Is price a good indicator of quality? That's a question managers and consumers are keen to understand yet research to date has offered mixed views. In some cases consumers have been found to persistently rely on price as a quality cue, but in others the price impact was reduced or even nullified when presented alongside other product features. A new study ... Read More

Is past success a predictor of more success to come? That's a question managers should be thinking more deeply on following a study that found those managers who issued a series of accurate short-term forecasts for their firms were more likely to then issue a less accurate forecast. That counterintuitive finding emerged in a study by Gilles Hilary and ... Read More

Financial models have shown time and again that it is beneficial for all households to invest in stocks, yet relatively few choose to do so. Until now the assumption has been that pecuniary participation costs turn people off investing. But recent research suggests there may be other deterrents at play. Steffen Andersen and Kasper Meisner Nielsen looked at ... Read More

The subtle signals contained in managers' forecasts can tell the market not only about the forecasters' uncertainty, but also their motivations. That is the message in a study that looks at manager forecasts of earnings per share (EPS) which finds those ending in nickel estimates are less accurate and overly optimistic. The study by Linda Smith Bamber, Kai ... Read More

Organizations that can adapt have a distinct advantage in a changing world. But their ability to adapt is not based solely on contemporary responses to circumstances - it may in fact be affected by conditions at their founding. According to the research by Christopher Marquis and Zhi Huang, the "imprinting" of external pressures on an organization at its ... Read More

Web personalization technology potentially makes it possible to match recommendations to customer preferences and thereby open up business opportunities for online merchants. However, the practice is rather more complicated than the theory as there are important decisions to make. One of the most important is when to make recommendations. Technology allows ... Read More

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