Takeovers and cooperatives: governance and stability in non-corporate firms

If consumers wholly or partially control a firm with market power they will charge less than the profit maximizing price. Starting at the usual monopoly price, a small price reduction will have a second order effect on profits but a first order effect on consumer surplus. Despite this desirable static result, it has been argued that cooperatives are vulnerable to take-over by outsiders who will run them as for-profit businesses. This paper studies takeovers of cooperatives. We argue that there will not be excessive takeovers of cooperatives due to the Grossman-Hart problem of free riding during takeovers.     

Transatlantic wage gaps and the migration decision: Europe–Canada in the 1920s

As has been seen in other contexts, workers in similar occupations earned much higher wages in Canada than Europe during the 1920s. This observation and related aspects of immigration are addressed with a life-cycle model of the migration decision. The characteristics of immigrants from five European countries: Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden, are explored in a way that sheds light not just on those population flows but on the process of immigration generally. We draw on passenger manifests from immigrant ships for information on the individual migrants. Simulations, based partly on the these manifests, reveal that the costs of migration, borrowing constraints, concern for status, and country-specific taste preferences account for key immigrant characteristics, and help explain the large wage differentials that persisted despite Canada’s relatively open immigration policy.     

Coping with sales call anxiety: The role of sale perseverance and task concentration strategies

The authors study how salespeople cope with social anxiety during customer contacts and find that two tactics, sale perseverance and task concentration, ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions. Both coping tactics, however, are differentially moderated by strength of felt physiological sensations and strength of negative expectations and thoughts. Salespeople experiencing anxiety cognitions should distract themselves by concentrating on their task to free up their thinking in relation to the task at hand. Engaging in behaviors to modify the situation by persevering on the sale, on the other hand, occupies action space and should be the coping strategy of choice for those salespeople confronting physiological sensations in relation to felt anxiety. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 171 salespersons. Frank Belschak (f.d.belschak@uva.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing and organizational behavior in the Business School at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Cologne in Germany. His current research interests include personal selling, emotions, and emotion regulation in organizations and across cultures. Willem Verbeke (verbeke@few.eur.nl) is a chaired professor of sales and account management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His area of research interests includes personal selling, sales management, emotions and emotion regulation, and knowledge management. Richard P. Bagozzi (bagozzi@umich.edu) is a professor of marketing in the Ross School of Business and a professor of social and administrative sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD from Northwestern University. He conducts research on human emotions, the theory of action, goal setting and goal striving, and structural equation methods.     

Brands matter: An empirical demonstration of the creation of shareholder value through branding

This research responds to the attendant need for empirical evidence pertaining to how marketing affects firm performance. Using the Fama-French method, common in finance, and a leading marketplace measure of a brand’s financial equity value, the authors provide empirical evidence for the branding-shareholder value creation link. The results extend previous research by showing that strong brands not only deliver greater returns to stockholders than does a relevant benchmark but do so with less risk This finding holds even when market share and firm size are considered. Barclays Global Investors Thomas J. Madden is a professor of marketing and director of the Professional MBA/Executive International MBA programs at the Moore School of Business, University of South Carolina. His research focuses on the measurement of brand meaning, marketing metrics, and value-based marketing strategies. His research has appeared in theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, and theJournal of Consumer Behavior. Frank Fehle (frank.fehle@barclaysglobal.com) is the head of Europe Equity Research at Barclays Global Investors in London, United Kingdom. Previously, he was an assistant professor of finance at the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, market microstructure, risk management, and derivatives. His work has appeared in theJournal of Financial Economics, theJournal of Futures Markets, theJournal of Economics and Business, theReview of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, among other journals and conference proceedings. Susan Fournier is an associate professor of marketing at Boston University. Her research focuses on branding and brand relationship marketing. Current projects explore person-brands, resonance as a moderator of the brand meaning → brand strength connection, the types of relationships consumers form with brands, and dynamic processes of relationship development and evolution. She served for 9 years on the Harvard Business School faculty and 2 years as a visitor at Dartmouth College. She consults with a range of companies to inform her teaching, case development, and research.     

The adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling

This study examines the adaptive consequences of pride in personal selling and its self-regulation with colleagues and customers. Study 1 investigates the effects of experiencing pride, where two benefits were found. First, pride increases salespersons’ performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes the use of adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Second, pride positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions differently toward colleagues and customers via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople, in other words, are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage. Willem Verbeke (verbeke@few.eur.nl) is a chaired professor of sales and account management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His research has appeared in a number of academic journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, theJournal of Management, theJournal of Organizational Behavior, and theJournal of Applied Psychology. His area of research interests includes personal selling, sales management, emotions and emotion regulation, social capital, and knowledge management. Frank Belschak (belschak@few.eur.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing and organizational behavior at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior from the University of Cologne in Germany. His current research interests include emotions and emotion regulation in organizations and across cultures, as well as social capital and networks. Richard P. Bagozzi (bagozzi@rice.edu) is the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Management in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management and a professor of psychology at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He conducts research on human emotions, the theory of action, goal setting and goal striving, and structural equation methods.     

Evaluating DSGE model forecasts of comovements

This paper develops and applies tools to assess multivariate aspects of Bayesian Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model forecasts and their ability to predict comovements among key macroeconomic variables. We construct posterior predictive checks to evaluate conditional and unconditional density forecasts, in addition to checks for root-mean-squared errors and event probabilities associated with these forecasts. The checks are implemented on a three-equation DSGE model as well as the Smets and Wouters (2007) model using real-time data. We find that the additional features incorporated into the Smets–Wouters model do not lead to a uniform improvement in the quality of density forecasts and prediction of comovements of output, inflation, and interest rates.     

Optimal Tariffs and Subsidies and Changes in Market Structure

The paper presents a unified treatment of optimal trade policy for a small country. The well‐known results for duopoly and competitive markets emerge as benchmark cases of the authors’ model. In addition, it is shown that changes in market structure have nonmonotonic effects on optimal tariffs. The results suggest that the recent reduction of tariffs in eastern Europe is consistent with welfare‐maximizing trade policy in response to the substantial changes in the market structure of these countries.     

Estimating the intergenerational persistence of lifetime earnings with life course matching: Evidence from the PSID

Why do estimates of the intergenerational persistence in earnings vary so much for the United States? Recent research suggests that lifecycle bias may be a major factor [Grawe, N., Lifecycle bias in estimates of intergenerational earnings persistence. Labour Economics 2006, 13:551–570; Haider, S., and Solon, G., Life-cycle variation in the association between current and lifetime earnings. American Economic Review 2006, 96(4):1308–1320.]. In this paper we estimate the intergenerational correlation in lifetime earnings by using sons' and fathers' earnings at similar ages in order to account for lifecycle bias. Our estimate based on earnings measured at 35–44 for both fathers and sons is similar to that for the age range 45–54.     

An empirical analysis of international labour migration in the Philippines

This study empirically investigates the impact of economic, demographic, and political factors on the size of emigration from the Philippines. In 2007, overseas workers from the Philippines sent remittances in excess of US$14 billion annually to their families back home. Although these remittances are an important source of foreign exchange and play an important role in economic development, the determinants of emigration in the Philippines are not well established. A simple unrestricted error correction model of migration was specified and estimated using data spanning the period 1975–2005. Results indicate that the level of unemployment, adult literacy and population density are the key determinants of emigration in the Philippines. The result also indicates that government instability impacts negatively on emigration in the Philippines. The policy implications of the results are discussed.