The Global and Regional Dispersion of Publishing in the Field of International Marketing

ABSTRACT

This paper empirically examines the research productivity of academic institutions in the leading international marketing journals, leading generalist marketing journals, and leading international business journals between the years 1999 and 2003 from a regional and country-specific perspective. The research found that across the three groups of journals, the majority of works were authored by academics at institutions located in North America, although North Americans contribute significantly less in the international marketing and international business journals than leading generalist marketing journals. The findings suggest that there is a broadening of non-U.S. influence within the international marketing and international business journals, which should lead to a broadening of international marketing theory.     

Portfolio Manager Ownership and Mutual Fund Performance

This paper examines the association between a mutual fund manager's personal fund investment and mutual fund performance. From a data set of newly released managerial ownership disclosures, I find that fund ownership levels are diverse and, in many instances, quite large. Mutual fund returns are increasing in the level of managerial investment, consistent with personal ownership realigning decision-maker and shareholder interests. Also consistent with the reduction of agency costs, I find that managerial ownership is inversely related to fund turnover. However, there is no evidence of an association between managerial ownership and a mutual fund's tax burden.     

Windfall gains and stock market participation

We exploit the randomized assignment of lottery prizes in a large administrative Swedish data set to estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation. A $150,000 windfall gain increases the stock market participation probability by 12 percentage points among prelottery nonparticipants but has no discernible effect on prelottery stock owners. A structural life cycle model significantly overpredicts entry rates even for very high entry costs (up to $31,000). Additional analyses implicate pessimistic beliefs regarding equity returns as a major source of this overprediction and suggest that both recent and early-life return realizations affect beliefs.     

An Investigation of the Yield Shift Theory of Satisfaction Using Field Data from the United States and the Netherlands

Yield shift theory (YST) is a relatively new theory that offers logic to predict and explain satisfaction effects for which prior theories could not fully account. We investigate the degree to which the propositions of YST are consistent with observed outcomes in a study of satisfaction with technology-supported collaboration among 322 knowledge workers from the Netherlands and 300 from the USA. Participants worked in natural groups on real tasks assigned in the course of their professional duties. All organizations used professional facilitators to guide the groups through complex collaborative tasks. Facilitators distributed a brief survey to measure the dependent variables satisfaction-with-outcome and satisfaction-with-process and the independent variables changes-in-utility and changes-in-likelihood. We validated the instrument in Dutch and English. Findings were consistent with the YST proposition that satisfaction responses are a function in shifts-in-yield for an individual’s set of active goals. We also observed that satisfaction responses also varied by national culture—on average, Netherlanders reported satisfaction responses of lower magnitude than did US participants. We discuss implications of YST for researchers and practitioners, and use its logic to reason why, in context of workplace collaboration, there may be differences in satisfaction responses by national culture.     

New deal or no deal in the Cotton South: The effect of the AAA on the agricultural labor structure

The Agricultural Adjustment Act has often been held responsible for the rapid reduction of share tenants and sharecroppers (laborers paid shares of the crop) during the 1930s. However, this conclusion has come with limited empirical backing. We shed new light on the consequences of this New Deal policy by empirically testing the role that the AAA cotton reduction program had on the displacement of share tenants and sharecroppers in the Cotton South. The results suggest that the AAA played a significant role in the displacement of black and white sharecroppers and black managing tenants even though it was a violation of AAA contracts for landlords to displace these workers.     

Optimal cartel trigger strategies and the number of firms

Recent empirical papers have analyzed collusion in the Joint Executive Committee in an attempt to determine which of several theories of cartel behavior is supported by the behavior of this 19th century railroad cartel. Non-parametric tests of whether high and low profit regimes followed a first-order Markov process when one controls for the number of firms support the theory of optimal collusion given by Abreu, Pearce, and Stachetti. Results on whether transition probabilities depend on the number of firms are inconclusive.     

Literature-related discovery (LRD): Potential treatments for Multiple Sclerosis

Literature-related discovery (LRD) is the linking of two or more literature concepts that have heretofore not been linked (i.e., disjoint), in order to produce novel, interesting, plausible, and intelligible knowledge (i.e., potential discovery). The open discovery systems (ODS) component of LRD starts with a problem to be solved, and generates solutions to that problem through potential discovery. We have been using ODS LRD to identify potential treatments or preventative actions for challenging medical problems, among myriad other applications. The previous three papers in this Special Issue describe the application of ODS LRD to Raynaud's Phenomenon (RP), cataracts, and Parkinson's Disease (PD).Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder (typically preceded by periods of remission and relapse), affecting mainly people in their early-mid life. MS is characterized by changes in sensation (hypoesthesia), muscle weakness, abnormal muscle spasms, or difficulty to move; difficulties with coordination and balance (ataxia); problems in speech (Dysarthria) or swallowing (Dysphagia), visual problems (Nystagmus, optic neuritis, or diplopia), fatigue and acute or chronic pain syndromes, bladder and bowel difficulties, cognitive impairment, or emotional symptomatology (mainly depression).We selected the subject of MS because of its global prevalence, and its apparent intractability to all treatments except for palliative remediation mainly through drugs or surgery. Our first goal was to identify non-drug non-surgical treatments that would 1) prevent the occurrence, or 2) reduce the progression rate, or 3) stop the progression, or 4) maybe even reverse the progression, of MS. Our second goal was to demonstrate that we could again solve an ODS problem (using LRD) with no prior knowledge of any results or prior work (unlike the case of the RP problem). As in the ‘cataract’ and PD examples, we used the MeSH taxonomy of MEDLINE to restrict potential discoveries to selected semantic classes, and to identify potential discoveries efficiently. Our third goal was to generate large amounts of potential discovery in more than an order of magnitude less time than required for the RP study. The discovery generation methodology has been developed to the point where ODS LRD problems can be solved with no results or knowledge of any prior work.