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This paper aims to investigate the impact of a firm’s pension insurance contributions (PIC) on its financialization (investment in risky assets) using a sample of Chinese firms.

The authors use a multiple regression model to conduct the analysis.

The findings suggest that a firm’s PIC increases its financialization. Additional analysis suggests that firms with higher PIC are more likely to have lower operating profit and higher financial risk. In addition, the impact of PIC on financialization is more salient when a firm faces high industry competitiveness, holds more cash, has high labor costs and labor intensity or is non-state owned.

The paper adds to the growing literature on the effect of social insurance on corporate policies. The findings complement those related to the relationship between defined contributions and defined benefits retirement plans and corporate policies.

The study contributes to the debate on the merits of financialization. The literature is mixed on the pros and cons of financialization. The results suggest that financialization has an adverse effect on a firm’s performance and risk in the lens of increased PIC.

China has seen a trend of financialization arising from the rapid economic development in the past decade. Moreover, the PIC premiums in China are not trivial. Thus, the significant cost of PIC and the financialization trend suggest that the answer to the research question is timely and meaningful.

Mobility and displacement make higher education professionals and students feel distressed, depressed, and discriminated against, from having to leave their homelands for improving their socio-economic conditions, or even escape for living. To overcome their feelings, they do their best to carry out a normal life, concentrating on upgrading, new cultural acquisition and linking with the new community, and adjusting to a new context. In the middle of this situation, there is an enrichment of societal relations, literacy processes, inclusion, and interculturality, which are transmitted to new generations. The pedagogy of the inclusive process of refugees and immigrants may become more enriched with the interaction of ontological, epistemological, cognitive, affective, axiological, and praxeological dimensions, in a new world that seeks for sustainability.

This paper aims to present a three‐dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model that simulates the fluid flow, species transport and electric current flow in PEM fuel cells.

The model makes use of a general‐purpose CFD software as a basic tool incorporating fuel cell specific submodels for multi‐component species transport, electrochemical kinetics, water management and electric phase potential analysis in order to simulate various processes that occur in a PEM fuel cell.

Three dimensional results for the flow field, species transport, including waster formations, and electric current distributions are presented for two test flow configurations in the PEM fuel cell. For the two cases presented, reasonable predictions have been obtained, and this provides an insight into the effect of the flow designs to the operation of the fuel cell.

It is appreciated that the CFD modeling of fuel cells is, in general, still facing significant challenges due to the limited understanding of the complex physical and chemical processes existing within the fuel cell. The model is now under further development to improve its capabilities and undergoing further validations.

The model simulations can provide detailed information on some of the key fluid dynamics, physical and chemical/electro‐chemical processes that exist in fuel cells which are crucial for fuel cell design and optimization.

The model can be used to understand the operation of the fuel cell and provide and alternative to experimental investigations in order to improve the performance of the fuel cell.

Misconduct allegations have been found to not only affect the alleged firm but also other, unalleged firms in form of reputational and financial spillover effects. It has remained unexplored, however, how the number of prior allegations against other firms matters for an individual firm currently facing an allegation. Building on behavioral decision theory, we argue that the relationship between allegation prevalence among other firms and investor reaction to a focal allegation is inverted U-shaped. The inverted U-shaped effect is theorized to emerge from the combination of two effects: In the absence of prior allegations against other firms, investors fail to anticipate the focal allegation, and hence react particularly negatively (“anticipation effect”). In the case of many prior allegations against other firms, investors also react particularly negatively because investors perceive the focal allegation as more warranted (“evaluation effect”). The multi-industry, empirical analysis of 8,802 misconduct allegations against US firms between 2007 and 2017 provides support for our predicted, inverted U-shaped effect. Our study complements recent misconduct research on spillover effects by highlighting that not only a current allegation against an individual firm can “contaminate” other, unalleged firms but that also prior allegations against other firms can “contaminate” investor reaction to a focal allegation against an individual firm.

European projects from a wide list of subjects are sharing and promoting good practice in knowledge development but there appears to be opportunities to exploit the findings of these projects more effectively, especially relating to sustainability issues, in the implementation and development of robust curricula within higher education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

A detailed description will be given of an example of a partnership between several universities from Sweden, France, Romania, and Lebanon related to a high-profile industry area: oil and gas. This partnership was created within a European Project carried out during the 2015–2018 period. The importance of this project is focused on how energy issues play an important role in the global development of industrial and underdeveloped countries. Energy issues are commonly accompanied with the challenging trade-off of energy production and environmental sustainability. The research project evaluates the creation and delivery of a new curriculum at the Lebanese universities based upon the joint effort and support of the European partners of the Project Consortium.

The overall aim of the project was to promote academic excellence through an academic network and by joint research, education, and exchange of experience, but also knowledge that has led to the high-quality curriculum. It is expected that this will contribute in the sustainable development of the Lebanese higher educational system. The project is in perfect alignment with the EU Commission’s action aiming to deepen the knowledge of extraction technologies and practices of unconventional gas and oil while minimizing potential health and environmental risks. The project succeeded in the delivery and the transfer of specific knowledge, through a more effective curriculum, for future educators and offers students a high-quality educational experience preparing them for the oil and gas industry.

Managers of defined-benefit (DB) firms have considerable discretion in deriving pension costs and flexibility in cash contributions to pension plans. Pension accruals occur when cash contributions differ from pension costs. The manipulable nature of pension costs and cash contributions allows managers of DB firms to manipulate pension accruals to achieve their desired earnings. We study whether DB firms with earnings management attributes (referred to as suspect DB firms) used more discretionary pension accruals (DPA) than non-suspect DB firms, especially after the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX).

The authors develop an aggregate measure of DPA to capture overall earnings management in pension accounting. They then employ a multivariate regression model to study whether the suspect DB firms engage in more DPA than non-suspect firms and to assess the impact of SOX on DPA for all DB firms and for suspect DB firms.

The authors find evidence that suspect firms inflate DPA to achieve their earnings goals and also that all DB firms and the suspect firms use more DPA in the post-SOX era compared to the pre-SOX period. In contrast, they observe no significant difference in real activities earnings management (REM) between suspect and non-suspect firms. In addition, neither the entire sample of DB firms nor the suspect firms display a significant change in REM after SOX.

The samples in the study are limited to firms with defined pension plans; thus, the findings cannot be generalized to all firms. In addition, as in other empirical studies relying on models to estimate earnings management proxies, this study inherits estimation errors from Jones and Roychowdhury's models. Consequently, the impact of these estimation errors cannot be ruled out.

The empirical findings of the study appear that instead of deterring DB firms from engaging in pension accruals earnings management, enacting the stringent anti-fraud SOX prompts these firms to rely more on accrual-based discretionary pension rather than switch to real activities manipulation to manage earnings.

While many prior studies focus on the impact of managing individual pension assumptions on earnings, the authors study overall earnings management in pension accounting by developing a model to derive an aggregate measure of pension earnings management.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the tribological properties of tetrahedral diamond-like carbon (DLC) films in self-mated contacts in the presence of additivated and non-additivated vegetable oils. DLC films have high practical value due to low friction and low wear properties. On the other hand, vegetable oils are considered to be lubricants for future due to its resource renewability and biodegradability. Sometimes different chemical agents are added to vegetable oils to further improve its tribological properties. Thus, the tribological study of DLC films against additivated oils becomes important.

The tribology tests were conducted in a four ball tribo-meter under the boundary lubricated conditions.

Ta-C DLC exhibited 80 per cent lower wear rate under Zinc dialkyldithiophosphates (ZDDP)-added oil compared to that of base oil. In contrast, the friction coefficient under additivated oil was slightly higher than the base oil lubricated case. Moreover, the carbonyl band area as well as the viscosity change of ZDDP-added oil was much smaller than that of base oil. Therefore, ZDDP reduced the wear of DLC film and prevented the oxidation of base oil during tribotests.

This is the first work on the tribological properties of ta-C DLC lubricated with corn oil with and without anti-wear additives.

Prior research has documented a guilt by association phenomenon whereby instances of corporate misconduct generate a negative spillover to innocent firms due to their shared industry membership with the wrongdoing firm. However, research on competitive dynamics predicts a positive spillover whereby some firms benefit from the revelation of financial misconduct by an industry peer. This study lends support to both these effects by highlighting the role product similarity plays in the understanding of investors' perceptions surrounding corporate misconduct.

The study assesses the investors' valuation of cash using Faulkender and Wang's (2006) methodology. The difference-in-differences approach is employed to compare the market valuation of cash held by non-accused firms with higher and lower litigation spillover risk operating in industries with higher vs lower product similarity.

The findings show that an increase in the volume and severity of misconduct by industry peers is associated with an undeserved loss in the value of cash held by non-accused firms operating in industries with high product similarity. In contrast, firms that sell differentiated products stand to gain from the troubles of the accused peer. Moreover, non-accused firms in industries with high product similarity reduce capital expenditures more following misconduct accusations against peers to preserve cash in anticipation of future lawsuits.

This study contributes to the growing spillover literature that investigates how a crisis caused by one firm affects the valuation of its peers.

This study aims to examine whether socially responsible firms have well-funded employee pension programs and whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance is associated with management discretionary choice of pension accounting assumptions.

The current study examines the impact of CSR performance on two measures of pension funding and two pension accounting assumptions using regression analysis. This study uses a panel data of 13,099 firms-years across 1,428 US firms from 1992 to 2015.

Firms with higher CSR scores report higher pension net assets and are less likely to have underfunded pension than their counterparts. These firms also adopt more responsible (conservative) pension accounting assumptions (i.e. lower discount rate and a higher rate of compensation increase) to estimate pension benefit obligations. Results are stronger for firms that operate in the materials and industrial sectors and for the post-2000 period when underfunded pension has become more prevalent. Firms with higher CSR scores are also less likely to have a pension freeze.

This study examines the signaling role of CSR by using the signaling theory to explain how senders view the signaling process as a channel to build their reputation and the correspondent inference theory to explain how receivers process and assess the signal. It provides evidence that the signal provided by CSR score is reliable in assessing firms’ commitment to non-investing stakeholders, such as employees, providing valuable information for potential employees making career decisions and for managers considering employee pension as part of corporate strategies to attract high quality workforce. This study provides inputs for public accountants providing assurance services that CSR performance has a significant impact on management reporting choices. This study also provides evidence that CSR could be considered a private provision of public goods that internalize the negative externality of the prevalent underfunded pension phenomenon.