You are charging your friend a fee? The influence of brand relationship norms on consumer judgments

Prior research has found that consumer interpersonal relationship norms influence how consumers view marketing actions by a brand. Exchange relationships (e.g. payment for benefit received) and communal relationships (e.g. altruistic concern for a partner’s welfare) were studied. Violating relationship norms negatively affected consumer judgments. We replicate and extend this finding. We show general support for the proposed interaction across a range of dependent measures, manipulations and with an Australian sample. We also show that the negative effects of norm transgression by charging consumers a fee can be attenuated when the fee is modest and that exchange participants can also regard fees as violations of relationship norms.     

Effects of individual resources and team-member exchange on service quality

While workplace resources are generally viewed as positively affecting performance, some studies indicate that not all resources increase performance. This study addresses the controversial disparate effects of workplace resources on performance by exploring functionally classified workplace resources in self-managing service teams and their relative impacts on team service quality. Considering membership dynamics and consequences between members, a field experiment was conducted in a cafeteria, with data collected through a working diary for workplace resources and a customer survey to evaluate service quality. Results suggest that efficacy-resources in self-managing teams should be controlled with caution as they may adversely affect team service quality. Supporting the person–situation interactionism perspective, workplace resources interact dynamically with individual employees and with situations. Esteem-resources were found to increase team service quality, while team-member exchange not only improved team service quality but also moderated the impact of esteem-resources on team service quality.     

An application of two-stage quantile regression to insurance ratemaking

Two-part models based on generalized linear models are widely used in insurance rate-making for predicting the expected loss. This paper explores an alternative method based on quantile regression which provides more information about the loss distribution and can be also used for insurance underwriting. Quantile regression allows estimating the aggregate claim cost quantiles of a policy given a number of covariates. To do so, a first stage is required, which involves fitting a logistic regression to estimate, for every policy, the probability of submitting at least one claim. The proposed methodology is illustrated using a portfolio of car insurance policies. This application shows that the results of the quantile regression are highly dependent on the claim probability estimates. The paper also examines an application of quantile regression to premium safety loading calculation, the so-called Quantile Premium Principle (QPP). We propose a premium calculation based on quantile regression which inherits the good properties of the quantiles. Using the same insurance portfolio data-set, we find that the QPP captures the riskiness of the policies better than the expected value premium principle.     

A Statistical Model to Investigate the Reproducibility Rate Based on Replication Experiments

The reproducibility crisis, that is, the fact that many scientific results are difficult to replicate, pointing to their unreliability or falsehood, is a hot topic in the recent scientific literature, and statistical methodologies, testing procedures and p‐values, in particular, are at the centre of the debate. Assessment of the extent of the problem–the reproducibility rate or the false discovery rate–and the role of contributing factors are still an open problem. Replication experiments, that is, systematic replications of existing results, may offer relevant information on these issues. We propose a statistical model to deal with such information, in particular to estimate the reproducibility rate and the effect of some study characteristics on its reliability. We analyse data from a recent replication experiment in psychology finding a reproducibility rate broadly coherent with other assessments from the same experiment. Our results also confirm the expected role of some contributing factor (unexpectedness of the result and room for bias) while they suggest that the similarity between original study and the replica is not so relevant, thus mitigating some criticism directed to replication experiments.     

A hybrid information approach to predict corporate credit risk

This study proposes a hybrid information approach to predict corporate credit risk. In contrast to the previous literature that debates which credit risk model is the best, we pool information from a diverse set of structural and reduced‐form models to produce a model combination based on credit risk prediction. Compared with each single model, the pooled strategies yield consistently lower average risk prediction errors over time. We also find that while the reduced‐form models contribute more in the pooled strategies for speculative‐grade names and longer maturities, the structural models have higher weights for shorter maturities and investment grade names.     

Finding good relationships – intended and realized relational governance of international fine wine exchanges

Changes in relational governance have mainly been documented in the form of relationship building, developments and repairs related to tensions, or break-ups of otherwise strong relationships. In this paper, we take a closer look at the relational governance of long-distance international exchanges between producers and importers of fine wine. We contribute by providing evidence for several novel relational governance changes, and we document portfolio effects on governance choices. Fine wine producers and importers intend on relational governance for most of their international exchanges, but they may end up being terminated, relegated to market governance, or settle as incomplete relationships.     

Private information in currency markets

Using daily abnormal currency returns for the universe of countries with flexible exchange rates, we show local currency depreciations ahead of unscheduled, public sovereign debt downgrade announcements. Consistent with the private information hypothesis, the effect is stronger in lower institutional quality countries and holds after we control for concurrent public information and for publicly available rumors about the forthcoming downgrades. Our results persist when abnormal currency returns are adjusted for global carry and dollar risk factors, world equity and bond returns, as well as local stock market returns. Finally, the currency depreciations are permanent, providing evidence for a link between fundamentals and currency markets.     

Determinants of China's bilateral trade balance in global value chains

This paper identifies the determinants of China's bilateral trade balance using a new measure based on international input–output data, the so-called ‘trade in value-added’ (TiVA), which can prevent double counting in the estimation of bilateral trade balance. Our results show that using a measure based on gross exports, rather than TiVA, causes relatively large overestimation of the impact of the RMB exchange rate on China's bilateral trade balance. This overestimation is mainly because that the increasing production of exports may require increasing intermediate imports as a consequence of international fragmentation of production in global value chains. In addition, our results also show that the impact of FDI inflows on China's bilateral trade balances depends on the position and role of China and its trading partners in GVCs.     

Exchange market pressure and primary commodity – exporting emerging markets

This paper studies short-term sensitivity between exchange market pressure and various domestic and external factors in primary commodity-exporting emerging markets. The paper focuses on the top country-commodity groups in sugar, cereal, fuels, ores and coffee during the pre-peak and post-peak commodity price periods across floating and pegged exchange rate regimes, using the price of crude oil as a general benchmark. Employing a panel model and panel VAR analysis, the paper finds the heterogeneity of response patterns unique to country-commodity groups and exchange rate regimes. According to the results, in flexible regimes, volatility occurs via the foreign exchange market, interest rates, and domestic credit cycles, feeding into the social costs for structurally weaker economies. Hard exchange-rate pegs often result in a drain on international reserves as the terms of trade deteriorate following post-price peaks, leading to unpopular depreciation. These results accentuate concerns over uneven international trade patterns, an open economy’s short-term foreign exchange policy, and speculative capital flows. Such sensitivity has broad implications for macroeconomic balance and the sustainability of implied exchange rate targets in the presence of a foreign exchange constraint across emerging markets.