Advertising in streaming video: An integrative literature review and research agenda

Streaming video (SV), such as YouTube, is a new media widely used nowadays. Nevertheless, there is a lack of knowledge about advertising in SV. In view of this, through a search in the rich depository of the Scopus database, this article presents the first integrative literature review about advertising in SV. Searching every article and conference paper related to the topic published until May 04, 2020, 59 studies were found and classified into two main topics: marketing studies (35), mostly focused on evaluating or exploring advertising in SV, and computational studies (24), focusing on the development of systems for the insertion of ads into SV. All knowledge present in these studies was summarized so that readers (both scholars and practitioners) could have easy access to the main contributions and information present in each study. Moreover, future research directions in six main themes are presented through a research agenda.     

Recent Developments at DG Competition: 2020/2021

Review of Industrial Organization - The Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission enforces competition law in the areas of antitrust, merger control, and State aid. After...     

The Quality and Price of Investment Banks’ Service: Evidence from the PIPE Market

We investigate the market structure and the pricing by placement agents of private investments in public equities (PIPEs). Our findings indicate that more reputable agents are associated with larger offers and with firms possessing lower risk. Agent reputation is positively associated with lower discounts and an enhanced post-PIPE trading environment. Issuers pay a higher dollar fee for these benefits, although more reputable agents charge a lower percentage fee. The evidence suggests that it is the quality of the issuing firm, and the pricing and reputational concern of the placement agent, that drives the equilibrium in the PIPE market.     

Insurance Guaranty Schemes in a Contingent Claims Setting

The introduction of an insurance guaranty scheme can have significant influence on the pricing and capital structures in a competitive market. This contribution summarizes the major findings of a working paper written by Schmeiser and Wagner (Working Papers on Risk Management and Insurance (IVW-HSG), No. 80, 2010). The effect on competitive equity-premium combinations is studied while considering a framework with policyholders and equity holders where guaranty fund charges are volume-based, as levied in existing schemes. Several settings with regard to the origin of the fund contributions are assessed and the immediate effects on the incentives of the policyholders and equity holders are analyzed through a one-period contingent claim approach. One result is that introducing a guaranty scheme in a market with competitive conditions entails a shift of equity capital towards minimum solvency requirements. Hence adverse incentives may arise with regard to the overall security level of the industry.     

Economic burden,work, and school productivity in individuals with tuberous sclerosis and their families

Aims: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is a multi-organ autosomal-dominant, genetic disorder with incomplete penetrance. The multiple manifestations of TSC and impacts to numerous organ systems represent significant disease, healthcare, and treatment burden. The economic and employment burden of the disease on individuals and their families is poorly understood. This study assessed the cost of illness and work and school productivity burden associated with TSC in a cross-sectional web-survey sample.

Materials and methods: Eligible TSC individuals and caregivers were invited through the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance advocacy group to complete a web-based survey about illness characteristics, treatment, disease burden, direct and indirect healthcare costs, work and school impairment.

Results: Data from 609 TSC adults or caregiver respondents with no cognitive impairments were analyzed. TSC adults (>18 years of age) had significantly higher direct out-of-pocket costs for ER visits, expenses for medical tests and procedures, alternative treatments, medications and lifetime cost of surgeries compared to TSC pediatric individuals. Both TSC adults and TSC caregivers reported work and school absenteeism and presenteeism; however, adults reported significantly higher absenteeism and presenteeism and overall activity impairment due to TSC, as might be expected, compared to TSC caregivers. TSC adults had significantly higher absenteeism and presenteeism rates compared to adults with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis and muscular sclerosis.

Conclusions: TSC results in considerable direct out-of-pocket medical costs and impairment to work productivity, especially for adults. Future studies should include the comparator group and examine direct cost burden in the US using electronic medical records and insurance databases.     

The Pluralist Theory of Ethics Programs Orientations and Ideologies: An Empirical Study Anchored in Requisite Variety

We propose, in this article, a pluralistic theory of ethics programs orientations, empirically derived from the statistical analysis of responses to an ad hoc questionnaire on organizational ethics practices. The results of our research identify six different orientations to ethics programs, corresponding to as many types of organizational ethics practices. This model goes beyond the traditional opposition between a compliance orientation, focused on the regulation of behavior and the detection of deviance, and a values-based orientation, which is said to be more reflective and enabling, and allows for a more sophisticated understanding of the composition of ethics programs. Drawing from the theory of requisite variety, we suggest that these six orientations are not to be considered in opposition but rather as complementary and even synergistic. In doing so, this pluralism has the potential to counter the potential deleterious effects of dominant logics and ideologies in organizations. Our model thus allows for a more empirical analysis of organizational ethics practices and programs and provides a new analytical framework for research and practice in considering the principle of requisite variety in ethics management. This represents, in our opinion, a contribution to the advancement of knowledge and practice in organizational ethics.     

Examining Social Networking Sites as a Survey Distribution Channel for Hospitality and Tourism Research

As businesses use social networking sites (SNS) to connect with consumers, SNS can be viewed as another way to collect users’ information. Since many consumers spend significant amounts of time connecting with others on SNS, it would be a suitable channel to gather information from the captured audience. This study compares survey responses from the traditional paper-and-pencil survey and online survey collected through an SNS recruitment method. The test results showed that there are no statistically significant differences in model fits from the two data collection methods. Thus, this study concludes that SNS holds great potential to serve as a survey distribution channel for collecting meaningful data. More in-depth empirical studies are needed to validate the method before using it for a wider range of research.     

Dealing with Dirt and the Disorder of Development: Managing Rubbish in Urban Pakistan

This article unveils the different “thought worlds” that inform urban development policy and the reality of urban service delivery in Faisalabad, Pakistan's third largest city. Focusing on changing patterns of residential waste removal and based on ethnographic work among minority Christian street sweepers, the “little sub-worlds” involved in domestic rubbish collection are explored, showing how these articulate with larger “thought worlds” about dirt and disorder. The symbolic meanings of dirt across public and private spheres are examined alongside efforts by development practitioners and donors to impose generic policy solutions related to privatized delivery. Drawing on Mary Douglas's insights about how ritual pollution or danger-beliefs serve generally to maintain social categories and hierarchies, the article nevertheless points to the historically contingent specificities of caste-like relations in urban Pakistan and how these have been constructed. It shows how, under increasing competition for scarce jobs, entitlements associated with hereditary status-based occupations are once more appealed to and reconstructed by these vulnerable waste workers, shaping in the process urban service delivery and the relations that underpin it. The disjuncture born of diverse logics about dirt and disorder reveals an institutional multiplicity and messy social reality that sits uneasily with development as an ordering and unidirectional process.     

Drivers to firm innovation and their effects on performance: an international comparison

This research aims to analyse the drivers to company innovation and their effects on the financial performance. This study is based upon a sample of companies, located in two neighbouring countries (Portugal and Spain). Linear regression was the methodology deployed to analyse the importance of innovation types (differences between Portugal and Spain). To analyse the extent to which the innovation capacity variables influence financial performance (turnover), we made recourse to Probit Regression models. Our results show significant differences in terms of both the drivers and inhibitors to innovation in these two countries. The introduction of products into new markets only proved significant at Spanish companies whilst innovations in both products and processes are significant in both sets of Iberian companies.