Facebook fan page: the effect of perceived socialness in consumer–brand communication

Facebook has become an important platform for a brand–consumer relationship channel. The current study investigates the influence of perceived socialness and its effect on consumers’ attitude toward brands. Participants (N = 404) were recruited in a large southeast university. A 2 (socialness: high vs. low)?×?2 (feedback control: high vs. low)?×?2 (brand image: high vs. low) between-subject design was conducted. The results of this study identified three important findings. First, high (vs. low) socialness elicited higher perceived relationship commitment, brand trust, and more favorable brand attitude. Second, the effect of socialness on brand attitude was moderated by brand image (positive vs. negative). Third, the mediation analysis showed that the effect of socialness (high vs. low) on brand attitude was fully mediated by perceived relationship commitment and brand trust.     

Can commodity futures risk factors predict economic growth?

This paper examines whether commodity futures risk factors can predict future economic growth. We test risk factors capturing various spot or term premia and find that only three factors capturing term premia on the basis-momentum, basis, and change in slope are robust predictors for future economic growth, especially for long horizons. Our findings highlight the importance of the term premia, rather than the spot premia on which the literature has mainly focused. Moreover, we find that possible explanations for predictability of commodity factors—the intertemporal asset pricing model and information diffusion explanation—are all inconsistent with our empirical results.     

What induces online loyalty? Online versus offline brand images

This study investigates the effect of the interplay between a multi-channel retailer's offline and online brand images on consumers' online perceived risk and online loyalty within the framework of a theory of cognitive dissonance. A sample of 671 female college students participated in an experiment using a 2 (prior offline brand image) × 2 (online performance) between-subjects design. Results reveal that offline brand image exerts significant effects on online brand image - which, in turn, significantly explains online perceived risk - and online customer loyalty. However, online perceived risk has no significant effect on online customer loyalty after controlling for the effects of online and offline brand images. These results provide implications for the direct and indirect halo effects of offline brand image and the direct effect of online performance that may influence consumers' perceptions, expectations, and loyalty regarding multi-channel retailers.     

Partial International Coordination in the Great Fish War

This study extends the great fish war model of Levhari and Mirman [Levhari, D. and Mirman, L. (1980) Bell Journal of Economics 11: 322–344] by incorporating a multiple country context into the model and investigates the existence of a partial coordination Nash equilibrium. First, findings of this paper suggest that a partial coordination scheme is sustainable only in limited cases. Any coalition that has more than two member countries cannot be sustained. Second, the existence and the number of coordinating countries depend critically on the magnitude of the biological and preference parameters. Finally, if the coalition is assumed to be a dominant player, there always exist one or two welfare-improving sustainable coalitions and the size of the sustainable coalitions depends on the parameters of the problem.     

What Does CEOs’ Pay-for-Performance Reveal About Shareholders’ Attitude Toward Earnings Overstatements?

If overstatements were a symptom of the agency conflict, pay-for-performance sensitivities should have increased in response to the additional penalties for misreporting imposed by SOX. Our finding of their decrease is inconsistent with the view that overstatements were an unintended consequence of incentive pay prior to 2002. To corroborate our interpretation, we show that (i) CEO pay-for-performance sensitivities are higher among firms whose shareholders stand to benefit from overstatements; (ii) this cross-sectional relationship weakens significantly after SOX; and (iii) the within-firm decrease in pay-for-performance sensitivity is most pronounced among firms with high pre-SOX shareholder benefits from overstatements.     

Relationship regarding the demand for labor between domestic temporary and foreign workers: Korean case

With the progress of globalization, South Korea, one of the emerging industrial countries, has recently witnessed a sharp increase in the number of enterprises that employ foreigners. However, there are only a limited number of studies on the influence that such an increase has had on the labor market in the Republic of Korea. Thus, using ‘Workplace Panel Survey’ data surveyed by the Korea Labor Institute (KLI), this paper examines the relationship concerning the labor demand of an establishment between domestic temporary and foreign workers. Analysis using a bivariate Tobit model shows that a typical Korean firm attempts to employ domestic temporary and foreign workers simultaneously. Further, the empirical analysis found that any establishment that is relatively newly established and has difficulty in recruiting domestic workers hires foreign workers, but there is no evidence that establishments hire foreign workers rather than domestic temporary workers to save on the production cost.