Beyond endorsements: The effect of celebrity Creative Directors on consumers’ attitudes toward the advertisement

Marketers are beginning to expand the roles that celebrities play in support of brands. Connections now go beyond the typical endorsement relationship to employing celebrities as Creative Directors. Study 1 demonstrates celebrity Creative Directors, as opposed to merely endorsers, result in increased attitudes toward the advertisement; an effect mediated by consumer perceptions of celebrity expertize and attenuated by skepticism toward advertising. Study 2 further investigates this phenomenon by considering whether it is the title of Creative Director that results in increased attitudes toward the advertisement or if consumers need to be made aware of the responsibilities associated with such a role. Results from Study 2 suggest that merely bestowing a celebrity with the title of Creative Director is not sufficient to enhance attitudes, the duties performed by the celebrity Creative Director must be made explicit.     

Understanding the economic determinants of the severity of operational losses: A regularized generalized Pareto regression approach

We investigate a novel database of 10,217 extreme operational losses from the Italian bank UniCredit. Our goal is to shed light on the dependence between the severity distribution of these losses and a set of macroeconomic, financial, and firm‐specific factors. To do so, we use generalized Pareto regression techniques, where both the scale and shape parameters are assumed to be functions of these explanatory variables. We perform the selection of the relevant covariates with a state‐of‐the‐art penalized‐likelihood estimation procedure relying on L₁‐penalty terms. A simulation study indicates that this approach efficiently selects covariates of interest and tackles spurious regression issues encountered when dealing with integrated time series. Lastly, we illustrate the impact of different economic scenarios on the requested capital for operational risk. Our results have important implications in terms of risk management and regulatory policy.     

Subnational home market bias in Vietnam: Evidence from enterprise‐level data

This paper contributes to the home (market) bias literature where administrative or political borders limit trade across borders. Home bias is well documented at the national and subnational level. To sort out macro (e.g., location characteristics) and micro (e.g., enterprise characteristics) factors behind home bias, we use small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) data from Vietnam. Using the fractional multinomial logit model, we find that the proportion of SME sales outside of their home markets is positively associated with enterprise size, age, number of business association memberships and the distance of SMEs' most important supplier. In contrast, the proportion of SME sales to neighbouring provinces is negatively associated with the share of SME production for final consumption. Besides enterprise‐level frictions, market characteristics matter too. The proportion of SME sales to customers in their home markets is negatively associated with home or neighbouring provinces' governance quality, while the proportion of sales to customers in neighbouring provinces is positively associated with these areas' governance quality. These suggest that good governance frees SME resources for use in selling to less familiar markets.     

Poaching and Firm‐Sponsored Training

A series of seminal papers argues that poaching hampers company‐sponsored general training. Empirically, however, the existence and extent of poaching remain open questions. We provide a novel empirical strategy to identify poaching. We find that only few apprenticeship training firms in Germany are ‘poaching victims’ or ‘poaching raiders’. Victims are more likely to be in a temporary downturn and raiders are more likely to be growing. Victims hardly change their training strategy after poaching and poaching seems be a transitory event. This is an important result for countries that intend to introduce apprenticeship‐type training and need to convince firms to participate in training.     

Corporate governance,life cycle,and payout precommitment: An emerging market study

We analyze the role of firm‐level corporate governance in determining the precommitment payout policy of emerging market firms and investigate whether there is a precommitment life‐cycle effect. Unlike previous studies of U.S. firms, we find evidence of precommitment only among relatively well‐governed firms, which combine good governance with large dividend payouts to shareholders and large debt‐related repayments to creditors. We also document a strong precommitment life‐cycle effect. Firms in the growth and mature stages of their life cycle tend to use both debt and dividends to precommit to investors, with an increasing proportion of dividends in total payout measures. Our results are robust to an array of control variables, alternate payout proxies, market setting, and firm‐level corporate governance, and it addresses potential endogeneity concerns in the sample.     

Determinants of idea sharing in crowdsourcing: evidence from the automotive industry

Drawing on external ideas through crowdsourcing has become common practice for firms that seek to improve and extend their product portfolios. As these initiatives often address the users of products, it is essential for firms to recognize those attributes that determine these individuals' willingness to share their ideas. This study takes the example of the automotive industry to examine how three attributes of car drivers determine their sharing behavior – that is, altruism, psychological ownership of ideas, and trust in car manufacturers. Our findings suggest that trust and altruism strengthen idea sharing, while psychological ownership weakens it. Furthermore, we find that car drivers' perception of sharing‐related risk acts as an important boundary condition for these relationships.     

Do the COVID-19 Crisis,Ageing and Climate Change Put Swiss Fiscal Sustainability at Risk?

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic crisis as well as demographic and climate change pose major challenges for public finances. This article deals with the implications of demographic trends in Switzerland, i.e. the progressive ageing of the population and its impact on the country’s public finances in the long run. As the analysis shows, the brunt of the demographic burden is borne by the old-age pension scheme, health and long-term care. This article also addresses the financial ramifications of the COVID-19 crisis and shows the need for economic policy action over the longer term to ensure the sustainability of public finances in Switzerland. Furthermore, a qualitative assessment of climate change is included, as it constitutes an additional major long-term challenge for public finances.

     

Shock Value: Bill Smoothing and Energy Price Pass‐Through

Energy prices are volatile, affect every consumer and industry in the economy, and are impacted by regulations including gas taxes and carbon pricing. Like the pass‐through literature in general, the growing energy pass‐through literature focuses on marginal prices. However, multi‐part pricing is common in energy retail pricing. I examine the retail natural gas market, showing that while marginal prices exhibit full or nearly full pass‐through, fixed fees exhibit negative pass‐through. This is consistent with the stated desire by utilities and regulators to prevent ‘bill shock.’ I discuss implications for pass‐through estimation and for proposed alternative pricing structures for regulated utilities.     

The dark side of individual blockholder philanthropy

We examine the market reaction to charitable pledges by individual blockholders of public firms. As this philanthropy may signal a weakening preference for wealth maximization and may be indicative of distraction or relaxed monitoring, these agency costs may overwhelm any reputation benefits. We find decreased firm value and lower pay-for-performance sensitivity, the effects of which are most severe where monitoring needs are high, the blockholder is a director, or when the firm has ex ante high corporate social responsibility ratings. Our results are robust to controlling for prior charitable foundation involvement, busy director–blockholders, dual-class share structures, blockholder exit, and pre-pledge firm sentiment.