Brand relationships through brand reputation and brand tribalism

The academic research on branding of consumer products and services is increasingly considering the degree of connectedness between consumers and brands as a key issue of investigation. The literature in this area investigates the nature and the strength of the relationship that consumers develop with brands, as well as the trend of joining brand tribes or brand communities in order to demonstrate and share with others their feelings towards and preference to brands. However, the impact of the overall perceptions of the brands in the form of its reputation and brand tribalism on brand relationships is so far unexplored in the existing literature. Using data collected from 912 respondents, this paper explores the importance of the long term brand reputation and brand tribalism on the strength of brand relationships. The findings suggest that brand tribalism is a better predictor of the strength of brand relationships than the long term brand reputation itself.     

Fixed-term employment contracts in an equilibrium search model

We develop a theoretical model of firm dynamics and unemployment and characterize equilibria with tenure dependent separation taxes. The model is a version of the Lucas and Prescott island model with undirected search. Two equivalent decentralizations are considered: one with spot labor markets and one with long-term employment relations. We model “temporary contracts” as the special case of a separation tax that only applies to workers with tenure higher than J. While in principle these contracts require a J-dimensional state space, equilibrium allocations solve a simple dynamic programming problem characterized by two-dimensional inaction set(s).     

A new methodology for the logistic analysis of evolutionary S-shaped processes: Application to historical time series and forecasting

A new multi-logistic methodology to analyze long range time series of evolutionary S-shaped processes is presented. It conceptually innovates over the traditional logistic approach. The ansatz includes computing the residuals to an optimized multi-logistic trend curve least squares fitted to the time-series data. The elements of the residuals series are checked for autocorrelations and once detected the residuals series is further analyzed to search for eventual presence of underlying periodic structures using a truncated Fourier sine series. The method foundations ensures both a universal applicability and a capacity to disclose the existence of active clocks that can be possibly traced to the driving motors of the evolutionary character of the time series, due to the responsiveness of corresponding process to the development of economic cycles. On associating these two views, it is found that the methodology has a strong potential to improve the quality of short-term forecasts. These findings have been put to test through applications of the methodology to studying the time evolution of two commodities of strong economic and social importance (corn and steel) and good results were consistently obtained for both the analytical and forecasting aspects.     

You can take it with you: Proposition 13 tax benefits,residential mobility,and willingness to pay for housing amenities

The endogeneity of prices has long been recognized as the main identification problem in the estimation of marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for the characteristics of a given product. This issue is particularly important in the housing market, since a number of housing and neighborhood features are unobserved by the econometrician. This paper proposes the use of a well defined type of transaction costs–moving costs generated by property tax laws–to deal with this type of omitted variable bias. California's Proposition 13 property tax law is the source of variation in transaction costs used in the empirical analysis. Beyond its fiscal consequences, Proposition 13 created a lock-in effect on housing choice because of the implicit tax break enjoyed by homeowners living in the same house for a long time. Its importance to homeowners is estimated from a natural experiment created by two amendments that allow households headed by an individual over the age of 55 to transfer the implicit tax benefit to a new home. Indeed, 55-year old homeowners have 25% higher moving rates than those of comparable 54 year olds. These transaction costs from the property tax laws are then incorporated into a household sorting model. The key insight is that because of the property tax laws, different potential buyers may have different user costs for the same house. The exogenous property tax component of this user cost is then used as an instrumental variable. I find that MWTP estimates for housing characteristics are approximately 100% upward biased when the choice model does not account for the price endogeneity.     

Banks’ Net Interest Margin in the 2000s: A Macro-Accounting international perspective

This paper re-examines the determinants of Net Interest Margin (NIM) in the banking industries of 15 developed and emerging economies. It presents three main contributions with respect to previous studies: first, we analyze the determinants of NIM in the years leading to the 2008 financial crisis; second, we account for the role of different accounting standards across countries; third, we use multi-way cluster estimation methodologies which control for cross-sectional and time-series dependence in macroeconomic and banking variables. We find that the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) contributed to lower NIM variations unexplained by standard accounting variables. Interest rate volatility is found to be positively and strongly related to NIM dynamics, whereas inflation risk is often found to be a relevant driver of NIM cross-country differences.     

Project Management of Production Line Automation: A Comparative Analysis of Project Management in Brazil and Colombia

This article aims to evaluate the production line automation projects developed by Brazilian and Colombian companies from the Project Management perspective, through the analysis of the application degree of PMBOK processes, to understand how formal techniques are being employed in these countries and also to identify improvement opportunities, when necessary. Data were collected through a survey. The similarity index between the ten processes, with the highest application degree in the Brazilian and Colombian samples, was 70%. For the processes with the lowest application degree, the similarity index was 60%. No similar study was found in the literature.     

Stock picking,market timing and style differences between socially responsible and conventional pension funds: evidence from the United Kingdom

As far as we are aware, this study presents the first comparative analysis of the stock picking and market timing abilities of managers of conventional and socially responsible (SR) pension funds, and of their use of superior information. For the United Kingdom, the results obtained show a slight stock picking ability on the part of SR pension fund managers (although it disappears if multifactorial models are considered), and a negative market timing ability on the part of both SR and conventional pension fund managers (these results hold for multifactorial models controlled by home bias). In relation to the management styles, both conventional and SR pension funds usually invest in small cap and growth values, although it is the SR pension funds that are the most exposed to these styles. We also observed that, while conventional pension fund managers make certain use of superior information to follow stock picking strategies, managers of SR pension funds use superior information to follow market timing strategies.     

Implications of perceived competitive advantages,adaptation of marketing tactics and export commitment on export performance

The aim of this exploratory paper is to fill an important gap in the international marketing literature by examining the influence of firm behavior in foreign markets (export commitment and adaptation of marketing tactics) on perceived competitive advantages and export performance. Using a sample of 150 Spanish export firms, the study found that firms that are more committed to their foreign markets are more willing to adapt elements of the marketing program. These firms also perform better in foreign markets. Moreover, the results also point out that adapting marketing tactics does not have direct effects on export performance, although it does have on the achievement of perceived competitive advantages in foreign markets, which positively influence export performance.