Anthropomorphized artificial intelligence,attachment, and consumer behavior

Marketing Letters - The increasing humanization and emotional intelligence of AI applications have the potential to induce consumers’ attachment to AI and to transform human-to-AI...     

Reviewing the intellectual structure of product modularization: Toward a common view and future research agenda

Product modularization in new product development has attracted considerable interest among scholars and practitioners from diverse fields of specialization. This has resulted in cross-disciplinary diversity in the field, diverting attention from its overall intellectual structure and hindering the development of a common view and shared concepts. Extant research lacks an integrative review, transcending a focal discipline that could identify gaps and ambiguities while making recommendations to advance the field. Considering a period of 30 years (1990–2020), we generate a data set of 2988 citing publications to which we apply a co-citation analysis. Thereby, we uncover the intellectual structure of the field and find three research perspectives that represent key knowledge bases: (1) product system, (2) production system, and (3) organizational system. Delimiting the data set into four periods, we can track developments over time, where we notice an increasing disintegration of the product system perspective, which is rooted in the discipline of engineering design. Within the two other perspectives, we document extensive dynamism in terms of publications, especially in the two most recent periods, indicating an active discussion and a potential receptivity to new trends. For these periods, we also identify an emerging cluster of fundamental publications and an increasing emphasis on the concept of system architecture. Leveraging the synthesis of these results, we forge links between neighboring disciplines and recommend avenues for further research, ideally to develop a more common view.     

Did it pay to be a pioneer? Wealth accumulation in a newly settled frontier society

European settler colonies are often thought to have been characterised by a continued expansion of the landed frontier, which impacted the distribution of wealth across their settler populations. Hampered by a lack of data, few studies have been able to study this in depth. How does settlement timing affect wealth and wealth accumulation when frontier expansion is not a smooth, continuous process? Was it the case that pioneers reaped greater economic benefits from locating their farms on superior land, or would they be disadvantaged compared with later arrivals owing to limited infrastructure or greater risk of conflict with indigenous populations? In this paper, we use a unique dataset that allows us to analyse the link between time of arrival and wealth accumulation in a colonial agrarian frontier society: the Graaff-Reinet district in South Africa's Cape Colony between 1786 and 1850. We find that those who arrived early located their farms in the more climatologically suitable areas of the district and utilised their superior lands to accumulate wealth more quickly than latecomers. However, owing to institutional changes that favoured later British arrivals, we also show that the existence of an early-arrival premium did not mean persistence in land ownership.     

The amenity value of natural views

We estimate nonmarket values for natural views in an urban setting. These views contain the aesthetics of natural areas commonly found in public parks and open space, and offer an aspect of property valuation that previous research is unable to disentangle from proximity to parks and open space. We incorporate machine learning techniques on Google Street View images to identify natural views in an urban setting. We find positive capitalization rates associated with household views of park-like properties. Estimates are robust to a variety of specifications, including models that are identified off of new developments on neighboring properties and falsification tests that help to rule out the effect of a broader neighborhood environment. From a policy perspective, our results inform as to the optimal size, location, and shape of open space. Furthermore, machine learning methods used in the construction of our view variable provide a potentially powerful tool for other nonmarket valuation studies.     

Examining SNAP and TANF caseload trends,responsiveness, and policies during the COVID-19 pandemic

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) cases increased by 3.3 million between March and June 2020, their largest quarterly increase ever. During the pandemic, many states adopted a wide set of policies and procedures to facilitate program enrollment, retention, and eligibility. I track these policies and create a pandemic policy index measuring state generosity. States that adopted more generous policies experienced larger TANF and SNAP caseload growth, especially eligibility policies such as exempting TANF work requirements or SNAP P-EBT availability. Analyzing the caseload relationship to labor markets, caseloads were less responsive to unemployment rate changes during the pandemic relative to the pre-pandemic period.     

State income taxes and team performance

International Tax and Public Finance - Professional athletes are both highly paid and highly mobile workers. Previous research has shown that athletes respond to state income taxes differentials...     

Ex-ante performance of REIT portfolios

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - The Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) market has become an increasingly important vehicle for alternative investment for equity investors. While...     

Operating Lease as Alternative Financing for REITs: a Viable Strategy or a Sign of Trouble?

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - Extant REIT research largely overlooks operating leases as an alternative source of financing. In this study, we hand-collect lease information of...     

IRS Private Letter Rulings: Initial Evidence on Determinants and Consequences

This study examines the determinants of firms' requests for Private Letter Rulings (PLRs) from the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and their impact on firms' cash holdings. Our results show that PLR requests tend to be made by firms with more active tax planning, more acquisitions, higher analyst following, higher leverage, and less in-house tax expertise. We also show that firms with IRS audit red flags are less likely to request a PLR. We use a difference-in-difference approach to assess changes in cash holdings following PLR requests and report a decrease in cash holdings for PLR firms, consistent with the notion that PLRs act to reduce tax uncertainty. Our study provides the first empirical evidence about the determinants of PLR requests and complements prior work on tax uncertainty and cash holdings (Hanlon, Maydew and Saavedra, 2017).