Analysts’ annual earnings forecasts and changes to the I/B/E/S database

Review of Accounting Studies - I/B/E/S is a common source of analyst earnings forecast data, and the reliability of these data is important for practice and academic research. Examining a common...     

Short-termism,shareholder payouts and investment in the EU

Investor-driven 'short-termism' is said to harm EU public firms' ability to invest for the long term, prompting calls for the EU to better insulate managers from shareholder pressure. But the evidence offered—rising levels of repurchases and dividends—is incomplete and misleading: it ignores large offsetting equity issuances that move capital from investors to EU firms. We show that, over the last 30 years and the last decade, net shareholder payouts have been moderate and investment and cash balances have increased. In sum, the data provide little basis for the view that short-termism in the EU warrants corporate governance reforms.     

Writing on the Wall: Street Art in Graffiti‐free Singapore

The legalization of graffiti in many cities has impacted urban landscapes and the way artists and the public view graffiti, street art and the city as well. This article considers the genesis, process and consequences of legal walls programmes firstly by introducing and differentiating the key terms ‘graffiti’, ‘street art’ and ‘legal walls’, then by examining an empirical case, that of Singapore. Renowned as a graffiti‐averse and litter‐free city, Singapore's recent about‐turn in legalizing illicit art forms illustrates changing government perspectives on creativity and legality in the country. Why the government has effected this change, how artists and members of the public have responded to it and the resultant art forms are critically explored. The conclusion reflects on four key lessons from Singapore for cities in general.     

Advertising and brand attitudes: Evidence from 575 brands over five years

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - Little is known about how different types of advertising affect brand attitudes. We investigate the relationships between three brand attitude variables...     

Multi-level and mixed-level <Emphasis Type="Italic">k</Emphasis>-circulant supersaturated designs

Supersaturated designs (SSDs) constitute an important class of fractional factorial designs that could be extremely useful in factor screening experiments. Most of the existing studies have focused on balanced designs. This paper provides a new lower bound for the \(E(f_{NOD})\)-optimality measure of SSDs with general run sizes. This bound is a generalization of existing bounds since it is applicable to both balanced and unbalanced designs. Optimal multi and mixed-level, balanced and nearly balanced SSDs are constructed by applying a k-circulant type methodology. Necessary and sufficient conditions are introduced for the generator vectors, in order to pre-ensure the optimality of the constructed k-circulant SSDs. The provided lower bounds were used to measure the efficiency of the generated designs. The presented methodology leads to a number of new families of improved SSDs, providing tools for directly constructing optimal or nearly-optimal k-circulant designs by just checking the corresponding generator vector.     

Modeling the Interdependence of the Economy and Power Industry Based on Multiplicative Two-Factor Functions

The paper has studied the change in the electric intensity of the Russian economy over the past 25 years. Equations have been constructed that correlate the electricity consumption with GDP (GVA for key economic sectors) and investment volume. The influence of structural changes and power consumption in particular sectors, as well as the modernization of the key economic sectors on the dynamics of the Russian economy electric intensity, has been identified.     

Foreign aid preferences and perceptions in donor countries

We present original survey data on preferences for foreign aid in 24 donor countries from 2005 to 2008. On publicly-funded foreign aid (Official Development Assistance, or ODA), we find patterns that are consistent with a standard model of democratic policy formation, in which donations are treated as a pure public good. Controlling for perceptions of current ODA, we show that individual preferences for ODA are (i) negatively correlated with relative income within a country-year; and (ii) positively correlated with inequality at the country level. We extend the analysis to explain variation in the gap between desired aid and actual ODA, arguing that lobbying by high-income special interest groups can divert resources away from the median voter’s preferred level of aid. Consistent with this, we observe that ODA is significantly lower where policymakers are more susceptible to lobbying. Finally, we present a novel test of competing “crowding out” hypotheses. Self-reported private aid donations are negatively correlated with actual ODA, and positively correlated with perceived ODA. This finding is consistent with an emerging argument in the literature, whereby ODA crowds out private aid by enabling charities to forego fundraising activities and crowds in private aid through a signaling channel.     

Scanning for discounts: examining the redemption of competing mobile coupons

Coupons research has typically focused on single-coupon redemption, with scant attention devoted to multiple, competing coupons. To bridge this gap, we observe supermarket shoppers who used their smartphones to scan products in-store, receiving both coupons for the scanned product and several others as a result. We model the determinants of redemption in this context, particularly net price range (NPR), coupon value, brand loyalty, and number of coupons. Latent class analysis uncovers two consumer segments: brand-focused shoppers (79.9%), who use internal reference prices, and deal-prone shoppers (20.1%), who use stimulus-based reference prices. Targeting by means of segment membership, NPR, and loyalty is indispensable: the same $0.50 coupon can have a redemption probability as low as 30% and as large as 80%, depending on these characteristics. Overall, the study sheds light on drivers of redemption under competition and provides managers with a blueprint to improve redemption rates by targeting shoppers with customized coupons.     

Perceptions of Agriculture and Food Corporate Social Responsibility

An online survey of 1,201 U.S. residents was conducted in April 2015 to better understand individuals’ perceptions of prominent areas of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the food supply chain. Demographic and household consumption information, including supermarket patronage, was collected. Each respondent completed best–worst tasks for CSR areas designed to elicit their relative importance of CSR areas. Overall, health and safety were perceived as the most important CSR area, and environment was prioritized second. Indicating gender as female and/or reporting age over 65 was positively correlated with the relative importance placed on health and safety, but negatively correlated with the size of preference share for nearly all other CSR areas investigated. Membership in the younger age categories was positively correlated with the size of the preference shares devoted to procurement, labor, fair trade, and biotechnology.     

Using matrices of specifications,factors and concepts to assist design-engineering students

In this work a matrix-type tool is used to assist design-engineering students to develop product design projects. The ‘specifications-factors-concepts matrix’ or SFCM is proposed as a specific tool to organize and relate product requirements, design factors and projected solutions. Taking into account the early stages of the design process, two types of projects that are denominated, respectively, with imposed specifications and with derived specifications, are differentiated. In each case, SFCM conveniently integrates the main contents of the project in order to carry out a comprehensive study of the design problem. SFCM was implemented in higher education, particularly in Degree of Engineering of Industrial Design and Product Development. The design of a hydraulic front brake handle for motorcycles (imposed specifications approach) and a waking up enabler for children (derived specifications approach), were proposed. The process of creation as well as the resulting matrix is shown in each case. In addition, the development and results of the experience are exposed. Students assessed by means of a survey how it helped them to develop the main tasks involved in the design projects giving, globally, a positive opinion about its usefulness.