Instagram and body image: Motivation to conform to the “Instabod” and consequences on young male wellbeing

The current paper explores how male Instagram users' (MIU) perceptions of body image and behavior are affected by the exposure to fitness hashtags, and the consequences on their wellbeing. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with #fitfam MIU with different levels of engagement. Low-engagement MIU with low body-esteem long for the “instabod” and engage in body transformation efforts to follow the fitness trend popularized by Instagram, to emulate peers and Instagram celebrities, to gain popularity and to appear successful. Instagram community members use positive and negative reinforcements to strengthen body internalization. The body transformation effort motivates low-engagement MIU to engage more, which has various effects on wellbeing: on one side, they feel anxious and in competition with other peers which often leads to muscle dysmorphia symptoms; on the other side, they feel more masculine with higher self-confidence, they have higher motivation to stay fit and to eat healthily.     

Introduction to special issue of <Emphasis Type=Italic>Small Business Economics</Emphasis> on female entrepreneurship in developed and developing economies

Research into entrepreneurship has for many years been interested in the differences in rate of participation and performance by female entrepreneurs. The motivation for considering female entrepreneurship in both developing and developed countries arises from our increasing understanding of the significance of the role of women in creating, running and growing businesses as a fundamental driver for economic growth. This special issue examines the reasons for differences in gender participation across levels of development using empirical studies.     

Project analysis using a linear approach (P.A.U.L.A.)

We define a general model (called PAULA) for the valuation, optimal management and selection among mutually exclusive safe projects. By exploiting the formal and financial features of the associated linear problems (primal and dual), we put forward two proposals to define an optimal internal financial law (IFL). They may be used to reduce the multiplicity of the IFLs and to avoid economically arbitrary outcomes.Research projectsCariplo andMurst.     

Structural and Cyclical Factors behind Current Account Balances

Global external imbalances widened persistently over the last several years and have narrowed abruptly over the course of the financial crisis. Understanding the extent to which structural or cyclical factors may have driven these patterns is important to assess the likely evolution of global imbalances going forward, as well as the potential adjustment that can be achieved through changes in policy. This paper assesses the link between structural and cyclical factors and current account balances using a panel of 94 countries from 1973 to 2008. We find that the medium‐term evolution of global external imbalances can be related in large part to structural factors including cross‐country differences in demographics, fiscal deficits, oil dependency and intensity, stage of economic development, financial market development, and institutional quality. Part of the narrowing in current account balances since the financial crisis appears to be related to various cyclical factors including changes in output growth, oil prices, and exchange rates, and may be expected to reverse alongside the economic recovery.     

Quality control for structural credit risk models

Over the last four decades, a large number of structural models have been developed to estimate and price credit risk. The focus of the paper is on a neglected issue pertaining to fundamental shifts in the structural parameters governing default. We propose formal quality control procedures that allow risk managers to monitor fundamental shifts in the structural parameters of credit risk models. The procedures are sequential — hence apply in real time. The basic ingredients are the key processes used in credit risk analysis, such as most prominently the Merton distance to default process as well as financial returns. Moreover, while we propose different monitoring processes, we also show that one particular process is optimal in terms of minimal detection time of a break in the drift process and relates to the Radon–Nikodym derivative for a change of measure.     

Banking crises and market discipline: International evidence

This paper analyzes the effect of banking crises on market discipline in an international sample of banks. We also evaluate how bank regulation, supervision, institutions, and crisis intervention policies shape the effect of banking crises on market discipline. We control for unobservable bank, country, and time specific effects using a panel data set of banks from 66 countries around 79 banking crises. The results suggest that on average market discipline weakens after a banking crisis. This weakening is higher in countries where bank regulation, supervision, and institutions promoted market discipline before the banking crisis, and where a more accommodative approach is adopted to resolve it.     

Dynamic auction environment with subcontracting

This article provides evidence on the role of subcontracting in the auction‐based procurement setting with private cost variability and capacity constraints. We demonstrate that subcontracting allows bidders to modify their costs realizations in a given auction as well as to control their future costs by reducing backlog accumulation. Restricting access to subcontracting raises procurement costs for an individual project by 12% and reduces the number of projects completed in equilibrium by 20%. The article explains methodological and market design implications of subcontracting availability.     

Value premium and macroeconomic variables

This paper investigates the effect of macroeconomic expectations on the value premium. We introduce a two-pass estimation procedure to extrapolate the impact of investors' macroexpectations on the firm fundamental value of Rhodes-Kropf, Robinson, and Viswanathan. We find that the level and slope of the term structure affect valuation, revealing a heavily industry-dependent effect. The portfolios sorted on metrics orthogonal to macroeconomic variables show a clear association between the misvaluation component of value premium and size risk. By removing the influence of the macroeconomic conditions and size, we separate the portion of the value premium that rewards macroeconomic expectations.     

Further empirical evidence on block transactions below the MBR: the Spanish market

There is a relatively unknown market for partial control or corporate influence in Spanish listed firms, where the control transaction size is below the legal threshold that triggers a mandatory tender offer, as this kind of deal looks for exercising some degree of control, but not a full control. The goal of this paper is to go further in its empirical analysis by exploring its distinguishing features, using as the criterion to define its transactions obtaining a seat in the board of directors. We find that these deals are mainly located in the segment of the market of large trades where the rules for private negotiations are easier to implement; the size of the block is relatively large and it is negotiated as a whole block. Besides, the most common buyer has no previous stake in the firm. We find no evidence that the buyers pay, in median, for a seat on the board of directors, but the variability of the premiums for those blocks is higher and shows that buyers that had no control position in the target firm pay more for being among largest shareholders (partial control) and less for not being among them (influence).