Using virtual reality to increase charitable donations

Marketer interest in using virtual reality (VR) as a persuasion tactic continues to rise. Notably, one sector at the forefront of utilizing this tactic for persuasive means is nonprofit marketing. Many charities have devoted considerable resources to creating VR appeals under the assumption that this medium will increase donations over and above present tactics. However, research has not yet examined the persuasive consequences VR may provide over more traditional channels. This research seeks to understand the opportunities and limitations this emerging tactic can offer marketers. Specifically, we examine the donation effectiveness of three real VR charitable appeals by assessing actual donation behaviors, and find that VR appeals increase donations compared to a two-dimensional (2D) format. This work addresses a timely and relevant issue for practitioners and opens doors to future research investigating VR’s applications to marketing.

     

Disentangling demand and supply in credit developments: A survey-based analysis for Italy

This paper combines qualitative information from the Eurosystem Bank Lending Survey with micro-data on loans for the participating Italian banks to assess the role of supply and demand factors in lending to enterprises developments, with a focus on the 2007-2009 financial crisis. Both demand and supply have played a relevant role, in the whole sample period and during the crisis. A counterfactual exercise shows that the effect of supply factors on the growth of lending was strongest after the Lehman collapse. On average, over the crisis period the negative effect on the annualized quarter-on-quarter growth rate of the panel banks’ lending to enterprises can be estimated in a range of 2.3-3.1 percentage points, depending on the specification. About one fourth of the total supply effect can be attributed to costs related to the banks’ balance sheet position, the rest to their perception of credit risk.     

年度报告——需要改进之处

年度报告是建立公司形象的重要一环,除了向投资者提供公司财务状况的有价值的信息外,还能帮助投资者认识公司的经营情况和未来发展前景.但是这些年度报告是否符合水准呢?来自"五大"的合伙人及一位财务总监提出了他们的观点.     

Risk-taking in new project selection: Additive effects of bonus incentives and past performance history

The goal of this study is to investigate how past project performance history and bonus incentive pay schemes affect managers' propensity to select more or less risky projects. Performance history is manipulated via past positive outcomes (i.e. beating a target profit rate) and negative outcomes (i.e. missing a target profit rate). Two types of bonus incentive pay schemes (hurdle bonus and graduated bonus) were employed in the study. The findings are consistent with prospect theory that predicts that prior bad outcomes (negative performance history) motivate greater risk-taking than prior good outcomes (positive performance history). In addition, we find evidence that hurdle and graduated bonus incentive schemes also affect risk taking. Overall, we find an additive effect of these two factors, such that the greatest (least) risk taking occurred when participants had negative (positive) prior experience coupled with a graduated (hurdle) bonus scheme.     

Is M&A different during a crisis? Evidence from the European banking sector

The financial crisis has affected the landscape of the banking sector around the world. We use a sample of transactions carried out by European acquirers in 2007–2010 to study the acquirer’s stock price market reaction to both announcements and completions of acquisitions. At the aggregate level, we find that there are no significant abnormal returns around the announcement of an acquisition while there are positive abnormal returns at completions. We study the cross-sectional determinants of abnormal returns and find that announcement returns are mainly explained by the acquirer bank characteristics, while completion returns mainly depend on opacity of the target and on the drop in idiosyncratic volatility associated with a reduction of uncertainty.     

Should Shareholders Have a Say on Acquisitions?

Shareholders of U.S. corporations have lost billions of dollars in acquisitions they never approved. In the United Kingdom, the listing rules give shareholders a binding say when targets are large relative to their acquirers. A transatlantic comparison of M&A activity suggests that if U.S. shareholders had a say on acquisitions, U.S. acquirers would do fewer value‐destroying acquisitions and their own shareholders would experience smaller losses. The authors also report finding a significant difference in the performance of the large U.K. deals that are subject to a mandatory vote and those that are not. The United States has given shareholders a mandatory say on pay. Is it time for U.S. shareholders to have a binding say on corporate acquisitions?     

Warrant price responses to credit spread changes: Fact or fiction?

We use a new approach to analyze the relationship between warrant prices and issuers’ credit spreads. This approach allows us to gain insights into whether issuers use their credit risk systematically to increase their profits. In a post‐Lehman sample, we find strong support for a systematic use since issuers decrease prices less after cred it spread increases than they increase prices after credit spread decreases. Credit spread decreases are accompanied by price increases on several successive days. This sluggish adjustment in prices can be explained by the fact that retail investors’ purchase decisions depend on product prices.     

Community-based tourism and networking: Viscri,Romania

This paper raises questions concerning the complexity of the term “community” when dealing with community-based tourism initiatives. It highlights the difficulty of translating into practice the paradigm of “community-based tourism”. Through a case study of tourism in the multi-ethnic village of Viscri, Romania, the paper discusses the operational role that a network of both internal and external actors may play in piloting tourism initiatives that produce benefits for communities that are unaccustomed to participatory development processes due to various barriers. The study highlights the key role played by a local leader and an external foundation in building a network that, thanks to the bonding and bridging relations activated, led the community towards a form of sustainable tourism development and a broader amelioration of the social conditions. The network described can be replicated in other geographical contexts, provided there is strong local leadership and also international interests and donors. In the long term, however, the network needs to be strengthened by involving other actors, above all local authorities. They are needed to assure the basis for long-term empowerment, participation in decision-making and progressive diversification of economic activities.     

Segmentation, advertising and prices

This paper explores the implications of market segmentation on firm competitiveness. In contrast to earlier work, here market segmentation is minimal in the sense that it is based on consumer attributes that are completely unrelated to tastes. We show that when the market is comprised by two consumer segments and when there is sufficient variation in the per-consumer costs firms need to incur to access the different consumer populations, then firms obtain positive profits in symmetric equilibrium. Otherwise, the equilibrium is characterized by zero profits. As a result, a minimal form of market segmentation combined with advertising cost asymmetries across consumer segments give firms an opportunity to generate positive rents in an otherwise Bertrand-like environment.     

The Effect of Computer Use on Work Discretion and Work Intensity: Evidence from Europe

This article studies changes in computer use and work discretion and intensity in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015. We document that while the proportion of workers using computers has increased from 40 per cent to more than 60 per cent, there remain significant differences between countries even within the same occupations. Several countries have seen a significant increase in computer use even in low-skilled occupations generally assumed to be less affected by technology. Overall, the great increase in computer use between 1995 and 2015 coincided with a period of modest deterioration of job quality in the EU-15 as a whole, as work discretion declined for most occupational and educational groups, while work intensity increased slightly for most of them. Our OLS results exploiting variation within country-occupation cells point to a sizeable positive effect of computer use on work discretion, but to no effect on work intensity. Our instrumental variable estimates point to an even more benign effect of computer use on job quality as measured by work discretion and work intensity. Hence, the results suggest that the (moderate) deterioration in the quality of work observed in the EU-15 between 1995 and 2015 has occurred despite the spread of computers, rather than because of them.