The effects of role strain on the consumer decision process for groceries in single-parent households

Single-parent families are becoming a larger part of American society. But what is known about their decision-making processes? Role strain is of particular interest when studying single parents because of their need to serve multiple family roles otherwise carried out by dual-parent families. In this study, the consumer decision process for single parents is empirically examined in the context of grocery shopping. Role strain was found to have a significant effect on problem recognition style and reactive shopping behaviors. Advertising positively influenced proactive shopping behaviors and had a negative relationship with reactive shopping behaviors. Implications for food retailers are provided.     

The impact of corporate debt on long term investment and firm performance

Prior research indicates a linkage between debt, research and development (R&D) and physical investment, and that the relationship varies depending on the type of firm (science versus non–science). Leverage also plays a multidimensional role in corporate performance and growth. The relationship between financial leverage and R&D expenditure is analysed using a sample of large United States (US) manufacturing firms. Then, the impact of leverage on R&D expenditure is studied using corporate performance drivers as intermediate variables. The results indicate that there is a strong negative relationship between the degree of financial leverage and the level of R&D expenditure that firms undertake. The negative relationship is robust to changes in model specifications and sample periods. More importantly, the results show that it is higher leverage that leads to lower R&D expense rather than R&D causing variations in future leverage. In addition, the results indicate that higher leverage adversely influences future investment in R&D which may in turn lead to negative impact on long term operating performance and future growth opportunities.     

Diplomatic relations and tourism advertising effectiveness: U.S. travel interest to Cuba

This study explores the relationship between nation brand familiarity and increased interest in tourism and tourism advertising effectiveness. Surveys fielded a few months before and a few months after the historic 17 December 2014 announcement of improved diplomatic relations between the United States and Cuba showed an increase in familiarity with Cuba as well as increased interest in traveling to Cuba among US adults. Respondents also indicated a more favorable reaction to a 30-s ad agency-produced television commercial for Cuba tourism. Results are discussed in light of literature on destination brand familiarity as it relates to brand interest and advertising evaluation. Implications for destination marketing managers are presented.     

Stock market liquidity and firm value

This paper investigates the relation between stock liquidity and firm performance. The study shows that firms with liquid stocks have better performance as measured by the firm market-to-book ratio. This result is robust to the inclusion of industry or firm fixed effects, a control for idiosyncratic risk, a control for endogenous liquidity using two-stage least squares, and the use of alternative measures of liquidity. To identify the causal effect of liquidity on firm performance, we study an exogenous shock to liquidity—the decimalization of stock trading—and show that the increase in liquidity around decimalization improves firm performance. The causes of liquidity's beneficial effect are investigated: Liquidity increases the information content of market prices and of performance-sensitive managerial compensation. Finally, momentum trading, analyst coverage, investor overreaction, and the effect of liquidity on discount rates or expected returns do not appear to drive the results.     

The Impact of Range Pricing on Marketing Time and Transaction Price: A Better Mousetrap for the Existing Home Market?

In various markets around the country, some real estate professionals are employing a new pricing strategy that involves marketing homes for sale with a price range rather than a single asking price. This strategy is often touted as a mechanism that will attract more potential buyers to look at a house and thus result in reduced marketing times for existing homes, with prices determined by competitive forces. The purpose of this study is to empirically examine whether houses using range pricing, often referred to as value range marketing, sell in the same amount of time and sell for similar prices as those marketed in the traditional manner. Two staged least squares with a correction for sample selection and Weibull duration models are used to test the hypotheses, employing a sample of 5,852 residential houses that were sold during the period January 1999 to December 2000. In contrast to claims of the strategy’s proponents, the results indicate that houses take longer to sell when using the range pricing strategy after controlling for physical characteristics and market conditions. Furthermore, there is no evidence that this strategy has any significant impact on transaction prices.     

GASB mandatory disclosure rules and municipal bond yield spreads

The implementation of the Government Accounting Standards Board’s Statement 45 mandates disclosure of “other post-employment benefits” (OPEB) in a standardized format. The mandate provides an opportunity to analyze noninformation impacts of mandatory disclosures, as key components of the information were already publicly available. We find that this mandate is associated with a significant 15 and 73 basis-point increase in yield spreads among tax-exempt and taxable bonds, respectively. This effect is particularly pronounced for riskier bonds—nonrated and longer maturity taxable bonds. However, states that do not follow the GASB 45 recommendation of prefunding the OPEB obligations face a greater increase in their yield spreads.     

Uncertainty about average profitability and the diversification discount

The diversification discount (multiple segment firm value below the value imputed using single segment firm multiples) is commonly thought to be generated by agency problems, a lack of transparency, or lackluster future prospects for diversified firms. If multiple segment firms have lower uncertainty about mean profitability than single segment firms, rational learning about mean profitability provides an alternative explanation for the diversification discount that does not rely on suboptimal managerial decisions or a poor firm outlook. Empirical tests which examine changes in firm value across the business cycle and idiosyncratic volatility are consistent with lower uncertainty about mean profitability for multiple segment firms.     

Sell on the news: Differences of opinion,short-sales constraints,and returns around earnings announcements

Miller [1977. Risk, uncertainty, and divergence of opinion. Journal of Finance 32, 1151–1168] hypothesizes that prices of stocks subject to high differences of opinion and short-sales constraints are biased upward. We expect earnings announcements to reduce differences of opinion among investors, and consequently, these announcements should reduce overvaluation. Using five distinct proxies for differences of opinion, we find that high differences of opinion stocks earn significantly lower returns around earnings announcements than low differences of opinion stocks. In addition, the returns on high differences of opinion stocks are more negative within the subsample of stocks that are most difficult for investors to sell short. These results are robust when we control for the size effect and the market-to-book effect and when we examine alternative explanations such as financial leverage, earnings announcement premium, post-earnings announcement drift, return momentum, and potential biases in analysts’ forecasts. Also consistent with Miller's theory, we find that stocks subject to high differences of opinion and more binding short-sales constraints have a price run-up just prior to earnings announcements that is followed by an even larger decline after the announcements.     

Voluntary Contributions to Personal Pension Plans: Evidence from the British Household Panel Survey

In this paper, we use data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the years 1992 to 1998 to study the determinants of saving in the form of voluntary contributions to personal pension plans (PPPs). We first estimate a probit model with selection for the probability of making these voluntary contributions. We then estimate a random‐effects tobit regression for the amounts contributed and compare the results with those of a similar regression for conventional saving. Our findings suggest that voluntary contributions to PPPs are made essentially for retirement purposes, whereas conventional saving is undertaken for precautionary motives. The former type of saving is thus unlikely to offset the latter completely.     

Corporate Diversification and Credit Constraints: Real Effects across the Business Cycle

We study whether differences in access to credit cause focusedfirms to perform differently from diversified firms in the productmarket. Prior work has identified binding credit constraintsfor bank-dependent firms during recessions. We assess whethercorporate diversification alleviates these constraints. We findthat during recessions sales growth rates drop more for bank-dependentfocused firms than for rival segments of bank-dependent diversifiedfirms. We also find that during recessions inventory growthrates drop more for bank-dependent focused firms than for bank-dependentdiversified firms even after we control for contemporaneoussales growth. Consistent with a credit constraint explanation,we find no difference in the sensitivities to recessions ofbank-independent focused and bank-independent diversified firms.(JEL G30, G31, G32)