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Evaluating information quality online is increasingly important for healthy decision‐making. People assess information quality using visual interfaces (e.g., computers, smartphones) with visual cues like aesthetics. Yet, voice interfaces lack critical visual cues for evaluating information because there is often no visual display. Without ways to assess voice‐based information quality, people may overly trust or misinterpret information which can be challenging in high‐risk or sensitive contexts. This paper investigates voice information uncertainty in one high‐risk context—health information seeking. We recruited 30 adults (ages 18–84) in the United States to participate in scenario‐based interviews about health topics. Our findings provide evidence of information uncertainty expectations with voice assistants, voice search preferences, and the audio cues they use to assess information quality. We contribute a nuanced discussion of how to inform more critical information ecosystems with voice technologies and propose ways to design audio cues to help people more quickly assess content quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On retailing platforms, several information‐provision technologies are adopted to gain profit, such as production video ads service, live streaming service, and virtual reality/augmented reality tech. In this article, we focus on the investment strategies of information‐provision tech and its impact on the platform‐based supply chain. To this end, we develop a general model under which the platform invests in information‐provision tech for homogenous sellers and consumers search for products on the platform. Our results show that the platform should adopt a higher investment level in information‐provision tech for the products with the unit search cost or products' information uncertainty degree being medium. Also, a more competitive environment can lead to a lower platform's investment level in information‐provision tech when the number of browsing products is sufficiently large. Interestingly, we find that for a large unit search cost or small uncertainty degree of products' information, investing in information‐provision tech can benefit the platform's and sellers' profit. In addition, if the number of browsing products is large, investing in information‐provision tech can increase the consumer surplus and social welfare. Lastly, our results hold for a broad class of distributions of products' information uncertainty value and other practical cases. Our studies can help the platform to understand the roles of information‐provision tech and provide some practical management insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the joint effects of analyst reputation, uncertainty and guidance news valence on analysts' reliance on management guidance. We find that, compared to less reputable analysts, reputable analysts rely less on guidance when they issue earnings forecasts. This analyst reputation effect is stronger when earnings and information uncertainty are higher or when the guidance contains good news. Further analysis suggests that both reputable and less reputable analysts sacrifice their forecast accuracy when they rely less on guidance; however, reputable analysts are compensated to a greater extent by the increased informativeness of their forecasts. Finally, we find that analysts' future career advancement is enhanced when their reliance is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We document strong evidence that CEO incentive compensation can predict the significance of stock price momentum through discretionary accrual and real activities manipulation. The profit of momentum strategy increases with CEO pay‐for‐performance incentive, but decreases with CEO risk‐taking incentive. It also evaluates the effects of information uncertainty on such relationship. The evidence is more significant for firms with older and longer tenured CEOs and firms with more informed traders. The relationship between the profit of momentum strategy and CEO pay‐for‐performance incentive is stronger among CEOs without the risk‐taking incentive. Our results are robust for different sub‐samples based on before and after Reg FD and Sarbanes–Oxley Act, even after controlling for the potential endogeneity. Further, our findings are consistent with the information diffusion explanation of momentum and the agency theory that incentivised CEOs tend to manipulate information by smoothing good news, concealing mildly bad news and accelerating the disclosure of extremely bad news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a timing momentum strategy by incorporating moving‐average signals in the price momentum and show that the proposed strategy substantially outperforms the buy‐and‐hold strategy. The performance of the timing momentum is better than that of Barroso and Santa‐Clara's (2015) constant‐volatility momentum and is identical to that of Daniel and Moskowitz's (2016) dynamic momentum. One advantage of the timing momentum is that its weights on winner and loser portfolios are lower than the other two strategies, thus leading to lower transaction costs. Further, we show that the profitability of the timing momentum is enhanced when information uncertainty is high. More importantly, the timing momentum has time‐invariant profitability across various time‐series predictors and during periods of momentum crashes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investing in renewable energy is vital for reducing carbon emissions, yet it also poses significant risks and uncertainties. This study proposes a novel approach to evaluate investment risks in overseas renewable energy projects. First, we apply the Wuli–Shili–Renli (WSR) methodology to develop an evaluation index system for investment risks at three levels—Wuli, Shili, and Renli. Second, a risk assessment framework combining D‐AHP and TOPSIS method is constructed to solve the problem of uncertainty in evaluation information resulting from variations in expert experience. Then we can obtain the risk value. Finally, we apply our approach to evaluate the ADAMA Wind Power Phase I Project in Ethiopia. Our findings reveal a medium risk value for the project, with the highest risk at the Shili level. The management risk is the most significant risk factor, consistent with reality. Our proposed method can effectively address information uncertainty in assessing investment risks of renewable energy projects and is applicable to other similar projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the predictive power of the trend strategy in the international stock market. Using data from 49 markets, we find that a trend signal exploiting the short‐, intermediate‐, and long‐term price information can predict stock returns cross‐sectionally in the international market. The significance of the trend strategy is associated with market‐level characteristics such as macroeconomic conditions, culture, and the information environment. The trend premium is more pronounced in markets with a more advanced macroeconomic status, a higher level of information uncertainty and individualism, and better accessibility to foreign investors. Nevertheless, the trend strategy only outperforms the momentum strategy in a relatively short horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Subjective time dilation is an effect discovered using the oddball paradigm, where expanding visual stimuli, but not shrinking ones, induce a prolongation of subjective temporal perception compared to static stimuli. This disparity is often seen as another demonstration of humans' evolved reaction to approaching threats, since visual expansion resembles approaching potential threats and warrants extra attention. In this study, we show that by manipulating the relative sizes of stimuli, both expanding and shrinking stimuli can induce prolongation of subjective time in an oddball paradigm. We propose an alternative explanation based on information theory, linking subjective temporal perception to entropy, an objective property of stimulus that is information uncertainty. Temporal function as a logistic function thus serves as the framework inside which content functions like information processing are able to operate coherently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Atmospheric state analysis is a difficult scientific problem but essential for atmospheric sciences. Data assimilation can generate accurate analyses by integrating information on the atmospheric state using probability density functions (PDFs), where the Gaussian approximation is typically used and PDFs are described by error covariance matrices (ECMs). However, ECMs have been estimated empirically, and dependency of the ECMs on meteorological conditions (flow) is only partially represented. These limit atmospheric state analysis accuracy. This is especially problematic for water substance‐sensitive microwave radiances (WS‐MWRs) because of their strong flow dependence. We objectively estimated ECMs of all data including flow‐dependence of the ECMs of WS‐MWRs. Since the ECM of each data is a component of one ECM representing one joint PDF as a whole, it is theoretically better to objectively estimate ECMs of all data, not just a particular data. For WS‐MWRs, we categorized flow into four using water substance amount and estimating an ECM for each category. Numerical experiments using the new ECMs on an operational global numerical weather prediction system show the followings. The new error standard deviations are generally smaller than those of empirical. Standard deviations and interchannel correlations of observation errors of WS‐MWRs increase with water substance amount. The effects of WS‐MWRs on analysis were approximately doubled. The analysis fields differ systematically such as increase of low‐level clouds over cold oceans. The forecast accuracy improved with 95% statistical significance up to 9%. Both the flow dependence of correlation and variance of WS‐MWRs contributed to the improvement of forecast accuracy. Plain Language Summary: Atmospheric state analysis is a difficult scientific problem but essential for atmospheric sciences. Data assimilation can generate accurate analysis by integrating information on the atmospheric state using probability density functions typically described by error covariance matrices (ECMs). However, the ECMs include empirical tunings, and their dependency on meteorological conditions (flow) is only partially represented. These limit atmospheric state analysis accuracy. These shortcomings are especially problematic for water substance‐sensitive microwave radiances (WS‐MWRs). We objectively estimate ECMs of all data including flow‐dependence of those of WS‐MWRs. For WS‐MWRs, we categorized flow into four categories by water substance amount and estimate ECMs for each category. Numerical experiments using the estimated objective ECMs (TEST) and conventional empirical ECMs (CNTL) on a global numerical weather prediction system show the followings. The error standard deviations (SDs) of TEST are smaller than those of CNTL for almost all data. For WS‐MWRs, SDs and correlations between different observation wavelengths increase with water substance amount. The effects of WS‐MWRs on analysis were approximately doubled. The analysis fields differ systematically, such as an increase in tropospheric low clouds over cold oceans. The forecast root‐mean‐square errors of TEST are smaller than those of CNTL with 95% statistical significance up to 9%. Key Points: We objectively estimated flow‐dependent error covariance matrices (ECMs) of water substance‐sensitive microwave radiances (WS‐MWRs)The new ECMs doubled effects of WS‐MWRs on analysis, increased low‐level clouds on cold oceans, and improved forecast accuracy up to 9%Both the flow dependence of correlation and variance contributed to the improvement of forecast accuracy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on exploring the factors influencing why companies engage in greenhushing decisions in the cultural backgrounds of China and Republic of Korea. Structural equation modeling analysis indicates that in these two countries, reputational risk not only directly leads to corporate greenhushing behavior, but also exerts its influence through conservatism as a mediating factor. Reputational risk causes companies to exhibit conservatism, which in turn leads to the adoption of greenhushing behavior. Furthermore, tests for moderation effects revealed that, in the Chinese sample data, a transparent information disclosure mechanism has the ability to mitigate the impact of reputational risk on corporate greenhushing behavior, as well as to alleviate the influence of conservatism on corporate greenhushing behavior. In the South Korean sample data, a transparent information disclosure mechanism can moderate the impact of reputational risk on conservatism and corporate greenhushing behavior. Finally, the fsQCA method is tested to derive the different configurations and pathways that lead to the strong emergence of greenhushing behavior in companies in China and Republic of Korea, as well as to identify the most influential pathways. This study provides substantial theoretical support for further exploration of the causal mechanisms of corporate greenhushing behavior and promotion of cross‐cultural comparisons and learning in the international environmental management field. In addition, provides rich empirical support and theoretical guidance for corporate environmental management decision‐making and policy formulation. The findings highlight the further standardization and strengthening of transparent information disclosure mechanisms will be an important direction for future environmental policy development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the power source of the engine, the Fuel Pump(FP) plays a vital role in the safe operation of the aircraft. Due to the complexity of the working mechanism of Aviation Fuel Pumps (AFP) and the strong correlation between the components, the assessment model cannot reflect the health state of the FPs better, while the initial parameters in the assessment model will affect the assessment effect of the model. Therefore, this paper proposes a health status assessment model that can fully integrate monitoring data. To improve the accuracy of the model parameters, the Random Forest algorithm is used to give the feature weights to make up for the limitation of relying on expert knowledge, and the model parameters are optimized by the Covariance Matrix Adaptive Evolutionary Strategy algorithm, which achieves an accurate assessment of the state. Finally, the AFP test bed was built and the AFP was tested. Compared with other methods, the accuracy of the proposed method in this question reaches 96%, which is greatly superior to other methods and verifies the effectiveness of the proposed method. It also provides an outlook on future research directions for health state assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Motor neuron disease (MND) (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is a life‐limiting neurodegenerative condition. In up to 20% of people with MND, a pathogenic variant associated with autosomal dominant inheritance can be identified. Children of people carrying a pathogenic variant have a 50% chance of inheriting this and a higher, although harder to predict, chance of developing the disease compared to the general adult population. This paper explores the experience of living with the genetic risk of MND. Methods: We undertook a UK‐based interview study with 35 individuals, including: 7 people living with genetically‐mediated forms of MND; 24 asymptomatic relatives, the majority of whom had an increased risk of developing the disease; and 4 unrelated partners. Results: We explore how individuals make sense of genetic risk, unpacking the interplay between genetic knowledge, personal perception, experiences of the disease in the family, age and life stage and the implications that living with risk has for different aspects of their lives. We balance an emphasis on the emotional and psychological impact described by participants, with a recognition that the salience of risk fluctuates over time. Furthermore, we highlight the diverse strategies and approaches people employ to live well in the face of uncertainty and the complex ways they engage with the possibility of developing symptoms in the future. Finally, we outline the need for open‐ended, tailored support and information provision. Conclusions: Drawing on wider literature on genetic risk, we foreground how knowledge of MND risk can disrupt individuals' taken‐for‐granted assumptions on life and perceptions of the future, but also its contextuality, whereby its relevance becomes more prominent at critical junctures. This research has been used in the development of a public‐facing resource on the healthtalk.org website. Patient or Public Contribution: People with experience of living with genetic risk were involved throughout the design and conduct of the study and advised on aspects including the topic guide, sampling and recruitment and the developing analysis. Two patient and public involvement contributors joined a formal advisory panel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To fully utilize the voltage regulation capacity and interaction characteristics of the Transmission and Distribution (T&D) system, a novel Modified Partially Observed Markov Decision Process (MPOMDP)‐based Reinforcement Learning (RL) scheme for Autonomous Voltage Control is proposed, which incorporates Demand Response (DR) and cooperation with the Transmission Network. The proposed scheme consists of two vital components: an MPOMDP block and a Modified Asynchronous Advantage Actor‐Critic‐based RL block. The MPOMDP block innovatively exploits the confidence interval of the observed state to make a better perception of the precise system state by introducing two new probability vectors. Then the MPOMDP block is fed into the underlying architecture of the RL block for asynchronously capturing features and optimal decision‐making, where the solving framework additionally brings in a public data buffer to realize boundary information sharing. Case studies are conducted on a modified T&D system considering N‐1 contingencies, with a training dataset from a district in Suzhou, China. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve significant voltage optimization while ensuring fast convergence speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers consider environmental uncertainty in making decisions. Accordingly, this study aims to test the positive effect of environmental uncertainty on cost stickiness. This study also investigates the effects of environmental uncertainty on cost stickiness under different strategies. Further, firms need more able managers to deal with uncertain environments. This study observes the different effects of environmental uncertainty on cost stickiness when managers have varying levels of managerial ability. We run the panel regression analysis of 23,298 firm‐year observations in Southeast Asian countries in 2013–2019. This study documents that environmental uncertainty increases cost stickiness, and the effects are qualitatively similar for prospector and defender strategies. Further, the effect of environmental uncertainty on cost stickiness is stronger in firms with low managerial ability for both the prospector and defender strategies. Greater environmental uncertainty increases cost stickiness (ratio of SG&A to sales). This increase can be interpreted as a negative signal for future profits and a positive signal that firms retain resources to meet future sales expectations. Managerial ability affects cost stickiness. Hence, less managerial ability strengthens the relationship between environmental uncertainty and cost stickiness. This study operationalizes environmental uncertainty using three dimensions: munificence, dynamism, and complexity, which are arguably more comprehensive than prior studies that only use a single uncertainty dimension. This study also adds strategy and managerial ability to the relationship between environmental uncertainty and cost behavior. It demonstrates that firms deal with uncertainty based on their competitive advantage and managerial capabilities. This study documents the cost behavior of Southeast Asian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2D‐Cascade‐Transeform‐Logistic‐Sine Map (2D‐CTLSM) with good randomness and large parameter chaos range is obtained by improving the Logistic and Sine map in a cascade manner. By combining the chaotic map with DNA coding, an efficient encryption algorithm based on a chaotic map with chunking dislocation and alternate row diffusion is designed. The shortcomings of zigzag itself are overcome by performing different zigzag transformations in chunks while combining DNA encoding to accomplish the diffusion operation. Due to the excellent properties of DNA encoding, the diffusion operation is performed by the DNA computation method with alternate row diffusion so that each value can complete the diffusion operation twice. The simulation experimental results and security analysis show that the algorithm can effectively resist various typical attacks, such as the information entropy is close to the expected value of 8, the correlation coefficient is close to 0, and the NPCR and UACI values can meet the critical value range, and so on. This is a safe and reliable image encryption algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine how analysts respond to non‐financial information about environmental, social responsibility, and corporate governance (ESG) performance and find good ESG performance lessens analysts' optimistic bias. We verify the mediating role of financial transparency that superior ESG performance decreases the level of information asymmetry between firms and analysts and improves financial transparency, thus weakening optimistic bias. Analysts' optimistic bias rises with increased institutional holdings and diminishes with heightened economic policy uncertainty. Social responsibility makes a larger reducing effect on analyst optimistic bias than corporate governance and environmental protection. Our findings have important implications for encouraging firms to emphasize ESG performance and improving stock market efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper systematically analyzes the relationship between government support and private enterprise innovation. A firm‐level proxy for government support is derived based on Chinese context. Specifically, we explore whether and how government subsidies affect private firms' innovation output. We find that government subsidies can promote private enterprise innovation, and this impact will be further strengthened when firms face high level of financing constraints and when large shareholders pledge their equities. However, this impact will be weakened in regions with high marketization degree and good information environment. Further analysis shows that government support can have a positive impact on corporate innovation by increasing private firms' innovation input and reducing financing costs. Our study sheds new light on the role of government support by investigating the boundary conditions and exploring the impact channel of its effect. Also, this paper fills a gap in the research on the role of government support and the situational research by putting this issue in Chinese context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates an exploratory uncertainty‐knowledge sharing model contextualized in terms of uncertainty induced by the COVID‐19 pandemic and based on the integrative framework of contingency theory and models of interpretation. The study attempts to explain the multidimensionality of and relationships between perceived environmental uncertainty types and knowledge‐sharing subprocesses. The presumptive connections between the variables are examined through an empirical study conducted with 224 academics from a large university in the Philippines. The results confirm the multidimensionality of uncertainty induced by the COVID‐19 pandemic and indicate that certain types of uncertainty drive knowledge‐donating and knowledge‐collecting behaviors within a knowledge‐intensive organization. The study offers theoretical and practical implications for reflective decision‐making in critical times and reciprocal intra‐organizational knowledge flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research empirically investigates the static and dynamic impacts of firms' digital transformation on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance by employing data of listed Chinese companies from 2011 to 2020 via estimations of propensity score matching and difference in differences. First, we find that digital transformation does some good to improve firms' ESG, which is confirmed after conducting several robustness tests. Second, digital transformation benefits the three aspects of ESG (environmental performance, social responsibility, and governance), and its impact is dynamic, promote ESG two years after the digital reform. Third, the impact of digital transformation on ESG is not constant among different firms. Specifically, digital transformation's impact on ESG is stronger among firms located in western or central regions of China and to those in polluting and competitive industries, as well as among non‐stated‐owned enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under rational asset pricing theory, and in efficient, frictionless market, risk should be priced contemporaneously and, thus, the market meltdown during the COVID‐19 pandemic must have been a contingent valuation of newly created risk. In contrast, we find that the reduction in equity value during the pandemic was stronger for stocks with higher pre‐pandemic accrued risk. This lends support to the discrete pricing proposition, which is a form of behavioural bias where investors price accrued risk during significant corporate or macroeconomic events. Furthermore, we compare the pricing of accrued risk during the pandemic with the pricing of accrued risk during non‐pandemic events and during past financial crises. We report evidence that pricing of accrued risk results in a premium in normal times and a discount during financial turmoil. Finally, we report evidence that investors price accrued stocks discriminately, that is, they are more likely to price accrued risk of stocks of larger firms, smaller B/M, and weaker momentum. Several theoretical and practical implications are discussed inside the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to confirm an empirical link between financial openness, foreign trade and income growth in South Africa. Although domestic credits, trade and growth are cointegrated, the findings indicate that no such link can be observed between money supply and exports as exports are a result of foreign demand and hence subject to foreign monetary factors rather than domestic financial development. The results of causality analyses reveal that the export‐led and supply‐leading hypotheses are confirmed for South Africa. Money supply in South Africa is also output driven. Finally, the study shows that changes in domestic credits precede significant changes in trade and growth in South Africa. As a result, this study suggests that the creation of domestic credits is a significant force behind trade and aggregate income in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although new investment can be viewed as a decision to pursue projects from a wide number of growth opportunities with easily discernible (and presumably preferable) risk profiles, downsizing (e.g., through layoffs, plant closings, asset divestitures, etc.) is a dichotomous choice to either abandon or continue an existing project where the relative risk between these options is not clear. Our evidence suggests that vega in the pre‐downsizing period is associated with risky investment that necessitates future downsizing. We further find that contemporaneous vega is associated with a greater likelihood of downsizing. On the other hand, our evidence suggests that delta is a significant impediment to downsizing. We examine the influence of behavioral factors in the decision‐making process and find downsizing decisions are discouraged by managerial overconfidence but encouraged by managers' aversion to ambiguity. Finally, we investigate whether equity incentives and behavioral factors lead to better downsizing decisions. We find that downsizing firms with high ambiguity perform better after downsizing relative to their matched pair with lower ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major challenge in multi‐agent formation is the issue of delay and uncertainty. This article investigates a robust formation control problem for linear multi‐agent systems with input delay and model uncertainty. The strategy adopted by an agent in the system aims to predict the delayed state using output information from neighboring agents over a fixed communication network and generate the control input from the predictor output. The predictor is employed using the finite spectrum assignment (FSA) technique. The overall strategy leads to a unified framework representation, and the multi‐agent formation control problem is simplified to a closed‐loop stability problem for an agent. The overall problem comes down to deciding two feedback gains: predictor gain and controller gain. For a perfect plant model, any choice of stabilizing gains can achieve formation. But when agent models are uncertain, the gains need to be derived from the solutions of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) containing network information and delay. LMIs are obtained from the bounded real lemma and the gains obtained from the solution guarantee to maximize the H∞$$ {H}_{\infty } $$ norm bound of allowable perturbation, modeled as additive uncertainty, for a known delay size. Further, since the FSA technique is sensitive to discretization, a digital implementation of the overall scheme is elaborated, which may help to debug stability issues in the implementation process. Finally, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study explores the influence mechanism of corporate social responsibility on corporate competitiveness. From 2011 to 2020, a research sample was collected from 108 A‐share pharmaceutical manufacturing companies listed on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Findings depict that the pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises significantly improved competitiveness by fulfilling social responsibility. Good internal control showed a mediating effect on the influence of corporate social responsibility. Moreover, a perfect equity incentive reflects the moderating effect in the relationship between corporate social responsibility and enterprise competitiveness. The study not only provides an empirical test for the relationship between corporate social responsibility and corporate competitiveness but also analyzes the transmission mechanism between internal control and executive equity incentive variables. The study findings stress monitoring stakeholders and improving the enterprise's internal control system. Moreover, it is necessary to establish a reasonable and effective executive equity incentive mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the role of credit scores in credit markets? We argue that it is, in part, the market's assessment of a person's unobservable type, which here we take to be patience. We postulate a model of persistent hidden types where observable actions shape the public assessment of a person's type via Bayesian updating. We show how dynamic reputation can incentivize repayment. Importantly, we show how an economy with credit scores implements the same equilibrium allocation. We estimate the model using both credit market data and the evolution of individuals' credit scores. We conduct counterfactuals to assess how more or less information used in scoring individuals affects outcomes and welfare. If tracking of individual credit actions is outlawed, poor young adults of low type benefit from subsidization by high types despite facing higher interest rates arising from lower dynamic incentives to repay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the e‐commerce sales data of A‐share listed firms in China, we explore how e‐commerce sales information affects analyst earnings forecasts. We find that firms' e‐commerce sales information is related to firms' value, increases firms' information transparency, broadens analysts' information channels, and thus improves analyst forecast behavior. Further analysis shows that e‐commerce sales information's positive effect is more significant in firms with high growth ability, low financial information transparency, and without management earnings forecasting. We also find that the positive effect is more salient in the bull market. The findings provide new insights for improving the analyst earnings forecast and offer evidence for the positive significance of e‐commerce sales of alternative data for the capital market in the information era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on signaling theory, the current research proposes an empirical framework to help firms understand the degree to which cross‐category purchases affect the revenue generated for each category and how within‐category purchases influence the cross‐category spillover effects. The framework is applied to novel individual‐level, cross‐sectional, and time‐series transaction details from a leading lifestyle conglomerate in the Middle East. The empirical results provide strong support for the presence of revenue spillover across multiple categories of brand extensions, with the spillover being more pronounced in categories in which customers have infrequently purchased and thus had less within‐category experience. These results add to the ongoing stream of research on brand extensions by offering evidence that both within‐ and cross‐category learning play a significant role in revenue generation from brand extensions for multi‐product or service firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a lithium‐ion battery State of Health (SOH) estimation algorithm is proposed based on the fusion of multidomain features and the application of a CatBoost model. The aim is to address the issue of low prediction accuracy in SOH caused by the utilization of single‐feature extraction techniques. The algorithm encompasses the extraction of various features from the original charge–discharge data, including time‐domain, frequency‐domain, entropy, and time‐series features. Following the evaluation of feature importance, a feature selection process is conducted to eliminate redundant features that provide a limited contribution to the predictive results. Subsequently, a multiple‐set discriminative correlation analysis is employed to integrate high‐dimensional features. To attain accurate predictions, the CatBoost model is further optimized through the utilization of a sparrow search algorithm. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves accurate SOH estimations within individual batteries, as evidenced by mean square error values consistently below 4e−4 and goodness‐of‐fit values exceeding or equal to 0.98. Additionally, the algorithm exhibits reliable prediction capabilities across different batteries operating under the same charge/discharge strategy. Comparative analysis indicates that the adoption of the multidomain feature fusion approach yields improved prediction accuracy in contrast to the utilization of a single feature extraction method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is unique worldwide in requiring disclosure of the timing, participants, and selected content of private in‐house meetings between firm managers and outsider investors. We investigate whether these private meetings benefit hosting firms and their major outside institutional investors—blockholder mutual funds (i.e., funds with ownership ≥5%). Using a large data set of SZSE firms, we find that blockholder mutual funds have more access to private in‐house meetings, and top management is more likely to be present, especially when a meeting is associated with negative news. Furthermore, when blockholder mutual funds attend negative‐news meetings with top management, they are less likely to sell shares, their investment relationship with the hosting firm lasts longer, and hosting firms experience lower postmeeting stock return volatility. These findings suggest that private in‐house meetings are an informative disclosure channel that improves social bonding between top management and blockholder mutual funds in ways that benefit hosting firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research Question/Issue: This study shows how investors assessed the informativeness of earnings announcements during the Covid‐19 pandemic. Prior studies suggest that earnings announcements are more likely to provide value to investors during periods of heightened uncertainty. However, the massive regulatory intervention that took place during the pandemic is likely to have led investors to seek alternative sources of information and to have reduced their reliance on earnings to price stocks. Moreover, the uncertainty brought by Covid‐19 directly challenged firms' value drivers and business models, potentially inhibiting the ability to map earnings onto stock prices. Research Findings/Insights: The empirical findings show that earnings announcements lost part of their information content during the Covid‐19 crisis. Cross‐sectional tests document that geographic dispersion of operations and the degree of institutional ownership significantly affected the relationship under study. We also find that the loss of earnings announcements' informativeness was driven by exposure to the pandemic. Theoretical/Academic Implications: The recent accounting literature investigates the role of accounting information in supporting public policy during systemic crises. Our results highlight the firm‐specific attributes that affect investors' perceptions of the informativeness of earnings announcements by showing how geographic dispersion and ownership structure affect it in periods of uncertainty. Practitioner/Policy Implications: In a context in which earnings announcements' informativeness decreases, regulators and standard‐setters should consider taking corrective action to restore its informativeness, such as by strengthening disclosure requirements. The documented decrease in the informativeness of earnings announcements could be partially offset by heightening disclosure requirements to complement financial statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The corporate culture within firms is a significant concern for regulators, shareholders and other stakeholders. Drawing on a large sample of US firms, we use the political preferences of the top management team (TMT) to proxy for a firm's culture and examine whether it influences the decision to implement an effective internal control system (ICS) and whether the ICS plays a mediating role between the culture created by the TMT and financial reporting quality. We find that a Republican‐leaning TMT with a more conservative ideology is associated with a more effective internal control system. In addition, the TMT's political preferences affect financial reporting quality, both directly and indirectly, via the internal control system. A range of robustness tests reinforces our main findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine non‐GAAP earnings reporting following a going‐concern audit opinion (GCO). Using a propensity score‐matched sample, matching first‐time going‐concern issuing companies with firms in financial distress that did not receive a going‐concern report, we find that the likelihood and frequency of non‐GAAP earnings reporting are lower following GCOs. In additional analyses, we find the negative association between the announcement of GCOs and the likelihood and frequency of non‐GAAP earnings reporting stronger when GCOs are issued by industry‐specialist auditors and when GCOs are unexpected, but do not find litigation risk or managers' ability to affect the association. These results are consistent with a decrease in investor demand for non‐GAAP earnings disclosures following GCOs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a sample of up to 2,503 initial public offerings (IPOs) in 32 countries from 2011–2017, we predict and find that higher levels of country‐level accounting enforcement are associated with lower levels of IPO underpricing. IPOs in countries with a relatively low accounting enforcement score (second quintile) exhibit a mean underpricing of 19%, whereas the mean underpricing amounts to just 9% in countries with a relatively high score (fourth quintile). The results remain qualitatively the same when we employ a multi‐level model or a difference‐in‐difference design. In countries that substantially strengthened their accounting enforcement in the 2003–2009 period, the level of IPO underpricing decreased significantly. We show that accounting enforcement matters for the cost of going public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there have been several studies of people's information behaviors during the COVID‐19 epidemic, the information practices of a specific group of people—those with depression—have been neglected. This study reports on qualitative interviews with 24 participants to explore the information practices of people living with depression during the pandemic lockdown. We use the theory of information worlds and the concept of transition to understand the phases of chaos, expansion, and contraction that the information worlds of this group present during the lockdown, and examine the interrelationship between the information worlds and the individual's transition experiences during specific periods. Our results show that, first, emotion, body, and embodiment play key roles in the individual's information worlds, while individuals' information practices are regulated by the economic environment, group norms, and other social circumstances. Second, government‐level information, the volunteer community, social media, and nonhuman objects further impact participants' information practices. We suggest that health management strategies need to have different priorities at different stages of the transition, and attention should be paid to the provision of emotional information support systems during the pandemic lockdown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how corporate social responsibility and critical stakeholder (media and analyst) attention affect firm value when an environmental violation occurs. We discover that corporate social responsibility acts as a buffer in influencing firm value by analyzing 224 environmental violation events that occurred in China's publicly traded manufacturing industry firms between 2015 and 2020. Moreover, we find that the corporate social responsibility buffering effect is more substantial when media and analyst attention is high (vs. low). By studying the effects of corporate social responsibility on firm value at the onset of an environmental violation event, this study offers further support for the risk management and reputation insurance theory of corporate social responsibility. It also enriches our understanding of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following sensemaking process, this study examines how CSR policy makers of multinational companies (MNCs) interpret institutional drivers, assign meanings on them, and enact them to reduce uncertainties in conducting CSR initiatives. Based on a case study towards Australia MNCs, this study reveals the sensemaking process towards two ecological changes: (1) the communities' expectations and culture and (2) different regulatory and governance standards between home and host countries. Local communities in host countries were believed of having power to express their expectations and demands to the companies. Nevertheless, the communities may not really hold power over the companies. Sensemaking process, however, is about "believing is seeing", which tends to follow a self‐fulfilling prophecy and self‐validating prophecy. When the corporate leaders selected the interpretation, they created a story to make sense of what happened and to carry on the current activities. They then decided to act upon their interpretations by enacting CSR initiatives. When it came to formulating the CSR policy, they followed the top‐down processing by following the home country's standards that had been applied in many different host countries. Meanwhile, when it came to its implementation, they followed the bottom‐up processing to gain acceptance from the communities. This study asserts that their sense making choices, that is, how they provide meanings and reasonings to their institutions and how their rationalities are enacted, shape their companies' CSR initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile social commerce (MSC) is exhibiting a growing interest from businesses and buyers due to the increasing number of mobile app users and combination of e‐commerce and sharing features of MSC platforms. The limited existing research on MSC recommends that the impact of MSC platform features/content on consumer behaviour should be further explored, while the social commerce literature emphasizes the necessity to investigate impulse buying (IB) and social participation (SP). Thus, this study adopted the Stimulus‐Organism‐Response (SOR) theory to investigate the impact of MSC content's usefulness, interactivity, entertainment and authenticity, built from the literature, on consumer emotions (arousal and pleasure), and their relationship with IB and SP. A sample of 345 Generation Y Chinese consumers was employed, while responses were collected through a survey, being used partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling to test our hypotheses. Significant relationships were established between the content characteristics and emotions, entertainment exhibiting the strongest impact on arousal, and authenticity on pleasure. Arousal had a significant impact on pleasure, and arousal and pleasure significantly affected IB and SP, with arousal displaying a stronger impact. This research expands the MSC theory through the grouping of content characteristics, documentation on the impact on consumer emotions, the relationship between arousal and pleasure, and the effect on both IB and SP, extending the SOR theory applicability. Practical recommendations for Generation Y MSC marketing are proposed. The model could be extended by introducing privacy concern, content personalization, perceived risk as independent factors, and trust and planned behaviour as explained variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This survey features three parts. The first one reviews the most recent literature on the relationship between domestic (i.e., country‐specific) uncertainty and the business cycle, and offers ten main takeaways. The second part surveys contributions to the fast‐growing strand of the literature that focuses on the macroeconomic effects of uncertainty spillovers and global uncertainty. The last part presents contributions on the role played by uncertainty during the COVID‐19 pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Chinese national and local governments have made every effort to attract high‐level overseas talent, limited scholarly attention has been paid to their decision of where to stay in China. Using resume data of 3372 individuals involved in the "Thousand Talent Program", this study makes the first attempt to identify both regional and personal factors that affect locational choices of overseas talent in China. Descriptive results show that returned talent are unevenly distributed and are mostly concentrated in a few coastal provinces. Results from conditional logit models show that both academic career prospects and (natural and man‐made) amenities play an important role in shaping overseas talent's choices of where to work, but regional prosperity exerts no effect. Alumni social networks, scientific collaboration networks, and educational trajectories are found to greatly influence their locational choices. Results from mixed models suggest that the effect of these provincial factors may vary by age, time spent abroad, the type of talent, the location of undergraduate study, and the country of stay before return. This study enhances our knowledge of the international return migration of the highly skilled by focusing on state‐led academic migration and by challenging the conventional wisdom that high‐level global talent are rootless and cosmopolitan elites with similar locational preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how the aftermath of the 2008 crisis affected firm productivity in the UK, focusing particularly on the cohort effect of firms established after 2008 – a previously overlooked aspect of the crisis – as well as the interaction with access to credit, which we test using firm‐specific and time‐varying credit scores. For identification, a matched sample is used based on credit score, firm age, size and ownership status, combining propensity score matching with difference‐in‐differences. While we find evidence that smaller firm size and changes in credit conditions affect productivity, about half of the difference in productivity remains unexplained. When we extend the matching analysis to examine across sectors and cohorts, we find that the low productivity performance during the years 2011–2016 is driven primarily by newer firms in the services sector, rather than in manufacturing. Within services, the underlying productivity puzzle is driven by a cessation of output growth in high‐productivity financial services, while abundant labour supply has led to a 'levelling down' of performance of newer firms in other services, converging towards the relatively low‐productivity manufacturing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the association between financial statement comparability and the likelihood of accounting fraud. Prior research documents a negative association between the quality of a firm's reporting environment and accounting fraud. We build on this literature and show that poor financial statement comparability is associated with a greater likelihood of accounting fraud. We also find that accounting comparability declines over time as the year of fraud detection approaches and that the association between comparability and fraud becomes more negative over this time. In addition, we find that financial statement comparability improves after fraud detection, consistent with the notion that managers improve their financial reporting quality after fraud. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This inquiry aims to investigate how the relational dynamics are imprinted on two critical dimensions of bribe‐taking: corruptibility and corruption risks. Two treatments were randomly administered to 1400 subjects: single versus repeated interactions and strangers versus weak ties. The findings suggest that repeated interactions induce bigger bribe sizes, but also increase risks from whistleblowing and internal auditing. Weak ties mitigate bribe‐taking willingness. Nevertheless, when coupled with repeated interactions, weak ties suppress the risks from whistleblowing, testifying the bifurcated effects. The tensions between corruptibility and corruption risks suggest that bribe‐taking decisions are fraught with internal tensions, with the overall effects likely being a priori determined only in specific contexts. Such tensions are more intensified among true bureaucrats as they tend to claim bigger bribes and report more risks from internal auditing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The battlefield situation changes rapidly because underwater targets' are concealment and the sea environment is uncertain. So, a great number of situation information greatly increase, which need to be dealt with in the course of scouting underwater targets. Situation assessment in sea battlefield with a lot of uncertain information is studied, and a new situation assessment method of scouting underwater targets with fixed‐wing patrol aircraft is proposed based on the cloud Bayesian network, which overcomes the deficiency of the single cloud model in reasoning ability and the defect of Bayesian network in knowledge representation. Moreover, in the method, the cloud model knowledge deal with the input data of Bayesian network reasoning, and the advantages in knowledge representation of cloud theory and reasoning of Bayesian network are applied; also, the fuzziness and stochasticity of cloud theory in knowledge expression, the reasoning ability of Bayesian network, are combined. Then, the situation assessment model of scouting underwater targets with fixed‐wing patrol aircraft is established. Hence, the directed acyclic graph of Bayesian network structure is constructed and the assessment index is determined. Next, the cloud model is used to deal with Bayesian network, and the discrete Bayesian network is obtained. Moreover, after CPT of each node and the transformation between certainty degree and probability are accomplished; the final situation level is obtained through a probability synthesis formula. Therefore, the target type and the operational intention of the other side are deduced to form the battlefield situation. Finally, simulations are carried out, and the rationality and validity of the proposed method are testified by simulation results. By this method, the battlefield situation can be gained. And this method has a wider application range, especially for large sample data processing, and it has better practicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of company name fluency on acquisitions. We hypothesize that a company's name fluency, used by potential acquirers as a mental shortcut, influences not only its visibility to investors but also the level of interest from potential acquirers, increasing the company's acquisition probability. After correcting for endogeneity, company name fluency is positively associated with both the probability of being an acquisition target and an acquisition premium. Reasons for a higher acquisition premium for targets with higher name fluency are identified as reduced need to hire top‐tier investment banks and higher synergy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes a BigTech lender's pricing strategies in the business‐to‐customer unsecured loan market using a proprietary data set of consumer loans in China. We find that the credit rating constructed by the BigTech lender is informative of the customers' default risk. Moreover, the interest rate decreases and the credit limit increases with the credit rating. Interestingly, the BigTech lender charges different interest rates to its customers based on the customer channel, although it does not provide information about the customers' default risk. Following the passage of the China Banking Regulatory Commission Act, which reduced credit market competition, the BigTech lender increased the current rate and decreased the credit limit. We rationalize these empirical findings in a simple model of credit contract design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Western Iberian Coast (WIC) is characterized by a dynamic coastal upwelling system with interactions between oceanographic features and continental river run‐off. The present study investigates the spatio‐temporal variability in the concentrations of Chlorophyll a (Chl a) and turbidity, and their relationships with physical and other biogeochemical properties along the entire coast of Portugal, as well as the response of phytoplankton to coastal upwelling pulses. In situ data were obtained during four oceanographic campaigns conducted in spring (April–May 2019), autumn (October 2018 and 2019), and early spring (February–March 2020). Upwelling conditions were evaluated through an upwelling index and auxiliary data such as sea surface temperature and height. In the WIC, the in situ surface temperature and salinity have a clear spatial pattern, both increasing from North to South. In autumn 2018 the highest temperatures coincided with the weakening of spring–summer upwelling conditions. Overall, high Chl a was associated with lower temperatures and higher dissolved oxygen concentrations (e.g., spring 2019). During spring 2019, an increase in Chl a, especially in the northern area, was associated with previous upwelling conditions. In early spring 2020, ongoing upwelling conditions in the northern area were associated with high turbidity and nutrients close to the shoreline with no immediate biological responses. An increase in Chl a was visible in satellite imagery a few days later. These results highlight the importance of understanding the complexity of coastal processes in the WIC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the divergence between credit ratings (CRs) and Moody's market‐implied ratings (MIRs). Our evidence shows that rating gaps provide incremental information to the market regarding issuers' default risk over CRs alone in the short horizon and outperform CRs over extended horizons. The predictive ability of rating gaps is greater for more opaque and volatile issuers. Such predictability was more pronounced during the 2008 financial crisis but weakened in the post–Dodd–Frank Act period. This finding is consistent with credit rating agencies' efforts to improve their performance when facing regulatory pressure. Moreover, our analysis identifies rating‐gap signals that do (do not) lead to subsequent Moody's actions to place issuers on negative outlook and watchlists. We find that negative signals from MIR gaps have a real economic impact on issuers' fundamentals such as profitability, leverage, investment, and default risk, thus supporting the recovery‐efforts hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of auditor choice (Big 4/Non‐Big 4) in debt financing for private and public firms. We find private firms have less access to debt than public firms, and Big 4 auditors support debt raising in both private and public firms. Consistent with private firms facing greater information asymmetry, Big 4 auditors are more important for debt raising in private firms than in public firms. The benefit of appointing Big 4 auditors for private firms' debt raising is greater in the opaque information environment of the global financial crisis. It is also greater when firms are smaller, younger, or have poorer financial reporting quality. We also find evidence consistent with Big 4 auditors mitigating agency conflicts and enhancing debt raising when ownership concentration is higher in private firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether managerial ability is associated with non‐GAAP earnings quality. I find that the quality of non‐GAAP earnings is greater for high‐ability managers than low‐ability managers. I also find that investors consider non‐GAAP earnings released by high‐ability management to be informative. Additional tests show that the positive association between managerial ability and the quality of non‐GAAP earnings is stronger when return volatility or managerial stock ownership is greater. The results are robust to alternative measures of managerial ability and non‐GAAP earnings quality and to controlling for endogeneity bias. Overall, this paper provides evidence that managers of high ability use non‐GAAP reporting as a signalling tool to reduce information asymmetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]