Heterogeneity in bank pricing policies: The Czech evidence

We estimate the pass-through from market interest rates to bank interest rates using heterogeneous panel cointegration techniques to address heterogeneity at the bank level in the Czech Republic. The results indicate heterogeneity in bank pricing in the short, but not in the long term. Mortgage rates and firm rates typically adjust to money market changes, but often less than fully in the long run. Large corporate loans have a smaller mark-up than small loans. Consumer rates have a high mark-up and do not exhibit a cointegration relationship with money market rates even in the long run. Next, we examine how bank characteristics determine the nature of interest rate pass-through in a cross-section of Czech banks. We find evidence for relationship lending, as banks with a stable pool of deposits smooth interest rates and require a higher spread as compensation. Large banks are not found to price their products less competitively. Greater credit risk increases vulnerability to money market shocks.     

Defining a Post-Conventional Corporate Moral Responsibility

The stakeholder approach offers the opportunity to consider corporate responsibility in a wider sense than that afforded by the stockholder or shareholder approaches. Having said that, this article aims to show that this theory does not offer a normative corporate responsibility concept that can be our response to two basic questions. On the one hand, for what is the company morally responsible and, on the other hand, why is the corporation morally responsible in terms of conventional and post-conventional perspectives? The reason why the stakeholder approach does not offer such a definition, as we shall see, is because the normative stakeholder approaches tend to confuse the social validity with the moral validity or legitimacy. It leads us to a conventional definition of corporate moral responsibility (CMR) that is not relevant to the pluralistic and global framework of our societies and economies. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate this intuition.     

To post or not to post: social media sharing and sporting event performance

Social networks are becoming increasingly important for consumers, especially in the context of sport, where the service experience is highly intense. Few studies have combined subjective event performance variables and social network variables to analyze social network content sharing by sports practitioners. This article investigates the use of social networks in relation to sporting events. An empirical study examined the role of social network variables and sporting event performance variables in social media use. The sample consisted of 410 triathletes (72.2% male) aged between 18 and 66 years (mean 37.03 ± 8.62). Four analyses were performed using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the causes of sharing comments through social media, sharing photos and videos on social media, participant satisfaction, and word‐of‐mouth (WOM). The event's general image was a necessary condition in all cases. The combination of participants’ satisfaction and positive event image and the combination of social network use and positive event image lead to social network content sharing by athletes. The combination of positive event image and participant satisfaction leads to a positive WOM.     

Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

This study examined the customer‐related antecedents of the customer's intention to switch firms. Customer citizenship behavior was a key element in this study. Scholars have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, the way that customer citizenship behavior relates to other attitudinal variables and the intention to switch has scarcely been analyzed. The proposed hypotheses were verified using partial least squares variance‐based structural equation modeling applied to 947 users of beauty care service firms in five countries. The results suggest that customer citizenship behavior is an antecedent of satisfaction, trust, and attitudinal loyalty. Two of these variables influence customers’ intentions to abandon relationships with the service provider. The implications of these findings enhance managers’ and scholars’ understanding of the determinants of customers’ intentions to switch firms.     

Evaluation of the Spanish flat rate for young self-employed workers

The dramatic growth of unemployment figures in Spain during the economic downturn has increased policies fostering entrepreneurship, particularly among the youth. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of a Spanish programme fostering self-employment among unemployed youth workers. We use an administrative dataset (the Continuous Working Lives Sample) to study the survival of subsidized start-ups compared to those not subsidized. Using a differences-in-differences approach, our results suggest that the programme has no effect in terms of survival rates.     

Mitigating information asymmetry through sustainability assurance: The role of accountants and levels of assurance

This paper aims to examine the usefulness of sustainability reporting in reducing information asymmetry as result of lower dispersion and higher accuracy in financial analysts’ earnings forecasts. The empirical results from an international sample of listed companies indicate that the disclosure of sustainability information alone is not sufficient in this regard as our findings indicate that information asymmetry is reduced to a greater when such information is assured, supporting the value relevance role of sustainability reporting and assurance. In addition, the empirical findings suggest differences in terms of assurance attributes (provider and level of engagement) and such differences are even more relevant when controlling the institutional context. Assurance is highly appreciated by investors in more stakeholder-oriented countries; however, in more shareholder-oriented environments, assurance affects information asymmetries only when it is provided by accounting professionals who also report a “reasonable” opinion.     

The Level of Sustainability Assurance: The Effects of Brand Reputation and Industry Specialisation of Assurance Providers

This research focuses on examining the relationship between some attributes of assurance providers and the level of sustainability assurance. By using the propensity to issue negative conclusions in the assurance statement as an indicator of the level of assurance, we examine whether the brand name and industry specialisation of the practitioners have an impact on the assurance opinion issued. Using an international sample of 1233 firm-year observations over the period 2007–2014, the findings document the impact of the brand reputation and industry specialisation of assurance providers on the level of assurance. The probability of detecting material errors and omissions in a sustainability report is higher if it is verified by a Big 4 auditing firm and by an industry expert as an assurance practitioner. The greater experience in providing audit services and the relevant skills and training provided by Big 4 firms, as well as the greater knowledge and experience of industry experts, increase the propensity to report more accurate opinions about a sustainability report. The findings are robust for alternative measures for the level of assurance and the industry specialisation.     

Characterization of the Row Geometric Mean Ranking with a Group Consensus Axiom

An axiomatic approach is applied to the problem of extracting a ranking of the alternatives from a pairwise comparison ratio matrix. The ordering induced by row geometric mean method is proved to be uniquely determined by three independent axioms, anonymity (independence of the labelling of alternatives), responsiveness (a kind of monotonicity property) and aggregation invariance, which requires the preservation of group consensus, that is, the pairwise ranking between two alternatives should remain unchanged if unanimous individual preferences are combined by geometric mean.     

A global approach to the analysis of user behavior in mobile payment systems in the new electronic environment

Mobile devices and social media have led to a profound revolution of modern society, obliging many companies to reorient their sales systems towards more successful commercial formats (mobile commerce and social commerce). The mobile payment, for instance, as an emerging and supplementary service to these new commercial formats, is now undergoing the adoption process. Mobile payment has long been discussed, but it has not yet reached the usage levels expected by the different mass market players (financial institutions, telephone operators, etc.) in Western societies. The purpose of this paper is to analyze users’ acceptance of mobile payment systems on social networks. In order to explain acceptance, we have integrated trust and perceived risk into the traditional TAM model. To complete this study, we have established the decisive factors of this payment system by analyzing user’s gender, age and experience level. The study was conducted through an online survey among a national panel composed by 2.012 social network users. The results of this research support previous studies and provide alternatives for companies to consolidate this new business model by means of the new technical developments.     

Intertemporal substitution in the Spanish economy: Evidence from regional data

This paper studies the intertemporal substitution in consumption and leisure for the Spanish economy by estimating the first‐order conditions of an individual optimization model with regional and aggregate data. While first‐order conditions determining intertemporal substitution in consumption show a good econometric fit, and the value we obtain for the intertemporal elasticity of substitution is similar to previously available results, the econometric fit of the intertemporal condition in leisure indicates that the behaviour of the Spanish labour supply over the cycle is more complex than can be explained by the canonical intertemporal choice model.