Brand popularity as an advertising cue affecting consumer evaluation on sustainable brands: a comparison study of Korea,China, and Russia

This study examines how brand popularity in conjunction with consumers' varied styles of decision-making, as well as other consumer characteristics, can influence the overall evaluation of a sustainable brand. The results of our empirical analysis show that the effect of brand popularity varies widely according to which countries one considers. Here we examined Korea, China, and Russia, and found in each country that popularity significantly influenced consumers' evaluations of sustainable brands, yet in very different aspects. In Korea, when the brand popularity cue was presented, a significant positive influence on consumer evaluation resulted. However, China showed a significant negative influence, while Russia showed neutral, insignificant results. In addition, we found also that both a brand's fashion leadership and its connection with sustainable, conscientious causes can work as moderators. Finally, we found that consumer decision-making style varies not only according to fashion leadership and sustainability involvement, but that each country had a different opinion on sustainability in general. Thus, several important implications for international marketing are here presented.     

Skilled-Labor Intensity Differences Across Firms,Endogenous Product Quality,and Wage Inequality

This paper proposes a theory to explain the relative wage-rate increase for skilled labor that results from trade liberalization that relies on within-sector reallocations of production resources (skilled and unskilled labor) across firms. Motivated by some stylized facts, in a model with firm heterogeneity, including firms that differ in their skill intensity even within a narrowly defined industry, firms with relatively high skill intensity that are more likely to be exporters, and a positive association between a firm’s skill intensity and its product quality, I develop a general equilibrium model where firms with a higher skill intensity endogenously choose a higher-quality product, and tend to be more profitable. In this framework, a reduction in trade costs allows members of the workforce to reallocate to more efficient firms that produce higher-quality products, using their skilled labor more intensively, resulting in a rising skill premium. The main sources of the increasing wage inequality that followed trade openness are a positive link between a firm’s skill intensity, its product quality, and quality competition.     

Consistent Testing for Stochastic Dominance under General Sampling Schemes

We propose a procedure for estimating the critical values of the extended Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests of Stochastic Dominance of arbitrary order in the general  K  -prospect case. We allow for the observations to be serially dependent and, for the first time, we can accommodate general dependence amongst the prospects which are to be ranked. Also, the prospects may be the residuals from certain conditional models, opening the way for conditional ranking. We also propose a test of Prospect Stochastic Dominance. Our method is based on subsampling and we show that the resulting tests are consistent and powerful against some  N^−1/2  local alternatives. We also propose some heuristic methods for selecting subsample size and demonstrate in simulations that they perform reasonably. We describe an alternative method for obtaining critical values based on recentring the test statistic and using full-sample bootstrap methods. We compare the two methods in theory and in practice.     

A bargaining model of tax competition

This paper develops a model in which competing governments offer financial incentives to induce individual firms to locate within their jurisdictions. Equilibrium is described under three specifications of the supplementary taxes. There is no misallocation of capital under two of these specifications, and there might or might not be capital misallocation under the third. This result contrasts strongly with that of the standard tax competition model, which does not allow governments to treat firms individually. That model finds that competition among governments almost always leads to capital misallocation.     

Random walk or chaos: A formal test on the Lyapunov exponent

A formal test on the Lyapunov exponent is developed to distinguish a random walk model from a chaotic system, which is based on the Nadaraya–Watson kernel estimator of the Lyapunov exponent. The asymptotic null distribution of our test statistic is free of nuisance parameter, and simply given by the range of standard Brownian motion on the unit interval. The test is consistent against the chaotic alternatives. A simulation study shows that the test performs reasonably well in finite samples. We apply our test to some of the standard macro and financial time series, finding no significant empirical evidence of chaos.     

Are there Monday effects in stock returns: A stochastic dominance approach

We provide a test of the Monday effect in daily stock index returns. Unlike previous studies we define the Monday effect based on the stochastic dominance criterion. This is a stronger criterion than those based on comparing means used in previous work and has a well defined economic meaning. We apply our test to a number of stock indexes including US large caps and small caps as well as UK and Japanese indexes. We find strong evidence of a Monday effect in many cases under this stronger criterion. The effect has reversed or weakened in the Dow Jones and S&P 500 indexes post 1987, but is still strong in more broadly based indexes like the NASDAQ, the Russell 2000 and the CRSP.     

Testing functional inequalities

This paper develops tests for inequality constraints of nonparametric regression functions. The test statistics involve a one-sided version of _Lp$L_p$-type functionals of kernel estimators (1≤p<∞)$(1\le p<\infty )$. Drawing on the approach of Poissonization, this paper establishes that the tests are asymptotically distribution free, admitting asymptotic normal approximation. In particular, the tests using the standard normal critical values have asymptotically correct size and are consistent against general fixed alternatives. Furthermore, we establish conditions under which the tests have nontrivial local power against Pitman local alternatives. Some results from Monte Carlo simulations are presented.     

Structural Transformation and Comparative Advantage: Implications for Small Open Economies

Data from the last half‐century show that revealed comparative advantage in agriculture (manufacturing) is negatively (positively) associated with the rate of decline in labour share in agriculture. Motivated by this finding, the author constructs and calibrates a simple open‐economy model, where there is learning‐by‐doing in manufacturing and industry‐supplied inputs to agricultural production. This paper focuses on the effects of comparative advantage and learning‐by‐doing on structural transformation and calibrate the model to the US and the UK data to estimate key parameters of the model. Quantitative experiments show that holding constant other factors a small difference in a country's comparative advantage can account for a large variation in structural transformation for open economies, which does not require nearly as much differential productivity growth as in closed‐economy models.