Search results

1 – 10 of over 14000
Book part
Publication date: 11 November 2014

Tatiana Albanez and Gerlando Augusto Sampaio Franco de Lima

According to the market timing theory, firms try to take advantage of windows of opportunity to raise capital by exploiting temporary cost fluctuations of alternative financing…

Abstract

Purpose

According to the market timing theory, firms try to take advantage of windows of opportunity to raise capital by exploiting temporary cost fluctuations of alternative financing sources. In this context, the main objective of this paper is to examine the influence and persistence of market timing in the financing decisions of Brazilian firms that launched IPOs in the period from 2001 to 2011.

Methodology/approach

We analyze the influence of past market values on the capital structure of these firms, based on the main models proposed by Baker and Wurgler (2002), adapted to reflect the characteristics of Brazilian firms’ financial statements.

Findings

We find evidence of market timing, but this behavior is not sufficiently persistent in the period studied to the point of determining these firms’ capital structure. We believe the fact that Brazilian companies rarely carried out follow-on primary equity issues after floating their capital in the period analyzed, due to the presence of more advantageous financing sources (particularly from the national development bank, BNDES), explains the results. Therefore, Brazilian firms appear to be pay heed to different funding sources, in search of windows of opportunity, to guide their financing decisions and determine their capital structures.

Originality/value

The Brazilian capital market has been developing intensely in recent years, making it increasingly relevant to analyze the financing and investment decisions of the country’s listed companies. The Brazilian literature on capital structure is extensive, but few works have addressed the issue of market timing.

Details

Emerging Market Firms in the Global Economy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-066-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 July 2014

Samantha A. Conroy, Nina Gupta, Jason D. Shaw and Tae-Youn Park

In this paper, we review the literature on pay variation (e.g., pay dispersion, pay compression, pay range) in organizations. Pay variation research has increased markedly in the…

Abstract

In this paper, we review the literature on pay variation (e.g., pay dispersion, pay compression, pay range) in organizations. Pay variation research has increased markedly in the past two decades and much progress has been made in terms of understanding its consequences for individual, team, and organizational outcomes. Our review of this research exposes several levels-related assumptions that have limited theoretical and empirical progress. We isolate the issues that deserve attention, develop an illustrative multilevel model, and offer a number of testable propositions to guide future research on pay structures.

Details

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-824-2

Keywords

Abstract

Details

The Efficiency of Mutual Fund Families
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-799-9

Book part
Publication date: 16 July 2015

Martine Lappé and Hannah Landecker

This study analyzes the rise of genome instability in the life sciences and traces the problematic of instability as it relates to the sociology of health. Genome instability is…

Abstract

Purpose

This study analyzes the rise of genome instability in the life sciences and traces the problematic of instability as it relates to the sociology of health. Genome instability is the study of how genomes change and become variable between generations and within organisms over the life span. Genome instability reflects a significant departure from the Platonic genome imagined during the Human Genome Project. The aim of this chapter is to explain and analyze research on copy number variation and somatic mosaicism to consider the implications of these sciences for sociologists interested in genomics.

Methodology/approach

This chapter draws on two multi-sited ethnographies of contemporary biomedical science and literature in the sociology of health, science, and biomedicine to document a shift in thinking about the genome from fixed and universal to highly variable and influenced by time and context.

Findings

Genomic instability has become a framework for addressing how genomes change and become variable between generations and within organisms over the life span. Instability is a useful framework for analyzing changes in the life sciences in the post-genomic era.

Research implications

Genome instability requires life scientists to address how differences both within and between individuals articulate with shifting disease categories and classifications. For sociologists, these findings have implications for studies of identity, sociality, and clinical experience.

Originality/value

This is the first sociological analysis of genomic instability. It identifies practical and conceptual implications of genomic instability for life scientists and helps sociologists delineate new approaches to the study of genomics in the post-genomic era.

Details

Genetics, Health and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-581-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Brian T. Pentland, Peng Liu, Waldemar Kremser and Thorvald Hærem

Using a routine dynamics perspective, the authors address a central question in a practice-driven institutional theory: where does change come from? In particular, the authors…

Abstract

Using a routine dynamics perspective, the authors address a central question in a practice-driven institutional theory: where does change come from? In particular, the authors focus on the possibility that small variations in routines can accumulate into big changes in institutions. The analysis is limited strictly to endogenous change. The authors use narrative networks to formalize and operationalize key concepts, such as variation and change. The authors reinterpret results from a published simulation model (Pentland, Liu, Kremser, & Hærem, 2020) that examined endogenous change in organizational routines. The simulation suggests that over a wide range of conditions, minor variations can lead to irreversible structural changes in routines. In the absence of exogenous shocks and institutional entrepreneurs, patterns of action that were previously possible can become impossible. The mechanism underlying these changes requires both accumulation and forgetting. Without forgetting, small variations may pile up (like dirty laundry), but they will not result in big changes.

Details

On Practice and Institution: New Empirical Directions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-416-5

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 26 August 2019

Lars Nyström

Why did peasants in old-regime Europe scatter their land in small strips within open fields? According to an influential theory advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, the system’s main…

Abstract

Why did peasants in old-regime Europe scatter their land in small strips within open fields? According to an influential theory advocated by Deirdre McCloskey, the system’s main aim was risk reduction. By spreading out land, peasants were less exposed to the caprices of nature: heavy rains, droughts, frost, or hailstorms. In a time when other insurance institutions were lacking, this approach could be a rational solution, even if, as McCloskey suggests, it could be achieved only at the expense of overall agricultural productivity.

Over the years, McCloskey’s theory has repeatedly been debated. Still, it has never been empirically established to what extent the open fields actually reduced risk. McCloskey offered only indirect evidence, based on hypothetical calculations from short series demesne level yields. Risks on enclosed and open-field land farms were thus never compared.

This chapter presents farm-level harvest variation series, including observations from both types of land. It is based on tithe records of 1,700 farms in Southern Sweden from 1715–1860. Results show that scattering had a limited effect on agricultural risk. The system did protect against small-scale local crop failures. It was less efficient, however, when it came to the large-scale regional harvest disasters that constituted a much more serious threat to peasants of the time. From this perspective, the inner logic of the open-field system is taken up for renewed consideration.

Details

Research in Economic History
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-303-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 25 April 2014

Gerlese Åkerlind, Jo McKenzie and Mandy Lupton

This chapter describes an innovative method of curriculum design that is based on combining phenomenographic research, and the associated variation theory of learning, with the…

Abstract

This chapter describes an innovative method of curriculum design that is based on combining phenomenographic research, and the associated variation theory of learning, with the notion of disciplinary threshold concepts to focus specialised design attention on the most significant and difficult parts of the curriculum. The method involves three primary stages: (i) identification of disciplinary concepts worthy of intensive curriculum design attention, using the criteria for threshold concepts; (ii) action research into variation in students’ understandings/misunderstandings of those concepts, using phenomenography as the research approach; (iii) design of learning activities to address the poorer understandings identified in the second stage, using variation theory as a guiding framework. The curriculum design method is inherently theory and evidence based. It was developed and trialed during a two-year project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, using physics and law disciplines as case studies. Disciplinary teachers’ perceptions of the impact of the method on their teaching and understanding of student learning were profound. Attempts to measure the impact on student learning were less conclusive; teachers often unintentionally deviated from the design when putting it into practice for the first time. Suggestions for improved implementation of the method are discussed.

Details

Theory and Method in Higher Education Research II
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-823-5

Book part
Publication date: 18 July 2006

Mikael Samuelsson

How general can a “general” theory of entrepreneurship be? Abstraction is a necessity but is it possible to include venture opportunity variation in a general theory of…

Abstract

How general can a “general” theory of entrepreneurship be? Abstraction is a necessity but is it possible to include venture opportunity variation in a general theory of entrepreneurship building on two contrasting perspectives such as equilibrium economics and disequilibrium economics. Two important boundaries need to be explicated. First, defining entrepreneurship as the creation of new economic activity includes both the creation of new means – ends (cf. Schumpeter, 1934) – as well as optimizing within known means – ends frameworks (cf. Kirzner, 1997). Second, such a theory includes an opportunity – actor nexus because it is the first tangible or intangible evidence of existing venture opportunities. Formal models of entrepreneurship often start with a person and at some point in time an exchange of persons with firms take place which is confusing because both levels of analysis and outcome are mixed with each other. Apparently, there is no such thing as entrepreneurship without actors, but if we want to create knowledge about the creation of economic activity, we need to frame our boundary around the nascent initiative instead of single actors and/or teams of actors because value can only be assessed in relation to the costs of services withdrawn. Analogous to this is, for example, the theory of firm and the theory of organizations with boundaries well beyond single actors or groups of actors. Another factor behind a venture-based theory of entrepreneurship comes from empirical evidence from the Swedish PSED, which suggests that approximately 16% (n=97) nascent entrepreneurs are exchanged during the start-up process. Formal models of entrepreneurship could therefore start with the nexus of venture opportunities and enterprising actors as suggested by Shane (2003) or with resources as suggested by Davidsson (2000) and progress forward in the entrepreneurial process. Entrepreneurship models built around the economic activity itself needs to be dynamic allowing different outcomes and feedback loops because resource combinations alter our perception of value and diffuses information, which may lead to additional resource combinations (Hayek, 1945).

Details

Entrepreneurship: Frameworks And Empirical Investigations From Forthcoming Leaders Of European Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-428-7

Book part
Publication date: 23 March 2017

José Venâncio Ferreira Neto, Sônia Maria da Silva Gomes, Adriano Leal Bruni and José Maria Dias Filho

This research investigated the impact that environmental disasters have on the volume of socio-environmental disclosure and investments of Brazilian companies from 1997 to 2012…

Abstract

This research investigated the impact that environmental disasters have on the volume of socio-environmental disclosure and investments of Brazilian companies from 1997 to 2012. News on environmental disasters was collected through a search engine, the companies responsible for the disasters were identified, and the research technique of content analysis was used to analyze the research data, which included the sustainability reports, annual reports, and management reports of the companies responsible, and also of other enterprises belonging to the same economic sector, dating from two years before and two years after the accident. The sentences were categorized according to the methodology used by Deegan, Rankin, and Voght (2000). The Mann–Whitney test was used in order to set the level of socio-environmental disclosure and investment before the occurrence of the accident and then compare it to the level of disclosure and investment after the accident. As a result, it was shown that the companies reported a higher volume of socio-environmental disclosure in the two years after the occurrence of the accidents – with statistical significance of 2.9%. Statistically significant variations of 8.2% and 0.7% were found in the totals of contributions to society and in environmental investments, respectively. On the other hand, there was no statistically significant variation in the internal social indicators. The relevance of this research is the study of events to understand how environmental disasters can influence voluntary disclosure practices of Brazilian companies, through the lens of the legitimacy theory.

Details

Advances in Environmental Accounting & Management: Social and Environmental Accounting in Brazil
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-376-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 30 November 2011

Diep Duong and Norman R. Swanson

The topic of volatility measurement and estimation is central to financial and more generally time-series econometrics. In this chapter, we begin by surveying models of…

Abstract

The topic of volatility measurement and estimation is central to financial and more generally time-series econometrics. In this chapter, we begin by surveying models of volatility, both discrete and continuous, and then we summarize some selected empirical findings from the literature. In particular, in the first sections of this chapter, we discuss important developments in volatility models, with focus on time-varying and stochastic volatility as well as nonparametric volatility estimation. The models discussed share the common feature that volatilities are unobserved and belong to the class of missing variables. We then provide empirical evidence on “small” and “large” jumps from the perspective of their contribution to overall realized variation, using high-frequency price return data on 25 stocks in the DOW 30. Our “small” and “large” jump variations are constructed at three truncation levels, using extant methodology of Barndorff-Nielsen and Shephard (2006), Andersen, Bollerslev, and Diebold (2007), and Aït-Sahalia and Jacod (2009a, 2009b, 2009c). Evidence of jumps is found in around 22.8% of the days during the 1993–2000 period, much higher than the corresponding figure of 9.4% during the 2001–2008 period. Although the overall role of jumps is lessening, the role of large jumps has not decreased, and indeed, the relative role of large jumps, as a proportion of overall jumps, has actually increased in the 2000s.

Details

Missing Data Methods: Time-Series Methods and Applications
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-526-6

Keywords

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