Cost behavior in e-commerce firms

We conduct empirical research on the flexibility of operating costs of e-commerce firms. With an international sample of firms from different European countries, we find that e-commerce firms have a different cost structure than traditional retail firms, with a lower share of labor costs and cost of goods sold, but a higher share of other operating costs. While we find no significant different behavior in cost of goods sold and labor costs between the two types of firms, e-commerce firms are more flexible in adjusting other operating costs than traditional retail firms when activity decreases. Results are robust to different models, estimations methods and samples. The higher flexibility of e-commerce firms relies on other operating costs, but e-commerce creates qualified jobs with higher wages than traditional retail, with no additional exposure to labor uncertainty for employees.

Cost stickiness and the firm’s organizational form: evidence from the property-liability insurance sector

We examine the existence of cost stickiness in the German property-liability insurance sector by analyzing if the percentage increase in administrative costs for a rise in premiums is larger than the percentage decrease in administrative costs for an equivalent drop in premiums. In addition, we analyze if sticky cost behavior depends on insurance firms’ organizational form. Using company-level data from German property-liability insurance firms for the years 2001–2017 and regression analyses, we find that administrative costs are sticky in the insurance sector, as administrative costs increase on average 0.82% per 1% increase in premiums but decrease only 0.6% per 1% decrease in premium income. Moreover, we find that stock insurers exhibit lower levels of cost stickiness, indicating better monitoring mechanisms.

The Effect of Corporate Sustainable Management on the Relationship between Cost Stickiness and Earnings Transparency

This study empirically analyzes the relationship between cost stickiness and earnings transparency. Additionally, this study examines the effect of corporate sustainable management (CSM) on the relationship between cost stickiness and earnings transparency. The evaluation scores of Korea Corporate Governance Service (KCGS) are employed to measure CSM activities. The empirical results show that the relationship between cost stickiness and earnings transparency is significant in the negative direction. This means that the more sticky the costs of a firm, the lower the earnings transparency of the firm. In addition, the relationship between the interaction variables of CSM and cost stickiness and earnings transparency is significant in the positive direction. This indicates that CSM activities act as a mechanism to mitigate the negative relationship between cost stickiness and earnings transparency. The findings of this study, which presented the effects of cost stickiness on earnings transparency and the fact that CSM activities act as a device to suppress the opportunistic cost behavior of managers, are expected to provide important implications to investors, external auditors, and supervisors.

Analisis Pengaruh Karakteristik Dewan Terhadap Asymmetric Cost Behavior pada Perusahaan yang Terdaftar di Bursa Efek Indonesia Tahun 2014-2018

Analyzing the effect of the board characteristics on asymmetric cost behavior is the aim of this study. Asymmetric cost behavior is dependent variable, while board characteristics are an independent variable in which there are changes in sales, decrease dummy, interaction term, the board size, and non-executive ratios. In addition, the control variable is owned by institutional ownership. The data population was 1570 data obtained from 314 companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014-2018. Data samples that had been tested and experienced deviations were 336 samples, therefore, the number of data analyzed is equal to 1234 samples. The annual financial statements were used in this study as secondary data and quantitative research. The result of the study is board characteristics have significant positive effect of changes in sales and interaction terms on asymmetric cost behavior and significant negative effect of decrease dummy on asymmetric cost behavior. The non-significant variable has negative effect on board size and institutional ownership on asymmetric cost behavior, while the ratio of non-executive has positive non-significant effect on asymmetric cost behavior.