From private label to co-branded credit card: an assessment of the impact of a change in value proposition over customer value perception and company value capture

Journal of Financial Services Marketing - Purpose: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the success of a value proposition over time, considering two aspects: customer’s perceived value and...     

A new take on voice: the influence of BlackRock’s ‘Dear CEO’ letters

Review of Accounting Studies - Abstract We examine whether broad-based public engagement by institutional investors influences the behavior of portfolio firms. We investigate this question in the...     

Der erste Eindruck zählt!? – Eine empirische Untersuchung von Ankereffekten bei der Vertrauensbildung in elektronischen Verhandlungen

The importance of electronic negotiations for developing and managing interdependent organizational relationships has increased significantly. Due to reduced cues in electronic negotiations interpersonal trust has become a crucial factor to overcome their limitations. Anchoring effects can set the course for trust building processes before any contact between negotiators occurred. So far, these effects have been analysed in face-to-face interactions. We could demonstrate anchoring effects in electronic interactions using internet-based negotiation simulations. We found that the participants quantified their trust level before and after the negotiation according to a priori information about their partners’ trustworthiness. Intuitive evaluations of the other’s trustworthiness seem to act as an anchor that can regulate ensuing perceptions and trust evaluations.     

Functions and failures: how to manage technological promises for societal challenges

Technological promises are becoming part of the way in which scientific and technological communities try to attract the attention of stakeholders, aiming at legitimation, reputation, and funding. Not all promises, however, become reality. With the increase in the use of promises comes the risk of disillusion and cynicism, which may affect negatively policy-makers and the public opinion. The paper suggests that the introduction in the field of S&T and innovation policy of a tool commonly used in engineering fields aimed at identifying and measuring all possible failures of a proposed technology. Instead of focusing on the magnitude of promises, it suggests that a useful perspective can be gained by placing systematic attention to the negative side, i.e. all reasons why a given technology may fail to deliver the promises. The paper develops the methodology, presents a case study, and illustrates the benefits of using it in policy-making.     

THE URBAN LEFT IN POWER: Comparing the Profiles of ‘Municipal Socialists’ and the ‘New Urban Left’ in Swiss Cities

Today, many cities in post-industrial societies are strongholds of left and progressive political forces. Almost 100 years ago, left parties had instituted municipal socialism in several European cities. In this article, we compare these two periods of left urban rule by focusing on the long-term changes over the last 120 years in the socio-demographic profile of urban left elites in four major Swiss cities. Our analysis of left elected representatives at six key dates highlights the main differences between the municipal socialists of the interwar period and the new urban left that rules contemporary cities. The former are members of the working class, blue-collar workers without university education, while the latter are members of the upper-middle class, highly educated sociocultural professionals. The results of our analysis contribute to a better understanding of the sociological composition of urban left-progressive political forces, an aspect that is somewhat neglected in recent research on the urban left. We discuss the potential political implications and further research avenues for contemporary debates in urban studies, in terms of urban policy priorities and political mobilization.     

Updating and Estimating a Social Accounting Matrix Using Cross Entropy Methods

The problem in estimating a social accounting matrix (SAM) for a recent year is to find an efficient and cost-effective way to incorporate and reconcile information from a variety of sources, including data from prior years. Based on information theory, the paper presents a flexible 'cross entropy' (CE) approach to estimating a consistent SAM starting from inconsistent data estimated with error, a common experience in many countries. The method represents an efficient information processing rule-using only and all information available. It allows incorporating errors in variables, inequality constraints, and prior knowledge about any part of the SAM. An example is presented, applying the CE approach to data from Mozambique, using a Monte Carlo approach to compare the CE approach to the standard RAS method and to evaluate the gains in precision from utilizing additional information.     

The impact of ECB and FED announcements on the Euro interest rates

We investigate the impact of news in the ECB and FED monetary policy announcements on daily changes in Euro interest rates. We document significant impacts of ECB announcements throughout the period but only until mid 2004 of FED announcements.     

On the commutativity of expansion and substitution effects

The reversibility of sequential economic choices concerning production and consumption is addressed. A geometric approach to substitution effects and output/income effects is set forth in terms of vector fields on bundle space. By means of suitable fixing relations the 0-homogeneity of such problems can be circumvented, so as to define global parametrizations of effects, for which Lie brackets measure the departure from commutativity. A couple of propositions are established, assessing the benchmark relevance of homothetic models. Application to Farrell decompositions, as tailored by Bogetoft et al. (Eur J Oper Res 168:450–462, 2006), results in complete agreement with the results found by such Authors. The theoretical relevance of the approach is thoroughly discussed.