Direct Evidence on Sticky Information from the Revision Behavior of Professional Forecasters

We provide evidence on the sticky‐information model of Mankiw and Reis ( 2002 ) by examining how often individual professional forecasters revise their forecasts. We draw interest rate and unemployment rate forecasts from the monthly Wall Street Journal surveys. We find evidence that forecasters frequently leave forecasts unchanged but revise more often the larger the changes in the information set; additionally, the information sensitivity of revision frequencies increased after 2007. We also find that, on average, forecasters in our sample revise more frequently than found in previous research but that revised forecasts are not consistently more accurate.     

Effects of Construal Level on Omission Detection and Multiattribute Evaluation

Research has demonstrated that consumers are commonly insensitive to missing information and that this insensitivity can lead them to form strong beliefs and evaluations on the basis of weak evidence. A growing body of research has shown that sensitivity to omissions can be heightened and that this increased sensitivity results in more appropriate evaluations. Expanding on this, the current research finds that the level of abstraction by which a situation is construed can influence the likelihood of omission detection and the resulting evaluative judgments. A series of studies reveal that people are more likely to spontaneously detect omissions in near vs. distant judgments, in concrete vs. abstract mindsets, and when they are inherently more likely to interpret actions in concrete vs. abstract terms. Further, although prior findings suggest that people may have differential sensitivity to primary and secondary missing features at different levels of construal, the current research finds no such difference. The results of this study indicate that people are more sensitive to all types of missing information when construal levels are low, and that this sensitivity leads to more moderate and appropriate judgments.     

Financial reporting,tax, and real decisions: toward a unifying framework

This paper provides a first step toward joint evaluation of taxation and financial reporting in the standard economic analyses of corporate behavior. It develops a framework that formalizes the idea that the attractiveness of some investment decisions is enhanced because they provide managers with discretion over the timing of taxable income and/or book income. It then examines from this perspective several current examples of tax and accounting issues.     

What do dividends tell us about earnings quality?

Over the past 30 years, there have been significant changes in the distribution of earnings—cross-sectional variation has increased, with increasing left skewness—as well as in corporate payout policy, with many fewer firms paying dividends and the emergence of stock repurchases. We investigate whether the informativeness of payout policy with respect to earnings quality changes over this period. We find that the reported earnings of dividend-paying firms are more persistent than those of other firms and that this relation is remarkably stable over time. We also find that dividend payers are less likely to report losses and those losses that they do report tend to be transitory losses driven by special items. These results do not hold as strongly for stock repurchases, consistent with them representing less of a commitment than dividends.     

Hot spots regulation and environmental justice

This paper analyzes whether regulating “hot spots” of toxic air pollution by increasing the spatial resolution of regulation could address environmental justice (EJ) concerns. To examine this question, this paper develops a decision model of a regulator choosing emission controls within a net cost minimizing framework. An empirical application of the model using air toxic emission data for Escambia and Santa Rosa Counties in Florida estimates the emission standards and spatial distribution of risks at a coarse and a finer spatial resolutions. Implications for EJ are analyzed by combining the simulated spatial risk distributions at the two resolutions with the demographic data. Results indicate that different measures of EJ point to different conclusions regarding the question of whether finer resolution regulation alleviates EJ concerns. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for EJ policy.     

When caring stops, staffing doesn't matter: part II

Response to a column on caring and staffing struck a cord with Nursing Economic$ readers worldwide. Measuring caring is complicated and a healthy debate exists over how exactly to do it. The extraordinary work of Dr. Jean Watson is an excellent resource for understanding how to measure and monitor caring. Beneath the instruments for measuring caring sits foundational work that can help us clarify and understand the topic of caring and just where it sits in our philosophies, intentions, patient care models, and care delivery systems.     

Leveraging firm-level marketing capabilities with marketing employee development

Using the theoretical foundations of the resource-based view of the firm, this study develops and measures marketing employee development capabilities and investigates how it moderates the relationships between brand and customer relationship management capabilities and firm performance outcomes. Based on a random sample survey of chief marketing executives from selected industries, combined with objective firm performance indicators and controls, results demonstrate that marketing employee development capabilities can leverage the relationships between firm-level marketing capabilities and customer satisfaction, market effectiveness, and objective financial performance. Further, these results show that such capabilities can be complementary and, in some cases, even substitute for each other, which improves organizational performance. Implications for researchers and marketing managers are discussed.     

Shadow pricing diversity in U. S. national forests

Tobit estimation of the market value of timber sales in national forests of North Carolina demonstrates the important effect of stand diversity on the formulation of bid prices for mixed-species timber tracts. The hedonic model generates a shadow price for diversity according to changes in bid prices, an effective shift in the demand curve for auctioned tracts due to stand diversity attributes. This approach contrasts with traditional shadow price analyses that focus on the supply effects of environmental constraints. Results are corrected for the effects of bidder participation, market conditions, production costs, and other stand attributes. Econometric results demonstrate that stand heterogeneity is a highly significant factor influencing the market value of timber sales from national forests of the Appalachian region. Greater heterogeneity results in lower bid prices for timber sales, indicating a positive shadow price for maintenance of stand diversity.     

Social marketing with challenging target groups: smoking cessation in prisons in England and Wales

• Smoking levels among prisoners are much higher than amongst the UK population as a whole. Our research focuses on the development and implementation of a pilot smoking cessation project:
  • Using a social marketing process combined with the Health Behaviour Model, 159 participants, drawn from four prisons, undertook a smoking cessation programme.
  • Data was collected using a case study approach, with a variety of research methods: primarily depth individual and mini‐group qualitative interviews, but also document analysis and observation.
  • The findings draw on prisoners' perspectives in the context of the marketing mix in elements of the strategy design, implementation and evaluation.
  • The discussion identifies the need to maintain a consumer perspective, feeding into the marketing mix, and to identify and promote aspects of mutually beneficial exchange over and above basic health and monetary costs.
• The positive outcomes and insights gained show that using a social marketing strategy, as part of a smoking cessation programme, has important policy and practice implications. Lessons could be applied to other health issues and in similar settings such as forensic mental health.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.