Corporate Affiliation Research Articles

National Establishment Time-Series Database©: Data Overview

For more than thirty-two million establishments, the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) Database© provides time-series information on mobility patterns, employment and sales growth performance, job creation and destruction, business startups and failures, changes in primary markets, corporate affiliations, and historical Dun and Bradstreet ratings, to name a few. Download the slides at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper=1027941 Download the audio file at: http://papers.ssrn.com/paper=1028868

National Establishment Time-Series Database©: Sample File 2006

For more than thirty-two million establishments, the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) Database provides time-series information on mobility patterns, employment and sales growth performance, job creation and destruction, business startups and failures, changes in primary markets, corporate affiliations, and historical Dun and Bradstreet ratings, to name a few. Developed through a joint venture with Dun and Bradstreet, it covers more than 250 fields and seventeen years of historical information thoroughly documenting economic activity from 1989 through 2006. This unique business establishment data-base is the only commercially-available historical database of its kind on the market. This file shows a sample of company-level information available.

National Establishment Time-Series (Nets) Database: Coffee Analysis

For more than thirty-two million establishments, the National Establishment Time-Series (NETS) Database provides time-series information on mobility patterns, employment and sales growth performance, job creation and destruction, business startups and failures, changes in primary markets, corporate affiliations, and historical Dun and Bradstreet ratings, to name a few. Developed through a joint venture with Dun and Bradstreet, it covers more than 250 fields and seventeen years of historical information thoroughly documenting economic activity from 1989 through 2006. This unique business establishment data-base is the only commercially-available historical database of its kind on the market. This file shows a sample analysis of the coffee industry.

Decentralization, Transfer Pricing and Tacit Collusion

Research in accounting traditionally regards transfer pricing as an intra-firm transaction problem. Within the context of a simple Cournot model, we demonstrate that firms can use transfer prices strategically as a collusive device. While firms are individually better off from a centralized organizational form with each internal division transferring intermediate goods at marginal cost, all firms benefit from a collusive agreement to organize along profit centers, transferring goods above marginal cost. This collusion yields roughly twice the competitive profits and is sustainable even when price or quantity collusion is not. This practice may also escape legal scrutiny while the same cost-shifting between regulated monopolists and their corporate affiliates is regarded as a major concern for regulators and researchers.

To Tell Or Not To Tell? Assessing the Practical Effects of Disclosure for Word-of-Mouth Marketing Agents and Their Conversational Partners

To Tell Or Not To Tell? Assessing the Practical Effects of Disclosure for Word-of-Mouth Marketing Agents and Their Conversational Partners

Default Correlation Among Non-Financial Corporate Affiliates

Based on an analysis of 152 non-financial corporate families with multiple rated entities at the time of their defaults, the authors find that when one affiliate defaults all of its affiliates default about 80% of the time, while at least one affiliate avoids default 20% of the time. Firm characteristics that increase the likelihood that at least one affiliate avoids default include: investment-grade ratings within three years of default, the presence of regulated affiliates, the presence of international affiliates, the presence of utilities or media affiliates, and a large number of affiliates in the family. Among these characteristics, only the presence of investment-grade ratings and regulated affiliates were statistically significant in a multivariate regression model. Rating differentials across affiliates tend to be wider across affiliates when some affiliates avoid default. The magnitude of rating differentials within the family one year prior to default is the single most important predictor of whether or not some affiliates avoid default.

Recommendations for the Establishment of Stroke Systems of Care

Stroke continues to be a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Approximately 700 000 Americans have a new or recurrent stroke each year, and stroke remains the third leading cause of death in the United States when considered independently from other cardiovascular diseases. Stroke also remains a leading cause of serious, long-term disability in the United States.1 Major advances have been made during the past several decades in stroke prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation. Despite successes in delivering effective new therapies, significant obstacles remain in ensuring that scientific advances are consistently translated into clinical practice. In many instances, these obstacles can be related to a fragmentation of stroke-related care caused by inadequate integration of the various facilities, agencies, and professionals that should closely collaborate in providing stroke care. There is increased emphasis on improving the components of stroke care, including recommendations from the Brain Attack Coalition for primary stroke centers and a formal process provided through the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) for the certification of primary stroke centers.2–4 It is critically important to look carefully at how the distinct components can be better integrated into systems of stroke care. The American Stroke Association (ASA), a division of the American Heart Association (AHA), is dedicated to improving stroke prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation through research, education, advocacy, and the development and application of scientifically based standards and guidelines. The ASA convened a multidisciplinary group, the Task Force on the Development of Stroke Systems, to describe the current fragmentation of stroke care, to define the key components of a stroke system, and to recommend methods for encouraging the implementation of stroke systems. The term “stroke system” is used in this article to avoid the corporate and financial connotations associated with the words “network” and …

A Brief Overview of Buddhist NGOs in Japan

AT THE OUTSET, it should be noted that the term NGO, as it is adopted by Japanese civil society and socially-minded Buddhist organizations, has a specific meaning that differs from the Western conception. Non-governmental organization usually refers to a civic or civil society group active within a society. However, in the Japanese context, NGO refers specifically to a group engaged in cooperation activities (kokusai kyoryoku katsud6 HM9t AMt) and not directly focused on domestic issues within Japan (SHIMIZU 1999, p. 699). This rather unique understanding of the NGO speaks to the marginal nature of Buddhist NGOs as actors in domestic Japanese civil society. It also shows the broader struggle of civil society in Japan in the development of a public sphere autonomous from the state and corporate affiliations. Japanese Buddhist NGOs first emerged in the early 198os in response to the intensifying crisis in Indo-China with the boat people from Vietnam and the mass of Cambodian refugees living on the border of Thailand. Groups like the Buddhist Aid Center (BAC), created in 1982 mainly by priests from the Nichiren sect, were in part a response to criticism in the mainstream media that Buddhism had become irrelevant to modern society and that Buddhist priests had no concern for the general well-being of people. Another factor was the increasing international exposure that Japanese, and Japanese priests in particular, were getting as the economy prospered. Many Buddhist priests active in international aid expressed the shock and

The Girl from God’s Country: Nell Shipman and the Silent Cinema

THE GIRL FROM GOD'S COUNTRY: NELL SHIPMAN AND THE SILENT CINEMA Kay Armatage Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003, 428 pp. Situating Canadian filmmaker Nell Shipman in the current stream of film studies is only a portion of what Kay Armatage sets out to do in this book. Neither a hagiography of a forgotten film legend, nor the story of genius ahead of her time, Armatage's work treats Shipman as an ordinary working woman. From this point of departure, Shipman's career is mapped onto a series of social and cultural topics, such as the history of women's participation in the film industry, silent film aesthetics, and current scholarship on women's films and women filmmakers. Part intervention, part historical treatise, part biography, The Girl From God's Country is a tightly woven history of women filmmakers in the era of silent cinema. Armatage first learned of Nell Shipman's existence in 1973 when a print of Back to God's Country, Shipman's 1919 feature film, was programmed for Toronto's Women & Film Festival. In the festival catalogue, Armatage appealed to feminist film scholars to employ archival and historical research methods in order to recover other filmmakers. She also called for more analysis of feminist films and the development of aesthetic, critical and theoretical frameworks to deal with feminist film practices, as existing methods had overlooked female creators and women's films. Despite her own directive, Armatage candidly admits that her research on Shipman was sidetracked in a major way: I was swept up into what seemed more exciting and revolutionary, the feminist theory project which in 1973-75 was in its germinal stages. Armatage further divulges that since her background was in literary theory, she was better prepared for theoretical work than for historical research. Her intent in returning to Shipman after almost thirty years is to rekindle her call for scholars in film and women's studies to push the boundaries of critical methods towards historical research. While she defends the gains in theoretical feminist film scholarship that have been made since the 1970s, she says the wave of feminist film theory failed to bring about a historical framework for women filmmakers or women's films. By means of introduction, Armatage provides an in-depth and detailed examination of the existing literature on women film directors during the silent film era, situating Shipman amongst her female filmmaker counterparts such as Dorothy Arzner, Alice Guy Blanche, Leni Riefensthal, Esfir Shub and Elizaveta Svilova. Armatage has unfortunately chosen to pass over the details of Shipman's youth and participation in the vaudeville circuit which she entered at the tender age of thirteen in 1905. Instead, the book begins with Back to God's Country and works through Shipman's filmography. In her analysis of Shipman's first film, Armatage brings to the forefront questions of national and gender identity in relation to landscape, wild animals, and the indigenous and immigrant people. These themes run through Shipman's career and surface so often in the book that it could well have been organized thematically rather than chronologically. In detailing Shipman's filmmaking career, Armatage describes the production conditions of each film. For example, she illuminates Shipman's corporate affiliations in The Trail of the Arrow and Something New, two films that were funded by automobile companies, with Shipman directing and acting. Armatage examines these two films through the discourses of modernity, technology, the automobile, and gender, and she links them to Shipman's own tendencies toward adventure and excitement, as embodied in stories of her reckless driving in New York City. The connective tissue of the cultural and historical themes of the book is the on-screen and off-screen performances of Shipman herself. Moving from a discussion of modernity and technology to an examination of racial stereotypes of Indians and the melodramatic conventions of the mulatta film, Armatage examines the lost film The Girl From God's Country in relation to questions of the representation of race and cultural identity in silent cinema. …

Non-Signatories and International Arbitration in the United States: the Quest for Consent

For many years arbitration practitioners have grappled with the problem of what to do with a ‘non-party’ – or more particularly a ‘non-signatory’1 – to the arbitration agreement that is nevertheless integral to the resolution of the dispute that has arisen. To take a simple example, what of the corporate affiliate that has been assigned certain rights and obligations under a subsequently disputed contract: can the affiliate assignee be compelled to arbitrate; can it commence arbitration itself and can it somehow intervene in an arbitration initiated between the original contracting parties? At the heart of these questions lies the widely-accepted principle that arbitration is by its nature consensual. However, in the absence of an agreement containing an arbitration clause and bearing the affiliate assignee's signature, where does one look to find evidence of such consent to arbitration? Far from being merely theoretical, the questions raised by the aforementioned scenario are in fact highly relevant to the contemporary practice of international commercial arbitration. Disputes involving non-signatories are inevitable in the context of modern international business transactions that typically involve complex webs of interwoven agreements, multilayered legal obligations and the interposition of numerous, often related, corporate and other entities. Accordingly, while the non-signatory ‘problem’ has long been associated with disputes arising out of bills of lading and construction sub-contracts, it is today to be found in such diverse contexts as arbitrations concerning reinsurance agreements, Internet-based software licences and investment treaties. Perhaps reflecting an increased awareness of this issue, there is a growing body of commentary on the topic.2 Bearing in mind the volume and breadth of these writings, this article does not attempt to produce an exhaustive analysis of all aspects of the treatment of non-signatories in international arbitration. Rather, focusing largely on the current position in the United States, …

On the Determinants of Pyramidal Ownership: Evidence on Dilution of Minority Interests

We investigate the determinants, costs and benefits of corporate affiliation to pyramidal holdings. We find that there is a mismatch between cash flow rights and voting rights in firms affiliated to pyramidal holdings, and that corporate policies reflect cash distribution preferences of the ultimate owners. We also find a permanent depressive effect of pyramidal ownership on corporate value. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis that the layers of equity holdings within the pyramidal holding contribute to form an impervious veil behind which ultimate owners engage in expropriating behavior. Our investigation of affiliated firms suggests that ultimate owners, mostly families, are adept at combining their cash flow rights, voting power, and distance from affiliates in a way that minimizes sensitivity to negative events and maximizes sensitivity to positive events.

3.1.1 COSYSMO: A Constructive Systems Engineering Cost Model Coming of Age

AbstractBuilding on the synergy between Systems Engineering and Software Engineering, the Center for Software Engineering (CSE) at the University of Southern California (USC), is in the process of developing a parametric model to estimate Systems Engineering costs. The goal of this model, called COSYSMO (Constructive Systems Engineering Cost Model), is to more accurately estimate the time and effort associated with performing the system engineering tasks defined by ISO/IEC 15288.This paper outlines the work accomplished thus far by USC, in collaboration with its Corporate Affiliates and the INCOSE Measurement Working Group, to develop the initial version of COSYSMO. This paper describes the development of the model, explains both its size and cost drivers, and outlines future steps that need to be taken to guarantee COSYSMO's successful adoption by the Systems Engineering community.

Unnatural Selection: Perverse Incentives and the Misallocation of Credit in Japan

We examine the misallocation of credit in Japan associated with the perverse incentives faced by banks to provide additional credit to the weakest firms. Firms are more likely to receive additional bank credit if they are in poor financial condition, because troubled Japanese banks have an incentive to allocate credit to severely impaired borrowers in order to avoid the realization of losses on their own balance sheets. This “evergreening” behavior is more prevalent among banks that have reported capital ratios close to the required minimum, and is compounded by the incentives arising from extensive corporate affiliations.

Corporate Affiliations and the (Mis)Allocation of Credit

The strong corporate affiliations in Japan have been cited as one of the major impediments to making the fundamental changes necessary to escape the economic malaise that has afflicted the Japanese economy over the past decade. While Japanese corporate affiliations during good economic times were heralded as an effective way to increase credit availability and reduce agency costs, during difficult economic circumstances these same affiliations may impede needed economic restructuring, insofar as they insulate firms from the market discipline that otherwise would be imposed by creditors. This study shows that corporate affiliations have contributed to significant misallocations of credit, since troubled borrowers with strong corporate affiliations with their lenders are more likely to obtain additional credit than their healthier brethren. In contrast, lenders that are not affiliated with the firm are less likely to extend additional credit as firms become more troubled.

Star rating and corporate affiliation: their influence on room price and performance of hotels in Israel

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether and how star rating and corporate affiliation, as signals of quality, influence pricing decisions of hotels in Israel in various geographical locations, each with its specific market characteristics and during two different periods in which the business environment suffers from a crisis due to the political circumstances in the Middle East. The data suggests that the star-rating system, which is traditionally used to rate hotels’ quality, is a still stable and consistent predictor of room prices. However, in light of the increased usage of brand names in the Israeli industry, it was found that the ability to charge and receive a premium for the hotel corporate affiliation or brand name is not consistent. The analysis presents the case in which a premium for brand name is eroded by the influence of the crisis, by the level of corporate intensity in the region, and also by the relative strength of consumers in the different geographical locations.

Investigating the Use of Advertising for Communicating a Hotel's Strategic Assets

Advertising may have a significant impact on a hotel's competitive advantage and financial performance. There is, however, an ongoing debate as to the role of advertising. One view suggests that advertising yields market power, which then fosters brand loyalty. The opposing view suggests that advertising, among other roles, is a method to inform customers about products or services, which then increases price sensitivity. This article discusses the hypothesis that the hotel's ability to communicate strategic assets determines the use of advertising. Hotels can use advertising channels to communicate strategic assets, hence create market power and support a price differentiation strategy. On the other hand, if the channel restricts the ability to communicate strategic assets, it will be used primarily as an informative tool. This study presents a case in which hotel advertisements are presented in a restricted setting, allowing advertising to communicate location and corporate affiliation, which are considered to be among a firm's strategic assets. We demonstrate that corporate affiliation is a strategic asset that supports an advertised request for a price premium in the hotel industry. The study also presents the limitations in using location as a strategic asset.

Why firms issue targeted stock

We analyze market reaction to targeted stock issuances and investigate possible motives for their use. We find a statistically significant abnormal return of 3.61% within a three-day window around the announcement of proposed targeted stock issuances, possibly attributable to greater information on targeted stock segments as well as monitoring and motivational advantages. We find lower tax-loss carry forwards among firms that issue targeted stock compared to those that spin off segments, suggesting that tax reasons motivate targeted stock use. The return and cash flows of targeted stocks are affected more by their common corporate affiliation, although industry influences remain strong.

The Impact of Star Ratings and Corporate Affiliation on Hotel Room Prices in Israel

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing decisions of hotels in an effort to ascertain whether corporate affiliation and stars influence hotels' pricing decisions. The findings suggest that high-quality (ie four- and five-star) hotels tend to be affiliated with chains and signal this affiliation using a naming strategy. In addition, the industry-based star rating system explains a large part of the price variation. The impact of corporate affiliation, modelled as the size of the corporation, has a relatively smaller, but overall positive, impact on price. An investigation of different locations reveals that the intensity of corporate affiliation, and specific characteristics of the consumers' market in each location are also significant in explaining the hotels' pricing decisions.

Questions of Evidence, Legitimacy, and the (Dis)Unity of Science

AbstractThe recent Science Wars have brought into sharp focus, in a public forum, contentious questions about the authority of science and what counts as properly scientific practice that have long structured archaeological debate. As in the larger debate, localized disputes in archaeology often presuppose a conception of science as a unified enterprise defined by common goals, standards, and research programs; specific forms of inquiry are advocated (or condemned) by claiming affiliation with science so conceived. This pattern of argument obscures much that is most creative in archaeological practice. Archaeologists routinely exploit both integrating and fragmenting relations among the sciences, especially in establishing evidential claims. I will argue that the credibility of these claims is a function, not of scientific status acquired by corporate affiliation, but of the substantive trade in tools and techniques, empirical insights, models, and theories that is made possible by local interactions between archaeology and a wide range of other disciplines. There is much more to be gained by developing a rich critical understanding of the interfield relations that make this trade possible than by appealing to generic ideals of science.

ASORN corporate affiliate program 1999

ASORN corporate affiliate program 1999