Purpose – To show that necessary condition hypotheses are important in operations management, and to present a consistent methodology for building and testing them. Necessary condition hypotheses (“X is necessary for Yâ€) express conditions that must be present in order to have a...

Several management accounting studies have investigated the behavioural impact of evaluative style, a concept that generally refers to the manner in which supervisors use accounting information to evaluate the performance of subordinates. Although most studies study this behavioural impact at...

This paper examines the effects of different corporate governance mechanisms on the cost of debt for large European firms and documents a novel interaction effect between shareholder rights and disclosure. Improved disclosure leads to a lower credit spread only if shareholder rights are low. A...

Recent empirical studies in regional science and urban economics show that agglomeration economies may be one source of the uneven distribution of economic activities and economic growth across cities and regions. At the same time, the body of research into the importance of agglomeration...

The area under Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve, also known as the AUC-index, is commonly used for ranking the performance of data mining models. The AUC has many merits, such as objectivity and ease of interpretation. However, since it is class indifferent, its usefulness while...

The promotion and support of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) forms an essential ingredient in policies to help improve Europe’s economic performance. A key issue in this context is whether SMEs face undue difficulty when trying to access credit. Using survey data from 2005 and...

In this case the Dutch Flower Auctions (DFA) are discussed. The DFA are part of the supply network in which flowers are produced, stocked, and then sold through either mediation or auctioning. This case focuses on the buyers’ and auctioneers’ positions when flowers are traded...

Economic evaluations of health care can help to make better medical decisions. Decisions about life and death. Our current methods are wrong. Reality is different from what we did believe. Policy decisions based on our current tools are not at all in the best interests of patients. We,...

Business is becoming increasingly international. At the same time, governments are intervening more in the conduct of business. A further development is the growing significance of emerging economies, many of which have a tradition of active government involvement with business. Taken together,...

The numerous scandals in business, such as those at AIG, Tyco, WorldCom, Enron and Ahold, have made all of us concerned about the emergence of unethical and irresponsible behavior in organizations. Such widespread corruption in business and politics has, as result, prompted a growth of interest...