Endogenous recessions: The creative destruction effect of final product novelty

In this paper we build a basic macroeconomic model aimed to grasp some aspects of the inner functioning of macroeconomic fluctuations. We highlight a mechanism through which the appearance of a product innovation results in an eventual reduction of the aggregate economic activity. When a new product appears, demand moves towards this more attractive product. The ‘creative destruction’ effect in this context is represented by the resources lost when firms producing old varieties exit the market due to the shortage of demand. Because firms producing a given product receive on average the same amount of demand, exits happen to be highly synchronized. We use this fact to explain the fluctuation asymmetries observed in real data. We test the ability of the model to meet features of real data against the United States' GDP in the 1950–1992 period.     

The «control quota» component in the price of shares

This work has been sponsored by the Journées Internationale de l'Association Francaise de Finance (Strasbourg, Université L. Pasteur, June 12–14, 1980). The paper deals with the problem of a shareholder, that wishes to sell a portion of his quota and vants that the weakining of his position is adequately compensated.     

A generalization of the Binomial distribution based on the dependence ratio

We propose a generalization of the Binomial distribution, called DR‐Binomial, which accommodates dependence among units through a model based on the dependence ratio (Ekholm et al., Biometrika, 82, 1995, 847). Properties of the DR‐Binomial are discussed, and the constraints on its parameter space are studied in detail. Likelihood‐based inference is presented, using both the joint and profile likelihoods; the usefulness of the DR‐Binomial in applications is illustrated on a real dataset displaying negative unit‐dependence, and hence under‐dispersion compared with the Binomial. Although the DR‐Binomial turns out to be a reparameterization of Altham's Additive‐Binomial and Kupper–Haseman's Correlated‐Binomial distribution, we believe its introduction is useful, both in terms of interpretability and mathematical tractability and in terms of generalizability to the Multinomial case.     

Replicating,validating, and reducing the length of the consumer perceived value scale

This research reports an assessment of Sweeney and Soutar's (2001) consumer perceived value (PERVAL) scale. The PERVAL scale contains four dimensions: quality, emotional, price, and social values. The present study develops and evaluates two short forms of the original 19-item PERVAL scale based on Sweeney and Soutar's (2001) original data and three other studies in two different countries. In comparison with the full scale, the short 12-item and 8-item forms have equally good dimensional properties and equivalent predictive validity. The discussion includes implications, both for research and for retail managers.     

Customer-based corporate reputation of a service firm: scale development and validation

Although corporate reputation has attracted significant attention among marketing scholars, current measures of it do not adequately capture the perceptions of the most important stakeholder group, customers, and often overlook its relationship to important customer-outcome variables. In this article, we identify dimensions of customer-based corporate reputation and develop scales to measure these dimensions (Study 1). Based on comprehensive validation procedures across three service firm types, we found support for a five-dimensional scale with the following dimensions: Customer Orientation, Good Employer, Reliable and Financially Strong Company, Product and Service Quality, and Social and Environmental Responsibility. In Study 2, using a second sample, we validate our scale and examine its relationship with important customer-outcome variables—customer satisfaction, loyalty, trust, and word of mouth. Most of the reputation dimensions were strongly associated with important outcome variables, with a few exceptions. We discuss the results with reference to the marketing implications.

Citation success: Evidence from economic history journal publications

This study examines the determinants of citation success among authors who have recently published their work in economic history journals. Besides offering clues about how to improve one's scientific impact, our citation analysis also sheds light on the state of the field of economic history. Consistent with our expectations, we find that full professors, authors appointed at economics and history departments, and authors working in Anglo-Saxon and German countries are more likely to receive citations than other scholars. Long and co-authored articles are also a factor for citation success. We find similar patterns when assessing the same authors' citation success in economics journals. As a novel feature, we demonstrate that the diffusion of research — publication of working papers, as well as conference and workshop presentations — has a first-order positive impact on the citation rate.     

Ranking economic history journals: a citation-based impact-adjusted analysis

This study ranks—for the first time—12 international academic journals that have economic history as their main topic. The ranking is based on data collected for the year 2007. Journals are ranked using standard citation analysis where we adjust for age, size and self-citation of journals. We also compare the leading economic history journals with the leading journals in economics in order to measure the influence on economics of economic history, and vice versa. With a few exceptions, our results confirm the general idea about what economic history journals are the most influential for economic history, and that, although economic history is quite independent from economics as a whole, knowledge exchange between the two fields is indeed going on.     

A spatially filtered mixture of <Emphasis Type="Italic">β</Emphasis>-convergence regressions for EU regions, 1980–2002

Assessing regional growth and convergence across Europe is a matter of primary relevance. Empirical models that do not account for structural heterogeneities and spatial effects may face serious misspecification problems. In this work, a mixture regression approach is applied to the β-convergence model, in order to produce an endogenous selection of regional growth patterns. A priori choices, such as North–South or centre-periphery divisions, are avoided. In addition to this, we deal with the spatial dependence existing in the data, applying a local filter to the data. The results indicate that spatial effects matter, and either absolute, conditional, or club convergence, if extended to the whole sample, might be restrictive assumptions. Excluding a small number of regions that behave as outliers, only a few regions show an appreciable rate of convergence. The majority of data show slow convergence, or no convergence at all. Furthermore, a dualistic phenomenon seems to be present inside some States, reinforcing the “diverging-convergence” paradox. An erratum to this article can be found at     

Economic Consequences of IFRS Adoption: The Role of Changes in Disclosure Quality*

This study adopts a two‐step approach to highlight the disclosure quality channel that drives economic consequences of IFRS adoption. This approach helps address the identification challenge noted by prior research and offers direct evidence on the role of disclosure quality. In the first step, we document the impact of the IFRS mandate on changes in disclosure quality proxied by the granularity of line item disclosure in financial statements. We find that IFRS‐adopting firms provide more disaggregated information upon IFRS adoption, such as more granular disclosure of intangible assets and long‐term investments on the balance sheet and greater disaggregation of depreciation, amortization, and nonoperating income items on the income statement. In the second step, we link the observed disclosure changes to the benefits and costs of IFRS adoption. We show that greater disaggregated information due to IFRS adoption enhances market liquidity and decreases information asymmetry, but does not affect audit fees differentially. Our evidence has implications for standard setters as they evaluate cost‐benefit trade‐offs when considering disclosure changes in the future.