of IC and a resultant situated model of IC in place of a predictive model.

This is the first study to apply a performative lens to study IC identities, roles and relationships from the perspective of a field of practice that is external to the organisation where IC is hosted. Examining IC from analysts’ perspective is important because not only can it provide an alternative perspective of IC, it also enables an understanding of analysts’ field of practice.

Student mobility from the south to the north/centre of Italy is an increasingly crucial topic because the most important consequence is the continual depletion of universities situated in the southern regions. Using micro-data from the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), the purpose of this paper is to investigate how contextual factors affect this mobility.

Empirical evidence is provided by developing a multilevel logit model of student decisions to move at university enrolment that allows us to identify the unique effects that student and province characteristics have on out-migration. Multilevel analysis is appropriate because the research questions focus on the role of province characteristics, variables that are measured at the macro level, on student-level outcome (out-migration) while controlling for student-level characteristics, variables that are measured at the micro level.

The present paper intends to contribute to the literature by quantifying the way in which contextual factors affect student mobility from the south to the north/centre of Italy. Findings show that province differences remain significant even after controlling for individual characteristics stressing the importance of the geographical dimension for student mobility. These findings have important policy implications for the future of university system in Italy.

This paper is relevant to the literature concerning this issue because most of the empirical applications are based on spatial models that do not take into account individual characteristics of the students. In addition, the multilevel methodology proposed can be easily generalise to other countries.