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This paper aims to analyse the exposure at default (EAD) in the event of multiple banking relationships to understand the differences with respect to solo banking relationships and forecast the banks risk exposure.

The paper uses a unique database provided by the Italian public credit register representative of the full Italian market before the financial crisis. The analysis compares different EAD risk proxies for debtors with unique and multiple banking relationships to underline the main differences among the two groups.

Results show that EAD forecast could be improved considering the existence of exposures with other lenders and banks that consider such type of information can reduce the risk of underestimating the risk exposure of a debtor.

The paper is the first attempt to model the EAD on the basis of the existence of multiple lending exposures. Results demonstrate a different lender’s risk exposure for debtors with multiple credit risk exposure and show the usefulness of the information about the overall system exposure in evaluating the risk exposure related to this type of customers.

This study comprehensively reviews the global literature on busy boards and audit committees.

Six eight articles on busy boards and audit committees from prominent accounting journals are reviewed and analyzed under the “reputation” and “busyness” premise.

Most studies advocating the “reputation” hypothesis have the consensus that busy directors have their benefits (knowledge spillovers), particularly regarding sharing their in-depth knowledge, experiences and expertise. This phenomenon is pronounced for younger and IPO firms, which have high advising and financing needs. From the “busyness” perspective, busy directors are too overboard in carrying out their duty effectively and responsibly.

This study identifies future research avenues on busy boards/audit committees and suggests that policymakers and regulators should limit the number of board appointments.

This is the first study to extensively amalgamate research on busy directors and audit committees. It reveals the various proxies used to measure the busyness of board and audit committee members and the consequences of busyness.

This paper examines the design and evaluation of a TV on Demand (TVoD) system, consisting of a globally accessible storage architecture where all TV content broadcast over a period of time is made available for streaming. The proposed architecture consists of idle Internet Service Provider (ISP) servers that can be rented and released dynamically as the client load dictates. This paper examines issues of resource management and content placement within this Video Content Distribution Network (VCDN). The existing placement algorithm is computationally expensive and in some cases, infeasible to execute within any reasonable length of time. This work proposes a number of new placement heuristics each of which attempts intelligently to reduce the search space so that only the best proxies are considered for replica placement. An extensive evaluation of these placement algorithms is carried out to identify a good placement algorithm without being computationally expensive.

Streaming audio/video contents over the Internet requires large network bandwidth and timely delivery of media data. A streaming session is generally long and also needs a large I/O bandwidth at the streaming server. A streaming server, however, has limited network and I/O bandwidth. For this reason, a streaming server alone cannot scale a streaming service well. An entire audio/video media file often cannot be cached due to intellectual property right concerns of the content owners, security reasons, and also due to its large size. This makes a streaming service hard to scale using conventional proxy servers. Media file compression using variable‐bit‐rate (VBR) encoding is necessary to get constant quality video playback although it produces traffic bursts. Traffic bursts either waste network bandwidth or cause hiccups in the playback. Large network latency and jitter also cause long start‐up delay and unwanted pauses in the playback, respectively. In this paper, we propose a proxy based constant‐bit‐rate (CBR)‐transmission scheme for VBR‐encoded videos and a scalable streaming scheme that uses a CBRtransmission scheme to stream stored videos over the Internet. Our CBR‐streaming scheme allows a server to transmit a VBRencoded video at a constant bit rate, close to its mean encoding bit rate, and deals with the network latency and jitter issues efficiently in order to provide quick and hiccup free playback without caching an entire media file. Our scalable streaming scheme also allows many clients to share a server stream. We use prefix buffers at the proxy to cache the prefixes of popular videos, to minimize the start‐up delay and to enable near mean bit rate streaming from the server as well as from the proxy. We use smoothing buffers at the proxy not only to eliminate jitter and traffic burst effects but also to enable many clients to share the same server stream. We present simulation results to demonstrate the effectiveness of our streaming scheme.

This paper presents a state‐of‐the‐art review of the Web privacy and anonymity enhancing security mechanisms, tools, applications and services, with respect to their architecture, operational principles and vulnerabilities. Furthermore, to facilitate a detailed comparative analysis, the appropriate parameters have been selected and grouped in classes of comparison criteria, in the form of an integrated comparison framework. The main concern during the design of this framework was to cover the confronted security threats, applied technological issues and users' demands satisfaction. GNUnet's Anonymity Protocol (GAP), Freedom, Hordes, Crowds, Onion Routing, Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), TRUSTe, Lucent Personalized Web Assistant (LPWA), and Anonymizer have been reviewed and compared. The comparative review has clearly highlighted that the pros and cons of each system do not coincide, mainly due to the fact that each one exhibits different design goals and thus adopts dissimilar techniques for protecting privacy and anonymity.

This study aims to estimate the amount of money laundering (ML) with multiple proxy approaches and measure the effects of ML on various indicators of the economic and financial sectors. Theoretical justifications are recruited from the parasite theory of organised crime.

A quantitative research methodology was used on a balanced panel data set to test the study’s hypothesis through generalised method of moment (GMM). The study sample consisted of 77 countries, and the data was collected for 15 years (2005–2019).

A study has found that 1.23% of global gross domestic product is laundered yearly, and there is no noticeable decline in ML activities. Further study has also found that ML has devastating effects on countries, government revenue, foreign investment, economic development, political and peace conditions, bank liquidity, interest rate volatility and exchange rate volatility. The study has not witnessed the negative consequence of ML on countries’ inflation rates.

Estimates of the study guide policymakers about the volume of resources fleeing and helps them to decide the level of response needed. Further findings help them prioritise the response system according to the area most affected.

This study is an original contribution by the authors and has studied the effects of ML by computing the amount of ML by four different proxies.

The purpose of this paper is to use a stochastic dominance test to examine the relative performance of value vs growth stocks based on multiple value-growth proxies in the Taiwan stock market.

This work examines whether the return distribution of a value portfolio stochastically dominates that of a growth portfolio using a test proposed by Linton et al. (2005).

By applying stochastic dominance analysis on the full-sample period, the sub-sample period and the state of the world’s economic conditions, the authors find that the earnings-to-price or dividend-to-price ratio is better than the book-to-market ratio as a value-growth proxy in Taiwan. There are robust results even after adjusting for data frequency, a sampling method and sample excluding financial services.

This study makes the first attempt to examine value vs growth strategies based on multiple value-growth proxies in the emerging market of Taiwan by administering the stochastic dominance test.

This paper aims to clarify some of the representations regarding philosophy of science and statistical methods, which are contained in Cadogan and Lee (this issue).

This paper uses logical argument and a review of literature.

Rigdon’s (2012) approach to construct validation is entirely consistent with scientific realism, while the “realist variable framework” revives the empiricist reification of common factors found in Bagozzi’s (1984) Holistic Construal and throughout the early literature of structural equation modeling. Factor indeterminacy is a phenomenon that makes it impossible to equate common factors with conceptual variables. The future of marketing measurement is not in the historical error-centric framework but in a measurement framework centered around uncertainty.

Researchers should avoid reification of common factors and recognize the validity gap between conceptual variables and empirical proxies, consistent with Rigdon (2012) and should move toward an uncertainty-centric approach to measurement.

Decision-makers need to acknowledge the difference between data and the underlying reality. Success or failure will be shaped by the reality, not by the data.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper seeking to clarify representations in Cadogan and Lee (this issue). This paper aims to save journal readers from being misled.

Background: Rising food bank usage in the UK suggests a growing prevalence of food insecurity. However, a formalised, representative measure of food insecurity was not collected in the UK until 2019, over a decade after the initial proliferation of food bank demand. In the absence of a direct measure of food insecurity, this article identifies and summarises longitudinal proxy indicators of UK food insecurity to gain insight into the growth of insecure access to food in the 21st century.

Methods: A rapid evidence synthesis of academic and grey literature (2005–present) identified candidate proxy longitudinal markers of food insecurity. These were assessed to gain insight into the prevalence of, or conditions associated with, food insecurity.

Results: Food bank data clearly demonstrates increased food insecurity. However, this data reflects an unrepresentative, fractional proportion of the food insecure population without accounting for mild/moderate insecurity, or those in need not accessing provision. Economic indicators demonstrate that a period of poor overall UK growth since 2005 has disproportionately impacted the poorest households, likely increasing vulnerability and incidence of food insecurity. This vulnerability has been exacerbated by welfare reform for some households. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically intensified vulnerabilities and food insecurity. Diet-related health outcomes suggest a reduction in diet quantity/quality. The causes of diet-related disease are complex and diverse; however, evidence of socio-economic inequalities in their incidence suggests poverty, and by extension, food insecurity, as key determinants.

Conclusion: Proxy measures of food insecurity suggest a significant increase since 2005, particularly for severe food insecurity. Proxy measures are inadequate to robustly assess the prevalence of food insecurity in the UK. Failure to collect standardised, representative data at the point at which food bank usage increased significantly impairs attempts to determine the full prevalence of food insecurity, understand the causes, and identify those most at risk.

This study examines the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility Disclosure (hereafter CSRD) on the Corporate Economic Performance (hereafter CEP) of a group of public shareholding companies in Jordan.

This study uses different proxies to examine the impact of CSRD on companies’ financial and economic value. The data were collected from a sample of 94 companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2016. Based on a checklist of 41 indicators, this study employed the manual content analysis technique to collect and analyse CSRD data. A statistical analysis technique was also used to examine the hypothesized relationships between collected data on CSRD and profitability.

The findings indicate that CSRD is value-relevant. It is positively and statistically associated with firm value proxied by Tobin’s Q. In addition, it is positively and statistically associated with firm financial performance proxied by ROE and ROA.

This study contributes to the research debate on the relationship between CSRD and CEP, particularly in developing nations. The study draws attention to the need for information on different dimensions of CSR, including human resource, environmental, product responsibility, and community participation, as disclosure on such dimensions is positively associated with profitability.

The findings provide important implications for Jordanian corporate managers to maintain CSRD in their best interest. With more emphasis on disclosing stand-alone CSR reports, corporate managers can present more information on different dimensions of CSR, attracting the attention of stakeholders such as investors, the government, media, and humanitarian activists and enhancing overall corporate goodwill.

CSRD activities reflect a positive impact on CEP. Due to the dearth of relevant research conducted in developing countries, this study provides empirical evidence on the positive relationship between CSRD and CEP in an emerging economy, with more emphasis on specific dimensions of CSR, including human resources, environmental, product responsibility, and community participation. Since multiple proxies exist to measure profitability, this study uses multi-approaches for profitability examination proxied by Tobin’s Q, ROE, and ROA. Moreover, the issue of CSR is original and interesting to be examined in the Jordanian context, where the listed firms have reported a homogeneous perception of CSR.