Changing rewards in contests: Has the three-point rule brought more offense to soccer?

In the mid-nineties FIFA decided to increase from two to three the number of points assigned to the winning team of a soccer match played under traditional round-robin national leagues. Since a game of soccer can be regarded as a contest, FIFA's measure provides an interesting case-study for analysing how a change in the system of rewards (from a zero to a non-zero sum rule) may affect the contestants' equilibrium behaviour. In this paper we try to assess, both theoretically and empirically, whether FIFA's new point rule has changed soccer towards a more offensive game, in which teams adopt more risky strategies. In particular, we evaluate the “na?ve hypothesis” according to which the measure would induce every team to play always more offensively, and we explore the extent to which the change in teams' behaviour may be affected by quality differentials between teams. Our most important hypothesis is that when the asymmetry between opposing teams is large enough, an increase in the reward for victory induces the weaker team to play more defensively, rather than the opposite. By looking at a subset of matches held in the Portuguese first division league, which approximate the conditions of our model, we find support for this hypothesis. First version received: July 1999/Final version received: May 2001     

Assessing Systemic Importance With a Fuzzy Logic Inference System

Three metrics are designed to assess Colombian financial institutions' size, connectedness and non-substitutability as the main drivers of systemic importance: (i) centrality as net borrower in the money market network; (ii) centrality as payments originator in the large-value payment system network; and (iii) asset value of core financial services. An aggregated systemic importance index is calculated based on expert knowledge by using a fuzzy logic inference system. We use principal component analysis to calculate a benchmark index for comparison purposes. Overall similarities between both indexes put forward that expert knowledge aggregation is consistent with that based on a purely quantitative standard approach. Specific non-negligible differences concur with the nonlinear features of an approach whose intention is to replicate human reasoning. Both indexes are complementary and provide a comprehensive relative assessment of each financial institution's systemic importance in the Colombian case, in which the choice of metrics pursues the macroprudential perspective of financial stability. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Leadership marketing: an exploratory study

In an era when collaboration is the key to business prosperity, the ability to develop one truly coherent and agile brand lived by its employees and delivered to external stakeholders has become extremely challenging. Unity between the internal brand and a company’s external image, when change is the only constant, has almost ceased to exist. The marketing function is frequently underemphasised at board level and its role is often devalued in leading organisational change. This paper concerns how marketing can partner with organisational leadership for a mutually beneficial exchange of skills and capabilities to be able to reinvent organisations rapidly enough to cope with shifts in the external business environment and create a sustainable future for the business. This paper explores the concept of “leadership marketing” from an interpretivist perspective which challenges the conventional view of marketing and leadership as two separate fields and offers a holistic approach for business management and brand alignment.     

Global Sourcing Decision‐Making Processes: Politics,Intuition, and Procedural Rationality

Global sourcing (GS) is a firmly established phenomenon in modern business practice that requires specific expertise from different organizational functions, such as purchasing, production, logistics, and research and development to analyze and select sourcing alternatives effectively. In this context, global sourcing decision‐making (GSDM) processes pose major challenges because two dimensions of functional politics, namely goal misalignment and power imbalance across functions, appear to influence procedural rationality in a manner not understood to date. Likewise, intuition also seems to play a role for the procedural rationality of GSDM processes. To elucidate the conditions under which procedural rationality is hampered or enhanced by politics and intuition, we studied five cross‐functional GSDM processes, in front of extant strategic decision‐making literature. We derive formal propositions on how functional politics and intuition influence the procedural rationality and present contingencies for the divergent role of intuition as well as functional politics in GDSM processes. Our research contributes to existing GS literature by providing a theoretical model of important microfoundations of how GSDM processes evolve. The findings also guide managers on how to structure GSDM processes such that GS projects can be conducted in a more rational fashion.     

Incorporating the dynamics of leverage into default prediction

A firm’s current leverage ratio is one of the core characteristics of credit quality used in statistical default prediction models. Based on the capital structure literature, which shows that leverage is mean-reverting to a target leverage, we forecast future leverage ratios and include them in the set of default risk drivers. An out-of-sample analysis of default predictions from a hazard model reveals that the discriminative power increases substantially when leverage forecasts are included. We further document that credit ratings contain information beyond the one contained in standard variables but that this information is unrelated to forecasts of leverage ratios.     

TESTING THE INDUCED INNOVATION HYPOTHESIS USING COINTEGRATION ANALYSIS

This paper deals with some of the problems involved in testing the hypothesis that factor price movements tend to influence the type of technological innovations which are developed and adopted, known as the Induced Innovation Hypothesis. Previous methods to perform this test are briefly reviewed and their limitations are discussed. A testing procedure which is based on the use of cointegration analysis is proposed and its advantages outlined. Finally, one application of the method is made, providing little support for the Induced Innovation Hypothesis in the case of US Agriculture (1948–83).     

Individual Investors' Attention to Accounting Information: Evidence from Online Financial Communities*

Online financial communities provide a unique opportunity to directly examine individual investors' attention to accounting information on a large scale and in great detail. I analyze accounting-related content in large samples of Yahoo! message board posts and StockTwits and find investors pay attention to a range of accounting information, fixating particularly on earnings, cash, and revenues. Consistent with the expectation that investors react to relevant information events, I find accounting-related discussion elevated around the filings of earnings releases and 8-K reports, but the reaction to periodic reports is confined to small firms. I also find investors expand their acquisition of accounting information and processing efforts in poor information environments. Greater attention to accounting information at earnings releases does not appear to be meaningfully associated with better information processing.     

Data Governance: Enhancing Innovation and Protecting Against Its Risks

Intereconomics - Big Data is expected to unleash data-driven innovation,which is supposed to better address and solve challengesin our society. As a so-called non-rival good, the sharingand...