Who is a Distracted Driver? Associations between Mobile Phone Use while Driving,Domain‐Specific Risk Taking,and Personality

Mobile phone use while driving (MPUWD) is an increasingly common form of distracted driving. Given its widespread prevalence, it is important for researchers to identify factors that may predict who is more likely to engage in this risky behavior. The current study investigates associations between MPUWD risk behaviors, domain‐specific risk perceptions, and broad personality dimensions. An Italian community sample (n = 804) completed a survey regarding MPUWD risk perceptions and engagement in MPUWD, in addition to the HEXACO‐PI‐R, a broad six‐factor personality inventory (honesty‐humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness to experience), and the DOSPERT, a six‐factor domain‐specific self‐report risk‐taking measure (health/safety, recreational, social, ethical, gambling, and investment). With respect to domain‐specific risk taking, greater frequency of SMS use while driving most strongly was associated with greater risk taking for the health/safety, gambling, and ethical risk domains. Further, greater honesty‐humility and conscientiousness, two traits related to cognitive control and risk behaviors, and to a lesser extent openness to experience, were associated with less frequent MPUWD, and positively associated with MPUWD risk perceptions. With growing public safety concern surrounding MPUWD, understanding associated personality factors is not only important for identifying psychological mechanisms underlying risk behavior, but also for more effective prevention and intervention programs.     

Is a loosely specified regulatory intervention effective in disciplining management commentary? The case of performance indicator disclosure

This paper offers a contribution to the call for research on the effectiveness of regulatory interventions governing management commentary disclosure. Specifically, we focus on the mandatory requirement concerning performance indicator disclosure introduced by the Modernisation Directive (2003/51/EC). In keeping with other regulators, the European legislator opted to implement a regulatory approach based on a rule with loose specifications. To understand the effects of this Directive, we have investigated the Italian context, in which neither the national legislator nor the standard setter have supported companies with detailed specifications or guidelines aimed at integrating the European provision. We have compared companies’ disclosure practices before and after the adoption of the Directive, investigating the number of disclosed indicators and also their modalities of presentation, as they are considered essential to guaranteeing the quality of this disclosure. Our results document that a mandatory intervention, even if based on loose specifications, is associated with an increase in disclosure practices. Nevertheless, such regulation does not seem able to guarantee high quality disclosure practices. In fact, before and after the regulation, companies primarily disclose common financial measures. Moreover, the usefulness of such disclosure is undermined by a limited compliance with the international guidelines concerning the modalities of presentation. These results reveal some weaknesses in the European approach to performance indicator regulation. In general, the EU legislator fails to explain the purpose and the objective of performance indicator disclosure and does not take into account the differences between financial and non-financial indicators. Furthermore, it does not provide firms with clear guidelines concerning the presentation modalities.     

Ownership structure,investors’ protection and corporate valuation: the effect of judicial system efficiency in family and non-family firms

Research on the effect of ownership structure on firm performance shows no convergent evidence concerning the sign and form of the above-mentioned relationship. Similarly, there is no homogeneous evidence documenting family ownership concentration is always positively or negatively correlated with firm value, or irrelevant. This paper analyses whether and how the de facto investor protection provided by the judicial system affects the relationship between corporate performance and ownership structure in 1314 firms operating in four European countries (Germany, France, Italy, and Spain) over a five-year period, 2010–2014. Moreover, we analyse whether judicial system efficiency influences if and how family firms in the controlling coalition collude for expropriating minority shareholders. Our findings show that the level of shareholder protection, derived from judicial efficiency, is relevant to the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance, thus corroborating literature in that institutional contexts matter in explaining such relations. The results suggest the need for more efficient external mechanisms of corporate governance to facilitate investment in equity capital, thus decreasing the country risk perceived by investors.     

Legitimacy theory may explain the failure of global adoption of IFRS: the case of Europe and the U.S.

We investigate the reasons why “adoption” of one set of globally accepted accounting standards is presently unachievable. By “adoption” we mean that a jurisdiction incorporates IFRS instantly as its national accounting as issued by the IASB. We state that the IASB has used a Legitimacy Theory strategy to gain acceptance of its standards by more than 120 countries across the globe but it has only gained pseudo-“adoption” (not as published by the IASB) of its standards by many countries. We contend that achieving policing and enforcement of its standards globally has proven to be empirically illusive. This legitimacy deficit may explain why convergence between the IASB and FASB is currently idle. We offer a possible solution to bridging the legitimacy gap of global adoption of IFRS. We propose an internationally respected regulator and suggest the IOSCO for this role through its participation in the IFRS Foundation Monitoring Board for policing and enforcement of IFRS for cross-listed firms reporting in compliance with IFRS so that the IASB’s output legitimacy may be achieved globally.     

The univariate distribution function for a particular bilinear model

The aim of the paper is to find the univariate stationary distribution of a particular bilinear process. In this context, we propose a novel approach to derive the distribution function. It is based on a recursive formula and allows to relax the conditions on the moments of the process. We also show that the derived approximation converges to the true distribution function. The accuracy of the recursive formula is evaluated for finite sample dimensions by a small simulation study.Received: February 2003, Revised: May 2004,     

Estimating a sensitive proportion through randomized response procedures based on auxiliary information

Randomized response techniques are widely employed in surveys dealing with sensitive questions to ensure interviewee anonymity and reduce nonrespondents rates and biased responses. Since Warner’s (J Am Stat Assoc 60:63–69, 1965) pioneering work, many ingenious devices have been suggested to increase respondent’s privacy protection and to better estimate the proportion of people, π _A , bearing a sensitive attribute. In spite of the massive use of auxiliary information in the estimation of non-sensitive parameters, very few attempts have been made to improve randomization strategy performance when auxiliary variables are available. Moving from Zaizai’s (Model Assist Stat Appl 1:125–130, 2006) recent work, in this paper we provide a class of estimators for π _A , for a generic randomization scheme, when the mean of a supplementary non-sensitive variable is known. The minimum attainable variance bound of the class is obtained and the best estimator is also identified. We prove that the best estimator acts as a regression-type estimator which is at least as efficient as the corresponding estimator evaluated without allowing for the auxiliary variable. The general results are then applied to Warner and Simmons’ model.     

On the estimation of non linear functions in stochastic volatility models

Abstract

This paper focuses on the inference of suitable generally non linear functions in stochastic volatility models. In this context, in order to estimate the variance of the proposed estimators, a moving block bootstrap (MBB) approach is suggested and discussed. Under mild assumptions, we show that the MBB procedure is weakly consistent. Moreover, a methodology to choose the optimal length block in the MBB is proposed. Some examples and simulations on the model are also made to show the performance of the proposed procedure.