Search results

In this paper, the authors document the existence of price clustering in the US corporate bond market.

Using a sample of 8,422,593 corporate bond trades in 2014, the authors find that over 18% (1,522,284 trades) of all bond trades end in a clustered price, defined as a price ending in 00, 25, 50, or 75.

Overall, the authors find that both bond rating category and risk, as measured by standard deviation of prices, play a role in price clustering; speculative grade bonds account for the majority of clustered prices. Clustered prices are more likely to have higher coupon rates, higher prices, and higher standard deviations of price than bonds with non-clustered prices. Regardless of size, both buy and sell dealer trades with customers (relative to interdealer trading) lead to an increase in price clustering. Dealers appear to use clustered prices when purchasing from and selling to institutions and, therefore, may use a clustered price to insulate themselves from the risk of asymmetric information. Additionally, the prevalence of clustered prices for retail-sized dealer sell trades suggests that dealers exercise dealer power over retail-sized traders.

This paper contributes to the literature on price clustering by examining trade price clustering of corporate bonds. It is different from previous papers on price clustering in equities. Given that bonds tend to be priced off of yield, it is unusual that trade prices cluster. It also demonstrates what kind of bonds cluster and with which customers dealers trade at clustered prices. It parallels other research in demonstrating dealer power over retail-sized traders.

Studies have suggested that entrepreneurship is a key mechanism for rejuvenating and facilitating economic growth in deprived areas. To provide further understanding of the persistently low entrepreneurial intentions found in deprived areas this chapter identifies key mechanisms and theoretical frameworks that link the formation of appropriate human capital to the prevailing environment, and that influences may flow in both directions. This contributes to the existing literature to provide a fuller understanding of interest to policy-makers of why past interventions have struggled to boost entrepreneurial intentions and where new interventions may be most effective in generating more positive entrepreneurial intentions in deprived areas.

Crowdsourcing – a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries – provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. Integrating work on organization theory and innovation, the authors first develop a framework that characterizes crowdsourcing into a main sequential process, through which organizations (1) define the task they wish to have completed; (2) broadcast to a pool of potential contributors; (3) attract a crowd of contributors; and (4) select among the inputs they receive. For each of these phases, the authors identify the key decisions organizations make, provide a basic explanation for each decision, discuss the trade-offs organizations face when choosing among decision alternatives, and explore how organizations may resolve these trade-offs. Using this decision-centric approach, the authors continue by showing that there are fundamental interdependencies in the process that makes the coordination of crowdsourcing challenging.

Women Empowerment means boosting the social, economic, political, and legal strength of women to secure equal right and make them confident to claim their rights. India has focused on women's empowerment to reduce domestic abuse and gender violence in recent decades. The study analyzes the relationship between women's empowerment and gender-based violence, employing a non-linear regression model using the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 5, 2019–20 data. In the present study gender-based violence is measured on the basis of spousal violence and women's empowerment is represented by women who are currently married and usually take part in three household decisions, women who worked in the past year and were paid in cash, women who own a house or land (alone or with others), women who use their own bank or savings account, and women who use their own cell phone for each state. Analysis of the result shows a link between women's empowerment and gender-based violence and a large disparity among states.

There is an abundance of empirical evidence on the positive effects of employment – and the detrimental effects of unemployment – on individuals’ psychological and physical health and well-being. In this chapter, the authors explore whether and how self-employment or entrepreneurship could be a solution for individuals’ (re)entry to the job market and which (psychological) variables enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. Specifically, the authors first focus on unemployment and its detrimental effects for health and wellbeing, and outline the existing interventions aimed at assisting reemployment and combating the negative consequences of unemployment for individuals’ well-being. Then, the authors will explore entrepreneurship as a potential solution to unemployment and explore the psychological variables that enhance the likelihood of entrepreneurial success. One of the variables the authors highlight as particularly relevant for self-employment is the second-order construct of Psychological Capital (PsyCap; Luthans, Avolio, Avey, & Norman, 2007), as well as its individual components – hope, optimism, efficacy, and resilience. PsyCap is a malleable construct that can be successfully trained, and PsyCap interventions are inherently strength-based and have positive effects on employees’ and entrepreneurs’ performance and wellbeing. Therefore, the authors end the chapter by suggesting that a PsyCap component in existing education and training programs for entrepreneurship is likely to not only increase entrepreneurial intentions and success, but also increases participants’ well-being, self-esteem, and the general confidence they can pick up the reigns and take back control over their (professional) lives.

One of the major foci of universities in relation to the educational missions is to promote the growth and development of students as leaders. This article discusses the role of academic advising as a strategic partner with classroom and extracurricular leadership development programs. To that end, this article reviews the roles of academic advising in higher education and discusses the viability of expanding these roles to include the role of advisor as leadership educator. In so doing, I provide a review of the literature related to student leadership development, discuss the similarity in advising outcomes and leadership development outcomes, and examine how the roles of academic advisors in higher education relate to leadership development as well as how advisors can become intentional leadership educators.

The purpose of this study is to provide a nuanced explanation of the linkage between entrepreneurial motivations, job attractiveness and growth of family-owned small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) using expectancy and institutional theories.

The data was collected from small family business owners and job seekers in the same companies during interview time using a simple random technique.

The study found that three EMs among small business owners play a pivotal role in family SME business growth in underdeveloped trade regions like China–Pakistan Economic Corridor. These firms are interested in investing in seaport-related commerce, restaurants or hotels and real estate business.

The government, small family business owners, universities and regional youth can use this applied research for their benefits alike.

The study contributes in multiple ways. First, the authors brought a unique context in the emerging economies context of an informal economy like Pakistan. Second, the authors have uniquely tested the moderating role of job attractiveness in the least developed regions. Finally, the authors have integrated family SMEs’ expectancy theory and institutional perspective.

This study examines the influence of firm management’s ethical “tone at the top” (tone) and the working relationship of an auditor with his/her supervisor (senior) on the auditor’s propensity to engage in an unethical, dysfunctional auditor behavior (DAB). Findings indicate that environmental factors influence the staff auditor’s decision of whether or not to follow a course of action suggested by the supervisor that is contrary to both the audit program and generally accepted auditing standards (GAAS). Specifically, auditors are influenced by the tone that the partner sets for the firm and by the working relationship that the staff auditor has with the supervising senior auditor. The results of this research have ramifications for the auditing profession, as they identify specific factors outside of auditing standards and beyond an auditor’s moral reasoning capabilities that can influence the acceptance of unethical, dysfunctional behavior.

This study aims to ascertain the personal characteristics of a group of successful academic entrepreneurs in a South African university enterprise and the prevalent barriers and enablers to their entrepreneurial endeavour.

The authors used a Delphi process to identify and rank the characteristics, enablers, barriers and behaviours of entrepreneurial academics, with a Nominal Group Technique applied to establish challenges they encounter managing their enterprise and to propose solutions.

Perseverance, resilience and innovation are critical personal characteristics, while collaborative networks, efficient research infrastructure and established research competence are essential for success. The university’s support for entrepreneurship is a significant enabler, with unnecessary bureaucracy and poor access to project and general enterprise funding an impediment. Successful academic entrepreneurs have strong leadership, and effective management and communication skills.

The main limitation is the small study participant group drawn from a single university enterprise, which complicates generalisability. The study supported the use of Krueger’s (2009) entrepreneurial intentions model for low- and middle-income country (LMIC) academic entrepreneur investigation but proposed the inclusion of mitigators to entrepreneurial activation to recognise contextual deficiencies and challenges.

Skills-deficient LMIC universities should extensively and directly support their entrepreneurial academics to overcome their contextual deficiencies and challenging environment.

This study contributes to addressing the paucity of academic entrepreneur research in LMIC contexts by identifying LMIC-specific factors that inhibit the entrepreneur’s movement from entrepreneurial intention to entrepreneurial action.

Reports on the results of a survey of various groups of annual report users as to the importance, or “materiality”, of environmental information to decisions they may wish to make. Also investigates how environmental information is ranked in importance relative to various other items of social and financial information. The user groups surveyed comprise shareholders, accounting academics, stockbrokers and financial analysts, financial institutions, environmental lobby groups, industry associations and other groups performing a review or oversight function. Reports the results which indicate that the majority of the annual report users surveyed believe environmental information to be material to their decisions, and that they seek the disclosure of this information in corporate annual reports. Although the results show that the users typically believe that environmental information is material, they further indicate that the majority of the user groups rank environmental information behind traditional financial information such as profits, net assets, cash flows, and dividend payments.