Emily M. Coyne, Joshua G. Coyne and Kenton B. Walker
Big Data has become increasingly important to multiple facets of the accounting profession, but accountants have little understanding of the steps necessary to convert Big Data…
Abstract
Purpose
Big Data has become increasingly important to multiple facets of the accounting profession, but accountants have little understanding of the steps necessary to convert Big Data into useful information. This limited understanding creates a gap between what accountants can do and what accountants should do to assist in Big Data information governance. The study aims to bridge this gap in two ways.
Design/methodology/approach
First, the study introduces a model of the Big Data life cycle to explain the process of converting Big Data into information. Knowledge of this life cycle is a first step toward enabling accountants to engage in Big Data information governance. Second, it highlights informational and control risks inherent to this life cycle, and identifies information governance activities and agents that can minimize these risks.
Findings
Because accountants have a strong ability to identify the informational and control needs of internal and external decision-makers, they should play a significant role in Big Data information governance.
Originality/value
This model of the Big Data life cycle and information governance provides a first attempt to formalize knowledge that accountants need in a new field of the accounting profession.
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Daniel Ames, Joshua Coyne and Kevin Kim
The purpose of the authors’ research study is to identify the impact of life cycle stage on firm acquisitions.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the authors’ research study is to identify the impact of life cycle stage on firm acquisitions.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a series of empirical databases to identify characteristics of acquirers and their targets. The authors then use logistic regressions and joint tests to identify significant differences between declining and non-declining acquirers.
Findings
The authors find that declining acquirers are more likely to pursue diversifying acquisitions and to pay for the acquisition with stock considerations. Acquisitions by declining acquirers result in positive abnormal returns initially, but post-acquisition returns are negative.
Research limitations/implications
The authors’ primary limitation is their data, which only includes public acquirers and targets, and runs from January 1, 1988 to December 31, 2010.
Practical implications
The authors’ research suggests that regulators, stakeholders and prospective stakeholders should consider the life cycle stage of an acquiring firm in setting expectations about motivations for and likely performance subsequent to the acquisition.
Originality/value
The authors’ paper is the first to consider the effect of firm life cycle stage on the motivation and subsequent success of an acquisition. Given the tremendous impact to shareholders of such significant transactions, understanding the acquisition process more completely is important to capital markets participants.
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Colin Harris, Andrew Myers, Christienne Briol and Sam Carlen
A discipline is bound by some combination of a shared subject matter, shared theory, and shared technique. Yet modern economics is seemingly without limit to its domain. As a…
Abstract
A discipline is bound by some combination of a shared subject matter, shared theory, and shared technique. Yet modern economics is seemingly without limit to its domain. As a discipline without a shared subject matter, what is the binding force of economics today? The authors combine topic modeling and text analysis to analyze different approaches to inquiry within the discipline of economics. The authors find that the importance of theory has declined as economics has increasingly become defined by its empirical techniques. The authors question whether this trajectory is stable in the long run as the binding force of the discipline.
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The current literature has not made any connection between foreign aid and entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if foreign aid influences entrepreneurial…
Abstract
Purpose
The current literature has not made any connection between foreign aid and entrepreneurship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate if foreign aid influences entrepreneurial activities in a recipient country.
Design/methodology/approach
Using system generalized method of moments (Blundell and Bond, 1998) estimators with a panel of 38 recipient countries during 2005–2014, the author tests for 33 measures of entrepreneurial activities.
Findings
This paper finds that aggregate aid tends to only boost necessity-driven early-stage entrepreneurship and benefit low-income entrepreneurs. Aid to infrastructure promotes entrepreneurship driven by both opportunity and necessity motivations. It also incentivizes competition with homogeneous products. Additionally, evidence suggests that both aggregate aid and infrastructural aid discourage adoption of state-of-the-art technologies, raise business failure rate and are associated more with necessity-driven early-stage entrepreneurial activities for females.
Originality/value
This is the first research examining “aid and entrepreneurship” relation.
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Ion Sterpan and Richard E. Wagner
Political economy is a term in wide use and has been for centuries. Yet standard economic theory reduces politics to ethics or economics. This reduction is enabled by the…
Abstract
Political economy is a term in wide use and has been for centuries. Yet standard economic theory reduces politics to ethics or economics. This reduction is enabled by the presumption of closed choice data or given utility and cost functions. In this conceptual framework, the political vanishes into an activity of preference satisfaction according to a welfare function (ethics) or into trade (economics). To bring the political back to life within a theory of political economy requires that closed schemes of thought be replaced by open schemes. The ways in which individuals react to the indeterminacy of their subjective choice data, in innocuous small-scale settings as well as in situations of dramatic exception to constitutional rules, separates them into leaders and followers. Followership creates an opportunity for political enterprise at the social level (enterprise in rules) and at the subjective level (enterprise in visions of options, and hence preferences). At both levels the political comes to the fore of political economy as an answer to the “challenge of exception.” Much of our inspiration for this argument traces to the work of Friedrich Wieser, Carl Schmitt, and Vincent Ostrom.
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Joshua K. Bedi and Shaomeng Jia
The finding that immigrants are more likely to self-employ than natives has been consistently shown by different researchers. At the same time, many call for the prioritization of…
Abstract
Purpose
The finding that immigrants are more likely to self-employ than natives has been consistently shown by different researchers. At the same time, many call for the prioritization of high-skilled immigration as they believe low-skilled entrepreneurs are not particularly innovative or high-growth-oriented. The purpose of this study is to critically review and synthesize the current literature on immigrant self-employment, paying particular attention to low-skilled immigrant entrepreneurship and the popular policy recommendation that high-skilled immigrants should be prioritized.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors survey the existing literature on immigrant self-employment and discuss recurring data issues, how those issues have or have not been addressed, as well as how these data issues impact the validity of policy recommendations that favor high-skilled immigrants and disfavor low-skilled immigrants. In particular, the authors examine how length of stay in the host country and host country institutions impact immigrant self-employment, especially low-skilled immigrant self-employment. The authors also point out unintended consequences of low-skilled immigration.
Findings
The authors find data issues significantly impact the potential justifications behind calls to favor high-skilled immigrants. In particular, many researchers underestimate the positive impacts of low-skilled immigrant self-employment by not accounting for institutions and length of stay in the host country. The authors conclude with policy recommendations that prioritize high-skilled immigration should be re-examined in light of recurring omitted variable biases within previous studies and evidence of a number of positive unintended consequences associated with low-skilled migration.
Originality/value
The authors review current literature and discuss how important confounding variables, like the number of years an immigrant entrepreneur has lived in a host country and the institutions of a host country, make common policy recommendations suggesting prioritization of high-skilled immigration problematic. The authors also discuss potential solutions to these data issues, ways these issues have been solved already, and possible ways forward. Finally, after considering the literature, the authors offer our own set of policy recommendations.
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Raymond J. March, Adam G. Martin and Audrey Redford
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the distinctions and complementary of William Baumol and Israel Kirzner’s classifications of and insights into entrepreneurship, and thus…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to clarify the distinctions and complementary of William Baumol and Israel Kirzner’s classifications of and insights into entrepreneurship, and thus providing a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity. This paper also attempts to clarify distinctions between unproductive and destructive entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper illustrates a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity by examining entrepreneurial innovation in drug markets both legal and illegal, identifying cases of productive, unproductive, superfluous, erroneous, destructive, and protective entrepreneurship.
Findings
This paper finds that the classifications of entrepreneurship (productive, superfluous, unproductive, erroneous, protective and destructive) put forth by Baumol, Kirzner, and the institutional entrepreneurship literature are complementary. While Baumol seeks to explain the disequilibrating tendencies of entrepreneurship, Kirzner seeks to explain the equilibrating tendencies of entrepreneurship within the institutional context.
Originality/value
This paper utilizes case studies from legal and illegal drug markets to uniquely and better explain the six cases of entrepreneurship. This paper also contributes to the literature by clearly articulating the complementarity of Baumolian and Kirznerian entrepreneurship.
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Tom Schultheiss, Lorraine Hartline, Jean Mandeberg, Pam Petrich and Sue Stern
The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the…
Abstract
The following classified, annotated list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” Reference books with imprints older than two years will not be included (with the exception of current reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.