Managing a Global Retail Brand in Different Markets: Meta-Analyses of Customer Responses to Service Encounters

This study investigates how retailers can leverage their brand to shape customers’ satisfaction with service encounters. It develops and tests hypotheses about how brand, store, and consumer factors moderate customer responses to experience clues during retail service encounters. Six meta-regression analyses synthesize and compare results from 842 satisfaction equations describing customers’ encounters with a global retailer operating 400 stores in 32 countries. The results show how customers weigh their perceptions of service encounters differently depending on brand, store, and consumer factors. In markets where customers believe the retailer has high holistic brand quality, they place less weight on experience clues within the store. In markets where customers believe the retailer’s service brand promise, they place more weight on in-store experience clues. In markets where the retailer promises utilitarian value, customers weigh functional experience clues more heavily. In markets with an online purchasing channel, the effect of experience clues common to offline and online store environments is magnified, and unique clues are diminished. In addition, customers heavily weigh experience clues that fit their goals. In general, retail success factors include high brand quality (which makes customers more forgiving), a service brand promise that is mirrored in the store image (which makes customers attend to the experience clues aligned with them), and the careful monitoring and managing of retail touchpoints (to customize experience clues to each market). In this way, retailers can use customer-based strategies to effectively design and manage their global retail brand in different markets.     

Mining semantic features in current reports for financial distress prediction: Empirical evidence from unlisted public firms in China

It is difficult to predict the financial distress of unlisted public firms due to their longer disclosure cycle of accounting information and more inadequate continuity of market trading information compared to listed firms. In this paper, we propose a framework to predict the financial distress of unlisted public firms using current reports. Specifically, to better represent the meaning of current report texts, we propose a semantic feature extraction method based on a word embedding technology. Empirical results show that current reports contain more effective information for predicting the financial distress of unlisted public firms compared with periodic reports. In addition, semantic features extracted using our proposed method significantly improve the predictive performance, and their enhancing effect is superior to that of topic features and sentiment features. Our study also provides implications for stakeholders such as investors and creditors.     

Delegation and the regulation of U.S. financial markets

We analyze the institutional determinants of U.S. financial market regulation with a general model of the policy-making process in which legislators delegate authority to regulate financial risk at both the firm and systemic levels. The model explains changes in U.S. financial regulation leading up to the financial crisis. We test the predictions of the general model with a novel, comprehensive data set of financial regulatory laws enacted specifically between 1950 and 2009. The theoretical and empirical analysis finds that economic and political factors impact Congress’ decision to delegate regulatory authority to executive agencies, which in turn impacts the stringency of financial market regulation, and our estimation results indicate that political factors may have been stronger and resulted in inefficiencies.     

Exploring the factors that drive consumers to use contactless delivery services in the context of the continued COVID-19 pandemic

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the launch of contactless delivery services. This research integrates resource matching, service quality evaluation, and perceived value theories to explore the factors that promote the use contactless delivery services. The data was obtained through questionnaire surveys, and research hypotheses were verified through the structural equation modelling approach. With the exception of convenience, the results show that privacy, reliability, security, and flexibility have a significantly positive effect on consumers' intention to use “contactless” delivery services through consumers' perceived value. This study contributes to the literature by introducing theoretical frameworks from various paradigms and enriches the academic research on existing theoretical structure models. It also helps optimize resource allocation and realize the social environment related to coexisting with the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Uncertainty perception in bidding for Product-Service Systems under competition

This research investigates what impact of uncertainty perception arising from the existence of competition has on the pricing decision for Product-Service Systems (PSS) under uncertainty. PSS provision is an increasingly important area for many businesses and competition increases cognitive pressures on providers even further. We present an experimental study with industrial costing and bidding experts from the defence and aerospace sector. The study consisted of an experimental set-up via two questionnaires which differed in the existence of competition in the bidding scenario. The findings showed that bidding decision makers changed their evaluation of the cost estimate due to the introduction of competition but kept their evaluations of the profit margin and price bids constant. Furthermore, the participants listed the relevant sources of uncertainty that influenced their decision-making process. This research contributes to the literature in two ways. First, our findings showed that predictions from current theory regarding decision-making of cost estimation and pricing are not confirmed when competitively bidding for PSS. Second, we show uncertainty sources that influenced the decision makers and identified p the importance of internal processes of the PSS provider and environmental uncertainty.     

金融周期、行业技术周期与经济结构优化

本文首先采用马尔科夫区制转移模型测算金融周期和12类行业的技术投入周期,进而采用交叉谱分析法和OLS法分析金融周期对行业技术周期的影响,结果发现:不同金融变量的周期具有异步性,各行业的技术投入周期具有明显差别;不同金融变量周期与行业技术投入周期之间存在不同的数量关联性,对不同的行业技术投入具有不同的影响作用;在繁荣阶段,金融市场和银行对各行业的技术投入都具有正向推动作用,但金融市场对高密度创新行业技术投入的推动作用更为显著,银行对低密度稳定行业技术投入的推动作用更为显著;在紧缩阶段,金融市场对高密度创新行业技术投入的紧缩效应更为剧烈,银行却对低密度稳定行业的技术投资下行起到缓解作用。根据这些事实和规律,可以引导利用各金融变量对具有发展前景的行业强化技术投资助推作用,提升经济结构优化效率。     

Improving forecasting performance using covariate-dependent copula models

Copulas provide an attractive approach to the construction of multivariate distributions with flexible marginal distributions and different forms of dependences. Of particular importance in many areas is the possibility of forecasting the tail-dependences explicitly. Most of the available approaches are only able to estimate tail-dependences and correlations via nuisance parameters, and cannot be used for either interpretation or forecasting. We propose a general Bayesian approach for modeling and forecasting tail-dependences and correlations as explicit functions of covariates, with the aim of improving the copula forecasting performance. The proposed covariate-dependent copula model also allows for Bayesian variable selection from among the covariates of the marginal models, as well as the copula density. The copulas that we study include the Joe-Clayton copula, the Clayton copula, the Gumbel copula and the Student’s $t$-copula. Posterior inference is carried out using an efficient MCMC simulation method. Our approach is applied to both simulated data and the S&P 100 and S&P 600 stock indices. The forecasting performance of the proposed approach is compared with those of other modeling strategies based on log predictive scores. A value-at-risk evaluation is also performed for the model comparisons.     

基于产业背景的金融控股集团协同机制研究

产业金控集团是当前我国产业资本借力资本市场发展实体经济的重要方式，但在 实际运行中存在协同机制不健全、协同效应发挥不足、产融结合的深度和广度不足等问题。本 文对国内外产业金融理论进行了文献综述，深入分析了产业金控集团产生的动因，指出了目前 产业金控集团在发挥协同效应中存在的不足。结合产业金控集团的优势和特点，从构建横向协 同机制和纵向协同机制的角度，探讨了完善产业金控集团协同机制的举措。     

Central bank disclosure as a macroprudential tool for financial stability

The Basel Capital Accord (pillar 3) states that disclosure of information (transparency) is essential to financial stability. This study analyzes, through inflation reports, the disclosure of information from the Central Bank of Brazil concerning the credit market. We consider credit risk and capital buffers as measures of financial stability in this analysis. Furthermore, in order to measure the perception of the monetary authority on the credit market, we built two indices based on the central bank’s communication on credit development. We performed a panel data analysis based on a sample of 125 banks for the period from June 1999 to September 2014 (7000 observations). The findings suggest that central bank communication regarding expectations concerning the credit market contributes to financial stability. Therefore, this kind of communication of central banks (about credit development) may constitute an important macroprudential tool to improve financial stability.     

Financial development,financial liberalization and social capital

The relationship between financial liberalization policies and financial development is controversial. The impact of these policies differs greatly across countries. In the literature, the quality of formal institutions has been identified as an important source of this heterogeneity, as countries with a weak institutional environment generally fail to benefit from financial liberalization. Using panel data covering 82 countries for the period 1973–2008, we find evidence that social capital may substitute for formal institutions as a prerequisite for effective financial liberalization policies. In particular, we find that during the post Washington-consensus period countries with a high prevailing level of social capital can ensure that financial liberalization positively influences financial development, despite the poor quality of their formal institutions.