University of North Texas at Dallas

Some peculiar characteristics of service firms, such as low capital intensity and the inseparability of production and consumption, have necessitated the modification of the traditional transaction-cost framework used to study entry-mode choice. By relaxing some unduly restrictive assumptions of the conventional transaction-cost analysis (TCA) model, the paper argues that firms prefer to start with full-control modes. It postulates that substantial variation in entry-mode choice occurs when firms that are characterized by low asset specificity relinquish control in response to the rising costs of integration or the diminishing ability to integrate. Several hypotheses on the propensity of service firms to employ shared-control entry modes are developed and tested. The results not only provide insights into entry-mode choice by service firms but also indicate how the transaction-cost framework can be broadened to develop a more comprehensive model for understanding entry-mode choice.

Many school districts experience difficulties attracting and retaining teachers, and the impending retirement of a substantial fraction of public school teachers raises the specter of severe shortages in some public schools. Schools in urban areas serving economically disadvantaged and minority students appear particularly vulnerable. This paper investigates those factors that affect the probabilities that teachers switch schools or exit the public schools entirely. The results indicate that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the students, particularly race and achievement, than to salary, although salary exerts a modest impact once compensating differentials are taken into account.

This valuable book shows second language researchers how to use the statistical program SPSS to conduct statistical tests frequently done in SLA research. Using data sets from real SLA studies, A Guide to Doing Statistics in Second Language Research Using SPSS shows newcomers to both statistics and SPSS how to generate descriptive statistics, how to choose a statistical test, and how to conduct and interpret a variety of basic statistical tests. It covers the statistical tests that are most commonly used in second language research, including chi-square, t-tests, correlation, multiple regression, ANOVA and non-parametric analogs to these tests. The text is abundantly illustrated with graphs and tables depicting actual data sets, and exercises throughout the book help readers understand concepts (such as the difference between independent and dependent variables) and work out statistical analyses. Answers to all exercises are provided on the book’s companion website, along with sample data sets and other supplementary material.

Over a large number of new products and technological innovations, the Bass diffusion model (Bass 1969) describes the empirical adoption curve quite well. In this study, we generalize the Bass model to include decision variables such as price and advertising. The generalized model reduces to the Bass model as a special case and explains why the Bass model works so well without including decision variables. We compare our generalized Bass model to other approaches from the literature for including decision variables into diffusion models, and our results provide both theoretical and empirical support for the generalized Bass model. We also show how our generalized Bass model can be used for product planning purposes.

This study tests whether the observed patterns in stock returns after quarterly earnings announcements are related to the proportion of firm shares held by institutional investors, a variable used by prior research to proxy for investor sophistication. Our findings show that the institutional holdings variable is negatively correlated with the observed post-announcement abnormal returns. Our findings also show that traditional proxies for transaction costs (i.e., trading volume, stock price) as well as firm size have little incremental power to explain post-announcement abnormal returns when institutional holdings is an explanatory variable. If institutional ownership is a valid proxy for investor sophistication, these findings suggest that the trading activity of unsophisticated investors underlies the predictability of stock returns after earnings announcements. However, tests evaluating the validity of institutional holdings as a proxy for investor sophistication yield only mixed results. This calls for caution in interpreting our findings.

Because of their extensive wounds, burn patients are chronically exposed to inflammatory mediators. Thus, burn patients, by definition, already have "systemic inflammatory response syndrome." Current definitions for sepsis and infection have many criteria (fever, tachycardia, tachypnea, leukocytosis) that are routinely found in patients with extensive burns, making these current definitions less applicable to the burn population. Experts in burn care and research, all members of the American Burn Association, were asked to review the literature and prepare a potential definition on one topic related to sepsis or infection in burn patients. On January 20, 2007, the participants met in Tucson, Arizona to develop consensus for these definitions. After review of the definitions, a summary of the proceedings was prepared. The goal of the consensus conference was to develop and publish standardized definitions for sepsis and infection-related diagnoses in the burn population. Standardized definitions will improve the capability of performing more meaningful multicenter trials among burn centers.

The balanced scorecard provides a framework for selecting multiple performance measures that supplement traditional financial measures with operating measures of customer satisfaction, internal processes, and learning and growth activities. An essential aspect of the balanced scorecard lies in its articulation of the linkage between performance measures and business strategy. This study conducts an experiment to assess how individuals' evaluations of the performance of business unit managers depend on strategically linked performance measures of a balanced scorecard. Statistical test results indicate that performance evaluations are influenced by strategically linked measures more than non-linked measures only when evaluators are provided detailed information about business unit strategies. The results also confirm Lipe and Salterio's (2000) finding that evaluators rely more on common measures than on unique measures. Evaluators rely more on strategically linked measures than on common measures when they are provided information on strategic linkages, but the reverse relation holds when they are not.

This paper investigates whether insider trading is informative about earnings quality and the valuation implications of accruals. We show that (1) the one-year-ahead persistence of income-increasing accruals is significantly lower when accompanied by abnormal insider selling and greater when accompanied by abnormal insider buying; (2) the accrual mispricing phenomenon observed in previous work (e.g., Sloan 1996) is due to the mispricing of income-increasing accruals; (3) one-year-ahead hedge returns to trading strategies based on the direction of accruals and insider trading significantly exceed those based on accruals alone; and (4) the lower persistence of income-increasing accruals accompanied by abnormal insider selling appears to be at least partly attributable to opportunistic earnings management. Our evidence suggests that market participants and researchers can use managers' contemporaneous trading in ex ante assessing the likelihood that the firms' accruals are of high or low quality, and in assessing the likelihood of earnings management. Our evidence suggesting that insiders trade on their knowledge of factors associated with accrual persistence is also relevant to policymakers charged with regulating insider trading.

In this study we explore why persons flee their homes to become refugees and internally displaced persons. We contend that individuals will tend to flee when the integrity of their person is threatened. Further, we argue that they will flee toward countries where they expect conditions to be better. We conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 129 countries for the years 1964-1989. Our findings support the conclusion that threats to personal integrity are of primary importance in leading people to abandon their homes. Measures of state threats to personal integrity, dissident threats to personal integrity, and joint state-dissident threats each have statistically significant and substantively important effects on migrant production. We also find that countries making moves toward democracy tend to have greater number of forced migrants, once other factors are considered. We conclude the analysis by identifying several lucrative areas for further investigation.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative pathogen for the COVID-19, first emerged in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and by March 2020, it was declared a pandemic. COVID-19 pandemic has overburdened healthcare systems in most countries and has led to massive economic losses. SARS-CoV-2 transmission typically occurs by respiratory droplets. The average incubation period is 6.4 days and presenting symptoms typically include fever, cough, dyspnea, myalgia or fatigue. While the majority of patients tend to have a mild illness, a minority of patients develop severe hypoxia requiring hospitalization and mechanical ventilation. Management is mostly supportive. However, several direct anti-viral agents, and immunomodulatory therapy with steroids and various cytokine blockers seem promising in early results. However, an effective vaccine has been established, which will help curb the pandemic.

Author(s): Hopwood, Christopher J; Kotov, Roman; Krueger, Robert F; Watson, David; Widiger, Thomas A; Althoff, Robert R; Ansell, Emily B; Bach, Bo; Bagby, R Michael; Blais, Mark A; Bornovalova, Marina A; Chmielewski, Michael; Cicero, David C; Conway, Christopher; De Clercq, Barbara; De Fruyt, Filip; Docherty, Anna R; Eaton, Nicholas R; Edens, John F; Forbes, Miriam K; Forbush, Kelsie T; Hengartner, Michael P; Ivanova, Masha Y; Leising, Daniel; Livesley, W John; Lukowitsky, Mark R; Lynam, Donald R; Markon, Kristian E; Miller, Joshua D; Morey, Leslie C; Mullins‐Sweatt, Stephanie N; Ormel, J Hans; Patrick, Christopher J; Pincus, Aaron L; Ruggero, Camilo; Samuel, Douglas B; Sellbom, Martin; Slade, Tim; Tackett, Jennifer L; Thomas, Katherine M; Trull, Timothy J; Vachon, David D; Waldman, Irwin D; Waszczuk, Monika A; Waugh, Mark H; Wright, Aidan GC; Yalch, Mathew M; Zald, David H; Zimmermann, Johannes

A measurement of the mass of the W boson is presented based on proton-proton collision data recorded in 2011 at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, and corresponding to 4.6 fb -1 of integrated luminosity. The selected data sample consists of 7.8 10 6 candidates in the W channel and 5.9 10 6 candidates in the W e channel. The W -boson mass is obtained from template fits to the reconstructed distributions of the charged lepton transverse momentum and of the W boson transverse mass in the electron and muon decay channels, yielding m W = 80370 7 (stat.) 11(exp. syst.)

According to real options theory, international joint ventures (IJVs) offer valuable growth options, yet there has been no direct evidence of whether, and under what conditions, firms actually capture such value. We argue that an IJV's ownership structure, product-market focus, and geographic location are important contingencies affecting the value of embedded growth options. Our evidence confirms that IJVs do enhance firms' growth option values, but only under certain circumstances. Specifically, minority IJVs and diversifying IJVs contribute to growth option value, but other IJVs do not. The findings also challenge recent claims about the growth option value of investments in emerging economies.

In this paper, a high-temperature, high-frequency, wire-bond-based multichip phase-leg module was designed, fabricated, and fully tested. Using paralleled Silicon Carbide (SiC) MOSFETs, the module was rated at 1200 V and 60 A, and was designed for a 25-kW three-phase inverter operating at a switching frequency of 70 kHz, and in a harsh environment up to 200 °C, for aircraft applications. To this end, the temperature-dependent characteristics of the SiC MOSFET were first evaluated. The results demonstrated the superiority of the SiC MOSFET in both static and switching performances compared to Si devices, but meanwhile did reveal the design tradeoff in terms of the device's gate oxide stability. Various high-temperature packaging materials were then extensively surveyed and carefully selected for the module to sustain the harsh environment. The electrical layout of the module was also optimized using a modeling and simulation approach, in order to minimize the device parasitic ringing during high-speed switching. Finally, the static and switching performances of the fabricated module were tested, and the 200 °C continuous operation of the SiC MOSFETs was verified.

Several studies have shown that pioneering brands are preferred to later entrants. The “pioneering advantage” is remarkably robust and has been observed across a wide variety of products and contexts. Two longitudinal experiments were conducted to investigate judgmental mechanisms that contribute to this advantage. In experiment 1, the amount of information presented was held constant across brands. Nevertheless, subjects learned more about the pioneer than about later entrants and consequently judgments of the pioneer were more extreme and were held with greater confidence. Furthermore, the pioneering advantage increased over time, especially when subjects were exposed repeatedly to the features of the pioneer. Experiment 2 demonstrated that order-of-entry effects on consumer memory and judgment are eliminated when information about a set of brands is presented simultaneously as opposed to sequentially. Furthermore, the results revealed that sequential information processing benefits the pioneer even when product information is processed incidentally. Implications of the results for understanding and managing order-of-entry effects are discussed.

Abstract The North American gravity database as well as data-bases from Canada, Mexico, and the United States are being revised to improve their coverage, versatility, and accuracy. An important part of this effort is revising procedures for calculating gravity anomalies, taking into account our enhanced computational power, improved terrain databases and datums, and increased interest in more accurately defining long-wavelength anomaly components. Users of the databases may note minor differences between previous and revised database values as a result of these procedures. Generally, the differences do not impact the interpretation of local anomalies but do improve regional anomaly studies. The most striking revision is the use of the internationally accepted terrestrial ellipsoid for the height datum of gravity stations rather than the conventionally used geoid or sea level. Principal facts of gravity observations and anomalies based on both revised and previous procedures together with germane metadata will be available on an interactive Web-based data system as well as from national agencies and data centers. The use of the revised procedures is encouraged for gravity data reduction because of the widespread use of the global positioning system in gravity fieldwork and the need for increased accuracy and precision of anomalies and consistency with North American and national databases. Anomalies based on the revised standards should be preceded by the adjective “ellipsoidal” to differentiate anomalies calculated using heights with respect to the ellipsoid from those based on conventional elevations referenced to the geoid.

The bullwhip effect describes the tendency for the variance of orders in supply chains to increase as one moves upstream from consumer demand. We report on a set of laboratory experiments with a serial supply chain that tests behavioral causes of this phenomenon, in particular the possible influence of coordination risk. Coordination risk exists when individuals' decisions contribute to a collective outcome and the decision rules followed by each individual are not known with certainty, for example, where managers cannot be sure how their supply chain partners will behave. We conjecture that the existence of coordination risk may contribute to bullwhip behavior. We test this conjecture by controlling for environmental factors that lead to coordination risk and find these controls lead to a significant reduction in order oscillations and amplification. Next, we investigate a managerial intervention to reduce the bullwhip effect, inspired by our conjecture that coordination risk contributes to bullwhip behavior. Although the intervention, holding additional on‐hand inventory, does not change the existence of coordination risk, it reduces order oscillation and amplification by providing a buffer against the endogenous risk of coordination failure. We conclude that the magnitude of the bullwhip can be mitigated, but that its behavioral causes appear robust.

Brown adipose tissue (BAT), as the main site of adaptive thermogenesis, exerts beneficial metabolic effects on obesity and insulin resistance. BAT has been previously assumed to contain a homogeneous population of brown adipocytes. Utilizing multiple mouse models capable of genetically labeling different cellular populations, as well as single-cell RNA sequencing and 3D tissue profiling, we discovered a brown adipocyte subpopulation with low thermogenic activity coexisting with the classical high-thermogenic brown adipocytes within the BAT. Compared with the high-thermogenic brown adipocytes, these low-thermogenic brown adipocytes had substantially lower Ucp1 and Adipoq expression, larger lipid droplets, and lower mitochondrial content. Functional analyses showed that, unlike the high-thermogenic brown adipocytes, the low-thermogenic brown adipocytes have markedly lower basal mitochondrial respiration, and they are specialized in fatty acid uptake. Upon changes in environmental temperature, the 2 brown adipocyte subpopulations underwent dynamic interconversions. Cold exposure converted low-thermogenic brown adipocytes into high-thermogenic cells. A thermoneutral environment had the opposite effect. The recruitment of high-thermogenic brown adipocytes by cold stimulation is not affected by high-fat diet feeding, but it does substantially decline with age. Our results revealed a high degree of functional heterogeneity of brown adipocytes.

This paper summarizes the research literature related to audit firm quality control, with a dual purpose: (1) to provide information on the current state of knowledge with regard to the ways in which audit firms monitor and control firm-level risk; and (2) to identify specific areas in which there is currently insufficient research. We review literature on a number of specific topics under the overall heading of firm-level risk monitoring and control, including: client acceptance/continuance procedures, auditor independence (partner and firm rotation, employing former auditors, nonaudit services, partner compensation), electronic decision aids, consultation units, procedures for communicating weaknesses and taking corrective action, and review of engagement activities (including engagement quality reviews, peer reviews, and regulatory inspections). We conclude with a discussion of research relevant to the issue of whether smaller audit firms should be subject to the same level of quality control regulation as larger firms.

Corrosion of titanium dental implants has been associated with implant failure and is considered one of the triggering factors for peri-implantitis. This corrosion is concerning, because a large amount of metal ions and debris are generated in this process, the accumulation of which may lead to adverse tissue reactions in vivo. The goal of this study is to investigate the mechanisms for implant degradation by evaluating the surface of five titanium dental implants retrieved due to peri-implantitis. The results demonstrated that all the implants were subjected to very acidic environments, which, in combination with normal implant loading, led to cases of severe implant discoloration, pitting attack, cracking and fretting-crevice corrosion. The results suggest that acidic environments induced by bacterial biofilms and/or inflammatory processes may trigger oxidation of the surface of titanium dental implants. The corrosive process can lead to permanent breakdown of the oxide film, which, besides releasing metal ions and debris in vivo, may also hinder re-integration of the implant surface with surrounding bone.