Unternehmenserfolg, Wechsel im Vorstandsvorsitz und Disziplinierung von Finanzvorständen

The Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is often referred to as a company’s No. 2 on contemporary management boards; yet corresponding empirical evidence is scarce. As a result, academic literature has not yet investigated whether CFOs—like CEOs—are dismissed more frequently if corporate performance is poor and to what extent forced Chief Executive Officer (CEO) turnover also influences disciplinary action towards CFOs. Therefore, in this paper we examine the antecedents of forced CFO departures in the largest German corporations between 1999 and 2006. Building on principal-agent theory, we expect respective relationships between the board of directors, the CEO, and the CFO. Moreover, we propose that principals also take team-specific and firm-specific human capital into consideration when disciplining agents. We find that poor corporate performance and forced CEO turnover both independently increase the likelihood of CFO dismissal. In addition, we find indications for a close team relationship between CFOs and CEOs. In summary, our results support the prominent role of CFOs alongside CEOs on contemporary management boards and suggest a more detailed consideration of CFOs in future research on performance consequences of managerial successions.     

EOQ model for imperfective items under a one-time-only discount

In practice, when a supplier is confronted with extreme completion in markets, unanticipated surplus in inventory, or change in the production run of a product, he/she may offer a special price discount to motivate buyers to order a special quantity. The purpose of the present paper is to investigate an inventory model for imperfective items under a one-time-only discount, where the defectives can be screened out by a 100% screening process and then can be sold in a single batch by the end of the 100% screening process. The optimal order policies associated with three kinds of effective times of the reduced price are obtained. Finally, a numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed model.     

Truth-in-sentencing, law enforcement, and inmate population growth

This paper presents the empirical estimation of an econometric model of the flow of prisoners into a state correctional system. Specifically, an econometric model was built to control for the number of parolees, the probability of admission to the state system, the size of the state population, the unemployment and poverty rates, the number of law enforcement officers within the state, and the state-wide “truth-in-sentencing” law, which requires convicts to serve at least 85% of their sentences. One primary result was that increases in the number of law enforcement officers has generated a decline in the growth rate of the prison population. This suggests that a “deterrent effect” is created when more police are placed on the beat. Furthermore, the results indicate that the truth-in-sentencing law has also slowed the rate of inmate population growth. This finding may reflect the growing trend for courts to hand down nontraditional sentences and to adjust prison sentences to reflect a constant “real time” of incarceration by crime.     

Is poverty multidimensional? A comparison of income and asset based measures in five Southern African countries.

This paper contests the major emphasis placed on the multidimensional nature of poverty measurement. Instead, it argues that poverty pictures created by different measures and at different units of analysis tend to converge. This argument is derived from a comparison of poverty pictures created using income and asset-based measures at the national and household level in five South African Development Community countries. Although multidimensional measures have value in illuminating subtle differences, the findings indicate a single dimension of poverty that runs throughout all the measures and levels of analysis. However, despite the single poverty picture provided by different measures, the abandonment of these different measures is not supported. Multidimensional measures provide insight into particular elements of poverty that is useful and relevant to poverty interventions.     

Educating tomorrow’s reformists: factors affecting the development of undergraduates’ social progressivism

Researchers have unpacked the ways in which students participate in democracy through voting and other forms of civic engagement. However, very little empirical work has delved into how students develop socially progressive values, despite their unprecedented importance to young people during their years in higher education. Rooted in a rich historical context of campus demonstration spanning the past 75 years and current events in the United States, this inspection of college students’ social progressivism was grounded by Pascarella’s model of students’ learning and cognitive development, and uses OLS (ordinary least squares) regression to investigate the phenomenon. Analyzing data collected by the Cooperative and Institutional Research Program from 159 institutions across the United States, this study explored the predictive capacity of students’ interaction with influential agents of socialization and other variables central to undergraduates’ college experiences. Results indicate that socially progressive students tended to interact more with faculty outside of office hours and had a higher cumulative GPA. Additional findings and implications are discussed.     

Highly Skilled Migration from Africa to the US: Exit Mechanisms,Demographic Determinants,and the Role of Socioeconomic Trends

Despite increases in research on the migration of skilled Africans to the developed world, few studies have examined the specific mechanisms of departure contributing to these trends. Previous studies further contain limited analysis of how these mechanisms respond to Africa’s changing social and demographic trends. This study uses data from various sources to examine these issues. The results indicate that, in absolute terms, overall emigration flows of highly skilled Africans to the US more than doubled between 1980 and 2010. In addition, they suggest that previous arguments indicating that the recruitment of African professionals drives these flows understate the role of student migration in driving these movements. In the past three decades, more skilled Africans migrated to the US through student migration mechanisms than through any mechanism associated with the recruitment of workers. Furthermore, in recent years, the Diversity Visa Program has become the second most important mechanism through which skilled emigration from Africa occurs. Finally, the analysis finds that trends in African student emigration are highly responsive to youth population growth and that, surprisingly, the migration of skilled professionals is less influenced by African economic trends than by economic trends in the US.

     

YOUTUBE,TWITTER AND THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT

Videos stored on YouTube served as a valuable set of communicative resources for publics interested in the Occupy movement. This article explores this loosely bound media ecology, focusing on how and what types of video content are shared and circulated across both YouTube and Twitter. Developing a novel data-collection methodology, a population of videos posted to YouTube with Occupy-related metadata or circulated on Twitter alongside Occupy-related keywords during the month of November 2011 was assembled. In addition to harvesting metadata related to view count and video ratings on YouTube and the number of times a video was tweeted, a probability sample of 1100 videos was hand coded, with an emphasis on classifying video genre and type, borrowed sources of content, and production quality. The novelty of the data set and the techniques adapted for analysing it allow one to take an important step beyond cataloging Occupy-related videos to examine whether and how videos are circulated on Twitter. A variety of practices were uncovered that link YouTube and Twitter together, including sharing cell phone footage as eyewitness accounts of protest (and police) activity, digging up news footage or movie clips posted months and sometimes years before the movement began; and the sharing of music videos and other entertainment content in the interest of promoting solidarity or sociability among publics created through shared hashtags. This study demonstrates both the need for, and challenge of, conducting social media research that accommodates data from multiple platforms.