Search Results (8)

In the modern corporation, understanding sustainable cost management practices is essential for promoting economic resilience and resource efficiency. This study investigates how ownership structures influence the behavior of selling, and general and administrative (SG&A) costs during periods of sales fluctuations in South Korean firms, with particular attention to Chaebols. Drawing upon agency theory and corporate governance perspectives, we examine whether proxies for agency costs, namely, free cash flow, asset utilization ratios, and operating expense ratios, explain variations in SG&A cost responses to changes in revenue. Utilizing a panel dataset of 4279 firm-year observations from KOSPI-listed companies over the period 2011–2021, we employ Pooled Ordinary Least Squares (OLS), Fixed Effects, Random Effects, and Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimations to model SG&A cost behavior. The analysis incorporates regression-based interaction terms that capture asymmetric cost adjustments during sales declines, commonly referred to as cost stickiness. Our findings indicate that firms with concentrated ownership, such as Chaebols, exhibit significantly lower SG&A cost stickiness, reflecting stronger financial discipline and more efficient resource allocation. In contrast, firms with dispersed ownership demonstrate more pronounced cost stickiness, consistent with governance frictions and managerial discretion. These results emphasize the moderating role of ownership structure in cost behavior and highlight its implications for sustainable corporate governance. Our study contributes to the literature on cost management and financial sustainability by offering empirical insights from a distinctive institutional setting. Policy recommendations include enhancing internal controls, promoting transparent cost practices, and encouraging shareholder oversight to reinforce long-term efficiency. Full article

The launch of both battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the global market has triggered ongoing radical changes in the automotive sector. On the one hand, the new characteristics of the BEV powertrain compared to the combustion type have resulted in new central parameters, such as vehicle range, which then become an important selling point. On the other hand, electric components are as yet not optimized and the sensors needed for autonomous driving are still expensive, which introduces changes to the vehicle cost structure. This transformation is not limited to the vehicle itself but also extends to its mobility and the necessary infrastructure. The former is shaped by new user behaviors and scenarios. The latter is impacted by the BEV powertrain, which requires a charging and energy supply infrastructure. To enable manufacturers and researchers to develop and optimize BEVs and AVs, it is necessary to first identify the relevant parameters and costs. To this end, we have conducted an extensive literature review. The result is a complete overview of the relevant parameters and costs, divided into the categories of vehicle, infrastructure, mobility, and energy. Full article

This study considered the supply chain that two manufacturers sell green complementary products to a dominant offline retailer. We investigated whether a manufacturer (the integrated manufacturer) should add an online channel and examined how it affects channel members’ decisions and profits. We formulated the power structure as the retailer-Stackelberg model and analyzed the pricing decisions for the supply chain. The results demonstrate that the integrated manufacturer prefers not to add the online channel when online and offline market bases are comparable and the level of complementarity is moderate. The integrated manufacturer gains more power at the expense of the offline retailer and the other manufacturer (the traditional manufacturer) when the complementarity between the offline and online channel is the same as offline channels with the addition of a new online channel; furthermore, the retailer earns less, while the traditional manufacturer’s profit hinges on the complementarity between the online and offline channels. It is beneficial for the offline retailer to balance the online and offline market bases of product 1 by improving the sales environment of the physical store. The integrated manufacturer can benefit from varying their marketing actions to decrease the degree of complementarity between the retail and online channels for the two products, while the traditional manufacturer can be better off from the online channel introduction by taking steps to increase the complementarity of the two products between the offline channels. Full article

This study intends to examine the impact of selling expense structure on the business growth of 255 Vietnamese large-scale enterprises in three different industries (Consumer Staples, Industrials, and Manufacture) listed on the Vietnamese Stock Exchange over four years from 2015 to 2018. By using STATA software (StataCorp LLC, 4905 Lakeway Drive, College Station, Texas 77845-4512, USA), the research outcomes indicate that both labour expense and depreciation expense have a negative influence on revenue growth and firm size growth but positive influence on profit growth while materials and tools expenses negatively affect all three dependent variables. Furthermore, an increase in the proportion of outsourcing expenses and other selling expenses would result in a significant increase in revenue but a decline in the profit of these companies. From this research results, large-scale enterprises should consider changing the selling expense structure as they spend too much on outsourcing and other selling expenses (60%–70% total selling expense) but too little on labour, which plays an important role in upgrading the profitability of these enterprises. Full article

Financial transparency, including transparency of transactions, is one of the pillars of sustainability. This study investigates whether a company’s ownership structure, including ownership concentration, managerial ownership, and the presence of institutional investors, affects upward real earnings management practices. The research is based on companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Poland adapting panel data regression models. The significance and contribution to literature of the paper lies in the fact that we provide evidence that the association between the magnitude of total upward real earnings management and shareholder concentration is U-shaped, thereby indicating that there is an optimal level of ownership concentration, minimizing the magnitude of upward real earnings management and thus increasing financial transparency. Our results show the negative relationship between total upward real earnings management and managerial ownership, thereby we confirm the alignment of interest hypothesis, in terms of real earnings management. We also confirm that individual instruments of real earnings management are linked to ownership concentration and managerial ownership in specific ways. The presence of institutional investors reduces the magnitude of total upward real earnings management. Full article

The financial market, including the fund market, has an increasingly important role in facilitating sustainable economic development. In this study, we examine whether investors react rationally to fund fees through the investigation of the impact of fee structures on investor behavior with open-end funds in China. We aim to determine whether performance influences the effect of the load fee on fund flows. Based on panel data that contained 240 open-end funds for the period of 2008 to 2017, we offer insight into the relationship between fee structure and the flow of open-end funds in China and find that investors react more sensitively to the load fee than operating expenses. Specifically, the coefficients of operating expenses were found to be insignificant in all regression analyses, while almost all the coefficients of load fees were statistically significant. In addition, our findings indicate that the load fee decreases net flow mainly through increasing redemption, and high load fees can make investors more rational to redeem funds with low performance. High load fees can influence investors to sell funds that perform worse in moderately performing funds, where a high load fee can increase investors’ rationality and motivate them to sell funds, resulting in the mitigation of the disposition effect. We also find that investors in larger funds and aggressive growth funds, as well as those who invest with institutional investors and higher liquidity, react more insensitively to load fees, which can be illustrated by the distraction effect. Full article

A high liquidity, low expense ratio and the possibility to conduct arbitrage allow exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be used for short sales. Bearish investors can also buy inverse ETFs. This paper aims to outline two investment approaches for bearish ETF investors and the differences between these two approaches; it also aims to examine the relationship between price and an indicator of volume and evaluate the final positions in selected ETFs in selected periods. Short ETFs dominate in simplicity, flexibility, paying out dividends and especially in the limited size of the loss. On the other hand, their structure, which demands daily rebalancing, causes substantial deviation from the benchmark in the long-term and leads to a higher expense ratio, and lower liquidity increases bid-ask spreads. Negative aspects of ETF short selling lie in unlimited loss, high borrowing costs, the need for margin accounts, variability of loan fees and the possibility of a transaction recall by the lender. On the contrary, margin operations enable potentially higher appreciation of capital by generating rebate rates. Our results show that with the decrease in value of the most used ETFs, short interest is growing for those funds where there is a very strong negative correlation implying hedging tendencies. Short selling proved to be a more advantageous strategy in the observed period of market downturn, as well as in 2011–2017, due to negative returns, however, by applying margin trading inverse ETFs turned out to make less losses. Sector-oriented inverse ETFs are the exception, where the largest differences between these two strategies are recorded. However, the final conclusion of the suitability of one of the analyzed strategies depends on the market volatility and the direction of the market itself. Full article

This research aimed to solve the economic crop planning problem, considering transportation logistics to maximize the profit from cultivated activities. Income is derived from the selling price and production rate of the plants; costs are due to operating and transportation expenses. Two solving methods are presented: (1) developing a mathematical model and solving it using Lingo v.11, and (2) using three improved Differential Evolution (DE) Algorithms—I-DE-SW, I-DE-CY, and I-DE-KV—which are DE with swap, cyclic moves (CY), and K-variables moves (KV) respectively. The algorithms were tested by 16 test instances, including this case study. The computational results showed that Lingo v.11 and all DE algorithms can find the optimal solution eight out of 16 times. Regarding the remaining test instances, Lingo v.11 was unable to find the optimal solution within 400 h. The results for the DE algorithms were compared with the best solution generated within that time. The DE solutions were 1.196–1.488% better than the best solution generated by Lingo v.11 and used 200 times less computational time. Comparing the three DE algorithms, MDE-KV was the DE that was the most flexible, with the biggest neighborhood structure, and outperformed the other DE algorithms. Full article