A large-scale test of the biorhythm-shoplifting connection hypothesis

The impact of shoplifting on retailers and on the public in general is significant. Stores lose revenue, local governments lose tax monies, and the public pays higher prices at the checkout counter, all because of the actions of individuals who shoplift. Because a large percentage of shoplifting is due to the actions of retail employees, an effort that would reduce losses due to employee theft could have a significant impact on the problem. Biorhythmic charting was hypothesized as providing a potential avenue through which the problem could be addressed. This study provides a large-scale test of the relationship between biorhythm criticality and shoplifting. A managerially useful relationship was not discerned. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Contribution of productivity and firm size to value-added: Evidence from Vietnam

A new indexing method is developed to decompose the contributions of productivity, prices and firm size to a firm's value-added. The method introduces an error term into the decomposition equation to capture measurement biases which are caused by using the deflator instead of the observed price and all other sorts of measurement error. An application of the method is given using private small and medium manufacturing firm level data in Vietnam from 1996 and 2001. The error index decomposition method provides a comparison of performance of all firms to the hypothetical representative firm. The analysis allows firms and policy makers to realize the key factors contributing to the success or failure of a firm and suggest strategies to improve firm economic performance.     

Marketing capabilities, stakeholders’ satisfaction, and performance

This study shows that the relationship between marketing capabilities and firm financial performance can be better understood when it is drawn using stakeholder satisfaction as an additional variable, in the context of the service industry. Results from 152 Spanish service organizations indicate that superior marketing capabilities lead to higher levels of stakeholder satisfaction, which consequently improves financial firm performance. Results complement previous research which found a strong relationship between marketing capabilities and performance when the latter includes financial and nonfinancial indicators. Marketing capabilities improve not only customer satisfaction but also employee fulfillment which, in turn, may increase financial indicators.     

Transferia: solving local pain or bringing global gain?

ABSTRACT

The sustainability of container transferia, a specific type of intermodal terminals located in the vicinity of ports, is analysed in an external cost evaluation. This concept enables transporting large amounts of containers from a port to a transferium, outside the most congested area, by high-frequency barge or rail transport. From this point onwards, the transport is executed by truck or intermodal. The paper presents a case study of maritime-based container transport in Belgium. A geographic information systems-based model compares transport alternatives, regarding their societal impact. The findings suggest that when trucks perform the hinterland transport to transferia instead of direct truck transport to the port, the production of external costs decreases in the port area, but remains stable in the hinterland. However, when intermodal chains can replace these truck services to the transferia, external costs remain limited in the port area, but also decrease in the hinterland in most cases.     

Food Motivations in a Tourist Destination: North American Tourists Visiting the City of Cuenca,Ecuador

Gastronomy has been established as one of the key elements for the promotion and consolidation of tourist destinations. The current aim is to contribute to the scientific literature in the field of the relationship between gastronomy and tourism in Latin America from the experience affirmed by North American tourists in the city of Cuenca (Ecuador). The methodology is based on a questionnaire presented to North American travelers during their visit to the city of Cuenca. The results show the existence of different segments of tourists in relation to their attitude toward the local gastronomy. Three segments are identified, and depending on their belonging to a certain segment, the tourists have different motivations with respect to gastronomy. Finally, the results permit concluding that the levels of satisfaction of the tourists differ depending on their attitude toward gastronomy, identified by the three segments.     

Network Effects,Bargaining Power,and Product Review Bias: Theory and Evidence

I construct a theoretical framework for expert product reviews and demonstrate how the existence of positive network effects can make review inflation profitable even when consumers are rational. This finding moreover suggests that product reviews may serve as a coordination mechanism for early adopters. In an empirical application to the video game journalism industry, I find evidence that reviews are inflated for games produced by large firms and for those that are part of pre‐existing game franchises. Additionally, I find variation in inflation across genres that would be inconsistent with common alternative theories of inflation, such as consumer naivete.     

Social comparison of cost behaviour and financial analysts

We investigate whether social comparison of a firm’s reported selling, general and administrative (SG&A) expenses affects financial analysts’ information uncertainty (and their behaviour). Based on a sample of US firms, we examine whether similarity of a firm’s SG&A to an industry-specific peer-based benchmark (or social benchmark) is associated with analyst forecast dispersion, forecast error and coverage. For external observers, the SG&A relative to sales (SG&A ratio) is a key diagnostic of a firm’s cost behaviour, but interpretational ambiguity of the SG&A signal is likely to incentivise search for information-relevant external cues to set expectations about and assess a firm’s SG&A ratio. Higher similarity to the social benchmark is expected to attenuate information asymmetry between analysts and firms regarding firms’ ability to effectively control overheads, decreasing analyst information uncertainty about cost behaviour and performance. In line with a varying weights model for social comparison, we observe a negative association between SG&A similarity and both forecast dispersion and error of one-year-ahead earnings for firms with a prior SG&A ratio exceeding the social benchmark. Our findings also show a negative relationship between SG&A similarity and analyst coverage, especially for firms with a prior SG&A ratio exceeding the social benchmark.     

The Decision to Repurchase Debt

The authors examined the market reaction to announcements of 208 corporate offers to repurchase outstanding debt during the period 1989–1996. In most tender offers, debtholders receive either a fixed price or a fixed spread over a benchmark Treasury security, or a range of prices based on a Dutch Auction. In most cases, management cites as its main motive the desire to reduce leverage and/or interest expense. But such tender offers are also often—in fact, in 70% of cases—accompanied by consent payments intended to induce bondholders to vote to remove covenant restrictions. The authors found that tender offers are wealth‐increasing events, with positive average market reactions of almost 1.5%. But the means of funding has a major impact on the market reaction. Whereas tender offers financed with equity receive a neutral market response, those offers financed with the proceeds from asset sales are associated with equity announcement returns of 3.8%. What's more, shareholders respond positively to the removal of covenants, especially asset sale covenants, with abnormal returns averaging 11% in such cases. Before their offers, companies that tender for their debt tend to have less cash and more long‐term debt than comparable companies, and to have lower operating returns and to trade at a discount to their peers. But after the tender offer, assets increase, operating returns improve, and the tendering firms trade at a premium.