Rezension

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Rezension

     

Private Debt and Timely Loss Recognition

Abstract

In this study, we investigate whether private debt contracting provides incentives for borrowers to recognize economic losses earlier in accounting earnings. Focusing on the window around firms' issuances of private loans, we document that timely loss recognition significantly increases following an issuance. This effect is significantly stronger for debt contracts that include performance covenants acting as trip-wires when firm performance deteriorates. We also find that timely loss recognition is particularly used when writing debt contracts is hampered by uncertainty about a firm's future development. These findings are consistent with timely loss recognition being used to increase contract efficiency by facilitating state-contingent control allocation based on a borrower's performance over the loan term.     

Adolescents’ Assessments of Advertisements for Unhealthy Food: an Example of Warning Labels for Soft Drinks

The potential of advertising to deceive young adolescents is problematic especially when it results in unhealthy food choices. Health warnings are supposed to raise awareness of the risky nature of a food product. However, these warnings compete for consumer’s attention with other advertising components set by marketers, such as product claims, visual frames, and images. To examine perception, attitudes, and behavioural intentions towards an ad, adolescents were exposed with fictitious soft drink advertisements in an experimental design. Hereby, we systematically varied warning labels and visual frames as key design elements of the advertisement. Results suggest that the effects of warnings on attitudes and purchase intention are mitigated by accompanying advertising elements. A single positive visual cue is sufficient to provoke purchase intentions. Overall, distraction from health warnings peaks in the youngest age groups and decreases with age. Findings raise concerns about how public health regulations on advertisements should be designed when the purpose is to inform especially younger adolescents of possible health risks. We discuss several implications for ethical marketing techniques of food products.     

Information diffusion in electronic and floor trading

The attractiveness of floor trading versus anonymous electronic trading systems for traders is analysed. We hypothesize that in times of low information intensity, the insight into the order book of the electronic trading system provides more valuable information than floor trading, but in times of high information intensity, this is not true. Thus, the electronic system's market share in trading volume should decline when information intensity increases. This hypothesis is tested by DTB and LIFFE data on Bund-Future trading in the period 1991 to 1995. In the first years of trading, the DTB's market share is inversely related to price volatility and trading volume as proxies for information intensity. In recent years, this relation fades away; this can be explained by the high frequency of transactions which implies a steady flow of information on transactions.     

Optimal Utilization of Capital and a Financial Sector in a Classical Gravitation Process

In a production price framework, a two‐sectoral gravitation process with cross‐over adjustments of prices and quantities is advanced. To overcome an inconsistency in the treatment of fixed capital in disequilibrium, the socio‐technological input coefficients are assumed to vary with the sectoral output–capital ratio, such that for each relative price there exists an optimal degree of capital utilization which maximizes the sectoral rate of profit. Production prices prevail if these maximizing rates of profit are equalized. In addition, a financial sector determining the rate of interest is incorporated into the model. The mathematical analysis establishes a broad scope for local stability of the long‐run equilibrium position once a condition applies that ensures stability of the output adjustments in the short period.     

WAGE FLEXIBILITY AND THE STABILITY ARGUMENTS OF THE NEOCLASSICAL SYNTHESIS

This note fills a lacuna in the neoclassical synthesis and completes its dynamic disequilibrium processes by including adjustments of the money wage rate in response to excess demand on the labour market. A Walrasian and a Keynesian variant are distinguished. While in the first case local asymptotic stability is always ensured, the equilibrium is unstable in the Keynesian case if money wages are too flexible relative to the adjustment speeds on the product and money markets.     

Connecting at the edge: Cycles of commodification and labour control within food delivery platform work in Belgium

In this paper we examine how commodification and labour control unfold within a digital labour platform, focusing on the connections between the platform, its users and workers. Based on a qualitative study covering couriers, clients, restaurants and the management of a food delivery platform in Belgium, we shed light on the complexity of commodification, explaining how the platform simultaneously empowers and disempowers all participants. We illustrate how the platform fosters commodification by granting access to transactions and fuelling competition, while at the same time increasing dependency through withholding information from users and workers. In so doing, we contribute to understanding how platforms exert control and create, extract and capture value by connecting users and workers with each other through the use of digital technology.     

Information Asymmetry in Business-to-Business Negotiations: A Game Theoretical Approach to Support Purchasing Decisions with Suppliers

Group Decision and Negotiation - The digital transformation confronts purchasing and supply management (PSM) with numerous new challenges, such as digital procurement objects and the information...