1,720,977 research outputs found
Pension underfunding and the expected return on pension assets: the impact of the 2008 financial crisis
No full textWe use the 2008 crisis as an exogenous shock to the pension funding status of U.S. corporate defined benefit (DB) pension plans to examine its impact on the assumption of the expected return on pension assets (ER). Contrary to prior literature, we find that DB pension plans transitioning from funded to underfunded status make expense-reducing assumptions by increasing their ER. We also document that the ER manipulation is larger for plans whose funding after 2008 drops significantly. The funding deterioration conservatively generates a 28-79 basis points increase in ER, reducing the pension accounting expense by about 5.23% to 14.76% (9.85 million). Our results are robust to controlling for the shock induced by the global financial crisis on corporate performance and other potential channels affecting ER
An empirical analysis of changes in the relative timeliness of issuer-paid vs. investor-paid ratings
No full textWe investigate the lead-lag relationships between issuer-paid and investor-paid credit rating agencies (CRAs), after the regulatory reforms in the U.S. (2002–2006) also including outlooks. Over our sample period, ratings (but not outlooks) issued by issuer-paid agencies were certified by the SEC while investor-paid agencies were not certified at all. First, in the wake of the reforms, we find a weaker lead effect of investor-paid over issuer-paid CRAs: after 2002, causality turned bi-directional. Second, after the overhaul of the rating business, issuer-paid CRAs behave less conservatively when dealing with outlook changes than with rating changes, which is consistent with a more conservative approach to ratings than to outlooks, because of the effects of the SEC's certification. Third, investor-paid downgrades become associated with more negative, statistically significant abnormal stock returns, than issuer-paid downgrades are. These results support the hypothesis that issuer-paid CRAs improved the timeliness of their ratings because of the recently implemented, tighter regulations. However, differences in abnormal returns imply that investor-paid rating actions still carry superior information. Adding data from the post NRSRO status acquisition by Egan Jones Ratings, the investor-paid agency studied in our paper, does not radically affect our results and confirms that some of the previously observed differences in timeliness and market impact have been fading over time
The adverse effects of systematic leakage ahead of official sovereign debt rating announcements
Get PDFRating agencies consult with local government officials several days prior to official announcements of sovereign debt rating changes, making information leakage likely. Using cross-country data from 1988 to 2012, we find evidence of information leakage. In particular, we find statistically and economically significant negative daily abnormal stock index returns prior to downgrade announcements. These effects are more pronounced in countries with lower institutional quality, and they persist during times with no downgrade rumors and no concurrent bad news in general. A mild post-announcement reversal consistent with overreaction to pre-event downgrade rumors highlights the adverse effects of such leakage and, thus, should be a policy concern for capital market regulators
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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