Liquidity suppliers and market makers profit by providing immediacy for less patient investors. In other words, the liquidity suppliers accommodate buying and selling pressure. However, they have limited capacity for carrying inventory and bearing risk. They are only willing to facilitate trading if they can buy shares at a discount or sell at a premium ... Read More

Manufacturers and retailers have introduced various ways such as quick response and continuous replenishment to leverage information sharing to improve supply chain performance. It is generally believed that when a retailer shares demand information with a manufacturer, the whole supply chain benefits from improved coordination. For the manufacturer, the ... Read More

Individual investors tend to tilt their portfolios towards local stocks. In the US, for instance, the typical household has about 30 per cent of its portfolio invested in stocks headquartered within a 250-mile radius of where it resides, even though only 12 per cent of all firms in the market are headquartered in the same radius on average. In China ... Read More

Several prominent accounting scandals at the turn of this century, involving such companies as Enron and Waste Management, led to restrictions of practices that were assumed to impair financial reporting quality. One of these practices was "revolving door" hires, in which companies hire accounting and finance officers from their auditors. The verdict on ... Read More

Corporate strategies inevitably have to consider the political environment in which a firm operates. In federal systems the situation can be complicated because one political party may rule at the national level and another at the state or provincial level, indicating political pluralism, or one party may control both, indicating hegemony. New research finds ... Read More

Do independent directors provide a valuable a service to shareholders? That question has been the subject of inconclusive debate and study. However, two researchers approach the question from an unusual angle - the sudden deaths of independent directors - and show that these board members are indeed deemed beneficial to shareholder value. Using data from 229 ... Read More

A family sits down after dinner and turns on the television. Market researchers record what they are watching and repeat this for thousands of families. But is the information they collect as useful as it could be? Households are often made up of several individuals. Are they all watching the television? Who has sway over what is watched? These questions are ... Read More

Using pirated software, gambling, and visiting pornographic websites are examples of behaviors that are hard to measure because people fear the consequences of being truthful. This reluctance can hinder efforts to understand and address these problems. However, one study suggests that it may be possible to elicit more honest responses without compromising ... Read More

Firms dealing in experiential products such as newspapers, wine or ski resorts face a dilemma. Key attributes of their products are beyond their control - they cannot direct the events of the day, the growing season or snowfall. As a result, consumers don't know the exact content of the products before they purchase them. This has ramifications for how such ... Read More

Public policy is regarded as a powerful tool that can alter the external environment that firms operate in and mark a transition to a new era. Research by HKUST and Harvard scholars cautions, though, against overstating its impact after finding that other environmental factors could influence the success and failure of public policy. Zhi Huang and ... Read More