Charge Higher Fees Research Articles

The rise of predatory publishing and journals.

Predatory publishing is a practice where businesses offer illegitimate and unethical publishing where an open access model is generally used with very little or no peer review at all. These publishers also charge high fees for article processing without the standard editorial or publishing standards for scientific disciplines. Predatory journals are an increasing phenomenon in dentistry, as in any healthcare academic publishing. This can mean poor-quality or false research is given false legitimacy and becomes available for dissemination and public consumption. They can be seen as an easy route to publish any work, particularly by junior colleagues who are trying to advance their academic careers. This article discusses the features and issues with predatory publishing while also highlighting the importance of ensuring healthcare literature remains credible, reputable and trustworthy.

Do auditors care about what retail investors say? Evidence from China

Using China's stock forum postings from 2008 to 2020, we document that when client firms exhibit pessimistic investor sentiment, auditors exert greater effort and charge higher fees from those clients. This increase in audit fees is attributed to the downward pressure on stock prices and the elevated litigation risk of the clients. We also reveal that the impact of pessimism on audit fees is stronger for firms with more widespread pessimism, those audited by larger audit firms and auditors with higher rankings, and those with a greater retail investor influence.

Achieving a Decentralized and Secure Cab Sharing System Using Blockchain Technology

The cab-sharing system provides a platform for drivers and riders with shared trip services, providing significant benefits, such as decreasing traffic congestion, reducing travel costs, and limiting energy consumption, which improve the business of transportation. However, existing cab-sharing systems mainly depend on the centralized authority to provide many services, increasing privacy concerns and facing the single point of failure issue. Also, these systems expose drivers’ or riders’ locations and personal information that increase security issues, and charge high fees for services due to the involvement of third-party providers. Therefore, this paper proposes a decentralized and secure cab-sharing system to provide ride-sharing services using blockchain technology without any trusted third party. The proposed system uses the blockchain structure to preserve the driver’s or rider’s information, such as personal details, travel price, pickup or drop-off locations, departure or arrival date, and time. Furthermore, it implements the reputation feature to rate drivers and riders based on their travel history or behaviors without any centralized authority that allows users to select them based on their past experiences on the system. The proposed architecture is deployed using the Ethereum platform and functionality is designed using smart contracts. The performance evaluation and experimental results show that the proposed system requires low computational overheads and provides an efficient cab-sharing platform.

The Tension Between Chinese Peasants’ Family Capital Reproduction Strategies and Massification in Higher Education

This paper is focused on the tension between Chinese peasants' family capital reproduction strategies and the existing higher education system. Under an institutionalised urban-rural segregation, most rural residents are not entitled to some of the basic social welfare guarantees available to urban residents, such as pensions. As a preparation for the future of their children as well as for themselves, peasants have a strong urge to invest in their children's higher education as their family capital reproduction strategy. However, higher education institutions, without sufficient funding from the government, have to increase enrolment size and charge high tuition fees. Increase in the cost of higher education has strongly impacted on the family economy of rural residents, and the rapid expansion of the system has resulted in an employment crisis for college graduates. Bourdieu's theory of capital reproduction will be applied in the analysis of several cases of rural parents and their children who have participated in higher education. The research eventually leads to the conclusion that, under urban-rural segregation, Chinese peasants are compelled to convert their limited economic capital into academic capital, while the reversibility of this capital conversion is hardly objectively guaranteed.

Competition for Attention in the ETF Space

AbstractThe interplay between investors’ demand and providers’ incentives has shaped the evolution of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). While early ETFs invested in broad-based indexes and therefore offered diversification at low cost, more recent products track niche portfolios and charge high fees. Strikingly, over their first 5 years, specialized ETFs lose about 30$\%$ (risk-adjusted). This underperformance cannot be explained by high fees or hedging demand. Rather, it is driven by the overvaluation of the underlying stocks at the time of the launch. Our results are consistent with providers catering to investors’ extrapolative beliefs by issuing specialized ETFs that track attention-grabbing themes.

Multiple systems, multiple shadows: Diversity of supplementary tutoring received by private-school students in Dubai

Dubai has a unique overall structure of educational provision in which 89% of students attend private schools serving multiple nationalities. About half of these students receive supplementary tutoring, widely known in the literature as shadow education. Different school systems within Dubai have different shadows, shaped by various factors including curricular demands and the cultures of the learners. Some supplementary tutoring is received within the schools, and some externally. Patterns of school-provided tutoring are shaped by the operators’ business models. Some schools charge high fees and include supplementary tutoring within their packages, while others charge lower fees and require separate payments for tutoring. Further variations are caused by the policies of school principals, thus indeed forming multiple systems with multiple shadows. Particularly employing interview data from 18 schools, the paper draws on Dubai’s unique features to make conceptual contributions to wider literature about the ways in which curricula, cultures, business models, and school-level administrations shape shadow education provision.

Corporate Control of Emergency Departments: Dangers from the Growing Monster

BackgroundCorporate control in emergency departments (EDs) has increased during the past 20 years through hospital consolidation and the growth of ED contract management groups. ObjectivesTo describe the growing corporate influence in the practice of emergency medicine and associated dangers to the public's safety and well-being. DiscussionHospital systems through mergers and acquisitions have created regional monopolies providing them the power to charge high fees, which can lead to economic hardship for patients. Hospitals have also increasingly employed physicians and can exert influence over their practice to further increase profits. ED contract management groups (CMGs) obtain the exclusive contract for emergency services and gain control over the livelihood of emergency physicians, decreasing their autonomy and inserting the business interest into the physician–patient relationship, and this may result in harm to patients. Safety issues identified by emergency physicians may not be articulated for fear of being fired, and protocols may direct physicians to order unneeded testing and encourage unnecessary hospital admissions to make higher profits. Of additional concern, some CMGs are involved in graduate emergency medicine education, exposing physicians in training to corporate influence during their formative years. ConclusionsGiven the potential harm to patients due to corporate influence, there must be serious consideration for legislative or regulatory solutions regarding the increasing corporate control of emergency medicine in the United States.

Portfolio Management Services in India: Returns and Incentives

On the back of booming equity markets and falling interest rates, Indian high net worth investors have flocked to Portfolio Management Services (PMS) funds in India with substantial assets under management of INR 18,07,939 crores. However, there is scant academic literature on the performance of PMS funds in India which charge high fees compared to passive index funds. The purpose of this study is twofold. First, describe the performance of PMS funds in India as compared to their respective benchmark. Secondly, review the incentives fees structure of PMS funds and recommend regulatory changes needed to address the shortcomings. The principal results indicate that majority of PMS funds have failed to outperform the benchmark in the short-term and medium-term periods. In the long-term period, however, largely PMS funds have beaten the benchmark returns. The implications of this study are two-fold in the Indian market context. First, high net worth individuals in India must invest via PMS funds only if their investment time horizon is at least ten years. For the short to medium-term, it will be better to invest in index funds due to their meager expense ratio and returns, which are like the benchmark indices. Second, Indian policymakers must increase the minimum hurdle rate based on which the variable performance fee is charged to ensure portfolio managers are rewarded if they generate abnormal risk-adjusted returns. This study contributes to academic literature by focusing on the performance and incentives of PMS funds market in India, which is largely unexplored till now.

Pesantren for Middle-Class Muslims in Indonesia (Between Religious Commodification and Pious Neoliberalism)

<p>Research about Islamic educational institutions, the market and the rise of the new Muslim middle-class in Indonesian society has mainly focused on schools. Its correlation with pesantren (Islamic boarding schools) as Islamic education providers has not yet been deeply portrayed. This paper aims to identify changes in pesantren management practices in relation to the growth of the Muslim middle-class and questions whether pesantren management practices intended to cater for the middle-class segment of society can be categorized as commodification or as acts of pious neoliberalism. As a preliminary examination, this paper was based on extensive literature and media research, interviews with teachers and parents in pesantren, and non-participant observation. This research highlights three different strategies developed by pesantren to respond to the growing size of the Muslim middle-class in Java, Indonesia: ‘developing’, ‘inserting’ and ‘creating’ new pesantren education programs. Three models are highlighted here in three select pesantren in Java: Firstly, a pesantren established and designed to accommodate middle-class Muslims that employs an approach that is an amalgamation between religious education and international educational standards. Secondly, a well-established traditional pesantren which built new ‘elite’ buildings to respond to demand from middle-class Muslims. And thirdly, a pesantren that targets urban middle-class students of all ages who have limited religious knowledge and which mainly focuses on a tahfidz program (memorizing of the Qur’an) through creating a ‘friendly’ image of learning the Qur’an. These pesantren maintain a deeply religious curriculum similar to traditional pesantren and provide good facilities for students but charge high fees for education, and as such may connotate a commodification practice. Using Mona Atia’s concept of pious neoliberalism, the writer questions whether the fusion of religious practices of any kind, commodification and adjustment to market logic, in this context, might be better understood as pious neoliberalism. In this sense, the commodification practices in the examples offered here should not always bear a pejorative meaning. While admitting that global changes have introduced new challenges to the Muslim community and in relation to Islamic education, it is hoped that this article will encourage further discussion and investigation on the subject of the changing nature of provision and management of Islamic educational institutions, in particular pesantren, in Indonesia.</p>

Consultation Pricing of the Online Health Care Service in China: Hierarchical Linear Regression Approach.

BackgroundOnline health care services are a possible solution to alleviate the lack of medical resources in rural areas, and further understanding of the related medical service pricing system would contribute to improvement of the online health care community (OHC). Although many studies have investigated the OHC, the impact of physicians’ reputations and wage levels on consulting prices in the OHC has rarely been discussed in the literature.ObjectiveThis study was designed to explore the determinants of consulting prices in the OHC. We addressed the following questions: (1) Are the prices of online health consultation services affected by wage levels at the doctor’s location? (2) How does a physician’s online and offline reputation affect their consulting prices?MethodsEmploying a large-scale sample of 16,008 doctors in China, we first used descriptive statistics to investigate the determinants of consulting prices in their entirety. Hierarchical linear modeling was then used to investigate the determinants of consulting prices in the OHC.ResultsThe empirical results led to the conclusion that if doctors have more elevated clinic titles, work in higher-level hospitals, have better online reputations, and/or have made more past sales, their consulting prices will be higher. Additionally, the wage level in the city in which the doctor is working determines their opportunity cost and therefore also affects consulting prices.ConclusionsThe findings indicate that the characteristics of the doctor, the doctor’s online reputation, and past sales affect the consulting price. In particular, the wage level in the city affects the price of the consultation. These findings highlight that the OHC is important because it can indeed break through geographical restrictions and give rural residents the opportunity to obtain medical service from doctors in big cities. However, doctors from cities often charge higher fees because of their higher opportunity cost. The results reveal that one of the most important functions of the OHC is to reduce the medical disparity between urban and rural areas; however, planners appear to ignore the possibility that rural residents with lower incomes may not be able to afford such high medical consultation costs. Therefore, the government should consider providing incentives to encourage urban doctors to provide discounts to rural residents or directly offer appropriate subsidies.

Audit Fees Determinants: A Study on the Impact of Key Audit Matters Reporting and other Factors

Knowledge is now an essential source of competitive advantage. Itenhanceseconomic growth and increasescorporate value. In the field of auditing, authority was aware of the need for improved reporting and thus has issued a brand newstandard related to auditor's report.While the new report is expected to enhanceaudit reporting and improve the quality of audit, the move may also increasethe audit costs as auditorsnow needto expandtheir efforts. We analyzed 261 companies listed on Bursa Malaysia and the results indicate that the requirement to improve auditor's communication through enhanced reporting does not influence audit fees. Instead, the study suggests that the company size, poor financial performance and liquidity issue are key determinants of audit fees. The two world's largest audit firms, i.e., PWC and KPMG, are found to charge higher fees than others, possibly for the brand name. This study informs regulators of the influence of the new requirement on audit output costs.It also offers insight into the main drivers for audit pricing following the current reporting requirement.

The implications of passive investments for active fund management: International evidence

This paper investigates how the tremendous growth in indexed investments has affected active management in the equity mutual fund industry across 32 countries. Our findings indicate that the growing competition from passive funds does not reduce the fees of actively managed funds. Moreover, active funds do not increase their product differentiation by diverging more from their benchmarks when they face more competitive pressure from indexed products, though they do sometimes charge higher fees and reduce their activity. Thus, our tests indicate that indexed and active funds can coexist and attract different clienteles.

Mandatory partner rotation, audit timeliness and audit pricing

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide further evidence on the ongoing debate on the costs and benefits of mandatory audit partner rotation (MPR). Specifically, this study examines how MPR simultaneously affects audit reporting lag (ARL) and audit fees (AFs).Design/methodology/approachA simultaneous approach was adopted to further shed light on the findings currently documented by this line of research.FindingsUsing Australian data, it was found that MPRs increase AFs but do not affect ARL simultaneously in the year of MPRs. It was also found that the departing audit partners do not charge higher fees or delay the completion of the audits in the final year before their departure and that neither AFs nor ARL changes significantly for the second round of MPRs.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study on MPR has examined the issue using a simultaneous approach although failure to consider the simultaneous effect of interrelated variables may lead to estimation biases and problems of parameter identification. The results herein provide further evidence that the clients do not bear both costs of paying higher AFs and having the delayed audits and that the costs associated with MPRs do not occur earlier and the costs associated with MPRs may dissipate over time.

Competition for Attention in the ETF Space

The interplay between investors’ demand and providers’ incentives has shaped the evolution of exchange-traded funds (ETFs). While early ETFs offered diversification at low cost, later ETFs track niche portfolios and charge high fees. Strikingly, over their first five years, specialized ETFs lose about 30% in risk-adjusted terms. This underperformance cannot be explained by high fees or hedging demand. Rather, it is driven by the overvaluation of the underlying stocks. Overall, providers appear to cater to investors’ extrapolative beliefs by issuing specialized ETFs that track attention-grabbing themes.

Competition for Attention in the ETF Space

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are the most prominent financial innovation of the last three decades. Early ETFs offered broad-based portfolios at low cost. As competition became more intense, issuers started offering specialized ETFs that track niche portfolios and charge high fees. Specialized ETFs hold stocks with salient characteristics---high past performance, media exposure, and sentiment---that are appealing to retail and sentiment-driven investors. After their launch, these products perform poorly as the hype around them vanishes, delivering negative risk-adjusted returns. Overall, financial innovation in the ETF space follows two paths: broad-based products that cater to cost-conscious investors and expensive specialized ETFs that compete for the attention of unsophisticated investors.

Do ESG Funds Make Stakeholder-Friendly Investments?

Investment funds that claim to focus on socially responsible stocks have proliferated in recent times. In this paper, we verify whether ESG mutual funds actually invest in firms that have stakeholder-friendly track records. Using a comprehensive sample of self-labelled ESG mutual funds in the US from 2010 to 2018, we find that these funds hold portfolio firms with worse track records for compliance with labor and environmental laws, relative to portfolio firms held by non-ESG funds managed by the same financial institutions in the same years. Relative to other funds offered by the same asset managers in the same years, ESG funds hold stocks that are more likely to voluntarily disclose carbon emissions performance but also stocks with higher carbon emissions per unit of revenue. Despite these findings, ESG funds hold portfolio firms with higher average ESG scores; we show that ESG scores are correlated with the quantity of voluntary ESG-related disclosures but not with firms’ compliance records or actual levels of carbon emissions. Finally, ESG funds appear to underperform financially relative to other funds within the same asset manager and year and charge higher fees. Our findings suggest that socially responsible funds do not appear to follow through on proclamations of concerns for stakeholders.

Trust of the Crowd and Audit Pricing

Using a novel dataset that captures public perceptions of the trustworthiness of client firms by extracting and converting social media feeds into an index, we find that auditors charge higher fees for client firms with lower trustworthiness, as client firms with higher trustworthiness are less likely to incur lawsuits. This correlation is stronger for the shorter audit tenures, younger client firms, and more complex auditing practices after the enactment of the SOX Act. Our results are robust to: (i) including firm or county fixed effects, (ii) controlling for the internal control weaknesses and various corporate governance measures, and (iii) adding the trust index constructed from financial news. Our study highlights the role of the perceived trustworthiness of client firms in audit pricing decisions.

Do mutual fund managers earn their fees? New measures for performance appraisal

This paper proposes a methodology to assess whether a mutual fund (MF) manages its costs and expenses efficiently, relative to its peers, in generating returns to investors. We consider incurred costs and expenses as MF disbursements. We develop a network data envelopment analysis model to assess MF performance from disbursement management perspective and propose new measures of MF performance - disbursement efficiency and disbursement utilization. We do this by conceptualising overall MF management process as a two-stage production process. In a sample of 1,706 U.S. equity MFs, we find that disbursement management performance relative to their peers (disbursement efficiency) is generally poor. Less than one per cent of the MFs are disbursement efficient and they are more likely to be growth funds. MFs that charge high fees perform relatively poorly in disbursement management. Large funds, on average, outperform mid-size and small funds in technical efficiency. According to our modelling framework, technical efficiency does not imply disbursement efficiency. Approximately fifteen per cent of technical efficient MFs are disbursement efficient. This is an indication that MF disbursement inefficiency is an issue that require attention of all stakeholders. Disbursement under-utilization and technical inefficiency explain disbursement inefficiency. For disbursement inefficient MFs, we provide pathways to become efficient in disbursement management. We validate the proposed MF performance measures empirically.

Public Attention and Auditor Behavior: The Case ofHurun Rich Listin China

ABSTRACTAdverse client publicity can entail regulatory scrutiny over audited financial statements and impose political costs on auditors. We use the changes in client publicity caused by their controlling owners’ presence on theHurun Rich List(the rich listing) in China to test the hypothesis that auditor conservatism increases with client publicity. Our evidence indicates auditors issue more adverse audit opinions to clients and charge higher fees following the rich listing events. Moreover, we observe that auditors strategically respond to clients with different attributes—for clients whose owners accumulated wealth in a more questionable manner, auditors choose more stringent audit reporting to better defend themselves from regulatory scrutiny; for clients without such attributes, auditors primarily rely on increasing audit fees to cope with any post‐listing increase in audit risks. Our analyses also suggest the impacts of rich listings tend to be concentrated among large audit firms with stronger reputation concerns or among engagement auditors with more conservative reporting styles. By showing how auditors manage political risks associated with heightened public scrutiny, we contribute to both the auditing and political cost literature.

Decentralized Mining in Centralized Pools

The rise of centralized mining pools for risk sharing does not necessarily undermine the decentralization required for permissionless blockchains: Each individual miner's cross-pool diversification and endogenous fees charged by pools generally sustain decentralization, because larger pools better internalize their externality on global hash rates, charge higher fees, attract disproportionately fewer miners, and thus grow more slowly. Instead, mining pools as a financial innovation escalate the arms race among competing miners and thus significantly increase the energy consumption of proof-of-work-based consensus mechanisms. Empirical evidence from Bitcoin mining supports our model predictions. The economic insights inform many other blockchain protocols as well as the industrial organization of mainstream sectors with similar characteristics but ambiguous prior findings.