Consumer Responses to Homosexual Imagery in Advertising: A Meta-Analysis

Rising support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, paired with the considerable buying power of this group, has triggered increasing interest from marketers in the gay and lesbian market. Many companies have developed advertising with homosexual imagery to better target this group as well as the mainstream market. The findings on the persuasive effects of homosexual imagery are mixed and do not provide insights on whether and when homosexual imagery in advertising supports persuasion. To resolve the inconsistencies in findings of prior research, this article presents a meta-analysis on the effects of homosexual imagery. The integrated effect size suggests that the net persuasive effect between homosexual and heterosexual imagery does not differ. We find, however, that homosexual consumers show negative responses to heterosexual imagery. Furthermore, the moderator analysis suggests that incongruence between imagery, consumer characteristics, cultural values, explicitness of imagery, endorser gender, and product type results in unfavorable responses to homosexual advertising imagery. These findings provide guidelines for future research and implications for advertisers who intend to address consumers of various sexual orientations.     

Fair Trade and Organic Agriculture in Developing Countries: A Review

Fair trade regimes and organic agricultural systems are 2 innovations that increasingly play an important role for agriculture in developing countries. Whereas fair trade regimes have their origin in the developing countries, organic agriculture was started in the rich countries and has only recently become popular in the Third World. Both innovations can be mutually reinforcing as fair trade often combined with organic production standards opens up new market prospects. In this article we explore the opportunities and constraints of marketing organic products from developing countries under fair trade regimes. Based on available literature, we review evidence of the magnitude of organic production and fair trade systems in developing countries. We also propose a framework for studying the impact of fair traded organically produced commodities using the case of black pepper in India. The framework will generate testable hypotheses regarding the 2 innovations.     

Twenty years of agricultural policy review and forecast

In a lecture on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of his Institute for Rural Structural Research in Frankfurt Professor Dr Hermann Priebe, the agronomist and economist, subjected the agricultural policy of the EC to a critical review¹. For the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, which is socially and financially unsustainable in its present form, he proposed changes which make economic sense and are not politically unattainable.     

The coming era of the financial executive: A broadened,less specialized role

Because corporate financing is becoming more complex, the role of financial executives is increasing in both importance and complexity. In addition to his traditional function of procuring funds from external sources, the new tasks of the financial executive will include generating funds from internal sources. His job will have to be broadened to include actively managing all of the corporations's major balance sheet items, and the author presents seven key questions a financial executive must consider in facing these new tasks. Thus, his role will be less specialized; it will require a knowledge of and experience with general management. The financial executive will increasingly become directly involved in the strategic issues handled by top management.     

How could everyone have been so wrong? Forecasting the Great Depression with the railroads

Contemporary observers viewed the recession that began in the summer of 1929 as nothing extraordinary. Using a neglected data set of forecasts by railroad shippers, we find that business was surprised by the magnitude of the Great Depression. We show that simple time series methods would have produced much smaller forecast errors than those indicated by the surveys, thus indicating that the survey forecasts were formed using more information than just the past history of the series. The depth and duration of the depression was beyond the experience of business, which appears to have believed that recovery would happen quickly as in previous recessions. Forecasts of inflation are then constructed using the survey forecasts. We find little evidence that the deflation that occurred during the Great Depression was foreseen, thus emphasizing the role of debt deflation in the propagation of the depression.     

Beyond budgeting ante portas,ControllingWorld am 31.3. und 1.4.

Neben dem Congress der Controller und Horváths Controller-Forum versucht sich die ControllingWorld von Management Circle als drittes gro?es Treffen der Controller-Community zu etablieren. Es geht nicht so famili?r zu wie in München und auch die Weihe eines Controlling-Papstes wie in Stuttgart fehlt. Aber als Tendenzbarometer hat auch die Bad Homburger ControllingWorld ihren Platz.     

Einkommens- und Vermögensverteilung — zu ungleich?

The distribution of income and wealth in Germany grew increasingly unequal until the beginning of the financial crisis. But inequality has not risen in either Germany or Switzerland since 2005. Nevertheless, Germans overestimate inequality. The German gap between reality and perception of inequality is important to investigate, as the subjective assessment of inequality influences redistribution preferences. Rising inequality may damage social stability and democracy, but it is unclear whether economists are able to assess a “proper and just” distribution. Interdependencies are discussed: Does a more equal distribution create negative effects on economic growth? How does Germany rank internationally with regard to distribution? Social mobility rates differ substantially across countries; what are the implications for economic policy?     

The disposition effect in farmers’ selling behavior: an experimental investigation

The identification of the optimal selling time of stored goods is among the most essential economic decisions on a farm. Beyond monetary aspects, behavioral factors influence farmers’ selling decisions. In financial economics, the disposition effect is a commonly observed phenomenon. It describes the fact that investors hold losing stocks too long, while they sell stocks that gained in value too early. In the context of agriculture, this behavioral bias has not been analyzed thoroughly yet. To close this research gap, we conducted an incentivized online experiment with 112 farmers from Germany. The experimental design was based on a well‐proven experiment from financial economics and adapted to an agricultural decision context where stored goods must be sold. Farmers were provided information on the uncertain price developments. In addition, lotteries were conducted to elicit farmers’ risk attitude, probability weighting, and loss aversion. Results indicate that there is a robust disposition effect in farmers’ selling behavior. Furthermore, more loss‐averse farmers exhibited a higher realization of gains.