Frequent cross-border acquirers from emerging countries and cultural distance: Does the cultural difference of the initial deal matter?

This paper analyzes the relationship between national cultural differences and the performances of repeated cross-border acquirers from emerging countries, using a sample of 1079 deals conducted by 337 acquirers for the sample period of 1985–June 2008. Empirical results indicate that cross-border acquisitions on average are associated with positive wealth effects; however, for firms starting with deals with high cultural differences, abnormal returns become near zero for subsequent deals. The evidence points to the relevance of the culture factor. Moreover, the results can be consistent with either the hubris behavior (Roll, 1986) or a learning effect (Aktas et al., 2011). Conditional on successful first deals, declining abnormal return pattern is more pronounced, compared to unconditional results. Regression analyses that control for other factors point to the same conclusion that the declining abnormal return pattern is significant only for firms with high initial cultural differences. The results remain qualitatively the same after using an alternative cultural measure and accounting for country median and information asymmetry. In addition, evidence suggests that information asymmetry is greater for initial deals with higher cultural differences. The practical implication of our results is that it is generally better for firms to start international acquisitions in countries with low or medium cultural differences.     

Repeated measures and longitudinal data analysis using higher‐order entropies

This paper implements the generalized maximum entropy (GME) method in longitudinal data setup to investigate the regression para meters and correlation among the repeated measurements. We derive the GME system using Shannon classical entropy as well as some higher‐order entropies assuming an autoregressive correlation structure. This method is illustrated using two simulated examples to study the effect of changing the support range and compare the performance of the GME approach with the classical estimation methods.     

Dept and input misallocation of agricultural supply and marketing cooperatives

Kim and Maksimovic provide an empirical model to examine the effect of dept on a firm. Their model is adopted to examine agricultural supply and marketing cooperatives. Using a short-run variable cost function, we find firm efficiency decreases as dept increases. A US$1 increase in indebtedness increases total short-run variable costs by US$0.0167 or roughly 1.67% Dept tends to shift input usage away from labour inputs. A test developed by Conrad and Unger is applied to determine whether the agricultural supply and marketing cooperatives are at a long-run equilibrium capacity. It is found that most of the cooperatives were overinvested in capacity. However,dept does not explain this overinvestment. Finally,the effect of dept on total productivity over the study period is examined. It is found that dept has had a small positive impact on total factor productivity growth. Scale economics and non-optimal capacity had large impacts on total factor productivity. Although dept is associated with short-run misallocation of resources, we find little evidence that dept is associated with long -run suboptimal capacity.     

Negotiating the Politics of Exclusion: Georges Candilis,Housing and the Kuwaiti Welfare State

In the early stages of welfare planning, the Kuwaiti state restricted equal access to its housing programs in neighborhoods outside the city. The subsequent demographic shift, caused by a Kuwaiti exodus to the ‘suburbs' and non‐Kuwaiti urban labor migration, prompted calls for housing schemes to encourage city living for citizens. Georges Candilis's proposal for a residential neighborhood in Kuwait City emerged from this context. This article examining Candilis's unrealized project also offers a critical perspective on Kuwait's unbalanced housing policies. From this analysis, it draws observations on the role of architects and their limited impact on policies established by decision‐making networks within the welfare state. Seen from this perspective, the Candilis project bears witness to broader socio‐economic agendas that privileged some groups while marginalizing or excluding others.     

通用全球营销主管任命之争

引子 2009年7月，通用任命原负责产品开发的副总裁Bob Lutz兼做全球营销主管，负责广告和营销，此番任命在广告界掀起了巨大的波澜。     

Technology transfer from government laboratories to industrial markets

The first purpose of this article is to explore the interface between Marketing and R&D. The intent is to illustrate the nature of the relationship that must be developed and maintained to assure the successful transfer of technology from Federal laboratories to the civilian and commercial sectors of the nation. The second purpose of this article is to explore how government participation affects the R&D—Marketing interface and other dimensions of the innovation process.     

What factors drive the adoption of digital banking? An empirical study from the perspective of Omani retail banking

This study aims to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of digital banking by retail banking customers. A theoretical model was developed based on an extended technology acceptance model to conceptualize the linkage among the factors impacting digital banking adoption. The primary data were acquired through a structured questionnaire from 200 customers. The multiple linear regression equation was used to analyse the relationship among six independent factors. The study revealed awareness, web features and perceived usefulness have significant positive influence on adoption of digital banking. The study is useful to plan and promote service model to enhance digital banking adoption.     

Imitation with asymmetric memory

Models of learning in games based on imitation have provided fundamental insights as the relevance of risk-dominance equilibria or perfectly competitive outcomes. It has also been shown, however, that the introduction of nontrivial memory in those models fundamentally alters the results. This paper further considers the effect of asymmetric memory length in the population. We focus on two classical results and find that, while asymmetric memory crucially affects equilibrium selection in coordination games, it reinforces the stability of perfectly competitive outcomes in oligopoly games. The latter result is generalized to aggregative games and to finite population ESS in symmetric games.     

THE INFORMATION CONTENT OF ORDERS ON THE SAUDI STOCK MARKET

Using order data for the Saudi Stock Market (SSM), we employ a new specification of an existing vector autoregressive (VAR) model to assess the information content of a newly submitted order. As predicted by the asymmetric information models, we find that larger and more aggressive orders are more informative. Private information is more important for infrequently traded stocks. Compared with previous findings, our findings imply the presence of much asymmetric information on the SSM. The correlation between a relative measure of informativeness and the spread provides further support for the previous empirical observation that these two variables measure different things and should not be used interchangeably.