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Applying sociological and developmental theoretical perspectives to educational policy issues, this study analyzed data from 7,710 children from low-income families in the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort. The goal was to examine how much the association between phonics instruction in kindergarten classrooms and children’s reading achievement during the first year of school in the low-income population would depend on whether children had previously attended preschool as well as the socioeconomic composition of their elementary schools. Lagged linear models with a series of sensitivity tests revealed that this association was strongest among children from low-income families who had not attended preschool and then enrolled in socioeconomically disadvantaged elementary schools and among children from low-income families who had attended preschool and then enrolled in socioeconomically advantaged elementary schools. These findings demonstrate how insights into educational inequality can be gained by situating developing children within their proximate ecologies and institutional settings, especially looking to the match between children and their contexts. They are especially relevant to timely policy discussions of early childhood education programs, classroom instructional practices, and school desegregation.

This study aims to examine the listing of firms at the highest corporate governance level of the Brazilian stock exchange (B3) as a means of legitimation and its relationship with risk and return on investment.

This paper analyzes 205 companies from 2010 to 2019, in which firms listed at the Novo Mercado level were compared with groups composed of other firms traded on B3.

The main results demonstrate that a listing at the supposedly higher level of corporate governance in Brazil does not indicate lower risk, a higher return or even a better risk-return ratio.

The findings are restricted to this sample, representing the association identified between the analyzed phenomena and not a cause-effect relationship.

The highest level of corporate governance in Brazil brings together firms that present a higher risk (at least systematic) and lower returns (at least financial) because they seek to legitimize themselves in the market as firms committed to better management practices.

These findings are useful to investors, the stock exchange, regulatory agents and the companies themselves to reflect on the purpose and usefulness of different levels of corporate governance in Brazil.

This study differs from the others that relate corporate governance to risk or return because it does not deal individually with corporate governance practices, but rather the phenomenon that is listed in a special governance level, created by the stock exchange, serving as a kind of seal legitimation.

A comprehensive operational framework is proposed to explain young consumers’ (i.e. generations Y and Z) engagement with brands on social media sites (SMSs). This paper aims to synthesize two motivational theories: uses and gratifications (U&G) theory and the technology acceptance model (TAM).

A selective literature review was conducted to examine recent publications related to young consumers’ brand-driven engagement behavior on SMSs in which either TAM or U&G theory was applied. A three-stage method was used: an initial search was followed by vertical and horizontal searches and then a targeted search of scholarly publications. At each stage, the university’s library databases and Google Scholar were searched for relevant, mainly peer-reviewed articles, using appropriate filters and keywords. The articles’ references and the studies that cited those articles were added to the initially identified research pool (vertical search), coupled with publications of a similar nature based on keywords (horizontal search). The final stage, the targeted search, involved identifying and adding specific articles (e.g. literature reviews and integrated models).

After a review of a significant number of U&G and TAM studies, similarities and differences of the two theories were identified, and an integrated operational framework was developed. Based on empirical findings of existing U&G and TAM studies, testable propositions were presented.

The proposed hybrid model and the associated propositions provide a research opportunity to empirically examine how young consumers’ motivational (i.e. motivating and demotivating) drivers, normative influence, perceived value and attitudes (toward brand content and engagement) predict intention or actual brand-related behavior on SMSs.

Much of current research indicates that generations Y and Z (“digital natives”) spend considerably more time on SMSs than any of the older generations (“digital immigrants”). Thus, brands that aim to target this cohort need to develop successful engagement strategies (e.g. gamification and influencer marketing) on current and emerging SMSs. The suggested conceptualization provides guidelines for companies to effectively use such communication strategies to motivate young people to engage with their brands on sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

A review of TAM research indicates that it lacks rich motivating/demotivating constructs, and thus borrows from other theories to complement this weakness. An examination of U&G frameworks, particularity Ducoffe (1996)-based models, indicates that these frameworks mainly test engagement with social media advertising but seldom other types of brand-driven engagement on SMSs. In addition, many U&G studies focus less than TAM studies do on outcome variables such as behavioral intentions and behavior. Thus, the authors propose a synthesized U&G and TAM framework that mitigates both theories’ weaknesses and builds on their strengths, enriching the growing research on brand-driven engagement behavior via SMSs.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of ownership concentration of the largest shareholder and foreign ownership on the demand for an external audit for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in six Latin American countries. In particular, the authors test whether foreign-owned firms (compared with domestic private-owned firms) and domestic firms with minority foreign shareholders are more likely engaged in audit assurance.

The authors applied the logit model to estimate the impact of ownership concentration and owner/shareholder type on audit demand, using a sample of 4,609 SMEs. The probabilities of being audited for firms in these countries are then calculated from the estimation results.

The empirical results suggest an inverse relationship between ownership concentration and audit demand only for Uruguay and Peru. However, foreign-owned firms and domestic private-owned firms with minority foreign ownership have a high probability of being audited for all sample countries.

Policymakers in developing countries may promote foreign investments in domestic private-owned firms to improve their corporate transparency and governance.

This study contributes to the growing literature on the impact of ownership on audit demand by particularly focusing on foreign owners and foreign minority shareholders. The findings indicate that foreign ownership (either majority or minority) contributes to corporate transparency and business environments in emerging countries.

High-speed Indium Phosphide (InP) HBTs have been widely used to design high-speed analog, digital and mixed-signal integrated circuits. The purpose of this study is to propose a new parameter extraction procedure for determining an improved T-topology small-signal equivalent circuit of InP heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs).

The alternating current crowding effect is considered through adding the intrinsic base capacitance in the small-signal equivalent circuit. All of the circuit parameters are extracted directly without using any approximation.

The extraction technique is more easily understood and clearer than other extraction methods, as the equations are derived from the S-parameters by peeling peripheral elements from small-signal models to get reduced ones and extracting each equivalent-circuit parameter using each equation.

To validate the presented parameter extraction technology, an n-p-n emitter-up InP HBT was analyzed adopting the method. Excellent agreement between measured and modeled S-parameters is obtained up to 40 GHz.

This study examines the effects of corporate governance on market returns during the first four waves of the COVID-19 crisis.

Event study and linear regression methods were applied on a sample of 293 US firms.

The results show that differences in abnormal returns are more significant during the second wave of COVID-19 and the two following waves. Moreover, estimations show that good corporate governance alleviated the effect of COVID-19 during the second wave and the two following waves. However, corporate governance did not affect abnormal returns during the first wave. Furthermore, evidence highlights that the effect of corporate governance is more observed in the industries most affected by COVID-19 than in the least affected industries.

Many studies have attempted to investigate the effect of corporate governance on stock returns during the first wave of the pandemic. However, to the authors' knowledge, this is the first study that focuses on different waves that occurred during 2020 and 2021.

Early literacy and numeracy development among children may be the best measure of a child's well-being. The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of child factors, quality of care and household factors, and community factors in early childhood on the development of literacy and numeracy skills of children in Bangladesh.

For this study, the authors used data from Bangladesh's 2019 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey. The association between response variables and selected covariates was examined using the chi-square test. To determine the risk factors for early child literacy and numeracy development, the authors applied two-level logistic regression models.

Among the total of under five children (n = 9,449), in general, 29.1% of the children were growing in the development early childhood literacy and numeracy in Bangladesh. Children (36–47 months), male children, children with moderate stunting, children with severe and moderate underweight status, mothers without education and primary education, and mothers from the poorest, poorer, middle and richer households were less likely than their counterparts to develop children's early literacy and numeracy skills. In contrast, women from the eastern and central regions, children who read at least 3 books, and early childhood education had higher odds of children's literacy and numeracy skills development than their counterparts.

The results from this study suggest that children's, community, quality of care and household level significant factors should be considered when trying to improve children's literacy and numeracy skills development in Bangladesh.

This study aims to examine how corruption influences the voluntary disclosure of corporate governance (CG)-related information by developed country multinationals (DC-MNEs) and emerging market multinationals (EM-MNEs) investing in six Latin American countries.

The study uses information from 300 MNEs included in the 2018 ranking of the 500 Largest Latin American companies (America Economía, 2018). Each MNE’s final annual report for the financial year ending 2018 was examined and coded to obtain the corporate governance disclosure index. Fractional probit regression was applied to test the hypotheses of the research.

DC-MNEs disclose more CG-related information in corrupt environments than EM-MNEs. This differentiated behavior occurs because DC-MNEs face higher legitimacy pressures in corrupt environments than EM-MNEs and because EM-MNEs are more experienced than DC-MNEs in dealing with such corrupt environments.

While both EM-MNEs and DC-MNEs need to continue investing in corrupt countries to grow, they need to disclose CG-related information as a strategic tool to manage the legitimacy issues triggered by corruption in the markets they operate.

Despite corruption being pervasive in emerging markets, its implications for firms’ strategic behaviors are still under-researched. This paper extends the scope of corporate governance and international business fields by studying how MNEs respond to relevant dimensions of the macro environment. This research shows that voluntary disclosure of CG-related information is a strategic response of the MNEs to gain legitimacy in corrupt environments.

The purpose of this paper is to refute See and Gorard’s paper published in this journal in 2015 which argues that parent-based interventions for school readiness are ineffective.

Methods and results from 107 studies that were cited in See and Gorard (2015a) and associated reports were reviewed. Evaluations were made based on comparing the original studies with the summaries of those studies in the publication.

In this rebuttal, the authors show how See and Gorard erred to correctly report methods, sample sizes, outcomes measured, and the actual results of prior research.

The authors suggest that See and Gorard do not provide solid evidence within their article to back up their claims about parent intervention programs. This rigorous review of See and Gorard’s primary sources reveals that the empirical evidence stands contrary to the claims being made. See and Gorard inaccurately reviewed publications which contradict their conclusions, and they relied on a vast amount of unpublished papers by students to support their claims.

The authors demonstrate how See and Gorard misapplied their own standards of evaluation; the authors claim that their source materials contradict the “finding” they purport to present; and the authors argue that they chose lesser known studies when more reputable ones were available.

The purpose of this paper is to summarise the results of a review of the literature linking parental involvement in their child’s education to attainment at or before primary school.

The search involved nine electronic databases supplemented by other sources, and yielded 4,898 apparently relevant reports. Of these, 127 were reports of attempted evaluations to see whether enhancing parental involvement led to higher attainment outcomes for children.

None of these studies was a large, robust evaluation. The overwhelming majority (121/127) reported research with serious limitations, and they were almost equally divided between those claiming success and those saying that the intervention had been ineffective or harmful. Of the remaining six, three offered positive outcomes, and these were generally complex interventions in which parental involvement was only part of a package of measures taken to improve results.

Therefore, the paper has three main messages for an area where practice and policy interventions abound. Research has to improve greatly.