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The purpose of this paper is to analyze the behavior of institutional and retail investors in S&P 500 index funds separately to determine why they behave differently.

We analyze the relationship between net flow and past index-adjusted returns or expense ratios more extensively via panel data regressions across a broad dataset.

We find that the holding of institutional investors is, indeed, sticky. The results indicate that the net flow of institutional investors is not sensitive to past index-adjusted returns of expense ratios.

Prior studies have attempted to explain the irrational behavior of investors in S&P 500 index funds. We attempt to show plausible reasons why they behave differently.

Wikis, as one of the Web 2.0 tools, has been increasingly used to engage students to learn with others in a collaborative virtual environment. However, there are relatively few studies examining the application of wikis in secondary schools. Therefore, this study aims to investigate factors affecting the use of PBWorks (a popular wiki tool).

The aim was achieved by empirically examining an extended technology acceptance model (TAM) from a sample of 429 junior secondary students in Hong Kong. Specifically, relationships among six latent variables, which were school support, teacher support, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitudes towards use and the intention to use, were posited in the model. The more robust factor-based partial least squares structural equation modelling (factor-based PLS-SEM) was used to test the research model.

The results indicated that most of the hypotheses were supported, which suggested that the extended TAM could explain the rationale behind students’ intentions to use PBWorks for group projects.

This paper extended the original TAM by including two additional variables (school support and teacher support) for explaining behavioural intentions. Because of the increased use of e-learning platforms in secondary schools, more understanding of what motivates secondary school students’ e-learning intentions is necessary.

The authors measure the impact of culture on Sharia; Social and Financial Disclosure (SSFD) of Islamic Banks (IBs) around the world.

Content analysis is used to measure levels of disclosure for a sample of 136 IBs of 25 countries for years 2013 and 2014. Different cultural measures are used. These include secrecy/transparency as suggested by Gray (1988) and Hofstede (1980, 1983, 2001, 2010)’s culture dimensions which include: Power Distance; Individualism; Masculinity; Uncertainty Avoidance; Long-Term Ordination and Indulgence. Ordinary least square (OLS) regression is used to test the research hypotheses.

After controlling bank-specific, corporate governance and country characteristics, the authors found that Hofstede’s culture dimensions have a significant impact on SSFD. They also found that Gray's transparency dimension positively influence levels of sharia, social and aggregated disclosure. Therefore, they conclude that culture influences levels of disclosure in IBs.

This study has policy implications for managers and regulators of Islamic banking industry.

This study is the first to use both Gray and Hofstede models in the context of IBs around the world. It also the first to explore the impact of culture on three different disclosure levels for IBs.

Though China is taking many steps to offer affordable houses to the public, the gap between the demand and supply for such affordable houses is still huge. Rapidly growing demand for affordable housing has encouraged large Chinese cities, faced with housing imbalance, to invest in developing affordable properties. As a result, the Chinese central government has started to encourage local governments to use Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) and private capital to supplement the funding deficit. There is also an on-going debate regarding the need to establish prerequisites for institutions to meet in order to achieve effective PPPs. In this paper, we examine what the current institutional environment is in China and how China is meeting these prerequisites for effective PPPs. We also examine the main programs on affordable housing and propose a potential field for using PPPs. We draw the conclusion that PPPs are more favorable for renting-oriented type projects than owning-oriented projects. In this context, the advantages of the PPP model for China's renting-oriented affordable housing programs are would be the provision of private financing, the enhancing efficiency by involving private sector experts and the statement of bundling constructions and maintenance and operation work in the contract, which motivates the private sector to build properties up to standard for its cost efficiency from the whole project perspective.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy. It provides an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts. The selected bibliography is useful to efficiently keep up with trends in library instruction for busy practitioners, library science students and those wishing to learn about information literacy in other contexts.

This article annotates 424 English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, theses and reports on library instruction and information literacy published in 2021. The sources were selected from the EBSCO platform for Library, Information Science, and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Education Resources Information Center (ERIC), Scopus, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, and WorldCat, published in 2021 that included the terms “information literacy,” “library instruction,” or “information fluency” in the title, abstract or keywords. The sources were organized in Zotero. Annotations summarize the source, focusing on the findings or implications. Each source was categorized into one of seven pre-determined categories: K-12 Education, Children and Adolescents; Academic and Professional Programs; Everyday Life, Community, and the Workplace; Libraries and Health Information Literacy; Multiple Library Types; and Other Information Literacy Research and Theory.

The paper provides a brief description of 424 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested as a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy within 2021.

This study examined the moderating effect of perceived control on the relationship between perceptions of organizational politics and two outcome variables: job stress and intent to quit. Survey data from 103 employees of a company in Malaysia were analyzed using moderated multiple regression. The results showed that perceived politics had adverse effects only on employees with low perceived control. Specifically, in a work environment that is perceived to be political, employees with low levels of perceived control reported experiencing more job stress and expressed greater intention to quit their job than did employees with high levels of perceived control. Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Many researchers, in several contexts, have investigated the influence of audit committee effectiveness and audit quality variables on reducing the extent of earnings management, and empirical evidence is rather inconsistent.

The aim of this paper is to meta-analyze the results of 58 prior studies that examined whether differences in results are related to moderating effects associated with corporate governance mechanisms or measures of earnings management.

The findings show that the meta-analysis identifies many significant relationships. The independence of the audit committee, its size, expertise and the number of meetings have a negative relationship with earnings management. Similar negative relationships exist between auditor size, specialization and earnings management.

This study contributes to the corporate governance literature. Further, recognizing the function of an audit committee and audit quality shows the value of considering an institutional setting in governance research. This study is significant to academic and practitioner literatures, policy makers and professional accounting bodies as it shows that governance reforms promote companies to adopt good governance practices. The results also give useful information to investors in examining the effect of audit committee characteristics and audit quality on earnings quality.

This study extends existing research on audit committee and audit quality to oversee both accrual and real earnings management using meta-analysis. Thus, this study has the potential to help stakeholders, board of directors, regulators and auditors, who are related with enhancing the supervision of firms and reducing the opportunities given to managers, to engage in earnings management.

This study aims to empirically examine whether the political connection is related to risk disclosure practices. The study also seeks to contribute to the existent risk disclosure literature by investigating the moderator effect of family ownership on this relationship.

The content analysis approach was used to collect data and determine the level of risk disclosure over the non-financial Jordanian firms listed on 1Amman Stock Exchange. The sample of this study contains 376 annual reports over four years from 2014 to 2017. It used the random effect regressions to examine the hypothesis of the study.

The results show that politically connected companies disclose less risk information than the unconnected ones in Jordan. The results also refer that family ownership contributes in mitigating the negative effect of the political connection on the level of corporate risk.

The results have implications for regulatory institutions such as the Jordan Securities Commission to take the negative effect of political connection in their consideration and impose further regulations to monitor this board’s attribute and control politicians’ domination on the board decisions.

The current study also contributes to the body of literature by investigating the effects of the political connections on the level of risk disclosure in the financial reports. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to examine the effect of the political connection on the risk disclosure practices. Moreover, the study is among the first studies that examine the moderating role of family ownership on such relationship.