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The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk neutral and non-risk neutral pricing of Singapore Real Estate Investment Trusts (S-REITs) via comparing the average of the individual ratios (of deviation between expected and observed closing price/observed closing price) with the ratio (of standard deviation/mean) for closing prices via the binomial options pricing tree model.

If the ratio (of standard deviation/mean) ratio > the ratio (of deviation between expected and observed closing price/observed closing price), then the deviation of closing prices from the expected risk neutral prices is not significant and that the S-REIT is consistent with risk neutral pricing. If the ratio (of deviation between expected and observed closing price/observed closing price) is greater, then the S-REIT is not consistent with risk neutral pricing.

Capitacommercial Trust (CCT), Capitamall Trust (CMT) and Keppel Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) have large positive differences between the two ratios (39.86, 30.79 and 18.96 percent, respectively), implying that these S-REITs are not trading at risk neutral pricing. Suntec REIT has a small positive difference of 2.35 percent between both ratios, implying that it is trading at risk neutral pricing. Ascendas REIT has the largest negative difference between the two ratios at −4.24 percent, to be followed by Mapletree Logistics Trust at −0.44 percent. Both S-REITs are trading at risk neutral pricing. The analysis shows that CCT, CMT and Keppel REIT exhibit risk averse pricing.

Results are consistent with prudential asset allocation for viable S-REIT portfolio investing but that not all these S-REITs exhibit strong market efficiency in their pricing.

Pricing may be risk neutral over a certain period but investor sentiments, fear of risks and speculative activities could affect an S-REIT’s risk neutrality.

With enhanced risk diversification activities, the S-REITs should attain risk neutral pricing.

Virtually no research of this nature has been undertaken for S-REITS.

This study aims to establish a centralized decision-making game model and manufacturer-led Stackelberg game model based on factors of risk aversion of supply chain members and product greenness. The research aims to study whether the introduction of the “cost + risk sharing” contract affects coordination of this type of green supply by calculating the optimal decision of each mode.

This research designs a supply chain model under centralized and decentralized decision-making. This model uses the Stackelberg game to calculate the optimal decision under decentralized decision-making to evaluate the effect of a green supply chain and then analyze the “cost + risk sharing” contract and the degree of coordination of the supply chain. A sensitivity analysis is conducted on the centralized mode for the impact of variables on the supply chain.

This research finds a double marginalization effect in decentralized decision-making, and the risk aversion coefficient plays a decisive role in the utility of supply chain members. The specific range of risk- and cost-sharing factors allows supply chain members to achieve Pareto improvements and provides decision-making based on the corresponding management strategies according to each other’s risk preference degree.

The influence of each variable on the green supply chain in the centralized mode is studied by MATLAB numerical simulation. It provides reference for green supply chain members to formulate corresponding management strategies according to each other's risk preference degree.

This research innovatively considers manufacturers and retailers to explore the market demand for product greenness. It introduces a novel “cost + risk sharing” contract to coordinate the green supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationships between grain farm and farmer profiles and their respective choices to use forward pricing techniques and revenue protection crop insurance to manage risk.

An e-mail survey of Midwestern grain farmers elicited farmer demographic information, farm profile, risk attitudes and farmer use of forward pricing and revenue protection insurance. Responses regarding use of risk management tools were compiled as choices to use possible bundles of tools to account for simultaneous nature of the decision. Choices to use bundles of tools were used as the independent variable categories in a multinomial logit regression. Regressors were relevant data collected from the survey.

Farm size, using a market advisory service, and being a technology adopter are the most important factors in predicting risk management tool use by grain farmers. Farmers tend to use forward pricing and revenue protection insurance in combination. Large farms are more likely to use forward pricing tools.

Results provide researchers, extension professionals and risk management specialists with a current understanding of how farm and farmer characteristics relate to use of risk management tools. The authors also elaborate on findings to provide guidance for future risk management research.

The survey covered 9 Midwestern states and 648 grain farmers. The survey results update understanding of grain farmers’ risk management practices. The empirical approach treats risk management decisions to use available tools as simultaneous, which recent literature suggests is more appropriate than earlier approaches.

The cost of agricultural loans is a major constraint to the growth of the agriculture sector. This paper examines agricultural loan pricing by banks in Ghana using panel data analysis.

Data were obtained from audited financial reports of 15 agricultural loan lending banks from 2010 to 2017. The study applies the random-effect model and the fixed-effect model in the analysis and uses the system generalized system method of moment to check the robustness of the results from the baseline models.

The study found that agricultural loan pricing by banks is significantly influenced by risk premium, cost of funds, loan impairment, agricultural growth rate and food inflation. Banks should leverage emerging technologies to de-risk agriculture loan pricing to allay the fear of default. Farmers should look for long-term and relatively cheaper funds to support agricultural loans. Increasing credit to the agricultural sector could increase output, thereby reducing food inflation uncertainty for competitive pricing of agricultural loans.

Agriculture employs about 52% of Ghana's labor force, contributing about 20% to GDP. But it is “under” financed. This study leads the way in unraveling the factors accounting for the high prices of agricultural loans in Ghana. This study further contributes to policy development toward increasing credit to the agricultural sector.

Multimedia content that is accessible through mobile devices has a larger size than other types of content (e.g. text, images). This may lead to higher prices for accessing the content via mobile devices, as mobile operators are capping mobile data billing plans in an effort to increase their revenues and prevent congestion. This poses problems for the users that are not willing/do not afford to pay the required price but still want to use multimedia content through the mobile networks. A price reduction for the user, as well as minimising bandwidth consumption can be obtained as a trade-off in multimedia quality. However, as previous research shows, not all people are willing to trade-off quality for a lower price; therefore, there is no straightforward approach to this problem. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to present a model of user willingness to pay for multimedia content quality as a function of the user risk attitude with the aim to provide personalised content depending on the user willingness to trade-off price for multimedia content quality.

A user model was proposed based on a literature review and an existing data set. A stereotypical approach was used where users are divided in two groups: risk averse and risk seekers. An experimental study involving six scenarios was used to validate the findings.

The results of the evaluation show that for the proposed user risk model, risk seekers preferred to pay for multimedia quality, whereas risk adverse users preferred to switch to a lower multimedia quality when monetary cost is involved. However, when the mobile data billing plan had the bandwidth limited, rather than a higher price to be paid when the bundle quantity was exceeded, the risk averse people’s preference for a lower quality still holds, but it does not show that most of the risk seekers prefer to pay for the multimedia quality.

This paper adds to the state of the art by providing a novel way to model the user preferences for multimedia quality based on their attitude towards risk, age, and gender.

Mobile data users, content providers (application service providers, over-the-top providers), mobile network operators (MNOs) and internet service providers (ISPs) could benefit from the results of this research. For mobile data users, the outcome of this research could be beneficial, as they can obtain personalised content based on their needs. From the content providers’ point of view, providing personalised content can lead to more satisfied users. It could also reduce the bandwidth consumption and the traffic to the server and/or proxy. Reducing the bandwidth consumption could lead to the possibility to acquire more customers and hence increase the revenues.

This is among the first studies to assess how the user preference towards multimedia quality if affected by the user attitude towards risk.

In United States v. United Shoe Machinery Corp., United Shoe Machinery (USM) was found guilty of illegal monopolization due to its leasing practices. Existing scholarship on this case largely focuses on the issue of leasing versus selling. In this article, we provide a more comprehensive analysis of this important decision. In addition, we examine USM’s antitrust experience before and after the famous 1953 case. We find that USM’s business practices were largely procompetitive and, therefore, did not warrant condemnation.

Pricing has tended to be the least creative element of marketing strategy, despite the fact that evidence from successful firms points strongly to the integral role of pricing in performance. Suggests that effective pricing has much to gain from an understanding of the entrepreneurial process, and its dimensions: innovativeness, proactiveness and risk‐assumption. Because firms today operate in increasingly turbulent environments, a reluctance to be entrepreneurial in pricing could lead to stagnation or even demise. Also provides a checklist for practising managers to use to determine the extent of entrepreneurial pricing behaviour within their firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the debate on whether psychology affects asset prices using agent-based modeling.

The authors set up three simulation regimes where the first regime contains fundamental investors who invest based on the mean-variance framework. The second regime includes purely irrational investors who invest based on behavioral biases. The third regime combines the two types of investors. The authors test whether the return properties from regime 3 converge to that of regime 1 or 2.

Results suggest that the type of irrationality affects return properties in different ways. Irrational investors who are introspective in their irrationality, only examining their performance and deficiencies, do not have much of a systematic effect on stock returns when combined with rational investors. However, irrational investors that aggregate information in an irrational manner have a systematic effect when combined with rational investors.

Research implication of using simulation analysis is that the results need to be verified via other methods such as empirical and/or experimental analysis.

Practical implications of the research is that policy makers can look for factors that investors use to aggregate to better understand the movement of financial prices and ignore other factors.

Social implication is that mass psychology impacts financial prices.

No other paper has used agent-based/behavioral analysis to better understand how different types of behavior may impact financial prices in different ways.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of gender and ethnicity of CEO and audit committee members (directors) on audit fees and audit delay in the US firms.

Audit-related corporate governance literature has extensively examined the determinants of audit fees and audit delay by focusing on board characteristics, specifically board independence, diligence and expertise. The authors provide empirical evidence that gender and ethnicity diversity in corporate leadership and boardrooms influence a firm’s audit fees and audit delay.

This study finds that firms with female and ethnic minority CEOs pay significantly higher audit fees than those with male Caucasian CEOs. The authors also find that firms with a higher percentage of ethnic minority directors on their audit committee pay significantly higher audit fees. Further, the authors find that firms with female CEOs have shorter audit delay than firms with male CEOs and firms with a higher percentage of female and ethnic minority directors on their audit committee are associated with shorter audit delay. Results indicate that female CEOs and both female and ethnic minority directors are sensitive to the market pressure to avoid audit delay.

The results suggest that gender and ethnic diversity could improve audit quality and the firms’ overall financial reporting quality.

This study provides insights to regulators and policy-makers interested in increasing diversity within a firm’s board and top executives. Recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the European Commission have been pressing publicly traded companies to improve diversity among their directors. This study provides evidence and perspective on how diversity can enhance financial reporting quality measured by audit fees and audit delay.

Previous studies have not given much attention on the impact of racial ethnicity in addition to gender characteristics of top executives and audit committee directors on audit fees and audit delay.

This paper aims to examine the applicability of real options methodology with respect to developing internal transfer pricing mechanisms. A pervasive theme in existing models is their inability to handle the dynamic and volatile nature of today’s business environment, as well as their lack of objective managerial flexibility. The authors address these and other issues and develop a transfer pricing mechanism based on Black–Scholes and the binomial options pricing methodology, which is better suited in today’s dynamic business environment.

The authors use a conceptual approach in developing theoretical justifications and show, practically, how a transfer price can be developed using two different real options pricing models.

The authors find that real options transfer price mechanism (real options framework [ROF]) can effectively deal with many of the issues that permeate a modern organization with complex multi-dimensional operations. The authors argue that uncertainty and behavioral issues commonly associated with setting transfer prices are better handled using a transfer pricing mechanism that preserves flexibility at the business unit level, the managerial level and the firm level. The approach allows for different managerial styles in both centralized and decentralized sub-units within the same organization. The authors argue that an open multi-dimensional framework using real options is suitable under conditions of uncertainty and managerial opportunism.

ROF-based transfer pricing may be significant in that firms can use it as a tool to manage an organization by setting the prices centrally and at the same time allowing managers to select the transfer price that best suits their specific situation and operating conditions. This may result in a more efficient and more profitable organization.

The contribution of the paper is the melding of the ROF from the finance literature with the accounting problem of setting a transfer price for items lacking a competitive market price. The authors also contribute to existing research by explicitly developing a framework that values managerial flexibility, takes into account uncertainty and considers the behavioral aspects of the transfer pricing process. The authors establish the conditions under which a generic real options model is a feasible alternative in determining a transfer price.