Neither an Authentic Product nor a Counterfeit: The Growing Popularity of Shanzhai Products in Global Markets

Counterfeits have been a longstanding concern to global brand manufactures. However, recently, a new product category that partly imitates and partly innovates under the term shanzhai has entered into market. Shanzhai products mimic original leading brands through visual or functional similarities and may also provide additional features. Given this new copycat phenomenon, our study for the first time conceptually distinguishes shanzhai products from counterfeits, theoretically compares the values of consumers choosing shanzhai products versus counterfeits, and empirically tests such differences in one integrative model. Specifically, shanzhai buyers value product functional benefits more than counterfeit buyers, while counterfeit buyers value status consumption, yet experience less self‐clarity than shanzhai buyers. Our findings offer important implications for imitative innovation literature as well as for practitioners.     

Tax Reporting Behavior Under Audit Certainty

This study uses a confidential data set of firms assigned to the Internal Revenue Service's Coordinated Industry Case (CIC) program to examine the effect of audit certainty on firms' tax reporting behavior. We first model the determinants of assignment to the program. Although the ability and incentive to avoid taxes are related to CIC assignment, we find that the IRS assigns firms primarily based on size and complexity. We then test whether audit certainty has a detectable effect on tax payments. Our results show that tax payments do not change when firms enter the CIC program, suggesting the CIC program does not have higher deterrence or enforcement effects relative to the IRS's standard selection and audit process for large corporations not included in the CIC program. However, supplemental analysis suggests that audit certainty does alter managers' expectations regarding future tax payments. Our paper provides new empirical evidence on the strategic game between the taxpayer and the tax authority and has important implications for tax authorities as they consider the costs and benefits of certain audit programs.     

Integration of and Deliveries among the World Zionist Organization,Israel, and Diaspora Countries: System Articulation with the Social Fabric Matrix

Abstract:

The religious economics (not economics of religion) concern here is the relationship between the World Zionist Organization (WZO) and Israel, which is known as a geopolitical power in its region and which is also known as an economic success story. Joseph Schumpeter and Karl Polanyi explained how the political economy of medieval Europe was influenced and guided by Christian morality. This paper extends the analysis of religious economics by using the social fabric matrix of original institutional economics to define and structure the integration of the WZO, Israel, and the Diaspora countries. This allows us to observe how to conduct such work and to learn how Israel is guided and influenced by the WZO. It also helps to explain Israel’s “risk of tearing itself apart” as noted in a recent article in the New York Times.     

Co-opted directors,gender diversity,and crash risk: evidence from China

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - This study examines how the composition of the board of directors at Chinese firms affects crash risk. The results indicate that co-opted directors...     

Internal Marketing at Continental Airlines: Convincing Employees that Management Knows Best

Maintaining a high level of customer service quality is necessary for success, particularly for firms in service industries, but employees need to be motivated to provide it. Management can provide the motivation through the use of compensation schemes and internal marketing. In this paper we examine profit sharing compensation schemes that reward employees for achieving customer service objectives. We discuss how such schemes should be implemented, and explain why management needs to convince employees through internal marketing programs about the benefits of its scheme. We obtain the optimal amount of profit that the firm should share with employees, and the optimal effort it should spend on internal marketing. Finally, we relate the analysis to a successful scheme implemented by Continental Airlines.     

Delineating Foreign Market Potential: A Tool for International Market Selection

International expansion is becoming more imperative in today's marketplace. However, determining which markets best suit a specific company is not a straightforward task. This study tackles the question of how managers should go about identifying, evaluating, and selecting foreign markets. For this purpose, we propose a practical, flexible, and forward‐looking three‐stage template for assessing foreign market opportunities and identifying the most promising international markets. The three stages include determining country responsiveness for a specific industry, estimating future industry growth, and incorporating an industry‐relevant aggregate measure. The study illustrates the tool for three companies from various industries and discusses the implications. The proposed tool offers insights on crucial dimensions for the industry‐specific market potential, and assists managers in identifying favorable foreign markets. This study also addresses the gap in the international market selection literature by developing a new empirical tool for foreign market analysis and selection using longitudinal secondary data. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

THE 2007–2008 U.S. RECESSION: WHAT DID THE REAL‐TIME GOOGLE TRENDS DATA TELL THE UNITED STATES?

In the extant literature of business cycle predictions, the signals for business cycle turning points are generally issued with a lag of at least 5 months. In this paper, we make use of a novel and timely indicator—the Google search volume data—to help to improve the timeliness of business cycle turning point identification. We identify multiple query terms to capture the real‐time public concern on the aggregate economy, the credit market, and the labor market condition. We incorporate the query indices in a Markov‐switching framework and successfully “nowcast” the peak date within a month that the turning occurred. (JEL E37, G17)     

Corporate tax avoidance: data truncation and loss firms

Loss firms are an economically significant and growing segment of the population of publicly traded corporations. Relatively little is known about the tax positions of loss firms because the firms are typically dropped from tax avoidance studies. We develop a new measure of corporate cash tax avoidance that is meaningful for all observations and reflects the extent to which a firm is tax-favored. We examine the extent to which inferences about corporate tax avoidance over the past twenty-seven years change when we examine the full population of firms, as opposed to a profitable and/or taxable subsample. In contrast to prior research findings, our results suggest that on average firms are tax-disfavored, by which we mean cash taxes paid exceed the product of the firm’s pre-tax book income and the statutory tax rate. In addition, many industries that appear to be tax-favored in profitable subsamples are tax-disfavored when the entire population is examined. We also find that the extent to which firms are tax-disfavored is increasing over time, and that domestic firms are more tax-disfavored than multinationals.     

The new middle class in emerging markets: How values and demographics influence discretionary consumption

The rise of new middle‐class consumers in rapidly transforming emerging markets has attracted the attention of Western business executives. What they know about this growing segment of customers will determine whether they succeed or fail in these markets. The present study examines the factors that drive the discretionary consumption of this new middle class, including the effects of consumerist values, religious values, occupation, education levels, and ownership of fixed assets. The study draws its insights from data gathered from 391 new middle‐class consumers in Ankara, the second‐largest city in Turkey. The findings provide important implications for businesses, both indigenous and foreign. An overall implication is that managers ought to understand and qualify the new middle class in emerging markets not simply by their access to disposable income but by deeper attitudinal and behavioral characteristics.     

Happy New Year of The...What?

Every person is indeed looking for strength and success in their lives.As the last of the fireworks blasts off its sparklv salute to mark the turn of the New Year,we say farewell to the graceful strength which galloped in on the Year of the Horse,and warmly welcome the Year of the Sheep.Sparks of debate have fired heavy discussions