Expectations and interest rates on mortgage loans

We examine the role of expectations for interest rates on mortgage loans. Our empirical results, based on cointegration tests, indicate a violation of the expectations hypothesis on the German loan market. In contrast to the capital market, a failure of the expectations hypothesis on the loan market cannot be attributed to the market segmentation hypothesis. Using a simple two-period model, we can show that the deviation from the expectations hypothesis is stronger than on the capital market and such that it confirms the common practice of choosing between loans with variable or fixed interest rates.An earlier version was presented at the annual meeting of theVerein für Socialpolitik 1994. We are grateful to Jürgen Wolters and an anonymous referee for their useful comments and suggestions.     

Impact of ICT on the productivity of the firm: evidence from Turkish manufacturing

This paper aims to explore the impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on labor productivity growth in Turkish manufacturing. This is the first attempt at exploring the impact of ICT on productivity in Turkish manufacturing at the firm level. The analysis is based on firm level data obtained from Turkish Statistical Institute (TURKSTAT) and covers the period from 2003 to 2012. The data used in the analysis includes all firms employing 19+ workers in Turkish manufacturing industry. Growth accounting results show that the contributions of conventional and ICT capital to value added growth are not significantly different from each other. On the other hand, results based both on static (fixed-effects) and dynamic panel data analysis highlight the positive influence on firms’ productivity exerted by ICT capital. The findings show that the impact of ICT capital on productivity is larger by about 25 to 50% than that of conventional capital. This contribution of ICT capital is higher than that of non-ICT capital for small sized and low-tech firms. Our findings imply that investing in ICT capital increases firm productivity by increasing the productivity of labor and also that convention growth accounting approaches may not be adequate to identify such linkages.     

Donor retention: an exploratory study of door‐to‐door recruits

• Door‐to‐door fundraising, where recruiters knock on the door of domestic dwellings to solicit a regular donation, is an increasingly popular recruitment technique. However, reported levels of attrition remain unacceptably high and in some cases charities may lose up to 50% of their new recruits in their first year of giving. In this exploratory study of 5000 active and 5000 lapsed recruits the demographic and attitudinal profiles of each group are compared. The paper concludes that lapsed donors are significantly younger than active recruits and experienced some form of pressure at the point of recruitment. Lapsed supporters were also significantly less happy with the quality of ongoing communication.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Corporate social responsibility and provision of trade credit

In this article, we identify and examine three different views of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the relationship between CSR and firms’ provision of trade credit. The trust view of CSR argues that CSR and trade credit provision are related positively, because CSR, as a trust-enhancing device, complements the incomplete contract nature of trade credit. The CSR literature shows that CSR firms tend to have higher cash holdings. With this in mind, the precautionary motive view of CSR suggests that cash holdings serve as a hedge against trade credit risk, while, on the other hand, the substitution view of CSR predicts that cash hoarding discourages the provision of trade credit. Using a dataset of 20,591 firm-year observations from 1991 to 2015, we find strong evidence that supports both the trust and substitution views of CSR but not the precautionary view of CSR.     

Precious metals,oil and the exchange rate: contemporaneous spillovers

We investigate the contemporaneous spillovers among precious metals, crude oil and the US$ exchange rate. We contend that conventional reduced-form vector autoregressive (VAR) models based on lead/lag relations do not fully capture the interactions among these series as these models ignore the contemporaneous effects. Using a Structural VAR model, we identify these contemporaneous spillovers, which are shown to be strong and asymmetric. We further show that not taking into consideration the contemporaneous interactions among these assets leads to inaccurate findings and inevitably to inaccurate interpretations of the causal relations among them.     

Relationship marketing: Back to basics?

Relationship marketing, however defined, has received considerable attention recently. To its advocates, relational exchange between buyer and seller represents a paradigm shift away from the traditional focus on individual transactional exchanges. Critics of relationship marketing argue that the concept is poorly defined and is merely a new way of describing what businesses have been doing for a long time.

This paper recognizes that the need to develop long‐term relationships between an organization and its customers is becoming greater. It is however questioned whether marketing educators are providing students with the abilities to take a mature approach to relationship marketing issues, in line with the changing nature of employers' business. Suggestions for introducing relationship marketing to the undergraduate syllabus are made at a number of levels, from an additional module for an introductory “principles of marketing course” to a multi‐disciplinary degree majoring in relationship marketing.     

Charitable organizations' storytelling influence on donors' emotions and intentions

The stories told by charitable organizations are typically designed to take the consumer through different emotional stages. This research probes the view that following exposure to the inciting incident or problem statement in the appeal for a particular charity, the consumer feels negative emotions. These feelings convert into anticipated positive emotions when the consumer is given the opportunity to help the person in need through a donation. Feedback that donors receive from the charitable organization will help to strengthen the emotional pay-off and enhances future donation intentions. The research utilizes an experimental design and data from 319 undergraduate students in a large U.S. university to confirm these hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications are then presented.     

Connected transactions and firm value: Evidence from China-affiliated companies

This paper investigates tunneling through related-party transactions (RPT) using a unique dataset of listed Chinese companies in Hong Kong. While prior findings suggest that investors do not seem to systematically discount tunneling firms, we find that firm value (Tobin's q and market-to-book value) is significantly lower for firms undertaking potentially expropriating transactions. In addition, cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) are lower for RPTs with disclosure exemptions and are negatively related to some RPT types. Our results suggest that firms tunnel using RPTs with disclosure exemptions and that disclosure requirements matter for RPTs. These RPTs could signal firms' corporate-governance quality, as investors substantially discount firms that undertake potentially expropriating transactions.