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The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent and in what ways signaling theory has been explored within the field of international marketing. This paper systematically reviews the use of signaling theory in the field of international marketing. Communication is a core aspect of the international marketing process. Research in this field has explored effective and unique ways of improving the communication flow to reduce the asymmetry of information between international consumers and the firm. This notion is adopted, enhanced and strengthened by signaling theory. Signaling theory has recently received the attention of international marketing scholars.

The systematic review methodology was applied for the purpose of identifying the relevant studies. We extracted academic articles over the last 23 years from the domain of international marketing that directly contribute to signaling theory based on 57 journal articles extracted through the systematic review process.

Based on systematic research the results reveal that the topic has grown and continues to expand within the broader international marketing field. We offer a theoretical conceptual framework to better understand signaling theory in the context of international marketing.

The authors map and critically evaluate the use of signaling theory in international marketing. Relevance of signaling theory in international marketing is growing and authors present an integrative framework that organizes the existing literature, and provides scholars to further expand on emerging themes of the domain. The paper offers some useful future research directions.

In the continuous development of high-speed railways, ensuring the safety of the operation control system is crucial. Electromagnetic interference (EMI) faults in signaling equipment may cause transportation interruptions, delays and even threaten the safety of train operations. Exploring the impact of disturbances on signaling equipment and establishing evaluation methods for the correlation between EMI and safety is urgently needed.

This paper elaborates on the necessity and significance of studying the impact of EMI as an unavoidable and widespread risk factor in the external environment of high-speed railway operations and continuous development. The current status of research methods and achievements from the perspectives of standard systems, reliability analysis and safety assessment are examined layer by layer. Additionally, it provides prospects for innovative ideas for exploring the quantitative correlation between EMI and signaling safety.

Despite certain innovative achievements in both domestic and international standard systems and related research for ensuring and evaluating railway signaling safety, there’s a lack of quantitative and strategic research on the degradation of safety performance in signaling equipment due to EMI. A quantitative correlation between EMI and safety has yet to be established. On this basis, this paper proposes considerations for research methods pertaining to the correlation between EMI and safety.

This paper overviews a series of methods and outcomes derived from domestic and international studies regarding railway signaling safety, encompassing standard systems, reliability analysis and safety assessment. Recognizing the necessity for quantitatively describing and predicting the impact of EMI on high-speed railway signaling safety, an innovative approach using risk assessment techniques as a bridge to establish the correlation between EMI and signaling safety is proposed.

Using identity theory, this paper aims to explore differences in socially responsible signaling behavior based on the salience of a personal or social identity.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship among identity commitment, salience, and signaling behavior.

Findings revealed personal identity salience mediated the relationship between socially responsible commitment and socially responsible social-signaling consumption behavior.

The results of the study suggest that Millennials engage in socially responsible activities as a result of a salient personal identity. Millennials use socially responsible behavior to signal their benevolence to themselves and others.

This is the first research that has examined the relationship between Millennials’ socially responsible consumption behavior and a salient personal or social identity.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on some important limitations of the ISO 26000 standard for corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the credible communication of corporate CSR claims. The paper aims to identify and explore firm-level strategies to signal adherence to the standard effectively and their legitimacy consequences for the standard.

The identification of firm-level signaling strategies is mainly derived from an institutional description of the ISO 26000 standard and based on anecdotal evidence from current business practice, initiatives that have been taken worldwide by organizations such as national standards institutes, the ISO 26000 text and adjacent ISO documents, including ISO post-publication surveys. The paper is grounded in signaling theory.

Five signaling strategies for firms are derived and explored which may reduce information asymmetries and engage in efficacious signaling of their underlying CSR quality and thus guide the communication of firms’ adherence to the ISO 26000 standard.

The findings urge to empirically investigate the use of ISO 26000 signaling strategies including their legitimacy consequences for firms.

The findings of this paper have implications for decisions firms make when considering working with ISO 26000 and communicating their adherence, notably regarding the enhancement of the credibility of their CSR claims. Also, it offers suggestions for certification organizations, national standards bodies and policy makers that want to encourage the adoption of CSR standards, ISO 26000 in particular.

This paper may have implications for evaluating the CSR claims of firms by stakeholders and broader society.

This paper is the first one to address inherent signaling problems of ISO 26000 and to identify signaling strategies to counter these problems in a structured way.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether bank managers of countries within the European Union (EU) engage in signalling, especially after implementation of international financial reporting standards (IFRS) commencing 2005.

“Signaling” is the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) to convey signals of fiscal prudence and future profitability to investors. The authors use data from 18 countries across the EU covering the pre and post IFRS regimes and apply univariate and multivariate tests in order to test signaling behavior under both accounting regimes.

The findings indicate insufficient evidence that financially healthy banks engage in signaling behavior. However, banks facing financial distress appear to engage in aggressive signaling relative to healthy banks. Finally, the propensity to engage in signaling behavior is more pronounced for financially distressed banks in the post IFRS regime. While IFRS, under IAS 39 sort to mitigate the discretionary component of LLPs, our finding may be attributable to lax enforcement of IFRS.

The findings have implications for both investors and regulators. Investors should be aware that troubled banks engage in signaling to convey positive information about their future prospects. Regulators should be aware that financially stressed banks have a greater propensity to engage in signaling and need to ensure that the provisions of IFRS (which attempts to limit discretion in estimating LLPs) are enforced more stringently.

The paper contributes to the growing literature on bank signaling in a number of ways. First, the authors use a sample from 18 countries within the EU which has not been done before. Second, unlike prior studies which only examined healthy banks, the authors also include financially distressed banks in the sample. Third, the authors examine signaling behavior in the pre and post IFRS regimes to understand the influence of IFRS on the propensity to engage in signaling by bank managers.

In this paper, we develop a simple model of the signaling value of the General Educational Development certificate (GED) credential. The model illustrates necessary assumptions for a difference-in-differences estimator that uses a change in the GED passing standard to yield unbiased estimates of the signaling value of the GED for marginal passers. We apply the model to the national 1997 passing standard increase, which affected GED test takers in Texas. We utilize unique data from the Texas Schools Micro Data Panel (TSMP) that contain demographic and GED test score information from the Texas Education Agency linked to pre- and post-test-taking Unemployment Insurance quarterly wage records from the Texas Workforce Commission. Comparing Texas dropouts who acquired a GED before the passing standard was raised in 1997 to dropouts with the same test scores who failed the GED exams after the passing standard hike, we find no evidence of a positive GED signaling effect on earnings. However, we find some evidence suggesting that our finding may be due to the low GED passing threshold that existed in Texas for an extended period.

Corporate donation behavior sends two financial-related signals, i.e. sufficient cash flow and self-confidence in future earnings. This paper aims to investigate whether these financial-related signals released by corporate donation drive investors to make more optimistic forecasts about the firm’s future earnings per share (EPS) and whether this effect varies across different historical earnings trends.

This study is based on a controlled online experiment with 553 MBA students.

The results demonstrate that a financial signaling mechanism works, but it is moderated by historical earnings trends. When the earnings trend is always increasing, the more the number of financial signals received, the higher the investors’ EPS forecast; when the earnings trend is fluctuating (down then up or up then down), investors’ EPS forecast is higher when they receive financial signal(s) than when they do not, but no additive effect occurs from receiving one signal to two signals; when the earnings trend is always decreasing, investors’ EPS forecast is irrelevant to the number of financial signals received.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to experimentally investigate a possible mechanism to explain investors’ positive response to corporate social responsibility (CSR) (specifically, corporate donation) disclosures – the financial signaling mechanism. This study also extends the research on the impact of financial information on investors’ use of nonfinancial information by investigating the moderating role of historical earnings trends on the financial signaling mechanism of the CSR effect.

The purpose of this paper is to test whether underpricing can serve as a signal of quality in a financing-investment environment and to compare it under the two institutions for financing offers that are commonly observed in corporate financial markets: take-it-or-leave-it offer (TLO) and the competitive bidding offer (CBO).

The research paper uses experimental economics methodology and laboratory experiments to investigate the research question.

The results suggest that underpricing can serve as a signal of quality but not sustainable as a repeat strategy. Over time, the high-quality firms converge to a pooling strategy rather than bearing the cost of signaling. Additionally, underpricing is lower under CBO than under TLO institution due to competitive bidding. Signaling under CBO institution may be less salient due to possible mimicking by the low-quality firms.

This paper presents a first experimental investigation of the underpricing-signaling hypothesis in a financing-investment environment under asymmetric information. The choice of institution in a financing environment produces qualitatively and strategically different behavior among firms and investors.

This paper aims to provide empirical evidence on the extent of alteration institutional characteristics, i.e. legal origin and corruption levels, may have on the signaling effects of auditors’ reputation, underwriters’ reputation and ownership retention on initial public offering (IPO) initial returns in OECD countries.

Cross-sectional data composed of 6,182 IPOs from 30 OECD countries are used for 2003-2012. Ordinary least square with multiple linear regressions is used to test the hypotheses.

The findings indicate that the legal framework and corruption level of a country alters the signaling effects of underwriters’ reputation, auditors’ reputation and ownership retention in an IPO environment. These three variables mitigate information asymmetry, signal firm value to potential investors and ultimately decrease IPO initial returns. This relationship is more significant in the civil law countries. Corruption levels negatively moderate the relationship in the common law and Scandinavian civil law countries but have no significance in the German and French civil law countries, indicating the importance of the signaling variables in these two civil law countries.

This study examines the extent of the alterations that the legal framework and the corruption levels cause to the signaling relationship between auditors’ reputation, underwriters’ reputation and ownership retention on IPO initial returns in selected OECD countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of insider ownership decreases on stock returns for firms undergoing seasoned equity offerings (SEOs).

Insider data were gathered for firms undergoing SEOs and this information used to compute the insider ownership percentage decreases caused by the SEOs. These insider percentage decreases and standard compounded abnormal return methodology were used to test signaling theory.

It was discovered that the short‐run and long‐run stock returns accompanying SEOs are not consistent with what signaling theory predicts. In particular, for greater decreases in insider ownership percentages, a superior market response for both short‐run tests and long‐run post‐SEO tests was often found.

Prior research has not examined how the change in insider ownership caused by a corporate event influences stock returns. Future research can build on the univariate tests by examining the impact of insider ownership within a multivariate framework.

Investors cannot profit by following the behavior of insiders by selling shares in companies where insiders lower their ownership percentages. This is because insiders appear to have personal agendas that they follow when decreasing their holdings.

This is the first study to examine how changes in insider ownership caused by a significant corporate event affect stock returns. The findings of this empirical examination challenge signaling theory as regards insider knowledge, the ability of insiders to convey their privileged knowledge (if it exists), and the capacity of outsiders to decipher and act on insider actions.