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The increases in the number of online courses given by universities have been quite dramatic over the last couple of years. Nowadays, many universities even give complete degree programs online where instructions and lectures in the form of, for example, streaming videos, are available for students to watch 24 hours a day. In a sense, the use of Internet and Interactive Computer Technologies (ICT) in higher education can be compared to any other type of teaching tool, such as the blackboard and overhead projectors. The motivation for using the Internet and ICT in higher education, from an economic point of view, is if they are more effective as teaching tools compared to any relevant alternative. That is, all else being equal, if the Internet is an effective teaching tool in that students who attend online courses or complete degree programs perform better in terms of marks in the final exam compared to face-to-face students. In this paper we reflect on and summarize some of the empirical findings in the literature on the effects of online teaching on student performance compared to face-to-face equivalents. Keywords

Purpose: The main objective of this paper analyses the effects of mandatory International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption by Spanish firms in 2005 on the cost of equity capital. Design/methodology/approach: Using a sample of listed Spanish companies during the 1999 to 2009 period and a country-level focused analysis. To achieve our objective we relied on OLS regression analysis and estimate the dependent variable-the cost of equity-by using the proxy suggested in Easton (2004). Findings: We find evidence that, unlike previous studies, Spanish listed companies show a significant reduction in their cost of equity capital after the mandatory adoption of IFRS in 2005, after controlling by a set of firm-risk and market variables. According to our results, increased financial disclosure and enhanced information comparability, along with changes in legal and institutional enforcement, seem to have a joint effect on the cost of capital, leading to a large decrease in expected equity returns. Research limitations/implications: The main limitation of the study is that the sample represents just one country.-562-Intangible Capital-http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/ic.491 Practical implications: The findings of the study may have implications for the firms' management staff, as they reveal what information determines the cost of equity capital. The systematic risk and the leverage affect positively the cost of stocks and therefore their market value. The results are consistent with the financial principle establishing that the higher risk and the higher leverage, the higher cost of capital. Originality/value: As a result of the conducted research, one is able to figure out which stock-return variables should be observed to anticipate the change of a company's cost of capital.

This study applies panel data regression models to investigate how the stock market values the environmental policy of the firm. The empirical analysis relies on a crosscountry sample of public firms for the period between 2014 and 2017 and uses the ratings of environmental performance (EP) released by Eikon Thomson Reuters. For the first time in the related literature, the price-to-sales multiple is used to capture the assessment of the stock market towards EP. The study reveals that firms with the highest (lowest) scores of EP are quoted at significantly lower (higher) price-to-sales multiples than other firms, indicating a negative perception of the stock market towards EP. This finding is mostly driven by firms from the American region (United States and Canada). However, even in the Scandinavian region, considered as the most advanced area with regard to the concern towards environmental issues, stock market participants do not seem to have a positive view of EP. These results are robust to various checks and, particularly, to the use of the Tobin Q ratio as an alternative indicator of the stock market perceptions. The inference of this analysis suggests that the negative assessment of the stock market towards EP may constitute a deterrent for achieving more environmentally committed firms, making it difficult to accomplish the United Nations' Sustainable Development agenda.

On May 27, 2014, Regulation (EU) No 537/2014 was published in the Official Journal of the European Union. Aiming to enhance audit quality, the new regulation establishes, among other measures, a maximum tenure of ten years with the audit firm and important limitations to the provision of non-audit services to audit clients by the audit firm. However, it should be noted that the extant research does not unambiguously support that long audit firm tenures or non-audit services impair the quality of audits. This research studies whether these provisions have been empirically associated with reduced audit quality for Spain. Because of its low litigation risk, the potentially negative impact of tenure and non-audit services on audit quality should be clearly observed in the Spanish audit market. Nevertheless, we do not report significantly lower levels of audit quality associated with either long tenures or non-audit services. Our results may have some interesting policy implication as they seem to put into question the necessity of such a regulation for the audit sector.