Targeted advertising and advertising avoidance

I examine how the increasing ability of firms to target their ads influences market outcomes when consumers have access to advertising‐avoidance tools. Although firms generally benefit from improved targeting, consumers need not. I also show that there may be too little blocking of ads in equilibrium and consider the role of targeted advertising when niche firms compete against mass‐market firms.     

The effect of tax revenue budgeting errors on fiscal balance: evidence from the Swiss cantons

This study is an empirical analysis of the impact of direct tax revenue budgeting errors on fiscal deficits. Using panel data from 26 Swiss cantons between 1980 and 2002, we estimate a single equation model on the fiscal balance, as well as a simultaneous equation model on revenue and expenditure. We use new data on budgeted and actual tax revenue to show that underestimating tax revenue significantly reduces fiscal deficits. Furthermore, we show that this effect is channeled through decreased expenditure. The effects of over and underestimation turn out to be symmetric.     

Can Companies Influence Investor Behaviour through Advertising? Super Bowl Commercials and Stock Returns

Recent research shows that mood and attention may affect investors’ choices. In this paper we examine whether companies can create such mood and attention effects through advertising. We choose a natural experiment by investigating price reactions and trading activity for firms employing TV commercials in 19 Super Bowl broadcasts over the 1969–2001 period. We find significant positive abnormal returns for firms which are readily identifiable from the ad contents, which is consistent with the presence of mood and attention effects. For recognisable companies with the number of ads greater than the sample mean, the event is followed by an average abnormal one day return of 45 basis points. The effect appears to persist in the short term with the 20‐day post‐event cumulative abnormal returns for such firms averaging 2%. We find significant abnormal net buying activity for small trades in shares of recognised Super Bowl advertisers indicating that small investors tend to be the ones most attracted by the increased publicity.     

Back to Basics: Forecasting the Revenues of Internet Firms

This paper examines the roles played by past revenues, web usage data, and analysts in forecasting the future revenues of internet firms during the years 1998 to 2000. For this time period our analysis shows that estimates of web traffic growth have significant incremental value in the prediction of revenues above time-series forecasts. Furthermore, analysts almost always underestimate the revenues of internet firms. Historical revenue growth has incremental predictive power over analysts' forecasts for portal and content/community firms, but not for our e-tailer sample. Moreover, the stocks of the portal and content/community firms with high historical revenue growth earn higher abnormal returns during our sample period than do those with low historical growth. Estimates of web usage growth generally do not have incremental value over analysts' forecasts for predicting the revenues of either set of firms. However, perfect foreknowledge of actual web usage growth would provide incremental predictive power. Collectively, our findings point to the potential value for forecasting purposes of both improving upon the web usage estimates and obtaining more timely reports of actual web traffic.     

Specific and Ad Valorem Taxation in Asymmetric Cournot Oligopolies

This paper compares ad valorem and specific taxes in asymmetric homogenous Cournot oligopolies with constant marginal costs. We show that for any given level of industry output, ad valorem taxes are superior to specific taxes in terms of revenue raised. If the tax rates are sufficiently high, for any given specific tax one can find an ad valorem tax that leads to greater tax revenue, consumer surplus, and industry profits.     

The role of creative strategy,ad disclosure and regulatory focus in investors’ decision making: An experimental investigation

This study examines the effects of creative strategy and ad disclosure in financial services advertising (FSA) and individual differences in regulatory focus on retail investors’ attitudes and behavioral intentions. Results from a between-subject experiment indicate that investors’ regulatory focus (promotion focus versus prevention focus) moderates the effects of FSA related to creative strategy and ad disclosure. Specifically, prevention-focused investors (promotion-focused investors) had more favorable attitudes towards and showed greater purchase intentions of a financial product when exposed to informational ads and ads with disclosures (transformational ads and ads without disclosures). The authors offer theoretical, managerial and public policy implications.     

Apple's agency model and the role of most‐favored‐nation clauses

The agency model used by Apple and other digital platforms delegates retail‐pricing decisions to upstream content providers subject to a fixed revenue‐sharing rule. Given competition both upstream and downstream, we consider how, under the agency model, retail prices depend on the firms' revenue‐sharing splits and the degrees to which consumers view the platforms and the goods sold on the platforms to be substitutes. We show that the agency model may not be universally adopted even if adoption would mean higher profits for all firms. Use of most‐favored‐nation clauses in these settings can ensure industry‐wide adoption and increase retail prices.     

Extrapolation Errors in IPOs

We demonstrate that relatively high revenue growth prior to an initial public offering (IPO) is associated with high IPO prices and poor returns. In particular, low‐growth IPO returns, ?1% on a three‐year annualized basis compared to ?12% (equal‐weighted) or ?29% (value‐weighted) for high‐growth new issues. There is no evidence that the performance differentials reflect risk premia. Rather, low‐growth firms’ returns are more stable over time. Finally, while analysts’ forecasts are upwardly biased for all firms, the magnitude of this bias is greatest for firms with rapid pre‐IPO revenue growth. Overall, these results are consistent with the extrapolation errors model suggested by Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny (1994).     

Conditional Persistence of Earnings Components and Accounting Anomalies

We suggest that the failure of investors to distinguish between an earnings component's autocorrelation coefficient (unconditional persistence) and the marginal contribution of that component's persistence to the persistence of earnings (conditional persistence) provides a partial explanation of post‐earnings‐announcement drift, post‐revenue‐announcement drift, and the accrual anomaly. When the conditional persistence of revenue surprises is high (low) relative to its unconditional persistence, both the post‐earnings‐announcement drift and the post‐revenue‐announcement drift are high (low), because investors’ under‐reaction to revenues and earnings is stronger when the persistence of revenue surprises is more strongly associated with the persistence of earnings surprises. Also, the mispricing of accruals decreases substantially when the conditional persistence of accruals is high relative to its unconditional persistence, because investors’ over‐reaction to accruals is mitigated when the persistence of accruals is indeed more strongly associated with the persistence of earnings. Our findings also suggest that financial analysts’ failure to distinguish between unconditional and conditional persistence of revenues and accruals results in more biased revenue and earnings predictions.     

Expansions and Contractions of Major US Shopping Centers

We analyze the determinants of expansions and contractions of shopping centers using a unique dataset of property level data for shopping centers in eleven metropolitan areas over the period from 1995 through 2005. We find that shopping centers with large operating costs are less likely to expand and are more likely to contract. Higher expected revenue per square foot increases the likelihood of expansion and decreases the likelihood of contraction. For small shopping centers the decision to change gross leasable area (GLA) is largely driven by potential revenue, while the decision to change the number of stores is largely a function of cost. We find some support for Grenadier’s theory that a larger number of competitors reduces the value of option to wait and increases the likelihood of both expansion and contraction. The market share of competitors reduces the likelihood of increasing the number of stores as suggested by the theory of strategic positioning. Our hypotheses best explain contraction decisions of large shopping centers and expansion decisions of small shopping centers. We find that both expansions and contractions of GLA are less likely for large shopping centers in MSAs with greater uncertainty about real estate prices, indicating that the option to delay has value. Moreover, small centers are significantly less sensitive to cost and revenue; since small centers are likely to have greater idiosyncratic risk than large; this provides indirect evidence for a significant delay option.     

Slowing Fossil Fuel Extraction: A Role for Taxation of Exports,Capital Gains and Interest Income

This paper develops a model of a growing open economy rich in non‐renewable resources, the extraction of which negatively impacts domestic productivity and whose sector competes with final production for capital. We analyse how tax rates on capital gains and interest income and the time trend of an export revenue tax rate could slow the extraction of resources for export. We find that taxing capital gains and interest income at the same rate and setting an export revenue tax rate to decline at the marginal social cost of extraction would defer extraction. An export revenue tax rate need not fall over time to curb depletion if capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than interest income, which is second best to taxing asset returns at the same rate when the resources sector competes for capital.     

Effects of Progressive Taxes under Decentralized Bargaining and Heterogeneous Labor

We consider changes in income tax progressivity in an economy where workers' productivities differ and workers and firms bargain individually over wages. With given employment a pure increase in tax progressivity reduces wages by reducing workers' relative bargaining power. When average taxes also increase, after-tax wages are unambiguously reduced, while the effects on gross wages and firm profitability are ambiguous. We next endogenize employment and firm entry under a uniform worker productivity distribution and the government's only policy instrument is a linear income tax. While a first-best solution then is ruled out, a second-best solution can be implemented using a family of linear tax functions, where a more progressive tax implies a higher tax revenue to the government. We show that the government can increase its tax revenue, and reduce after-tax income differences, without any additional disturbance to allocation.     

An Empirical Investigation of Market Structure, Efficiency, and Performance in Property-Liability Insurance

This study examines the relationships among market structure and performance in property‐liability insurers over the period 1992–1998 using data at the company and group levels. Three specific hypotheses are tested: traditional structure‐conduct‐performance, relative market power, and efficient structure (ES). The results provide support for the ES hypothesis. The ES hypothesis posits that more efficient firms can charge lower prices than competitors, enabling them to capture larger market shares and economic rents, leading to increased concentration. Both revenue and cost efficiency are used in the analysis, and this is the first study to use revenue efficiency in this type of analysis. The results for the sample period as a whole and by year are consistent. The overall results suggest that cost‐efficient firms charge lower prices and earn higher profits, in conformance with the ES hypothesis. On the other hand, prices and profits are found to be higher for revenue‐efficient firms. Revenue X‐efficiency is derived from activities such as cross‐selling and may rely heavily on the use of detailed information from customer databases to identify potential customers. The implications of this research are that regulators should be more concerned with efficiency (both cost and revenue) rather than the market power that arises from the consolidation activity taking place in insurance.     

Corporate site visit and tax avoidance: The effects of monitoring and tax knowledge dissemination

This study examines how institutional investors' corporate site visits affect tax avoidance. Using quantile regressions, we find that corporate site visits decrease tax avoidance for firms at high levels of tax avoidance and increase tax avoidance for firms at low levels. The effect of corporate site visits on tax avoidance is stronger for firms subject to a weaker information environment, which suggests that institutional investors acquire additional firm-specific information via corporate site visits and play a more effective monitoring role. We also find that visitors who visited low-tax firms in prior years share tax-planning knowledge with high-tax firms which they visit in the current year. The effect of tax knowledge transfer is more pronounced when the visitors are from incumbent institutional shareholders. This study identifies corporate site visits as a channel via which institutional investors serve as monitors to managers and as facilitators of tax knowledge transfer.     

Is Investor Attention for Sale? The Role of Advertising in Financial Markets

Prior research documents capital market benefits of increased investor attention to accounting disclosures and media coverage; however, little is known about how investors and markets respond to attention‐grabbing events that reveal little nonpublic information. We use daily firm advertising data to test how advertisements, which are designed to attract consumers' attention, influence investors' attention and financial markets (i.e., spillover effects). Exploiting the fact that firms often advertise at weekly intervals, we use an instrumental variables approach to provide evidence that print ads, especially in business publications, trigger temporary spikes in investor attention. We further find that trading volume and quoted dollar depths increase on days with ads in a business publication. We contribute to research on how management choices influence firms' information environments, determinants and consequences of investor attention, and consequences of advertising for financial markets.     

The effects of revenue diversification and cross border banking on risk and return of banks in Africa

The paper analyses the implications of revenue diversification and cross-border banking for risk and return. We sample 320 banks across 29 African countries and employ System GMM estimator as a methodological approach to shed further light on the diversification-stability nexus by examining the complex interaction between three key variables: cross-border banking, diversification and bank stability. The results suggest that exploration risk reduces diversification as the level of capital increases when banks cross border to diversify across revenue generating activities. Our analyses further show that, banks in Africa derive absolute benefits from diversification if they cross border and diversify their revenue base concurrently. These results are robust to a range of controls including alternative variable specifications, regulatory environment that bank operate and methodology.     

Analyst revenue forecast reporting and the quality of revenues and expenses

We decompose earnings quality into revenue and expense quality and examine their associations with analyst propensity to supplement their earnings forecasts with revenue forecasts. Analysts report more revenue forecasts to I/B/E/S when expense quality is low to compensate for the low accuracy of their earnings estimates, which has a positive association with expense quality. Expense quality is unassociated with revenue forecast accuracy, thus revenue forecasts become increasingly useful for valuing firms when expense quality is low. Analysts report fewer revenue forecasts when revenue quality is low because both earnings and revenue forecast accuracy decline as revenue quality deteriorates. To control for endogeneity, we use firm‐fixed effects to control for unobserved time‐invariant heterogeneity across firms, instrumental variables regressions and regression in changes.     

Impact of on-field football success on the off-field financial performance of AFL football clubs

In this study, we examine the factors that contribute to the financial performance of clubs in the Australian Football League over the period from 1993 to 2002. Primarily, we examine the association between the on‐field football success of clubs and their level of off‐field financial performance. We find that match attendance is positively related to both short‐term and long‐term success of football clubs and also to the uncertainty as to the match outcome (i.e. the expected closeness of the match). We also find that club membership is highly persistent and is positively related to both the past football success of the club and the marketing expense incurred. Finally, we find that there is a significant association between the level of marketing revenue and the level of on‐field success in the prior 2 years.     

The bidder exclusion effect

We introduce a new, simple‐to‐compute test of independence of valuations and the number of bidders for ascending button auctions with symmetric, conditionally independent private values. The test involves estimating the expected revenue drop from excluding a bidder at random, which can be computed as a scaled sample average of a difference of order statistics. This object also provides a bound on counterfactual revenue changes from optimal reserve pricing or bidder mergers. We illustrate the approach using data from timber auctions, where we find some evidence that bidder valuations and the number of participants are not independent.     

Integration and search engine bias

We study the effects of integration between a search engine and a publisher. In a model in which the search engine (i) allocates users across publishers and (ii) competes with publishers to attract advertisers, we find that the search engine is biased against publishers that display many ads – even without integration. Integration can (but need not) lead to own‐content bias. It can also benefit consumers by reducing the nuisance costs due to excessive advertising. Advertisers are more likely to suffer from integration than consumers. On net, the welfare effects of integration are ambiguous.