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The prediction of pre-election polls is an issue of concern for both politicians and voters. The Taiwan nine-in-one election held in 2014 ended with jaw-dropping results; apparently, traditional polls did not work well. As a remedy to this problem, the purpose of this paper is to utilize the comments posted on social media to analyze civilians’ views on the two candidates for mayor of Taichung City, Chih-chiang Hu, and Chia-Lung Lin.

After conducting word segmentation and part-of-speech tagging for the collected reviews, this study constructs the opinion phrase extraction rules for identifying the opinion words associated with the attribute words. Next, this study classifies the attribute words into six municipal governance-related topics and calculates the opinion scores for each candidate. Finally, this study uses correspondence analysis to transform opinion information on the candidates into a graphical display to facilitate the interpretation of voters’ views.

The results show that the topics of candidates’ backgrounds and transport infrastructure were the two most critical factors for the election prediction. Based on the predication, Lin outscores Hu by 17.74 percent which is close to the real election results.

This study proposes new rules for the extraction of Chinese opinion words associated with attribute words.

This study applies Chinese semantic analysis to assist in predicting election results and investigating the topics of concern to voters.

The proposed opinion phrase extraction rules for Chinese social media, as well as the election forecast process, can provide valuable references for political parties and candidates to plan better nomination and election strategies.

This article aims to clarify the role of social capital and social capital inequality embedded in bank ties in enabling and diversifying new firms' debt use.

The study adopts a quantitative method, using an unbalanced longitudinal dataset covering three years–2011, 2013 and 2015–from a project on small manufacturing enterprises in Vietnam. The sample consists of 513 firm-year observations.

Network extensity and network mobilisation increase new firms' debt use. Differences in ascribed and attained social statuses (i.e. gender, generation, business association membership and political affiliation) result in social capital inequality between entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs who are of a younger generation, have higher levels of education and are not members of the Communist Party benefit less from social capital than those who are older, have less education and are party members.

The effects of access to and the use of the social capital embedded in bank ties on new firms' debt use are both studied. The sources of social capital inequality are investigated at the individual level through distinguishing ascribed and attained social statuses and explained by two mechanisms: capital deficit and return deficit. The moderating effects of social capital inequality are also examined.

Executive compensation packages are often valued in an inconsistent manner: while employee stock options (ESOs) are typically valued ex‐ante, i.e., before uncertain ties are resolved, cash bonuses are valued ex‐post, i.e., by discounting the realized cash grants. Such a lack of consistency can, potentially, distort empirical results. A related, yet mostly overlooked, problem is that when ex‐post valuation is used pay‐performance measures cannot be well defined. Consistent use of ex‐ante valuation for all components of a compensation package would simultaneously resolve both of these problems and provide a natural framework for the analysis of agency problems. In this paper, we perform ex‐ante valuation of cash bonus contracts as if the executive’s performance were measured by the company stock price, demonstrate how the shape of the bonus contract influences the executive’s attitude toward risk, and study the pay‐performance sensitiv ty of such contracts. We commence by demonstrating that a typical executive bonus contract with a linear incentive zone has a pay off structure equivalent to a portfolio of standard and binary European call options so that the ex‐ante contract value is given by the linear combination of Black and Scholes call and binary call prices, with the strike prices at the boundary points of the incentive zone. Assuming that a risk neutral executive can choose the level of stock price volatility by selecting a set of projects at origination, we show that bonus contract terms can dramatically affect the executive’s risk taking behavior and pay performance incentives. Our results are extended to bonus contracts with non‐linear incentive zones, and performance share contracts with vesting risk.

This study evaluates low Reynolds number models of turbulence for numerical computations on the heat transfer and fluid flow behavior in a rectangular channel with streamwise‐periodic ribs mounted on one of the principal walls. The models include k − ε models of Launder and Sharma (1974), Chien (1982), k − ε model of Lin and Hwang (1998), Wilcox’s k−ω model (Wilcox, 1994) and Durbin’s model k − ε −v² (Durbin, 1995). The numerical results show that all these models can predict the flowfield reasonably well, and the inclusion of the Yap term (Yap, 1987) in the ε – equation (or ε – equation) can further improve the prediction in these k − ε models, k − ε model and k − ε − v² model. However, these models behave differently in heat transfer computations. The k − ω model leads to too low a level of heat transfer and turbulence. Among these k − ε models and the k − ε model, Lin’s model with the Yap term predicts the heat transfer level best. Durbin’s model with extra v², f equations and the Yap term exhibits further improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of consumers’ perceptions of convenience retailer innovativeness on their perceived value (PV) and store patronage intentions (PIs).

A three-step PCRI-PV-PI model that integrates perceived convenience retailer innovativeness (PCRI), PV, and PIs is proposed. The moderating effect of consumer innovativeness on the relationship between PCRI and PIs is also examined.

Modeling results confirm that PCRI is an important antecedent of PV among consumers that further influences their PIs toward specific convenience retailers. Moreover, PCRI significantly and indirectly affects the PIs of less innovative consumers via PV. However, no such indirect association is identified among highly innovative consumers.

The proposed PCRI-PV-PI model may be useful to other consumer behavior and retail studies, particularly in this era of increased market competition in which innovation has become a critical strategic tool for market differentiation.

The current research is the first empirical study that examines the effects of PCRI on PV and PIs in the context of convenience retailing.

The purpose of this paper is to compare foreign listings on regulated and unregulated exchanges, and civil and common‐law companies to test the effects of cross‐listing (CL) on the firm's number of analysts and the accuracy of their forecast.

The study is a comparative one. The empirical test employs both univariate and multivariate analyses and a sample of 584 cross‐listed firms along with the number of analysts and analysts' forecast errors (FE).

After controlling for the firm's size, risk, earnings surprise, and industry, the results show that analysts become more active around CL on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and PORTAL compared to CL on AMEX, NASDAQ, NYSE and over the counter (OTC). On the contrary, no statistically significant decrease in the magnitude of analysts' FEs was reported, suggesting no increase in the quantity of analysts' information. The results hold for both civil and common‐law countries.

The study is limited to the use of cross‐listed firms only. Future research should include non‐cross‐listed firms. As for the implications, the evidence indicates that the choice between CL on regulated or unregulated exchanges in the USA has no impact, either on the decision of an analyst to follow the firm or on the quantity of information available about that firm. In addition, the evidence suggests that analysts are more inclined to follow firms that cross‐list on the LSE than on the US regulated exchanges. Moreover, PORTAL, as an unregulated market, provides surprising evidence on the significant role of the US large institutional investors in attracting the highest number of analysts per firm compared to other regulated exchanges.

The paper compares CL on regulated and unregulated exchanges in the USA and UK for both civil and common‐law firms. It contributes to the existing literature on CL and information disclosure and has implications for academics, market regulators, professionals, and multinational firms.

The last few years in the financial markets have shown great instability and high volatility. In order to capture the amount of risk a financial firm takes on in a single trading day, risk managers use a technology known as value‐at‐risk (VaR). There are many methodologies available to calculate VaR, and each has its limitations. Many past methods have included a normality assumption, which can often produce misleading figures as most financial returns are characterized by skewness (asymmetry) and leptokurtosis (fat‐tails). The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of VaR and describe some of the most recent computational approaches.

This paper compares the Student‐t, autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (ARCH) family of models, and extreme value theory (EVT) as a means of capturing the fat‐tailed nature of a returns distribution.

Recent research has utilized the third and fourth moments to estimate the shape index parameter of the tail. Other approaches, such as extreme value theory, focus on the extreme values to calculate the tail ends of a distribution. By highlighting benefits and limitations of the Student‐t, autoregressive conditional heteroskedastic (ARCH) family of models, and the extreme value theory, one can see that there is no one particular model that is best for computing VaR (although all of the models have proven to capture the fat‐tailed nature better than a normal distribution).

This paper details the basic advantages, disadvantages, and mathematics of current parametric methodologies used to assess value‐at‐risk (VaR), since accurate VaR measures reduce a firm's capital requirement and reassure creditors and investors of the firm's risk level.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prevalence of benign and malicious envy on social media, and to examine the relationships between shared content (experiential vs material purchases), envy type (benign vs malicious), and purchase intention (toward the same vs a superior object).

Three studies (N=622) were conducted to ask participants to recall the last time they experienced envy due to browsing social media, report an envy-triggering post about either an experiential or a material purchase shared by others and read a post about a friend’s newly bought MacBook in either an experiential or a material phrasing. The degrees of benign and malicious envy were measured, as well as the future purchase intentions toward the same and a superior object.

The results showed that most of the envious emotions were actually benign envy. Although there was no main effect of purchase type on envy type, both experiential purchases and phrasings were less likely to be perceived as showing off, and therefore triggered less malicious envy. Furthermore, benign envy was positively associated with the purchase intention of the same envied purchase, and malicious envy was positively associated with the purchase intention of something even superior.

As browsing other’s social news sometimes evokes envy, people were concerned about the negative effects of envy on consumers. However, this paper addressed the positive effects of envy which comes along with a motivation of moving up. This positive motivation can also be utilized for social media advertising.

Explores the influence of Japan’s culture on its innovative strengths and weaknesses. Indicates that Japan is good at evolutionary and process innovation but not so hot on inventing. Links this to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, comparing Japanese with US results. Attempts to link Japanese cultural attributes to rice and its consequent agricultural system and associated human relations. Devotes a section each to Japanese collectivism, power, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity/femininity, and Confucianism. Finds that Japanese culture does not promote individuality or risk‐taking (unlike the US), but does excel at process technology.

Research has found that African-Americans and women have opportunities for advancement in the traditional corporate environment through resources embedded in their social networks. However, layoffs can affect the composition of their social networks, their positions in the networks, and rewards from those networks. I suggest that the racial, cultural, and gender differences between African-American and women layoff survivors and White and male layoff survivors will negatively affect their access to and benefits from social capital resources. Yet, strong tie relationships with White and male layoff survivors in key strategic positions can help African-American and women survivors maintain their existing job position because they can then borrow the social capital resources of the White and male survivors. Thus, while research has found that weak ties help individuals advance in their workplaces, strong tie relationships with majority groups may be more beneficial to minority groups in maintaining their position after a layoff.