Corporate Governance und Eigenkapitalkosten - Bestandsaufnahme des Schrifttums unter besonderer Ber��cksichtigung des Informationsaspektes und Forschungsperspektiven

The present paper provides an overview of research concerning the relationship between corporate governance and the cost of equity capital. The purpose is to explore whether and to what extent corporate governance attributes manifest in firms?? cost of capital. Since the separation of ownership and control is seen as the starting point for the academic thinking on this issue, the term of corporate governance from a shareholder perspective is discussed in more detail. Apart from this terminological discussion the emphasis of this paper lies on the critical review of theoretical and empirical literature. In conducting this review, empirical concepts measuring the relevant dimensions and their potential limitations are explained. Based on these limitations I suggest opportunities for expanding research on the relationship between corporate governance and cost of equity capital, thereby showing future research directions.     

Role Balance and Marital Satisfaction in Taiwanese Couples: An Actor-Partner Interdependence Model Approach

Role balance theory proposed that a well-organized self-system, rather than a salient hierarchy role, contributes to individual psychological well-being. However, research on role balance focuses only on the intrapersonal process without regard for the interpersonal process on the spouse’s well-being. Furthermore, pervious studies were all conducted in the East cultures (countries) which lead to the doubt whether the theory could be applied into East cultures such as collectivism. Therefore, in this study, we surveyed 204 dyads form Taiwan. Participants completed the Role Balance Scale and Kansas Marital Satisfaction Scale. The Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (APIM) was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that the husband’s role balance positively predicted his own and his wife’s marital satisfaction. Similarly, the wife’s role balance also had a positive effect on her own and her husband’s marital satisfaction. These results suggest that the influence of role balance is bidirectional within couples. Moreover, model comparisons demonstrated that the wife’s marital satisfaction was affected more by her own role balance than by her husband’s role balance. Possible mechanisms, limitations and implications of this study are discussed.     

Continued usage of technology versus situational factors: An empirical analysis

Mainstream technology management literature suggests that research on continued usage of technology is largely based on two perspectives, namely (i) a forward-looking perspective that underpins the technology acceptance model (TAM), and (ii) a retrospective perspective that is based on the expectation disconfirmation theory (EDT). We propose an extended framework to re-examine continued usage of technology by combining these two perspectives and incorporating individual, social and environmental factors as additional variables. Our study, in the context of users’ continued usage of e-learning tools, reveals that in addition to user satisfaction and perceived usefulness, self-efficacy, system service support and social pressure are significant factors that affect continued usage of technology. Our findings enrich the theoretical framework of continued usage of technology, and provide e-learning developers with managerial insights on how to entice learners to continue using their e-learning tools.     

Price,Rebate, and Returns Supply Contracts for Coordinating Supply Chains with Price‐Dependent Demands

Channel rebates and returns policies are common mechanisms for manufacturers to entice retailers to increase their order quantities and sales ultimately. However, when the underlying demand depends on the retail price, it has been known that channel coordination cannot be achieved if only one of these mechanisms is deployed. In this article, we show that a policy that combines the use of wholesale price, channel rebate, and returns can coordinate a channel with both additive and multiplicative price‐dependent demands. In addition to determining the sufficient conditions for the contract parameters associated with the equilibrium policy, we show that multiple equilibrium policies for channel coordination exist. We further explore how the equilibrium policy can be adjusted to achieve Pareto improvement. Other issues such as the maximum amount of expected profit that the manufacturer can share under the coordinated channel, the structural properties of the contracts under both the additive and multiplicative price‐dependent demand functions are also discussed.     

Evaluation of Beta Generation Algorithms

In this article, we discuss the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) for the exponential and Weibull distributions by considering progressive Type-I interval censored data. For exponential distribution, the explicit expression of MLE of failure rate cannot be obtained when the intervals are not equal in length. The direct application of some numerical algorithms, such as the Newton–Raphson algorithm, is non-ideal because of the cumbersome second derivative. We apply some equivalent quantities to obtain the MLE of failure rate of exponential distribution. Based on the equivalent quantities and the Weibull-to-exponential transformation technique, we propose a new algorithm to obtain the MLEs for the parameters of progressive Type-I interval Weibull data. An example reanalysis and some simulation studies are carried out to illustrate the performance of the estimations using the new algorithm.     

Optimizing Latin hypercube designs by particle swarm

Latin hypercube designs (LHDs) are widely used in many applications. As the number of design points or factors becomes large, the total number of LHDs grows exponentially. The large number of feasible designs makes the search for optimal LHDs a difficult discrete optimization problem. To tackle this problem, we propose a new population-based algorithm named LaPSO that is adapted from the standard particle swarm optimization (PSO) and customized for LHD. Moreover, we accelerate LaPSO via a graphic processing unit (GPU). According to extensive comparisons, the proposed LaPSO is more stable than existing approaches and is capable of improving known results.     

Efficiency analysis of university departments: An empirical study

Universities play an important role in the development of a country in this age of the knowledge economy. As government subsidies to universities have been reducing in recent years, the more efficient use of resources becomes an important issue for university administrators. This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the relative efficiency of the academic departments at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan. The outputs considered are total credit-hours, publications, and external grants; and the inputs utilized by the departments are personnel, operating expenses, and floor space. An assurance region is constructed by the top administrators of the university to confine the flexibility in selecting the virtual multipliers in DEA. Four groups of departments of similar characteristics are categorized via an efficiency decomposition and cluster analysis. The aggregate efficiency indicates whether the resources have been utilized efficiently by a department and the efficiency decomposition helps identify the weak areas where more effort should be devoted so that the efficiency of the department can be improved.     

The dynamic plant layout problem: Incorporating rolling horizons and forecast uncertainty

To the best of our knowledge, research in the dynamic plant layout problem (DPLP) assumes that the planning horizon is fixed and that material flows are known with certainty. But in practice, many companies use rolling planning horizons. Further, they have to deal with the effect of uncertainty in material flow forecasts. This paper investigates the performance of algorithms under fixed and rolling horizons, under different shifting costs and flow variability, and under forecast uncertainty. Nearly 1800 problems were run using different algorithms. The results show that algorithms that dominated under fixed horizons may not work as well under rolling horizons. Also it is difficult to identify an algorithm that performs well under all situations. Thus the development of efficient and effective heuristics might be useful in solving the rolling horizon problem. It also appears that increasing the planning horizon under rolling plans does not offer any advantage. Further forecast uncertainty may not significantly affect the performance of algorithms and in some cases may be beneficial.     

Impact of enforcing a statutory minimum wage on work and quality of life of vulnerable groups in Hong Kong

The statutory minimum wage (SMW) law was enforced in Hong Kong on 1 May 2011. To examine its impact, this longitudinal study measured the quality of life, job and pay satisfaction, monthly income, hourly rate and working hours of vulnerable groups (n = 253) before and after the legislation. The findings confirmed that the enforcement of the SMW induced a positive impact as intended. The introduction of the SMW induced a positive wage and employment effect on the vulnerable groups in Hong Kong without harming their employment rate. Job and pay satisfaction, as well as most domains of the quality of life (i.e., physical and psychological health, and environment), increased significantly. In general, the positive impact of the SMW was more prominent for employees who previously worked less than 18 hours a week and who had hourly rates less than 28 HKD. The implications of the findings are discussed in the social context of Hong Kong. Key Practitioner Message: ● Enforcing minimum wage induced a positive impact on quality of life, job and pay satisfaction, and a monthly income of vulnerable groups. ● The social relations (quality of life) decreased after implementing minimum wage for workers working longer than 18 hours a week. ● Longer working hours is a key factor for the increase of a monthly income among the vulnerable groups.     

Estimation methods for time‐dependent AUC models with survival data

The performance of clinical tests for disease screening is often evaluated using the area under the receiver‐operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC). Recent developments have extended the traditional setting to the AUC with binary time‐varying failure status. Without considering covariates, our first theme is to propose a simple and easily computed nonparametric estimator for the time‐dependent AUC. Moreover, we use generalized linear models with time‐varying coefficients to characterize the time‐dependent AUC as a function of covariate values. The corresponding estimation procedures are proposed to estimate the parameter functions of interest. The derived limiting Gaussian processes and the estimated asymptotic variances enable us to construct the approximated confidence regions for the AUCs. The finite sample properties of our proposed estimators and inference procedures are examined through extensive simulations. An analysis of the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) 175 data is further presented to show the applicability of the proposed methods. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 38:8–26; 2010 © 2009 Statistical Society of Canada