Search results for "evidence"
showing 10 items of 1050 documents
Financial Structure of the Family Business: Evidence From a Group of Small Spanish Firms
2007
This article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the financial behavior of small family businesses and their differences from nonfamily small businesses. Taking into account two consolidated financial approaches, (1) the trade-off theory and (2) the pecking order theory, several hypotheses on the financial behavior of both groups of firms have been tested. By estimating these models through panel data methodology, using a sample of Spanish family businesses together with another control group of nonfamily businesses, we have obtained results confirming that a business's family nature does lead it to employ financial policy different from the rest of businesses. Furthermore, …
Unveiling the Role of Multiple blockholders: Evidence from Closely Held Firms.
2019
Research Question/Issue. This paper disentangles how the modes of ownership distribution among multiple blockholders and their heterogeneity shape principal–principal conflicts and, in turn, affect firm performance. The paper offers empirical evidence from a panel of Italian closely held firms over the period 2009–2014. Research Findings/Insights. We explore the principal–principal conflicts among blockholders across two distinct control structures. When a single blockholder controls the firm, principal–principal conflicts are shaped by the trade‐off between the alignment effect and the monitoring effect. In this scenario, we find that the relationship between the two largest blockholders' …
Struggle over joint audit: on behalf of public interest?
2012
International audience; European Commission (EC 2011) has recently suggested joint audit - broadly defined as an audit where two independent auditors are jointly liable for the audit report - as a way a way to increase audit quality after the financial crisis and to mitigate audit market concentration, by enlarging the audit offer. Big 4 audit firms have fought this proposal by arguing its unbearable cost while 2nd Tier audit firms have supported it by arguing its added quality. This conflicting position leads us to question their claim of public interest concern. As group-interest economic regulation theories predict that the absence of any effect of a new regulation (here: joint audit) is…
Healthy but risky: A descriptive study on cyclists’ encouraging and discouraging factors for using bicycles, habits and safety outcomes
2019
Abstract Transportation is a necessary process that requires not only adequate means, but also individual choices. And apparently, the recent boom of alternative modes of transportation has substantially changed people’s perceptions of cycling, as well as the reasons why they decide to use a bike. Nevertheless, people identify some motives that encourage this use together with the perceived risks and the discouraging factors which affect the choice of using a bike, thus making it important to explore all these elements in the light of the empirical evidence. The objective of this study was to explore and describe the encouraging and discouraging reasons behind the use of bikes among cyclist…
Transport Logistics and Modal Split of Spanish Exports to Europe: Empirical Evidence
2006
This article attempts to find the determinants of mode choice decisions for Spanish shipments to Europe and North Africa in four productive sectors that presents differentiated transport logistics. To this end, exhaustive fieldwork was carried out and a database constructed, including 1251 observations collected from transport decision-makers. A mixed logit is used to estimate a modal choice model, consistent with economic theory of modal choice in a price-time reliability framework. The main findings are that quality attributes of service influence modal choice only for the relatively high-value sectors whereas relatively low-value sectors are mainly affected by transport costs. In terms o…
The Influence of Ambiguity Tolerance on Willingness to Communicate in L2
2017
The main purpose of this chapter is to find empirical evidence for the role of ambiguity tolerance (AT) in shaping one’s L2 willingness to communicate levels in the context of the English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom, in the Polish educational context. As the pyramid model of L2 WTC proposes (MacIntyre et al., 1998), AT’s basis is constituted by the most distal and enduring influences of personality. For this reason, ambiguity tolerance, conceived of as a personality variable (Furnham and Marks, 2013), can have a significant impact on L2 WTC. The complexity of interrelated mechanisms embedded in the foreign language learning context induce ambivalent feelings of being simultaneousl…
Forensic Inspections in the Time of Covid-19
2021
The global pandemic of COVID-19 has impacted the entire world in ways that were unimaginable months ago. It has changed how professionals work and interact with one another. To ensure the safety of experts and attorneys, also forensic inspection procedures must evolve, while still providing a reliable foundation for an expert testimony, relevant to the task at hand. Traditional field inspections require attendees to be physically present and generally in close proximity. Inspecting artifacts may also require that individual components be serially examined by multiple experts, which increases the risk of transmitting the disease. The authors propose a new approach to forensic inspections aim…
Is there scientific evidence of the mouthwashes effectiveness in reducing viral load in Covid-19? A systematic review.
2020
Background The aim of this research is to verify whether there is evidence in the literature regarding the decrease in viral load present in saliva after using three types of mouthwashes. Material and methods Clinical and/or in vitro experimental studies that have used mouthwashes as a form of intervention to reduce the viral load in saliva were included. Combinations of words and appropriate truncations were adapted for each of the seven selected electronic bases including grey literature. Results The selection of articles was carried out in two phases by two independent reviewers. After removing duplicate articles, 1245 references were maintained, and 2 articles were included in the Syste…
[The impact of COVID-19 on hand surgery: a French retrospective comparative study in COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 hand trauma centers].
2021
Introduction: En 2020, la pandémie a divisé la France en zone COVID-19 et non COVID-19. L’objectif principal de notre étude était de comparer la variabilité de l’activité chirurgicale et de consultation de 2 centres SOS main entre la période de pandémie et hors pandémie. Les objectifs secondaires étaient d’identifier les patients à risque afin de développer des moyens de prévention en traumatologie de la main. Méthodes: Il s’agit d’une étude rétrospective bi-centrique à visée épidémiologique sur les admissions aux urgences traumatologiques pendant le premier confinement français. Les données ont été comparées à la même période en 2019 (groupe contrôle). 2055 patients ont consulté pour un tr…
Performance Assessment of Critical Thinking: Conceptualization, Design, and Implementation
2020
Enhancing students’ critical thinking (CT) skills is an essential goal of higher education. This article presents a systematic approach to conceptualizing and measuring CT. CT generally comprises the following mental processes: identifying, evaluating, and analyzing a problem; interpreting information; synthesizing evidence; and reporting a conclusion. We further posit that CT also involves dealing with dilemmas involving ambiguity or conflicts among principles and contradictory information. We argue that performance assessment provides the most realistic—and most credible—approach to measuring CT. From this conceptualization and construct definition, we describe one possible framework for …