The editors of Management Science acknowledge all our 2020 reviewers and guest associate editors, who generously provided expert counsel and guidance on a voluntary basis. We are grateful for their contributions; without them the journal could not function. Below, we list those reviewers who contributed four or more reviews in 2020.
The application of total quality management in organizations is a critical step towards ensuring organizations achieve and maintain their competitive advantage in the long run. However, not all organizations are aware of the key criteria and elements of a successful total quality management application, which negatively impacts their employee satisfaction and overall quality of their processes. This research project explores the application of total quality management, taking the case of the Bir Hassan Technical Institute in Lebanon. It set a number of key objectives: first, to determine the degree to which the total quality criteria are applied in the vocational and technical sectors at Bir Hassan Technical Institute. Second, to identify the impediments which stand in the way of applying total quality criteria and whether the senior administration has a clear strategic plan for the application of total quality management at that institute. Using a qualitative and quantitative methodology to gather and analyse the data, the project finds that vocational and technical education in Lebanon, for the most part, still lacks planning and coordination, with the main problem lying in the educational curricula and the way they are applied, in addition to the means and their variety in applying the subjects and teaching them. In the case of the Bir Hassan Technical Institute, the organization suffers from the dissatisfaction of the teachers and administrators with their job circumstances, which was a reason for dysfunction and a barrier to the provision of quality education, all of which are symptoms of the lack of total quality management application.
Zimbabwe has generally been witnessing a significant decline of meaningful Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows for some reason. The decline of FDI inflows has seen most developing countries, seeking other alternatives to attract foreign currency into their respective economies. In particular, the diaspora community has been receiving increasing attention from respective governments across the globe. Indeed, diaspora remittances have been increasing in recent times, proving to be a significant alternative source of foreign investment capital. It is, however, the contention of this paper that, in the case of Zimbabwe, diaspora remittances are not being fully exploited in terms of this resource's immense potential, as an alternative source of investment capital. In this regard, this paper sought to proffer ideas and/or suggestions on the steps that could be adopted by the Government of Zimbabwe to unlock the full potential of diaspora remittances as a source of the much-needed investment capital. The study adopted a multi-pronged research approach, largely utilizing qualitative designs to collect and analyze data through questionnaires and interviews. A purposive sample of 150 respondents was used. The results obtained confirm that the Zimbabwean economy is yet to realize full potential economic benefits (investments) from its citizens domiciled abroad. The study has thus proffered some recommendations that the Zimbabwe government could introduce to boost her diaspora’s contribution to national development. The recommendations include confidence (trust)-building measures to convince the diaspora community to invest back home; awareness campaigns to highlight existing investment opportunities, and pro-active engagement with the diaspora community, among others.
We document that larger firms pay substantially lower cash effective tax rates (cash effective tax rates (ETRs)) over the long run than smaller firms. Over a 10-year period, firms in the largest decile pay 10.4 percentage points (p.p.) (25%) lower cash taxes than those in the smallest decile, and this gap balloons to 14.4 p.p. (35%) for the largest 1% of firms. This pattern is robust to various specifications but vanishes when cash ETRs are measured annually. The relation between firm size and taxes over the long run cannot be explained by foreign operations, depreciation, research and development spending, or stock compensation, characteristics commonly associated with aggressive tax practices. Meanwhile, the observed tax inequality is strongly associated with the incidence of losses. Because smaller firms are more likely to incur significant losses, which are often not deductible against profits, they consequently face higher effective tax rates. A key finding of our paper is that the size effect reflects differences in loss rates, and consequently utilization, rather than political costs or benefits. A cross-country analysis supports these findings.
This paper examines how infrastructure development affects stock market participation in India using trading data from more than 13 million individuals. Using the phased rollout of a national road construction program as a natural experiment, we find that new road connections lead to significant increases in both trading activity and the number of investors. These effects are driven primarily by new market entrants and are most pronounced in rural and intermediately developed regions as well as among male and middle-aged investors. Two main mechanisms explain these patterns. First is an information channel: improved connectivity reduces information frictions, facilitates portfolio diversification, and encourages investment in geographically distant firms. Second is a financial inclusion channel: road construction spurs new bank branch openings—especially by state-owned banks—expanding access to financial services and enabling portfolio reallocation from savings and consumption to equity markets. We find limited evidence for a third possible channel, risk sharing, whereby participation rises with road connectivity in regions with high income volatility. Whereas initial investor returns are positive, long-term performance declines and risk-taking increases, suggesting that infrastructure expansion promotes market participation but not necessarily optimal investment outcomes.
Cheap-talk communication between parties with conflicting interests is common in many business and economic settings. Two distinct behavioral economics theories, the trust-embedded model and the level-k model, have emerged to explain how cheap talk works between human decision makers. The trust-embedded model considers that decision makers are motivated by nonpecuniary motives to be trusting and trustworthy. In contrast, the level-k model considers that decision makers are purely self-interested but limited in their ability to think strategically. Although both theories have been successful in explaining cheap-talk behaviors in separate contexts, they point to contrasting drivers for human behaviors. In this paper, we provide the first direct comparison of both theories within the same context. We show that, in a cheap-talk setting that well represents many practical situations, the two models make characteristically distinct and empirically distinguishable predictions. We leverage past experiment data from this setting to determine what aspects of cheap-talk behavior each model captures well and which model (or combination of models) has better explanatory power and predictive performance. We find that the trust-embedded model emerges as the dominant explanation. Our results, thus, highlight the importance of investing in systems and processes to foster trusting and trustworthy relationships in order to facilitate more effective cheap-talk interactions.
Banks’ lending technology hinges on their handling of soft and hard information in dealing with different types of credit demand. Through assembling a novel data set on banks’ investment in information technologies (IT), this paper provides concrete empirical evidence on how banks adapt their lending technologies. We find investment in communication IT is associated with improving banks’ ability to produce and transmit soft information, whereas investment in software IT helps enhance banks’ hard information processing capacity. We exploit policies that affect geographic regions differentially to show causally that banks respond to an increased demand for small business credit (mortgage refinance) by increasing their spending on communication (software) IT spending. We also find that the entry of fintech induces commercial banks to increase their investment in IT—more so in the software IT category.