Brand Ownership As a Central Component of Adolescent Self‐esteem: The Development of a New Self‐esteem Scale

This article outlines the development of a new scale to measure adolescent self‐esteem. The new scale addresses weaknesses in existing measures that have failed to consider the growth of the consumer society in the Western world and the impact of this on the formation of adolescent self‐esteem. The development of this scale includes extensive qualitative research with over 100 high school pupils, which led to a series of quantitative data collection and analysis processes to develop the scale. In the final stage, data were collected from 889 pupils and analyzed to confirm the validity and reliability of the new measure. The result of this work is a 21‐item self‐esteem scale comprising of four distinct, yet interrelated factors: self‐evaluation, social ability, social comparison effects, and notably, brand ownership. The findings provide an updated and upgraded measure of self‐esteem that takes into consideration the specific audience of adolescents living in a consumer culture. The scale development process demonstrates that when considering the formation of self‐esteem, the influence of the use and possession of commercial brands is as relevant as the traditional factors/components such as academic achievement or sporting prowess.     

Mixed pricing in online marketplaces

A rich theory literature predicts mixed strategies in posted prices due to standard price discrimination, search frictions, and various other rationales. While typically interpreted as implying occasional sales or price dispersion, online marketplaces enable a firm to truly use randomization as a tool in pricing, and so such behavior should be expected to arise in online settings. We investigate a case of mixed pricing across a large subset of products on a major e-commerce website. We first test for randomizing behavior, and then construct a model of price discrimination that would generate randomization as optimal behavior. We estimate the model and use it to assess pricing effects of a proposed merger in the industry.     

Emotional support from a digital assistant in technology-mediated services: Effects on customer satisfaction and behavioral persistence

In their traditional role, digital assistants in technology-mediated services provide customers with information, guidance, and suggestions. However, as the opportunities offered by technology and artificial intelligence increase, digital assistants can also provide emotional support, which refers to empathetic, reassuring expressions for customers who have failed or succeeded in fulfilling a task. We show across four experiments that emotional support offered by a digital assistant increases customer satisfaction (Study 1 and 2) and persistence (Study 3 and 4) in using technology-mediated services. The increase in satisfaction occurs via the perceived warmth of the digital assistant, and the increase in persistence via the serial mediation of perceived warmth and satisfaction. Further, the results of a moderated serial mediation show that the effect on persistence only occurs when a digital (but not when a human) assistant provides emotional support in technology-mediated services. Finally, the effect of emotional support on persistence occurs independently of the digital assistant's embodiment. Practitioners learn how to imbue technology-mediated services with a human touch, inducing favorable customer outcomes.     

Ambulante Pflegeeinrichtungen bilden aus?!

Zusammenfassung  Ausbildung als Ma?nahme gezielter Personalentwicklung — Qualifiziertes Fachpersonal für die Altenpflege ist oftmals schwer zu finden. Was also tun, wenn Fachkr?fte n?tig, aber auf dem Arbeitsmarkt immer schwerer auffindbar sind? Ein wichtiger Bestandteil einer voraus denkenden und systematischen Personalentwicklung ist die Ausbildung.     

The Foreign Exchange Rate Exposure of Nations

Following the well-known approach by Adler and Dumas (Financ Manage 13(2):41–50, 1984), we evaluate the foreign exchange rate exposure of nations. Results based on data from 27 countries show that national foreign exchange rate exposures are significantly related to the current account and financial account balance variables of corresponding economies.     

Economics at the FCC, 2016–2017: Auction Designs for Spectrum Repurposing and Universal Service Subsidies

The Federal Communications Commission is responsible for federal regulation in the telecommunications and electronic media sectors, and for management of the nation’s non-federal radio frequency spectrum. During the past year, Commission economists contributed to the agency’s ongoing efforts to use market-based mechanisms—such as auctions—to allocate spectrum and distribute universal service subsidies efficiently. This includes repurposing broadcast television spectrum for more efficient use by wireless service providers through the recently concluded Broadcast Incentive Auction and structuring auction mechanisms to promote efficient allocation of universal service subsidies for the increased build-out of mobile wireless and fixed broadband service in unserved and underserved areas.     

Modelling Co-movements and Tail Dependency in the International Stock Market via Copulae

This paper examines international equity market co-movements using time-varying copulae. We examine distributions from the class of Symmetric Generalized Hyperbolic (SGH) distributions for modelling univariate marginals of equity index returns. We show based on the goodness-of-fit testing that the SGH class outperforms the normal distribution, and that the Student-t assumption on marginals leads to the best performance, and thus, can be used to fit multivariate copula for the joint distribution of equity index returns. We show in our study that the Student-t copula is not only superior to the Gaussian copula, where the dependence structure relates to the multivariate normal distribution, but also outperforms some alternative mixture copula models which allow to reflect asymmetric dependencies in the tails of the distribution. The Student-t copula with Student-t marginals allows to model realistically simultaneous co-movements and to capture tail dependency in the equity index returns. From the point of view of risk management, it is a good candidate for modelling the returns arising in an international equity index portfolio where the extreme losses are known to have a tendency to occur simultaneously. We apply copulae to the estimation of the Value-at-Risk and the Expected Shortfall, and show that the Student-t copula with Student-t marginals is superior to the alternative copula models investigated, as well the Riskmetics approach.     

Identifying and analysing the drivers of heterogeneity among ecosystem builder accelerators

In response to convergent and dynamic market developments, established firms use corporate accelerators to open their innovation processes to start‐ups. Among different accelerator themes, the ecosystem builder theme introduced by recent research plays a crucial role in furthering our understanding of the heterogeneity of accelerators due to its broad objectives. By interviewing 20 leading experts from 16 German corporate accelerators, we first identify heterogeneity among different ecosystem builder accelerators based on the differences in the process of selection, business support, and graduation. Second, we further structure the observed heterogeneity by depicting five different ecosystem builder accelerator types instead of a single ecosystem builder theme. These ecosystem builder accelerator types show important differences and similarities in terms of strategies, design elements, and processes within each of the process steps. Our findings hold meaningful research and managerial implications by providing (1) a consistent and systematic conceptual understanding about ecosystem builder accelerators, their strategies, design elements, and processes and (2) guidance to design and position ecosystem builder accelerators with regard to a long‐term corporate strategy.     

Overnight stock returns and realized volatility

The information flow in modern financial markets is continuous, but major stock exchanges are open for trading for only a limited number of hours. No consensus has yet emerged on how to deal with overnight returns when calculating and forecasting realized volatility in markets where trading does not take place 24 hours a day. Based on a recently introduced formal testing procedure, we find that for the S&P 500 index, a realized volatility estimator that optimally incorporates overnight information is more accurate in-sample. In contrast, estimators that do not incorporate overnight information are more accurate for individual stocks. We also show that accounting for overnight returns may affect the conclusions drawn in an out-of-sample horserace of forecasting models. Finally, there is considerably less variation in the selection of the best out-of-sample forecasting model when only the most accurate in-sample RV estimators are considered.     

Presenting dynamics of social phenomena: should we use absolute,relative or time differences?

Empirical studies within social sciences face an important decision about how to express key findings to the target audience. Simplicity is an important selection criterion here, because the findings need to be conveyed in an efficient manner (i.e., briefly and concisely), but also because stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, the media, general public) are heterogeneous in their methodological backgrounds. The corresponding ways of measuring thus need to be not only exhaustive and message-delivering but also simple and intuitively understandable. This is particularly important when dynamics in time are discussed. There, most typically, either absolute or relative differences are used. This review paper critically elaborates these two popular measures and, in addition, discusses the alternatives of time distance and time step. The paper demonstrates that even in simple linear examples, the results of these four types of measures may sharply contradict. The empirical example of the digital divide is also elaborated, which illustrates many tempting possibilities for biased, one-sided interpretations that match the needs of certain stakeholders. Finally, the paper alerts users about possible misleading conclusions and suggests comprehensive treatments, using several measures simultaneously.