Corporate brand image in retail banking: development and validation of a scale

Recent changes in deregulation and technology have made banking one of the most competitive sectors in the global economy. Within this background, corporate image management has gained importance as a way of differentiating companies. This paper aims to develop a scale to analyse the corporate image in banking. Derived from a review of the literature, a scale with the most cited dimensions of analysis is developed. This scale is then tested by means of an empirical study of 450 individuals, where dimensionality, reliability and validity requirements are confirmed. Both theoretical and managerial implications are presented.     

Money demand in the Dominican Republic

This paper investigates a demand for money relationship for the Dominican Republic. The financial system of the Dominican Republic is underdeveloped, and there are no suitable domestic data on the opportunity cost of holding money. Economic links with the USA suggest a possible role for a foreign interest rate effect and a currency substitution effect in the demand for domestic money. A long-run demand for money relationship is developed from the perspective of alternative estimation methodologies, and it is shown that a 'literature standard' specification augmented by foreign monetary variables is robust. The ensuing short-run dynamic model is adequate, stable and suggests an important role for expected inflation, and a real bilateral exchange rate with the USA. A number of policy implications for the Dominican Republic are drawn from the results.     

Estimating total factor productivity growth in Singapore at sectoral level using data envelopment analysis

Trends in total factor productivity growth (TFPG) are examined in the ten major sectors of Singapore. Data are drawn from the Yearbook of Statistics, Singapore, (various issues) and Economic Survey of Singapore series ranging from the year 1985 to 2000. Due to the heterogeneous characteristic of each sector and non-availability of reliable input price data, this study uses a non-parametric, frontier methodology known as data envelopment analysis (DEA) to obtain the Malmquist Productivity Index at the sectoral level. The results can help Singapore identify the ‘best practice' sector and laggards in three aspects: efficiency change, technical change and TFPG, which is the qualitative productivity improvements needed for long-term economic growth. The three sets of productivity estimates are adjusted for effects of inflation and business cycles so that they are more reliable for policy implications. This exercise will provide a platform for more detailed study on the determinants of TFP growth in different sectors and at the firm level in Singapore.     

Port choice in a competitive environment: from the shipping lines' perspective

The present era of globalization and regional competition has witnessed the increasing influence of the global operations of the shipping lines on port development and the declining monopoly of ports. This warrants the need for an identification of the port selection criteria from the perspective of the shipping lines. Hence, an attempt is made to determine the port choice from the perspective of the shipping lines. Moreover, most port operators have designed their strategies based on the ‘stated preference’ of the shipping lines. However, the stated preference approach can have several shortcomings such as the shipping lines would tend to overstate their demands for services at the port. This directs for an examination of the port choice of the shipping lines based on a revealed preference approach. The ‘revealed preference’ approach aims at judging the port choice of shipping lines purely from their ‘actions’ rather than what they actually ‘state’. The empirical study in this article is based on a survey conducted among major shipping lines operating in Singapore and Malaysia. The findings have shown port charges and wide range of port services to be the only significant factors in their port choice. Moreover, the results show no consistency between the stated and revealed preferences of shipping lines.     

The Computational Complexity of Rationalizing Behavior

We study the computational complexity of rationalizing choice behavior. We do so by analyzing two polar cases, and a number of intermediate ones. In our most structured case, that is where choice behavior is defined in universal choice domains and satisfies the “weak axiom of revealed preference,” finding the complete preorder rationalizing choice behavior is a simple matter. In the polar case, where no restriction whatsoever is imposed, either on choice behavior or on choice domain, finding a collection of complete preorders that rationalizes behavior turns out to be intractable. We also show that the task of finding the rationalizing complete preorders is equivalent to a graph problem. This allows the search for existing algorithms in the graph theory literature, for the rationalization of choice.     

Structural Change in Chile: 1960–90

This paper attempts to analyze compositional structural change in Chile, especially during the period around 1974–90, when the most overt ‘neo-liberal’ experiment was forced on the country's economy and society. The main conclusion is that, while the service sector has moved in the correct direction, setting up important industries for the dynamic development of the country, the manufacturing sector has not performed equally well. The manufacturing sector has significantly shrunk its most sophisticated base, and relies mostly on traditional manufacturing that grows sluggishly. Export expansion is in manufacturing still a small proportion of exports. The primary sector is still the main export earner, but has significantly diversified. It appears that the economy has not moved fast enough towards, and does not appear to be geared by, the type of exports that may sustain a dynamic industrial development, based on external markets.     

Envy and Habits: Panel Data Estimates of Interdependent Preferences

We estimate the importance of preference interdependence from consumption choices. Our strategy follows the literature that tests the constraints imposed by optimality on the evolution of individual consumption. The introduction of habits and envy places additional restrictions on the evolution of the optimal consumption path. We use a unique data set to test these restrictions. Our estimates suggest that, if one defines utility over consumption services, a large fraction of these services is relative, with one third of the weight placed in the consumption of the reference group and another third placed in the agent's past consumption.     

Charity Art Auctions

Using a unique panel data set of art auctions on eBay, we conduct an empirical analysis of the impact of charity status on the outcome of an auction and find it to be substantial. Charity status increases the probability of sale by 46%, the observed number of bidders by 111% and the sale price by 45%. In addition, charity status substantially lowers the auction's opening price. Interestingly, the effect of charity status declines over time indicating that charity auctions may be susceptible to donor fatigue.     

Tests of asset pricing with time‐varying factor loads

This paper proposes an empirical asset pricing test based on the homogeneity of the factor risk premia across risky assets. Factor loadings are considered to be dynamic and estimated from data at higher frequencies. The factor risk premia are obtained as estimates from time series regressions applied to each risky asset. We propose Swamy‐type tests robust to the presence of generated regressors and dependence between the pricing errors to assess the homogeneity of the factor risk premia and the zero intercept hypothesis. An application to US industry portfolios shows overwhelming evidence rejecting the capital asset pricing model, and the three and five factor models developed by Fama and French (Journal of Financial Economics, 1993, 33, 3–56; Journal of Financial Economics, 2015, 116, 1–22). In particular, we reject the null hypotheses of a zero intercept, homogeneous factor risk premia across risky assets, and the joint test involving both hypotheses.