Customer satisfaction and the cost of capital

Using a sample of U.S. firms from 1995 through 2015 and the customer satisfaction scores from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, we find strong evidence that firms with higher customer satisfaction scores enjoy lower cost of equity capital, even after controlling for other factors that determine the cost of equity. In addition, results from a propensity score matched sample analysis, a difference-in-differences analysis, and instrumental variable regressions suggest that our findings are robust to accounting for endogeneity. We also document that customer satisfaction is positively related to investor recognition and financial report quality. The effect of customer satisfaction on the cost of equity increases with the level of information asymmetry, consistent with customer satisfaction mitigating information asymmetry. Overall, our findings suggest that customer satisfaction lowers a firm’s risk and significantly attenuates its financing costs.

     

There is no ‘I’ in team: Career concerns,risk‐taking incentives,and team outcomes

The National Basketball Association contracting rules provide plausibly exogenous variation in career concerns near contract end. We use this setting to study how individual career concerns affect risk‐taking behavior and can sabotage team performance. Using the frequency and duration of player injuries from 1991 to 2013 we measure individual risk‐taking behavior. We find that the average player's likelihood of missing a game due to injury falls by 0.06 percentage points (or over 100% relative to the mean injury rate) in the final 3 months of his contract, and when missing games due to injury is unavoidable, his recovery time drops by 22 days. However, “elite” players with virtually no career concerns actually miss more games due to injury. Finally, we find that elite players missing too many games and “average” players playing before healthy, combine to hurt team performance. For each additional player in the last 3 months on contract, the win probability for that team falls by over 2.6%.     

Involuntary excess reserve and bankers’ remuneration: evidence from Chinese banks

This article analyses the effects of involuntary excess reserves (IER) on bankers’ remuneration and the penalty associated with bank risk-taking if discovered. The study finds that IER help conceal tail risks, improves bankers’ performance and remuneration. However, the risks once discovered result in heavy penalties on bankers’ remuneration. The study extends the agency theory to the context where banks hold large IER.     

Cultural distance and cross-border bank linkages

This study investigates the effect of cultural distance on global bank linkages using country-pair data for the period 1990–2013. We followed Schwartz (2006) to measure cultural distance, and employed the number of bank pairs involved in cross-border syndicated lending from the source to target countries as a measure of bank linkages. We found that cultural distance has a negative association with bank linkages. This effect is stronger in countries featuring higher informational asymmetries, as represented by weaker institutions, higher uncertainty, or revolution shocks. Our results hold even when employing alternative measures of bank linkages and cultural distance, and when considering the potential endogeneity of cultural distance.     

Research collaboration model in academic social networks

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a hybrid collaboration recommendation method that accounts for research similarities and the previous research cooperation network. Research cooperation is measured by combining the collaboration time and the number of co-authors who already collaborated with at least one scientist. Research similarity is based on authors’ previous publications and academic events they attended. A weighted directed graph is built to discover new collaborators by using direct and indirect connections between scientists. Moreover, a consensus-based system is built to integrate bibliography data from different sources. The experimental results show that our method improves the recommendation performances over other methods.     

Digital gaming culture in Vietnam: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

New information and communication technologies continue to spread rapidly into the Asian marketplace, which has led to new patterns of leisure consumption, one of the most popular being digital gaming. However, in Vietnam there is limited research on gaming as a leisure activity. The purpose of this study is to explore the phenomenon of digital gaming in Vietnam to better understand how it is practiced in this culture. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-five gaming industry figures and gamers. Thematic analysis was used to guide data collection and analysis. The findings indicate that glocalisation, socialised gaming practices and competitiveness characterise the Vietnamese gaming experience. The distinct culture of Vietnam combined with globalised gaming consumption habits has created new modes of play culture, and hence leisure experiences that are growing in pervasive and influential ways.     

Government contracts and US bond yield spreads: A study on costs and benefits of materialized political connections

In a 1991–2013 sample of bonds issued by US public firms, we find that the cost of debt (yield spread relative to comparable Treasuries) of suppliers to government agencies is contingent on the strategic importance of the supplier's industry. The yield spreads for strategically unimportant government suppliers are higher than for firms that are not government suppliers. If government contracts serve as tangible evidence of political connections, these higher yield spreads indicate that weaker corporate governance as a cost of political connections outweighs the benefits of said connections. For the subsample of government suppliers from strategically important industries, where the benefits of implicit bailout guarantees and revenue stability outweigh the corporate governance problems, the cost of debt is lower than for firms that are not government suppliers. The higher (lower) cost of debt for strategically unimportant (strategically important) suppliers is confined to contracting with the federal government. Our findings are robust to alternative variable and sample specifications, and to endogeneity concerns.     

Developmental Rent Management Analysis: Learning,Upgrading, and Innovation

In this article, I construct an original analytical framework, called the developmental rent management analysis (DRMA), for the analysis of rents and rent management. This framework is based on the premise that successful rent management depends on political and institutional arrangements to produce incentives and pressures for technical upgrading and innovation. This is because, while rents are created for a variety of purposes, rent outcomes — whether growth-enhancing or growth-reducing — depend on a set of political, institutional, and market conditions that take place formally and informally. Therefore, the key objective of the DRMA framework is to understand how a country’s politics, institutions, and industries are configured to incentivize and compel industrial upgrading. Thus, DRMA enables a broader and more complex understanding of the various factors at play in the process of development. I provide an illustrative application of the DRMA framework using the Vietnamese experience of adopting third-generation technology in the telecommunications industry.     

Being Innovative While Being Green: An Experimental Inquiry into How Consumers Respond to Eco‐Innovative Product Designs

Eco‐innovations are an effective way for companies to strategically align themselves with customers’ growing environmental concerns. Despite their crucial role, scant research has focused on eco‐innovative product designs. Drawing from the sustainability and innovation literature, this article proposes that in the design of an eco‐innovation, its degree of innovativeness, level of eco‐friendliness, and detachability significantly affect consumers' adoption intentions. This article develops various conceptual models tested through three independent online experiments with U.S. consumers. The findings support the hypotheses and provide useful insights into the underlying mechanisms of how and why consumers respond to eco‐innovative product designs across various high‐tech product categories. Specifically, the results show (1) a positive effect of innovativeness degrees of eco‐innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of product eco‐friendliness and on their adoption intentions as well as a significant moderating role of consumers' need for cognition (Study 1); (2) a positive influence of eco‐friendliness levels of eco‐innovative attributes on consumer adoption intentions in the case of high‐complexity products but not for low‐complexity products, emphasizing the need to adopt different approaches when developing eco‐innovations to ensure favorable consumer reactions (Study 2); and (3) a significant impact of the detachability of eco‐innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of trade‐offs between environmental benefits and product functionality and on their intentions to adopt eco‐innovations (Study 3). These findings add to existing theoretical knowledge, provide actionable managerial implications, and identify fruitful avenues for future research.