In this discussion draft, linking research findings with concrete operational challenges, we review key issues in worldwide governance, and present recent empirical evidence. Focusing on defining and unbundling key governance components, such as rule of law, voice and accountability, corruption...

Although a plethora of research has examined the benefits of government support for stateowned enterprises, our understanding of how domestic support can become a source of liability is severely limited. In this paper, we develop a novel concept of “liability of domestic support” to...

This paper aims to establish the basis for a new approach to the performance of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The proposed approach emphasises the potential of the SME'S information system (IS) for enhancing performance, through its deployment for superior monitoring and control....

This paper reports on the behaviour of young (less than three years old) micro-firms (less than ten employees) in Scotland, with an emphasis on life-cycle effects. Two main tests were carried out. The first took Gibrat's Law (that growth is independent of size) as the null hypothesis, and a...

This paper provides a critical survey of theory and evidence on information system (IS) development within the SME. It proceeds under five headings. First, the information needs of the SME are identified. Second, the use of information to guide decisions is considered. Third, the management...

We characterize the conditions under which industry-wide agreements on refund policies weaken price competition. We identify the conditions under which joint industry proffit increases with the amount of refunds promised to those consumers who cancel a reservation or return a product. We compare...

In this paper, we combine the strategic delegation approach of Fershtman-Judd-Sklivas with contets. The results show that besides a symmetric equilibrium there also exist asymmetric equilibria in which one owner induces pure sales maximization to his manager so that all the other firms drop out...

A company’s performance significantly depends on how well a company manages its finances keeping in view the short term hurdles and long term goals. One objective of financial statement analysis is to determine firm value. Research suggests that a firm’s value is a function of the...

When in-store display influences consumer choices, shelf space allocation can be strategically used by retailers to extract payments from manufacturers. The paper finds that manufacturers with better brand names have higher willingness-to-pay for shelf spaces. Shelf space fees soften inter-brand...

This paper investigates the relationship between the selling price of diamonds and their weight in carats. For this purpose, we use a unique sample of 112,080 certified diamonds collected from www.info-diamond.com during the first week of July 2011. We find substantial differences in pricing...