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This study aims to examine whether and how the experience of specialized external governance mechanisms mandated by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 – the actuary and auditor – affect pension plan funding.

This study uses data from annual pension plan regulatory reports (Form 5500), Form 10-K filings, Form DEF 14A filings (company proxy statements) and publicly available data sources. The hand-collected data include information related to the pension plan’s actuary and auditor and various pension plan data disclosed in the company’s financial statement footnotes.

The author finds that more experienced actuaries and auditors are associated with better funded pension plans, especially when the company has higher financial risk or lower board independence. Additional analyses indicate that companies with more experienced actuaries and pension plan auditors are more likely to make higher annual pension plan contributions and hold fewer Level 3 fair value assets.

The dearth of pension plan governance research generally focuses on whether and how internal governance mechanisms affect pension plan funding. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first empirical study of the relationship between external pension plan governance mechanisms and pension plan funding.

We study the potential effects of pension underfunding on corporate investment, financial constraints and improved employee bonding using 10 Pacific-Basin countries (including the United States, Australia, and eight Asian countries) at heterogeneous economic development stages and different regulatory environments. We document that corporate pensions are significantly underfunded in most countries of our sample in the period of 2001–2017, when interest rates were ultralow in most countries. In addition, firms from countries with stronger employee protection and more generous retirement benefits tend to show higher levels of underfunding in their defined benefit (DB) pension plans. To the extent of pension underfunding imposing constraints on corporate investment, we find that firms in these countries can face more constraints on investment when their pension is underfunded.

The paper empirically investigates the link between banking market structure and funding liquidity risk.

With a panel of Vietnamese commercial banks from 2007 to 2021, the system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator is applied as the primary regression method, while the random-effect model and the corrected least square dummy variable (LSDVC) technique are also considered in robustness checks.

Competition may increase banks' funding liquidity risk. This finding holds for competition measures derived from the Boone index and concentration ratios but not in the case of the Lerner index as a proxy for market power. Further results indicate that the funding liquidity risk of banks that are larger and have better performance (less credit risk and higher return) tends to be less affected by competition. Besides, the overall impact of bank competition on funding liquidity risk is amplified by the financial crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The study extends the empirical literature by exploring the relationship between bank competition and funding liquidity risk. Additionally, the paper also studies how the impact of bank competition on funding liquidity risk depends on the characteristics of the banking sector and the macroeconomic conditions of the economy, including the moderating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study examines the impact of university science parks’ (USPs) capabilities on revenue generation and introduces regional innovation as a moderating variable. This study aims to provide insights into enhancing revenue generation and fully leveraging the role of USPs in promoting revenue generation.

This study employs system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation for 116 universities in China from 2008 to 2020, using hierarchical regression analysis to examine the relationships between variables.

The findings suggest that USPs play a beneficial role in fostering revenue generation. Specifically, the provision of incubation funding demonstrates a positive correlation, while USPs size exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern, with a threshold at 3.037 and a mean value of 3.712, highlighting the prevalent issue of suboptimal personnel allocation in the majority of USPs. Moreover, the analysis underscores the critical moderating influence of regional innovation, affecting the intricate interplay between USPs size, incubation funding and revenue generation.

The single country (China) analysis relied solely on the use of secondary data. Future studies could expand the scope to include other countries and employ primary data collection. For instance, future research can further examine how regional development and USPs strategic plan impact revenue generation.

The study recommends that USPs managers and policymakers recognize the importance of incubation funding and determine the optimal quantity of USPs size to effectively foster revenue generation in USPs. Policymakers can use regional innovation as a moderating variable to reinforce the relationship between USPs size and incubation funding on revenue generation.

The study’s findings can contribute to the strategic industry growth and economic development of nations by promoting revenue generation. Leveraging the role of USPs and implementing the study’s recommendations can strengthen innovation and technology capabilities, driving strategic industry growth and economic development. This can enhance global competitiveness and promote sustainable economic growth.

This study introduces regional innovation as a moderating variable and provides empirical evidence of its influence on the relationship between USPs size and incubation funding on revenue generation. This adds value to research to the existing literature on USPs and revenue generation by showcasing the importance of examining the regional impact in research and innovation.

In a recent quasi-experimental study, the effects of a large German public startup support measure entitled “EXIST – Business Startup Grant” (EGS) on a variety of outcomes were determined, but without examining which factors are responsible for these program effects. The present study investigates the contribution of several factors to the success of the program in promoting product development and business planning.

By means of a two-wave panel design and fixed-effects panel regressions, evidence is generated that provides unique insights into the effect mechanisms of a publicly funded startup grant. The data for the study come from the program monitoring of the startup support measure.

Several factors were identified that significantly drive the effects of the program on the product development and business planning stages, namely the program-induced improvement of the skills of the startup team, intensification of cooperation with pilot customers/users, increase in the degree of networking and advice/support from third parties and the effort put into business plan preparation.

Startup support programs are a crucial aspect of technology and innovation policies, which are often evaluated in order to find out whether they generate effects. Assessing whether a program is effective or not, however, does not usually allow specific recommendations on how to improve the measure to be developed. Further information on the mechanisms of intervention is needed for this purpose. The present study takes up on this idea and provides this information for a specific type of public startup support measure.

An important but neglected area of investigation in digital entrepreneurship is the combined role of both core and peripheral members of an emerging technological field in shaping the symbolic and social boundaries of the field. This is a serious gap as both categories of members play a distinct role in expanding the pool of resources of the field. I address this gap by exploring how membership category is related to funding decisions in the emerging field of artificial intelligence (AI).

The first quantitative study involved a sample of 1,315 AI-based startups which were founded in the period of 2011–2018 in the United States. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 32 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define the boundaries of their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.

The author finds that core members in the newly founded field of AI were more successful at attracting funding from investors than peripheral members and that size of the founding team, number of lead investors, number of patents and CEO approval were positively related to funding. In the second qualitative study, the author interviewed 30 members of the field (core members, peripheral members and investors) to define their respective role in shaping the social boundaries of the AI field.

This study is one of the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to bring empirical evidence that investors adapt their funding strategy to membership categories (core and peripheral members) of a new technological field in their resource allocation decisions. Furthermore, I find that core and peripheral members claim distinct roles in their participation and contribution to the field in terms of technological developments, and that although core members attract more resources than peripheral members, both actors play a significant role in expanding the field’s social boundaries.

Core AI entrepreneurs who wish to attract funding may consider operating in fewer categories in order to be perceived as core members of the field, and thus focus their activities and limited resources to build internal AI capabilities. Entrepreneurs may invest early in filing a patent to signal their in-house AI capabilities to investors.

The social boundaries of an emerging technological field are shaped by a multitude of actors and not only the core members of the field. The author should pay attention to the role of each category of actors and build on their contributions to expand a promising field.

This paper is among the first to build on the growing literature in emerging organizational fields to study the resource acquisition strategies of entrepreneurs in a newly establishing technological field.

The study showcases the social impact (online attention) of funded research compared to nonfunded for the BRICS nations. The key themes achieving online attention across the funded and nonfunded publications have also been identified.

A total of 1,507,931 articles published across the BRICS nations for a period of three (03) years were downloaded from the Clarivate Analytics' InCites database of Web of Science (WoS). “Funding Acknowledgement Analysis (FAA)” was used to identify the funded and nonfunded publications. The altmetric score of the top highly cited (1%) publications was gauged from the largest altmetric data provider, “Altmetric.com”, using the DOI of each publication. One-way ANOVA test was used to know the impact of funding on the mentions (altmetrics) across different data sources covered by Altmetric.com. The highly predominant keywords (hotspots) have been mapped using bibliometric software, “VOSviewer”.

The mentions across all the altmetric sources for funded research are higher compared to nonfunded research for all nations. It indicates the altmetric advantage for funded research, as funded publications are more discussed, tweeted, shared and have more readers and citations; thus, acquiring more social impact/online attention compared to nonfunded publications. The difference in means for funded and nonfunded publications varies across various altmetric sources and nations. Further, the authors’ keyword analysis reveals the prominence of the respective nation names in publications of the BRICS.

The study showcases the utility of indexing the funding information and whether research funding increases social impact return (online attention). It presents altmetrics as an important impact assessment and evaluation framework indicator, adding one more dimension to the research performance. The linking of funding information with the altmetric score can be used to assess the online attention and multi-flavoured impact of a particular funding programme and source/agency of a nation so that necessary strategies would be framed to improve the reach and impact of funded research. It identifies countries that achieve significant online attention for their funded publications compared to nonfunded ones, along with the key themes that can be utilised to frame research and investment plans.

The study represents the social impact of funded research compared to nonfunded across the BRICS nations.

In the context of rewards-based crowdfunding, this study aims to examine the role of project backers as providers of knowledge inputs beyond just financial capital.

This study uses binomial regression to study the relationship between project creators’ and backers’ knowledge sharing, and the relationship of these two knowledge-sharing elements with achieving above-goal funding levels.

This study finds that the project creator’s knowledge sharing is significantly and positively related to backers’ knowledge sharing and that this relationship is moderated by the type of project. Furthermore, backers’ knowledge sharing is positively related to above-goal funding outcomes for a project.

This study established the link between creators’ and backers’ knowledge sharing in rewards-based crowdfunding, which has been underexplored in the literature. This study’s direct attention to the role of knowledge as a key resource in rewards-based crowdfunding and crowdsourcing in general.

For entrepreneurs seeking crowdfunding, this study highlights the importance of knowledge sharing with their project backers to attain above-goal funding. Furthermore, eliciting backers’ knowledge input acts as a signaling mechanism that increases the crowd’s confidence in the project. It also endows entrepreneurs with knowledge resources that can improve project outcomes and achieve broader market success postcrowdfunding.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to focus on knowledge content as a critical element in project backer-creator communication in rewards-based crowdfunding. This study also delineate the various knowledge types shared between the project creator and backers in both rewards-based crowdfunding projects.

Adopting a brand prominence perspective, this study aims to examine how textual and visual brand elements influence the success of crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings.

A Python-based Web scraper was used to collect data from 620 crowdfunding campaigns for aftermarket offerings hosted on Kickstarter. The linguistic inquiry and word count application programing interface was then used to analyze the linguistic aspects of these campaigns. A fixed effects regression model was used to evaluate the hypotheses.

Textual and visual brand prominence are positively associated with campaign success. Further, with some variations, both types of brand prominence augment the positive effects of narrative and graphic design elements on campaign success.

This study makes novel theoretical contributions to the literature on branding, crowdfunding and aftermarket products. The results also provide practical insights to aftermarket enterprises on creating compelling crowdfunding campaigns.

By analyzing the direct and synergistic effects of branding, narrative and graphic design elements on crowdfunding success, this study extends various literature streams and identifies several future research opportunities.