Hedonic pricing and the role of stud fees in the market for thoroughbred yearlings in Australia

Using data from one of Australia's largest thoroughbred auction houses, we investigate the price determinants of thoroughbred yearlings sold at auction. We include novel key variables to construct hedonic pricing models and examine the relative role of stud fees compared to the wide range of attributes in the pricing of yearlings. We find that the price effect of stud fees is influenced by the value buyers place on both the characteristics of sires and the characteristics of sire side siblings. The findings imply that the quality of dams a sire has been matched within the breeding market has consequential effects on yearling prices through the sire's stud fee and progeny.     

HOW DID UNCONVENTIONAL MONETARY POLICY AFFECT ECONOMIC FORECASTS?

We study how unconventional monetary policy announcements affected professional forecasters' predictions of bond rates, gross domestic product growth and inflation using data from the monthly survey by the Wall Street Journal. We find that unconventional monetary policy (UMP) announcements moved predicted bond rates in the direction the Fed intended. UMP announcements had differential impacts on forecasters' predictions; they also tended to move growth and inflation predictions in directions opposite those the Fed intended due to Fed information effects. A policy implication of our study is that the Fed should communicate economic projections to the public separately from monetary policy announcements to mitigate Fed information effects. (JEL E52, E58)     

Partial least squares structural equation modeling in HRM research

Abstract

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) has become a key multivariate analysis technique that human resource management (HRM) researchers frequently use. While most disciplines undertake regular critical reflections on the use of important methods to ensure rigorous research and publication practices, the use of PLS-SEM in HRM has not been analyzed so far. To address this gap in HRM literature, this paper presents a critical review of PLS-SEM use in 77 HRM studies published over a 30-year period in leading journals. By contrasting the review results with state-of-the-art guidelines for use of the method, we identify several areas that offer room of improvement when applying PLS-SEM in HRM studies. Our findings offer important guidance for future use of the PLS-SEM method in HRM and related fields.     

Hamburg's Spaces of Danger: Race,Violence and Memory in a Contemporary Global City

Germany today is experiencing the strongest upsurge of right‐wing populism since the second world war, most notably with the rise of Pegida and Alternative für Deutschland. Yet wealthy global cities like Hamburg continue to present themselves as the gatekeepers of liberal progress and cosmopolitan openness. This article argues that Hamburg's urban boosterism relies on, while simultaneously obscuring, the same structures of racial violence that embolden reactionary movements. Drawing on the work of Walter Benjamin and Allan Pred, we present an archaeology of Hamburg's landscape, uncovering some of its ‘spaces of danger’—sites layered with histories of violence, many of which lie buried and forgotten. We find that these spaces, when they become visible, threaten to undermine Hamburg's cosmopolitan narrative. They must, as a result, be continually erased or downplayed in order to secure the city as an attractive site for capital investment. To illustrate this argument, we give three historical examples: Hamburg's role in the Hanseatic League during the medieval and early modern period; the city under the Nazi regime; and the recent treatment of Black African refugees. The article's main contribution is to better situate issues of historical landscape, collective memory and racialized violence within the political economy of today's global city.     

Mobile diaries – Benchmark against metered measurements: An empirical investigation

Researchers seeking to study the relationships between consumers' communications, attitudes, and behaviors could benefit from monitoring consumers over time, across multiple locations and channels, and in a way that reflects consumers' subjective perceptions. Diaries on smartphones (mobile diaries) can be used as a research tool for such purposes. A mobile diary is a self-report instrument whereby people use their mobile handset to repeatedly report experiences of interest. Mobile diaries are increasingly used in psychology, geography, medicine, and commercial marketing. Yet they have rarely been used for quantitative marketing research, and were not benchmarked against best-practice metrics in marketing.In this study, we aim to set the ground for using mobile diaries in quantitative marketing research. We first lay out the theoretical infrastructure for the usage of mobile diaries, and describe possible respondent reporting concerns, including concerns related to non-reporting, reporting over time, and concerns stemming from individual-level heterogeneity.We demonstrate the potential of mobile diaries, as well as the importance of the various concerns, using a benchmark test case in the context of primetime TV viewing. Our benchmark uses a sample of respondents with both mobile diary viewing reports and Nielsen People Meter (NPM) records. Our analysis reveals that averaging across all conditions, 47.4%–64.7% of the NPM records are reported by the diary. The major sources for mismatch are random time periods without alarms, short viewings, and periodic reporting inactivity (pulsing). Concerns such as a decrease in reporting rates over time (e.g., fatigue), smartphone ownership, and demographic variation across individuals have relatively small effects on reporting likelihood. Analyzing the cases in which diary reports do not have a matching NPM record, we find many of them can be attributed to out-of-home viewing and viewing on non-metered devices. This finding demonstrates how mobile diaries can complement metered measurements. Overall, aggregate diary-based ratings have a 0.90 correlation with NPM ratings.We discuss implications for designing and using mobile diary studies in marketing.