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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between bargain purchase gains (BPGs) booked by the acquirer and smoothing of acquirers’ earning performance across time.

The authors use a sample of 122 bargain purchase acquisitions in non-financial industries from 2009 to 2012 and a pair-match control group of 122 goodwill acquisitions.

The authors find that BPGs, and in particular, the Level-3 fair value estimates of intangible assets acquired, have consistently been used to smooth earnings but that such smoothing activities are not associated with long-term market returns.

This study is the first one to investigate bargain purchase acquisitions in a broad range of non-financial industries and suggests that managers are using the valuation of intangibles to avoid unfavorable earnings even though these valuations are not credible to investors.

Acquisitions of bankrupt firms can be beneficial because the bankrupt targets may be more receptive to acquisition offers for the purpose of survival, courts can override any resistance that may occur, information on the target is disclosed within the formal reorganization plan, acquirers can accrue tax benefits, and acquirers may assume favorable debt contracts. However, two disadvantages of acquiring a bankrupt firm are higher costs of completing the conversion and the high degree of uncertainty about the target's future cash flows. Results of our analysis suggest that firms announcing acquisitions of bankrupt targets experience favorable wealth effects. Thus, the market appears to anticipate that the present value of future cash flows derived from the target will exceed the cost of the acquisition. Our analysis also found that acquisitions of bankrupt firms yield more favorable wealth effects than acquisitions of healthy firms. The acquisitions of bankrupt firms were especially well received by the market when the acquirer was the sole bidder and when the target's business was closely related to that of the acquirer.

This paper examines the environmental disclosure decisions of New Zealand firms in response to political costs arising from the enactment of the Resource Management Act (RMA) in 1991. Unlike prior disclosure studies, this study provides a more rigorous test of the political cost hypothesis by identifying firms that were directly affected by RMA and by measuring the change in environmental disclosures over the pre‐ to post‐RMA period. We hypothesise that the increase in environmental disclosures will be a positive function of the firm's political visibility. Using six different measures of political visibility and three composite measures derived from a factor analysis of the individual measures, the evidence indicates that, in general, politically visible firms were more likely to increase their environmental disclosures after RMA whether the change was measured on a dichotomous or continuous basis. Overall these results provide support for the political cost hypothesis.

This paper has two purposes: to use polarisation to identify variations in loyalty and to apply polarisation to an important non‐brand attribute, price.

A comprehensive revealed preference data set of wine purchases is used to apply polarisation. Polarisation was defined in two ways: as a function of the beta binomial distribution (BBD) to give a measure of loyalty for an alternative; and as a function of the Dirichlet multinomial distribution (DMD) to give a baseline level of loyalty. Variations were identified by analysing the differences between the BBD and DMD.

Polarisation was shown to be one way of identifying variation across price tiers. In the empirical example used, the DMD model is violated with the price tiers not being directly substitutable with one another. Buyers show excess loyalty towards the lowest and highest price tier levels. One tier shows “change‐of‐pace” loyalty. Small brands do better when they focus on high loyalty tiers, middle brands compete in the change‐of‐pace tier and large brands do well across all tiers.

Very little work has been undertaken into price tier loyalty and no known empirical research has been undertaken into behavioural loyalty to price tiers in wine. Very little empirical research has considered the association between excess loyalty for attribute levels (such as price tiers) and the existence of niche, change‐of‐pace and reinforcing brands.

Managers may “creatively” choose accounting methods in order to smooth income figures. Using a sample of 1,094 transportation firm‐year observations before and throughout the global financial crisis (GFC) period of 2006‐2009 in seven Asian countries, the purpose of this study is to investigate whether managers' smooth reported earnings to meet the benchmark target of last year's earnings figure.

Following previous research (e.g.,Burgstahler and Dichev; Degeorge, Patel, and Zeckhauser; Holland and Ramsay; Burgstahler and Eames; Daske, Gebhardt, and McLeay; Gore, Pope, and Singh; Charoenwong and Jiraporn), this study uses an earnings benchmark of sustaining last year's performance as the key indicator of earnings management.

The empirical evidence reveals that corporate managers seem to opportunistically smooth income to beat earnings targets. The results also show that the AuditQuality, EcoCrisis and Size are not explanatory for the smoothing behavior of the above target firms. However, the independent variables EcoCrisis and Size are predictors for the smoothing behavior of the sample firms that engage in income‐increasing earnings management. The coefficient on EcoCrisis is negative and significantly (at p=0.001) related to the earnings management measure, suggesting that during a period of economic stress, transportation firm managers engage in less aggressive income‐increasing discretionary accruals strategy. Furthermore, the findings confirm that large size firms exhibit less aggressive income‐increasing earnings management behavior. Specifically, the coefficient on Size is negative and moderately significant (p=0.056) associated with earnings management measure.

This study strongly supports the political costs hypothesis which argues that larger firms are subject to more public scrutiny and political actions therein exhibiting less aggressive income‐increasing earnings management behavior. The authors further note a “big bath” phenomenon during the GFC period suggesting that corporate managers manipulate their reported earnings downward to make poor results even worse in the current financial period, artificially enhancing future year's earnings.

Gives a bibliographical review of the finite element methods (FEMs) applied for the linear and nonlinear, static and dynamic analyses of basic structural elements from the theoretical as well as practical points of view. The range of applications of FEMs in this area is wide and cannot be presented in a single paper; therefore aims to give the reader an encyclopaedic view on the subject. The bibliography at the end of the paper contains 2,025 references to papers, conference proceedings and theses/dissertations dealing with the analysis of beams, columns, rods, bars, cables, discs, blades, shafts, membranes, plates and shells that were published in 1992‐1995.

The purpose of this paper is to examine customers’ behavioural outcomes based on the actual attitudinal responses of mobile marketing initiatives.

A total of 764 usable responses was included through a non-probability convenient sampling method. The data used in the study gathered from mobile users of 37 cities from nine states across India. The analysis of moment structures 22.0 and SmartPLS 3.0 statistical programmes were used for measurement validation and to test the structural model.

The study indicated that mobile marketing had a more significant effect on customers’ negative attitudes and followed by on positive attitudes. Despite the strong significant effect on customers’ negative attitudes, it does not display more significant effect on negative behavioural outcomes. Finally, the study suggested that customers’ positive attitudes display more favourable behavioural outcomes of mobile marketing initiatives.

The paper would help the mobile marketers and advertisers to understand the impact of mobile marketing initiatives on customers’ attitudes and behavioural outcomes and how it can be managed to ensure the higher level of adoption and acceptance.

The results of the analysis indicated that when the users have favourable attitudes of mobile marketing initiatives, it can be highly effective in triggering of favourable behavioural outcomes.

This study aims to examine the effect of opinion leadership on individuals’ susceptibility to social influence, which eventually affects their adoption behavior and assess how these relationships vary with gender in new product adoption.

Data were collected based on a survey of young consumers regarding the adoption of new consumer electronics. The hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling and multiple sample analyses.

The study finds that opinion leaders are more sensitive to influence from others when the mechanism of status competition is at work. Although consumers who are more susceptible to normative influence tend to adopt new products later than others, those who are more susceptible to status competition are more likely to adopt earlier. The results also provide evidence for gender differences. Female leaders are more susceptible to status competition, whereas male leaders are less sensitive to informational influence. The effects of susceptibility to normative influence and status competition on adoption behavior are stronger for female than for male consumers.

The overall structural model predicts an interesting relationship between individual influence and susceptibility, as well as the effects of these factors on adoption behavior. This study also provides deeper insights into the dynamics of the social influence mechanisms at work for each gender in new product adoption.

This study sets out to examine whether CEOs who hold the dual position of chairperson of the board exert increased influence over the board, resulting in compensation contracts more favorable to the CEO than to the firm.

Correlation analysis is used to test the association between the dependent variable and the independent variables. Logistic regression is used to predict the probability of permitting Section 83(b) election in the context of CEO duality, CEO tenure, tax‐paying status and size of the firm.

The results show that the presence of CEO duality does not influence the likelihood of permitting a Section 83(b) election. However, the tenure of the CEO significantly increases the likelihood of permitting a Section 83(b) election.

This study is limited in the sense that it only examines the year 2004 and the results may be unique to that year. An extension of this study to include additional years of observations is warranted.

Shareholder concerns about CEO duality appear to be unfounded. However, shareholders may consider limiting CEO tenure to lessen the likelihood of CEOs acting in their own best interest at the expense of the firm.

This study contributes to the literature by finding that attributes of the CEO may influence the form of equity compensation that is awarded to the CEO. These attributes may serve the self‐interest of the CEO and not enhance firm value to the shareholder.