Political forecast cycles

A moral hazard model is used to show why overly optimistic revenue forecasts prior to elections can be optimal: Opportunistic governments can increase spending and appear more competent; ex post deficits emerge in election years, thereby producing political forecast cycles – as also found for US states in the empirical literature. Additionally, we obtain three theoretical results which are tested with panel data for Portuguese municipalities. The extent of manipulations is reduced when (i) the winning margin is expected to widen; (ii) the incumbent is not re-running; and/or (iii) the share of informed voters (proxied by education) goes up.     

Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.     

Adverse effect of social media on generation Z user's behavior: Government information support as a moderating variable

Social media emerged as a primary source of information among young users, but its severe effect on mental state due to information overload, still an area of concern for the researchers. Generation Z users' addiction to the mobile phone/gadgets is increasing with a rise in social media and consequently their behavioral outcomes have transformed completely. Nowadays behavioral issues including stress, fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’ and ‘phubbing’, anxiety etc. rising each day but the relationship among these issues and information overload is less examined. The social media users are unable to filter the trustworthy information due to its enormous size and thus role of information support from government becomes essential. The current study extends the S-O-R theory exploring relationship between the stimulus of enormous information on the responses generated among the Generation Z such as social media fatigue, ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety. The findings from a sample of 319 users belonging to Generation Z suggest that social media platforms need to understand user's compulsive usage that is resulting into fatigue and consequently anxiety. The role of government information support on reducing fatigue and anxiety is found to be positive. The relationship between ‘fear of missing out’, ‘phubbing’ and anxiety is found significant and shows presence of partial mediation. The study offers significant theoretical and practical implications. It is significant for the service providers and social media platforms to advance interfaces with minimum fatigue for the users and offers information support to the users to reduce stress caused by information load.     

Unconventional monetary policy announcements and information shocks in the U.S.

We study unconventional policy shocks and information shocks associated with central bank announcements in the U.S. While unconventional policy shocks capture the direct influence of announced monetary policy actions, information shocks are associated with central bank information conveyed with the announcement. To disentangle these two types of shocks, we impose sign restrictions on high frequency changes in interest rates and stock prices around announcements. We find that information shocks lead to persistent declines in the 10-year government bond yield, whereas the actual unconventional policy shock induces only small interest rate responses. We also find that expansionary output effects of unconventional monetary policy are to some extent counteracted by the information shock.     

疫情防控常态化下的世界经济战略走向

新冠疫情的出现冲击了世界经济,从经济全球化和全球经济治理体系两个维度分析疫情对世界经济的影响以及世界经济未来走向,研究发现:(1)新冠疫情通过影响全球价值链、贸易投资和就业环境阻碍经济全球化进程,中美矛盾升级、原有治理体系规则未与时俱进和激进政策的不确定性对全球经济治理体系提出新的挑战;(2)新冠疫情强化了世界各国对人类命运共同体的认识,将人类命运共同体融入全球治理体系将是未来治理的重要趋势;(3)新冠疫情可能会使世界经济格局出现新的变化,而中国在此次疫情中高效率的抗疫举措将进一步提升自身在世界经济格局中的地位和参与度。     

Does china income FSDs follow Benford? A comparison between Chinese income first significant digit distribution with Benford distribution

Since Benford’s law is an empirical phenomenon that occurs in a range of data sets, this raises the question as to whether or not the same thing might be true in terms of the Chinese income distribution data. We focus on the first significant digit (FSD) distribution of Chinese micro income data from the 2005 Inter-Census sample, which corresponds to 1% of Chinese population and other micro income data from the China family panel studies (CFPS) and Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS). We use information theoretic-entropy based methods to investigate the degree to which Benford’s FSD law is consistent with the FSD of Chinese income data and our findings suggest consistency between the Chinese FSD income distribution and Benford’s distribution. The close connection between the two distributions has implications for the quality of the sample of Chinese micro data.     

Understanding sustainable development flexibility: An information perspective

Although flexibility has been considered critical in responding to uncertainty in a business environment, few studies have explored firms' flexibility in sustainable development. To understand the nature of firms that can respond better to uncertainty in their sustainable development practices, this study defines sustainable development flexibility and investigates the mechanism underlying its formation. The study proposes a conceptual framework on the interactions of managers' environmental attitude and cognitive style, as well as firms' information integration on sustainable development flexibility. A questionnaire survey was developed to test the corresponding hypotheses, and 241 valid responses were received from middle- and top-level managers in Chinese firms. The results show that (a) the higher the manager's environmental attitude, the higher the firm's information integration and greater sustainable supply chain flexibility, and (b) the more intuitive the manager's cognitive style, the greater the impact of environmental attitude on sustainable development flexibility.     

Robust multivariate analysis for mixed-type data: Novel algorithm and its practical application in socio-economic research

We propose a novel method and algorithm for the analysis and clustering of mixed-type data using a hierarchical approach based on Forward Search. In our procedure, the identification of groups is based on the identification of similar trajectories and then linked to very intuitive two-dimensional maps. The proposed algorithm can use different measures for the calculation of distance in the case of mixed-type data, such as Gower’s metric and Related metric scaling. A key feature of our algorithm is its ability to discard redundant information from a given set of variables. The practical usefulness of the algorithm is illustrated through two applications of high relevance for empirical economic research. The first one focuses on comparing different indicators of environmental policy stringency in different countries. The second one applies our procedure to identify clusters of countries based on information regarding their institutional characteristics.     

Out-of-stock justifications and consumers’ behavioral outcomes– exploring the role of product type and sales level information in out-of-stock situations

The present study extends prior research on stockouts by examining how product-related attributes interact with OOS justifications to influence consumer responses to stockouts. Drawing from Out-of-stock (OOS) literature, this study investigates how perceived popularity, perceived uniqueness, negative affect, and behavioral outcomes are influenced by out-of-stock justifications, product type, and sales level. Two scenario-based experiments and two field studies are conducted in which the cause of the stockout, product type, and sales level are manipulated at different levels. The results of the studies provide the following primary insights- 1) Consumers infer popularity of the product when the product is OOS due to high demand or when the sales level is high 2) Consumers infer uniqueness of the product when the product is OOS due to short supply but not when sales level is low 3) As the perceived popularity of utilitarian products or the perceived uniqueness of hedonic products increases, consumers' propensity to switch stores to purchase the OOS products increases 4) Consumers’ intention to spread negative word of mouth decreases when the cause of OOS or a high sales level is specified. Retailers can influence behavioral outcomes by specifying the cause of stockout tailored according to the type of product, or by providing sales level information.     

Asymmetric information consolidation and price discovery: Inferring bad news from insider sales

Due to the paucity of sources of negative firm‐specific information, US capital markets have more difficulty identifying and incorporating bad news into stock prices than they do good news. Even though insider selling is a potentially important proxy for undisclosed bad news, researchers have difficulty ex ante identifying information‐based sales due to an inability to separate liquidity‐motivated from information‐based insider trades. We hypothesize that when insiders in multiple firms sell shares of one firm in which they are insiders and at the same time buy shares of other insider portfolio firms, the sale is more likely to be information‐based, since the proceeds are reinvested. Conversely, when an insider sells one firm without purchasing others or sells multiple insider firms the sale is likely liquidity‐motivated. We find that insider sales identified as information‐based using this algorithm are followed by significant negative abnormal returns. Information‐based sales are also more likely to be associated with delistings, earnings declines and earnings restatements. Analysts are also more likely to revise their earnings forecasts downwards for these firms. It is thus possible to ex ante identify insider sales with information content. Our results will be of interest to investors and also to regulators designing insider trading rules.