Entrepreneur Attributes and Formalization of Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises in Tanzania

New institutional economics literature underscores the role of entrepreneur attributes in structuring the entrepreneur’s views and decision-making about (in)formalizing the business while considering the environment which shapes one’s perceptions. However, empirical knowledge on same, based on the African/Tanzanian context, remains scant. Based on Tanzanian national survey data from 5549 micro, small and medium enterprises, this paper assesses the influence of entrepreneur attributes on business formalization while controlling for structural and institutional factors. The results reveal that attributes likely to increase the probability of formalizing one’s business include being either a male, aged between 31 and 50, opportunity-driven or having at least secondary education.     

Trade Unions as Agents for Skill Formation: The Case of Singapore

Trade unions can influence the quality and quantity of training provided to workers. This article delineates the role played by unions in Singapore’s skill formation system, during the 1980s and 1990s. This role is framed by the context of the developmental state and of a collaborationist union movement. Singapore unions act to support the state’s drive to upgrade the skills of the workforce. They put pressure on employers to sign up to collective agreements including statements about training, and they act as both agents and providers of training and education for basic and core skills. They also devote considerable resources to persuading their members to take up training opportunities. What evidence there is suggests that these various strategies have had some success. The unions’ role in Singapore is contrasted with their role in some other countries.     

Dividends and Market Signalling: an Analysis of Corporate Insider Trading

This study tests the multiple‐signal theory of dividends of John and Lang (1991) in the context of a European market. Our evidence shows that investors are more sensitive to insider trading signals than to signalled changes in existing dividends. In effect, the insider sales signal is universally understood as bad news. After controlling for the quality of a firm's investment opportunities, investors are found to penalise dividend outflows by mature firms that exhibit more informed insider sales activity. Finally, we offer an innovative exploration of the role of earnings announcements in market reaction to the dividend signal.     

Why Narrative Ads Work: An Integrated Process Explanation

We propose and test an integrated process explanation for why narrative ads in general are more persuasive than non-narrative ads. A study involving a random sample of 25 narrative and 25 non-narrative TV commercials and 484 nonstudent research participants confirmed that a set of four process variables—emotive response, ad hedonic value, ad credibility, and perceived goal facilitation—collectively mediate the positive effects of narrative (versus non-narrative) ads on attitude toward the ad (A_ad) and brand attitudes. The results also supported moderated mediation processes, with type of featured product and product involvement as important moderators. Implications for theory as well as practice are discussed.     

Franchising in Europe: Exploring the Case of Spain with Self‐organizing Time Maps

Economic crises affect both the organizational side and the brand side of the franchise. Using self‐organizing time maps, this study examines how franchise brand behavior influences decisions by potential franchisees in Spain. The findings confirm that franchising offers an alternative to the business turnaround strategy, which firms apply when faced with adverse changes in the environment such as those caused by the economic crisis in Spain. Results show that all franchise brands within the same sector behaved similarly, except for brands in the catering sector, which displayed varying responses to the economic changes. The authors discuss the implications of these results for future franchisees.     

The Construction of Tourist Space by Public Administration and Institutional Communication: The Image of the Brand Andalucía as a Tourist Destination

The public administration in Spain is using service public advertising to promote the brand image of one destination: Andalucía. The purpose of campaigns to promote tourism is: to increase the gross domestic product; to devise, create, and execute law-abiding messages within the public space; and to create and reinforce the values being constructed around a certain location and around its brand as a distinctive sign of that location. In this article the goal is to analyze how the public administration creates the brand image of Andalucía through the campaigns “Andalucía te quiere” (Andalucía loves you) and “Smile! You are in Andalucía.”     

Behavioral Finance in Joseph de la Vega's Confusion de Confusiones

In this paper, we link Joseph de la Vega's work Confusion de Confusiones, written in 1688, with current behavioral finance and propose that Vega be considered the first precursor of modern behavioral finance. In addition to describing excessive trading, overreaction and underreaction, and the disposition effect, Vega vividly portrays how investors behaved 300 years ago and includes interesting documentation on investor biases, such as herding, overconfidence, and regret aversion.     

Students’ perception of CSR and its influence on business performance. A multiple mediation analysis

Firm managers play an important role in the implementation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) actions. Education is emerging as the key factor in developing a sense of moral responsibility amongst the business students who will eventually become company managers and decision makers. The aim of this research is, thus, twofold. First, to analyze the existence of a direct positive correlation between university students’ perception of CSR and its impact on business performance; and second, to examine the extent to which two factors (advantages brought by CSR and responsibilities toward stakeholders) act as mediation variables in the aforementioned correlation. The analysis was performed with a sample of 390 business‐related university students. Amongst the potential contributions made by this study we can highlight the possibility of knowing future managers’ way of thinking and of knowing the aspects where educational centers might improve their CSR teaching.     

Multivariate semi-nonparametric distributions with dynamic conditional correlations

This paper generalizes the Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) model of Engle (2002), incorporating a flexible non-Gaussian distribution based on Gram-Charlier expansions. The resulting semi-nonparametric-DCC (SNP-DCC) model allows estimation in two stages and deals with the negativity problem which is inherent in truncated SNP densities. We test the performance of a SNP-DCC model with respect to the (Gaussian)-DCC through an empirical application of density forecasting for portfolio returns. Our results show that the proposed multivariate model provides a better in-sample fit and forecast of the portfolio returns distribution, and thus is useful for financial risk forecasting and evaluation.