The Impact of Salesperson Perception of Firm Market Orientation on Behaviors and Consulting Effectiveness

The purpose of this study was to study market orientation as an antecedent of salespersons' behaviors that should, in turn, influence the ability of the salesperson to add value to the product or service. There have been many studies of personal antecedents of salespersons behaviors and performance, with little predictive success. But there are few studies of firm-level influences on salesperson behaviors and their outcomes. A survey was sent to non-retail salespeople utilizing previously validated scales for all constructs of interest. The survey responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling to test hypotheses. Results suggest that market orientation has an indirect influence on salesperson consulting through adaptive selling and active listening behaviors. Active listening fully mediates the relationship between customer orientation and salesperson consulting, while salesperson consulting fully mediates the relationship between active listening and consulting effectiveness. Half of the influence of market orientation on salesperson consulting effectiveness is direct, while the other half of its influence is indirect through those salesperson behaviors. The author provides explanations for these results and implications for managers and researchers.     

Dilation bootstrap

We propose a methodology for combining several sources of model and data incompleteness and partial identification, which we call Composition Theorem. We apply this methodology to the construction of confidence regions with partially identified models of general form. The region is obtained by inverting a test of internal consistency of the econometric structure. We develop a dilation bootstrap methodology to deal with sampling uncertainty without reference to the hypothesized economic structure. It requires bootstrapping the quantile process for univariate data and a novel generalization of the latter to higher dimensions. Once the dilation is chosen to control the confidence level, the unknown true distribution of the observed data can be replaced by the known empirical distribution and confidence regions can then be obtained as in Galichon and Henry (2011) and Beresteanu et al. (2011).     

Combining forecasts: An application to elections

We summarize the literature on the effectiveness of combining forecasts by assessing the conditions under which combining is most valuable. Using data on the six US presidential elections from 1992 to 2012, we report the reductions in error obtained by averaging forecasts within and across four election forecasting methods: poll projections, expert judgment, quantitative models, and the Iowa Electronic Markets. Across the six elections, the resulting combined forecasts were more accurate than any individual component method, on average. The gains in accuracy from combining increased with the numbers of forecasts used, especially when these forecasts were based on different methods and different data, and in situations involving high levels of uncertainty. Such combining yielded error reductions of between 16% and 59%, compared to the average errors of the individual forecasts. This improvement is substantially greater than the 12% reduction in error that had been reported previously for combining forecasts.     

Europe’s COVID-19 Crisis Response: A Race Well Run,But Not Yet Won

Intereconomics - While Europe’s response to the pandemic has been laudable, there remains more to be done in order to prevent economic scarring and ensure a robust recovery.     

Compliance Costs of Corporate Income Taxation in Singapore

This study is the second in a series of studies investigating tax compliance costs incurred by public-listed companies. We found evidence of a size effect which is a predominant finding of similar studies. The size effect was more pronounced when absolute measures of costs were used than when a relative measure, cost/sales turnover, was used. Additional evidence was found of limited success relating to the IRAS's moves to simplify the tax system. Specifically, only large companies with sales turnover exceeding $500m benefited and considerably reduced their overall compliance costs. Most of the decrease was a result of the computational component of compliance costs. This resulted in the gap in absolute costs narrowing between Group 3 and any of the other categories of companies. There was also greater reliance on external professionals, the smaller the company. Views elicited indicate that more could be done to increase accessibility to IRAS publications for Group 1 and Group 2 companies.     

The deterrent to dubious corporate behavior: Profitability,probability and safety recalls

In response to findings of abnormal stock market reactions following such dubious corporate behaviors as bribery, fraud, and the production of hazardous products, some researchers have argued that the stock market reaction is a sufficient deterrent to these behaviors so that additional regulation is not necessary. In this paper we examine stock market returns as a deterrent to dubious behavior in the production of defective automobiles. Relying on a broader range of assumptions about managerial behavior than are used in previous studies, we question the efficacy of the market as an instrument of social control.