Financial Communications and the Contested Take-over Bid, 1958–1982

This study investigates the, changing audience for financial communications and the implications for financial communicators. On the basis of 12 case studies it examines the channels of communication, including offer and defence documents, the role of the press, financial public relations and advertising. The results suggest that the press and financial public relations have a significant role to play but that the price or value of the offer remains the key factor which determines the final outcome in a contested take-over bid.     

Green Consumption under Misperceived Prices: An Application to Active Transportation

We propose a consumption model that captures the impact that perceived price ambiguities may have upon decision‐making in green markets in general and in active transportation markets in particular. The basic intuition for the model is that a consumer who may be misperceiving the price of the green good (the active transportation mode) would be willing to pay a positive amount from her income in the current period to resolve the misperception going forward. We posit that the basis for the price misperception in the active transportation context is misperception of the relative risks involved in taking that mode. The compensating variation that aligns perceived and objective risk is derived. We show how raising green consumption via price misperception correction can be superior to traditional economic policy instruments. The results shed light on the more general family of situations in which agents may consistently misperceive aspects of the decision environment.     

Competition and Participation in Religious Markets: Evidence from Victorian Scotland

In 1885, the largest churches in Scotland were engaged in a dispute about state funding. We use data generated in the course of that dispute to test two related hypotheses. First, as market size (proxied by population) increases, the competitiveness (or complexity) of the religious market structure will not decrease. Second, religious activity, as measured by giving per member, church income and participation, will not decrease as market competitiveness (or complexity) increases. Empirical evidence lends support to the first hypothesis, but casts doubt on the second, and the supply-side theories underpinning it, which posit a causal link between increased competitiveness (complexity) and higher levels of religious activity. In interpreting the results the importance of a rich understanding of institutional arrangements—particularly market structure, governance and financing—is underlined.     

Politics, stock markets, and model uncertainty

The available evidence on the effects of political variables on both returns and volatility of aggregate stock indices is scant and mixed. Applying Bayesian Model Averaging to a panel dataset of 17 parliamentary democracies spanning the post-war period until 1995, we test the robustness of political variables in explaining stock returns and stock return volatility. While we find that the influence of political variables on excess returns is weak, there is evidence of some political variables explaining return volatility.     

The role of the seven dimensions of job satisfaction in salesperson's attitudes and behaviors

To date, the majority of studies on job satisfaction use either a global measure or the JDI measure. To extend current research, this study uses the seven dimensions of job satisfaction as described by Churchill et al. [Churchill, G.A., Ford, N.M., Walker, O.C. Measuring the job satisfaction of industrial salesmen. J Mark Res 1974; 11 (3): 254-260.] to explore the relationship between job satisfaction, emotional exhaustion, organizational commitment and propensity to leave. Findings suggest that: 1) emotional exhaustion only relates to certain dimensions of job satisfaction and 2) job satisfaction dimensions related to organizational commitment and propensity to leave are not necessarily the same. Overall, this research provides an argument for the use of the seven dimension job satisfaction scale, as opposed to global measures or the JDI measure.     

The Impact of the Interaction of Utilitarian and Informational Reinforcement and Behavior Setting Scope on Consumer Response

The influence of the environment on the emotional responses and behaviors of consumers has been well established in the consumer behavior literature. The Behavioral Perspective Model (BPM) assumes that utilitarian reinforcement, informational reinforcement, and consumer behavior setting scope are independent dimensions of environmental influence, which can combine in particular consumption situations to produce consumer behavior. This paper empirically examines the possibility of interactions among these dimensions by means of the pleasure, arousal, and dominance (PAD) emotional variables. The PAD variables have been shown to mediate consumer behaviors such as the desire to stay or escape from the setting, to affiliate with others, and the willingness to spend money and consume. The results, showing an interaction between pleasure and arousal in high‐pleasure environments, which then leads to increased approach behavior, seem to confirm the synergistic effects of utilitarian reinforcement and informational reinforcement on behavior. This study appears to be the first to find and investigate a three‐way interaction between pleasure, arousal, and dominance in the context of purchase and consumption. This interaction suggests that the three structural dimensions of the BPM combine to produce consumer behavior. It also highlights the important role of consumer behavior setting scope in consumer situations maintained by intermediate patterns of reinforcement. The implications of these findings for theory and marketing management are discussed.     

Career concerns incentives: An experimental test

Holmström’s [Holmström, B., 1982/1999. Managerial incentive problems: a dynamic perspective. Review of Economic Studies 66, 169–182. Originally published in: Essays in Economics and Management in Honour of Lars Wahlbeck, Helsinki] career concerns model has become a workhorse for analyzing agency issues in many fields. The underlying signal jamming argument requires players to use information in a Bayesian way, which is difficult to directly test with field data: typically little is known about the information that individuals base their decisions on. Our laboratory experiment provides prima facie evidence: (i) the signal jamming mechanism successfully creates incentives on the labor supply side; (ii) decision errors take time to decrease; (iii) while subjects’ average beliefs are remarkably consistent with play, a mild winner’s curse arises on the labor demand side.     

Patterns of Aging-Related Changes on the Way to 100

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate dynamic properties of age trajectories of physiological indices and their effects on mortality risk and longevity using longitudinal data on more than 5,000 individuals collected in biennial examinations of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) original cohort during about 50 subsequent years of follow-up. We first performed empirical analyses of the FHS longitudinal data. We evaluated average age trajectories of indices describing physiological states for different groups of individuals and established their connections with mortality risk. These indices include body mass index, diastolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, pulse rate, level of blood glucose, hematocrit, and serum cholesterol. To be able to investigate dynamic mechanisms responsible for changes in the aging human organisms using available longitudinal data, we further developed a stochastic process model of human mortality and aging, by including in it the notions of “physiological norms,” “allostatic adaptation and allostatic load,” “stress resistance,” and other characteristics associated with the internal process of aging and the effects of external disturbances. In this model, the persistent deviation of physiological indices from their normal values contributes to an increase in morbidity and mortality risks. We used the stochastic process model in the statistical analyses of longitudinal FHS data. We found that different indices have different average age patterns and different dynamic properties. We also found that age trajectories of long-lived individuals differ from those of the shorter-lived members of the FHS original cohort for both sexes. Using methods of statistical modeling, we evaluated “normal” age trajectories of physiological indices and the dynamic effects of allostatic adaptation. The model allows for evaluating average patterns of aging-related decline in stress resistance. This effect is captured by the narrowing of the U-shaped mortality risk (considered a function of physiological state) with age. We showed that individual indices and their rates of change with age, as well as other measures of individual variability, manifested during the life course are important contributors to mortality risks. The advantages and limitations of the approach are discussed.