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This chapter investigates the relevance of accounting and other information to valuing Internet IPOs during the years 1998–2000 in Europe and the United States. We show that market value is negatively related to net income in the Internet bubble period before April 1, 2000 in both European and U.S. IPO markets. This is consistent with an Internet firm’s start-up expenditures being considered as assets, not as costs. Furthermore, for the U.S. IPO market, we find that free float is value relevant during the Internet bubble. Underwriters and issuers restricted the supply of shares at the IPO. This drove up market prices as investors were keen to buy Internet IPO shares.

This study looks at the value-relevance of accounting data and measures of web-traffic for Internet firms listed on the Neuer Markt. We show that earnings and cash flows cannot explain the valuation of Internet companies, while we report a positive association between total sales and market capitalisation. In addition, sales and marketing as well as research and development expenses are relevant value-drivers. Furthermore, we find a positive relation between market values and a number of web-metrics such as customer loyalty, reach, page impressions, and unique visitors. We conclude that during the Internet bubble, measures of web-traffic provided at least as much explanatory power for market values as financial statement information.

Nursing homes experience high nursing staff turnover. Nursing staff in nursing homes is comprised of gray and blue collar workers that include registered nurses (RNs), licensed practical nurses (LPNs), and certified nurse assistants (CNAs). The relationship between human resource management (HRM)practices, organizational culture, and nursing staff turnover is examined in underresourced (high Medicaid) nursing homes. Survey data from 348 nursing home administrators (NHAs) of USA high Medicaid (85% or higher) facilities were merged with secondary data sources for 2017–2018. The dependent variables (nursing staff turnover rates) consisted of the percentages of RNs, LPNs, and CNAs that had voluntarily quit the organization during the past year. The independent variables were: (1) HRM practices (employee-centered and high involvement practices); and (2) organizational culture: clan, market, hierarchical, and non-dominant. Organizational and market variables were controlled for. Data were modeled using Poisson log-linear regression, and propensity score weights were used to adjust for potential survey non-response bias. Results show high involvement HRM practices and having a clan culture are associated with lower RN, LPN, and CNA staffing turnover. Study findings suggest that organizational culture and HRM practices may be instrumental in reducing nursing turnover in underresourced nursing homes.

In explaining international expansion and performance, the traditional explanation in international business literature has mainly offered country, and firm-level structural explanations for performance. Moreover, this literature has been biased toward larger, established multinational manufacturing companies (Dunning, 1958; Hymer, 1960; Aharoni, 1966; Vernon, 1966). This was understandable as, for much of the 20th century, manufacturing occupied the dominant share of the economy. However, by the early 1960s, the service sector already accounted for more than half of the domestic economic activity in developed nations. Today, even in international operations, the share of services is rapidly increasing. For example, the share of services in U.S. exports in 1997 had grown to 27%, and to 16% in U.S. imports (Contractor, 1999). Moreover, in sectors such as information technology, telecommunications or biotechnology, recent years have seen a proliferation of entrepreneurial start-up companies, where the characteristics of their founders and leaders appear to have as much, or greater, impact on performance, as traditional firm-level explanations. Since the late 1980s, the growth of venture capital markets and rise in entrepreneurship have been observed in technology-driven industries (The Economist, 1993; Gupta, 1989; Mamis, 1989). Could entrepreneurial and leadership factors assume greater importance in explaining performance, especially international performance, of younger companies in such sectors? This is the broad hypothesis pursued in this study.

The growth incidence curve of Ravallion and Chen (2003) is based on the quantile function. Its distribution-free estimator behaves erratically with usual sample sizes leading to problems in the tails. The authors propose a series of parametric models in a Bayesian framework. A first solution consists in modeling the underlying income distribution using simple densities for which the quantile function has a closed analytical form. This solution is extended by considering a mixture model for the underlying income distribution. However, in this case, the quantile function is semi-explicit and has to be evaluated numerically. The last solution consists in adjusting directly a functional form for the Lorenz curve and deriving its first-order derivative to find the corresponding quantile function. The authors compare these models by Monte Carlo simulations and using UK data from the Family Expenditure Survey. The authors devote a particular attention to the analysis of subgroups.

Purpose – We analyze equality of opportunity for earnings acquisition in France between 1973 and 1993 defining individual circumstances by parental earnings. We compare two different definitions of circumstances. In the first one they are measured by the father's earnings level, in the second one by the father's rank in the earnings distribution.

Methodology – First we use stochastic dominance tools. Then we decompose the evolution of inequality of opportunity using the mean logarithmic deviation and the results of regressions of descendants’ earnings on their parents’ earnings.

Findings – Inequality of opportunity has remained stable when conditioning on the earnings level of the father, whereas it has diminished when conditioning on his rank in the earnings distribution. The former result is explained by the stable intergenerational earnings elasticity. The latter by the decreasing wage inequality in the previous generation.

Originality – Our analysis emphasizes that the assessment of equality of opportunity and its evolution is very sensitive to the partition of circumstances used. Moreover, it stresses the complementarity between the discrete and the continuous approaches for measuring inequality of opportunity.