Does Wage Rank Affect Employees’ Well‐being?

How do workers make wage comparisons? Both an experimental study and an analysis of 16,000 British employees are reported. Satisfaction and well‐being levels are shown to depend on more than simple relative pay. They depend upon the ordinal rank of an individual's wage within a comparison group. “Rank” itself thus seems to matter to human beings. Moreover, consistent with psychological theory, quits in a workplace are correlated with pay distribution skewness.     

Effectiveness of in-store supermarket food demonstration

Customer interviews and evaluation observations of in-store supermarket food product demonstrations produced data to test hypotheses about the relationship between aspects of the demonstration, the demonstrator, buyers and non-buying observers, and increased net sales of the demonstrated product. Findings showed that certain demonstration personal characteristics, professional qualifications, source of employment and demonstrator techniques were significantly related to sales increases. Certain aspects of consumer responses were also significant. Results indicate a need for educators to emphasize the sampling and interaction aspects of demonstrations and for marketers to pay more attention to training demonstrators.     

Investor Sentiment and Pro Forma Earnings Disclosures

We examine the influence of investor sentiment on managers’ discretionary disclosure of “pro forma” (adjusted) earnings metrics in earnings press releases. We find that managers’ propensity to disclose an adjusted earnings metric (especially one that exceeds the GAAP earnings number) increases with the level of investor sentiment. Furthermore, our analyses suggest that, as investor sentiment increases, managers: (1) exclude higher levels of both recurring and nonrecurring expenses in calculating the pro forma earnings number and (2) emphasize the pro forma figure by placing it more prominently within the earnings press release. Additional analyses indicate that the association between investor sentiment and managers’ pro forma disclosure decisions at least partly reflects opportunistic motives. Finally, we find that managers’ own sentiment‐driven expectations also play a role in their pro forma disclosure decisions.