International diversification can reduce the risk of investment portfolios, but the optimal allocations are affected by taxes. This paper examines taxation of dividends received from equity securities. Two important studies are reviewed, and five other studies are outlined. Ongoing research with simpler models will give useful guidance to individual investors.

The objective of Microfinance institutions (MFIs) is often two-fold; the so-called double bottom line of seeking financial return sustainability, while also maximizing the social impact of their services on the lives of the poor individuals they serve. The pursuit of the social impact bottom line puts microfinance institutions in a peculiar position with regards to the response of their cost structure to the global financial crisis. This paper begins by investigating the impact of the global financial crisis on the cost structure, and cost inefficiencies of MFIs given their double bottom line pursuits. Overall, it appears that achieving growth in both dimensions of social impact and financial sustainability, grew more costly for the MFIs directly because of the global financial crisis. Moreover, given the risk-adjusted nature of the cost inefficiency measure used in the paper, the results show that maintaining a given level of risk in the loan portfolios became significantly more challenging for MFIs after the global financial crisis. In addition, the analysis performed here finds that more than two-thirds of the institutions in the industry are operating under economies of scale, although the proportion decreased after the global financial crisis. This suggests that some progress is evident towards broader achievement of the cost benefits of scale, but that the industry on average still has room for consolidations, mergers, and acquisitions. The analysis uses a time-invariant panel Stochastic Frontier Analysis with standard errors clustered at the country level. The data, from the Mix Market database, comprises 1400 Microfinance institutions across 108 countries.

This paper points out the implications of job-related stress for turnover intention and absenteeism in the Cameroon’s Microfinance sector. It uses structured questionnaires in collecting primary data from employees of Microfinance institutions. The Chi-Square model is used to test the relationship between job-related stress, turnover intention and absenteeism. The study finds that the type of stress experienced by employees depends on the category of the Microfinance Institution (MFI). Acute stress is more widespread among Category One Microfinance workers than among Category Two Microfinance workers and episodic acute stress is more widespread among Category Two Microfinance workers than among Category One Microfinance workers. Also, the study reveals that chronic stress is experienced at very low levels within both categories. For the correlation analyses, at a 95% confidence level, our results indicate that there is a significant relationship between job stress and turnover intention as well as absenteeism. In this regard, we propose that employees should be keen to recognise the signs of stress, and employers should be conscious of the negative impact that stress has on employees’ health and performance and hence on the profits of the organisation. Moreover, handling dysfunctional stress can be a strategy for managers in every Microfinance institution to retain talented employees who respect organisational ethics and are committed towards achieving the goals of the institution.

Social networks are now a ubiquitous feature of the modern world. People use social media for various purposes, such as obtaining information, interacting with other people, and learning about new trends and developments that affect them. Online social media platforms are important tools that are allowing women entrepreneurs to overcome traditional societal limits and improve the effectiveness of their firms’ operations. In this paper we develop a conceptual discussion and three propositions related to the improvement of female social networks for pursuing entrepreneurship as a result of social media platforms, and more specifically how these platforms have enhanced women entrepreneur’s opportunity recognition processes and firm performance. Following a review of the literature and the development of the propositions, implications for practice, limitations, and future research directions are offered.

This is a legal case study of a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) seeking to overturn the decision of the California Board of Accountancy (Board) to revoke his CPA license; however, the Court of Appeal affirmed the Board’s decision and the revocation became permanent. The Board found that the CPA had not registered his firm’s name with the Board and had violated independence rules. The Board also found that the CPA exhibited gross negligence in his performance of 2 audits by committing 11 extreme violations of Generally Accepted Auditing Standards, as follows: issuing an unqualified opinion when the client’s income statement contained inaccurate revenue and earnings figures; dating the audit reports before completion of field work; failure to maintain work papers; failure to obtain evidence; failure to confirm Accounts Receivable; failure to prepare a written audit plan; failure to evaluate the client’s internal controls; failure to obtain legal representation letters; failure to determine audit risk; failure to make fraud inquiries; and failure to perform analytical procedures. However, the CPA’s most egregious behavior was his dishonesty in communications with the Board.

First-Price-Sealed-Bid (FPSB) are widely used in both the public and private sectors. In a FPSB procurement common value auction, a seller must first estimate their cost to provide the product requested by the buyer and then determine a bid amount by adding a markup to the cost estimate. This markup must consider desired profits as well as informational uncertainties regarding the cost estimates since actual costs of production are known only after the product is produced. In this paper, we investigate the impact of better cost estimates on firm profitability and bidding strategy in a two- and three-bidder auction. Based on field data from over 1000 procurement auctions, we assume that errors in cost estimation follow a normal distribution. This assumption greatly complicates the analysis such that finding an analytical solution is unlikely. Therefore, using a numerical solution approach, we find the equilibrium solution for each type of seller under a variety of parameter settings. We find that advantaged sellers will be more profitable yet submit more aggressive bids. These results depend on the number of advantaged and disadvantaged sellers competing. Indeed, if there is more than a single advantaged seller competing, they will submit very aggressive bids resulting in profits that may actually decrease as each gets better at estimating costs. Our results provide a clear understanding as to the importance of accurate product cost estimates and extends the research on the effects of cost estimation accuracy in procurement auctions.

This research investigates how advertising values affect customer trust and thus engagement on social media. We dissect the values and trust into two types respectively: informative value and entertainment value; and cognitive trust and emotional trust. In the theoretical framework, we suggested that both trusts would significantly affect social media engagement. With a 2x2 experimental setting on specific levels of information and entertainment values in an Instagram post, we conducted a questionnaire survey to compare the differences of engagement level among the four posts. We also revealed that people with a certain personality, income level and expense pattern have a significant effect on social media engagement.

There have been numerous discussions on the sharing economy to identify the contributing factors of its success. The focuses are more on the demand side, the user behaviours, or the peculiar nature of platform business which is closely associated with this new mode of business operation. This article tries to work on the supply and operational side of the business, with an analytical framework covering four key aspects related to the assets being shared. Those are the value, ownership, geographical distribution of the assets and whether the assets are genuinely being shared. Four types of sharing businesses have been analyzed, namely, bikes, automobiles, apartments, office spaces. The outcome of the analysis is to predict the possible success or failure of any existing or new businesses in this new economic landscape. Moreover, the results of the analysis indicate that, from the supply side perspective, sharing is in fact not the key success factor, while asset ownership and its corresponding high or low maintenance cost are the more relevant considerations. The hype generated around this concept of sharing economy may have overshadowed the essence of this business model.

The growth of the online shopping market in South Africa has been widely publicized, and has led to many online retail brands being established. More and more people in this country are shopping online. Traditional retailers have also expanded their offering to including online shopping, due to public demand and an opportunity to expand their reach. To attract growing consumer segments to online shopping, online retailers must understand why consumers shop online, as well as the different demographic factors which play a role. A survey was conducted among shoppers at two shopping centres: in Johannesburg and in Pretoria. Of the 210 completed questionnaires, only 207 were usable. Convenience sampling was adopted to intercept customers at the two shopping centres. To achieve the objectives of this study, various statistical analyses were conducted, including descriptive statistics, factor analysis, a t-test and the ANOVA test. The majority of respondents reported that they shop online. Twelve factors were identified during factors analysis, with four having a greater influence on online shopping, namely usefulness, trust, convenience and ease of use. The study also found that online shopping factors differ across demographics such gender and income groups, but not across age and level of education.

Active portfolio management postulates that investors should seek increasing the breadth of their portfolio. Usually, investors associate breadth with the number of assets. Because of the unknown correlations between models’ forecasts and errors, breadth almost always is significantly less than number of assets in investors’ portfolio. In order to increase breadth, long investors must increase to higher extend the number of assets in their portfolio leading to ambivalent influence over active risk. One part of the active risk - tracking error can be diversified by increasing the number of assets but with diminishing result. The second part of the active risk - strategy risk constantly increases with number of assets. Therefore, theoretically there must be some optimum level of number of assets in portfolio which maximize alpha and IR of the investment. This optimum will depend on the specifics of investors’ benchmark. Taiwanese market with its broad index provokes active investors to increase the breadth significantly. We found for this stock market that breadth increasing can be effective for IR maximization when portfolio involves 15-25 number of assets (or 5%) of the assets. Further increasing in numbers will cause either alpha eating or total active risk increasing and eventually will result in lower IR.

Cause-and-effect diagrams are used to determine whether the process studied has the potential to lead to the achievement of sustainable quality of the logistics service. The achievement of the planned results in accordance with the approved objectives and policies for the expected quality of the logistics processes and the application of the logistics approach in management can be managed by applying the Cause-and-effect diagram, or Ishikawa method. The main objective of this analysis is the application of the method in logistics operations for the decision-making process by the senior management of the organisation where the method is applied, where the decisions should be adequate to the cause and effects. The application of the expert method is sought through achievement of consensus among the members of the team engaged with the composition of the diagram. The results of the study confirm that the studied problem is affected by a number of causes, however, the application of the method in logistics organisations can help determine which of the multiple factors have a significant or less significant contribution.