How co-branding versus brand extensions drive consumers' evaluations of new products: A brand equity approach

Current research into co-branding and brand extensions indicates that these marketing strategies benefit firms, yet marketing literature examines the concepts only independently. This article reports the findings of two studies, conducted among 256 students, that compare the effectiveness of co-branding versus brand extension strategies. The comparison of these strategies, both individually and concurrently, considers consumers' attitudes, quality perceptions, and purchase intentions toward a new product (i.e., Bluetooth-enabled sunglasses). The first study reveals that the presence of at least one high-equity brand in co-branding strategy suffices to leverage consumers' evaluations of a new product. However, the findings of the second study indicate no significant differences between co-branding and brand extensions in terms of consumer evaluations of an identical product.     

Human capital,investment and growth: Some results from an endogenous growth model

Recent theoretical literature on the sources of economic growth has emphasized the role of human capital as an internal contributing force in the growth process. Empirical results reported in this paper provide support for this theoretical proposition. Cross-country data from 32 developing countries indicate that human capital (as alternatively measured by the primary school enrollment rate or the adult literacy rate) exerts a significant positive impact upon output growth.     

Impact of formalisation of property rights in informal settlements: Evidence from Dar es Salaam city

This paper aims to study the responsiveness of the informal property market and management systems towards the introduction of land registration for informal settlements in Tanzania. City governments are increasingly recognising the need to strengthen legal rights for the urban poor as a means to bring them more effectively into the urban economy and ensure better provision of water, sanitation and other primary services. The research focuses on Tanzania and in particular two case studies within Dar es Salaam. The findings of the work suggest that the introduction of residential licenses whilst potentially assisting in creating legal certainty has not resulted in the financial sector accepting them as full security against loans. Accessing credit by the poor however has not yet been fully realised resulting in some further hurdles for the financial sector to overcome. Finally, and of some significance is the registration of property in the informal settlements has provided the opportunity of formal property transactions within these settlements.     

The impact of traffic sign deficit on road traffic accidents in Nigeria

This study assesses the impact of traffic sign deficit on road traffic accidents in Nigeria. The participants were 720 commercial vehicle drivers. While simple random sampling was used to select 6 out of 137 federal highways, stratified random sampling was used to select six categories of commercial vehicle drivers. The study used qual-dominant mixed methods approach comprising key informant interviews; group interviews; field observation; policy appraisal and secondary literature on traffic signs. Result shows that the failure of government to provide and maintain traffic signs in order to guide road users through the numerous accident black spots on the highways is the major cause of road accidents in Nigeria. The study argues that provision and maintenance of traffic signs present opportunity to promoting safety on the highways and achieving the sustainable development goals.     

Earnings quality,bankruptcy risk and future cash flows

Prior research suggests that the quality of accruals may be compromised where the magnitude of accruals is abnormally high, due to the presence of errors in the accruals‐estimation process (Dechow and Dichev, 2002; Richardson, 2003). A consequence of this is that abnormal accruals may not map into realised future cash flows to the extent that would normally be expected of accruals data. Indeed, the association may be insignificant if abnormal accruals consist primarily of estimation noise. Our study investigates whether abnormal accruals for UK firms provide incremental insight into future cash flows. In particular, our paper may be viewed as a development of Subramanyam (1996). We find a significant positive association between abnormal accruals and one‐year‐ahead operating cash flows. This provides a rationale for the pricing of abnormal accruals by the market (Subramanyam, 1996; Xie, 2001) and suggests that abnormal accruals are not merely the products of noise in the accruals‐estimation process. However, our results are conditional upon the probability of one‐year‐ahead bankruptcy risk (Charitou et al., 2004). We also find that abnormal accruals possess small but significant explanatory power for future cash flows even when controlling for the disaggregation of accruals into individual items (Barth et al., 2001).     

Mapping the consumer‐subject in advertising

Traditionally marketing communication‐or more specifically advertising‐has been framed in terms of products/ services, needs and wants of consumers as if these were real givens, existing independently of the forms and acts of marketing communication itself. From this perspective, advertising is merely seen as a purveyor of information about products/services/needs between producers and consumers but hardly as actively implicated in shaping, not only the relation between the processes of production and those of consumption, but also the conception of the consumer‐subject. This paper makes a brief diachronic account of advertising with a view to highlighting how the consumer‐subject is represented. Whereas early advertising conceives of the consumer‐subject as a “rational” decision‐maker, aware of its needs and desire, more recent advertising constitutes the consumer‐subject in a hyperreal, dream‐like world, which seduces and spellbinds it.     

The monetarist versus the neo-Keynesian views on inflation: Some Italian evidence

This empirical inquiry investigates the relative merits of the monetarist and the neo-Keynesian hypotheses regarding the behavior of inflation in the Italian economy over the 1955–1983 period. Based on testing three alternative dynamic models that have been proposed in the literature, the empirical results support the monetarist proposition that unemployment has an insignificant impact upon inflation, a finding that is at odds with the neo-Keynesian hypothesis. Indeed, consistent with the monetarist hypothesis, the results suggest that the rate of monetary expansion is a prime determinant of the rate of inflation and its acceleration in Italy.     

Corporate Data and Future Cash Flows

Abstract:   This article examines the ability of current accounting data to explain future cash flows for UK firms, as disclosed under FRS1 (1991). Rather than examining price data — from which cash flow implications have to be inferred — we follow the more direct approach used in several recent US studies, in which actual future cash flow data are examined. Specifically, our methodology is a development of the OLS regression framework employed by Barth et al. (2001) . We provide a replication of their main OLS analysis, and then extend this to deal with fixed effects and time trends in the levels of cash flow data. Our study finds that the disaggregation of earnings into cash flows and accruals, generates superior explanatory power with regard to future cash flows.     

The evolution of auditing： An analysis of the historical development

This paper aims to analyze the development of auditing. It is found that auditing has evolved through a number of stages. In the mid 1800s to early 1900s, the audit practice was considered as ＂traditional conformance role of auditing＂. However, for the past 30 years, the auditor has been playing an ＂enhancing role＂. Today, auditors are expected not only to enhance the credibility of the financial statement, but also to provide value-added services. Nevertheless, following extensive reform in various countries as a result of the collapse of big corporations, it is expected that the role of auditors will converge. It is evident that the paradigm about auditing has shifted over the years and it is likely to continue shifting in the future.