Styles of background music and consumption in a bar: An empirical evaluation

The effects of background music have been widely studied in the literature but few studies have tested effects of music in commercial settings. An experiment was carried out in a bar to test influence of three different styles of music on patrons. According to a random assignment, patrons were exposed to Top 40 music, which was usually played in the bar, cartoon music or drinking songs. Results showed that drinking songs appeared to increase the length of time customers stayed in the bar and the average amount spent. A congruency hypothesis is used to explain these findings.     

Human capital and financial equilibrium

This article investigates the effect of incorporating human capital—an expansion of the investment opportunity set—into the analysis of portfolio investment decisions. The “production function” of human capital displays decreasing returns to scale. The return on human capital is a product of two factors: a “market” return and return unique to each individual. Financial equilibrium results are derived and tested empirically using U.S. data and an international sample. The main findings are that demand for financial assets relates positively to human capital risk and negatively to financial capital risks.     

Stabilität und Fortschritt: Das Problem der ärmeren Länder

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Englischen übersetzt von Dr. F. Redl, Wien     

Who consults investment analysts?

This paper shows that the questions: Who consults investment analysts? and Who goes to the El Farol bar in Santa Fe? are similar. Thus, investors use a mixed optimal strategy. The demand for consulting services is also characterized.Received: 25 September 2002, Accepted: 26 May 2003, JEL Classification: D81, C70Jacob Paroush: The author is grateful to Yaw Nyarko, Yigal Milchtaich and an anonymous referee for helpful comments and suggestions.     

The effect of merger and acquisition activity on the safety and soundness of a banking system

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, it argues that merger and acquisition activity reduces the total risk in the banking system. Second, it suggests that the recent high level of merger and acquisition activity as well as the high rate of banks failure is an adjustment process of a banking system to a smaller optimal size.     

FRACAS: A Computerized Aid for Reasoning in Tax

Problem solving in the tax domain requires two kinds of knowledge: of the law itself and of how the law has been applied in the past. The need for the second factor arises as a result of the ambiguity of natural language. The problem solver requires information on how the courts have adjudicated specific cases in the past. This information would then provide the basis for reasoning about the current case. In this paper we address the issue of developing a system which will retrieve relevant historical cases. The cases are stored using a frame representation scheme and the users can retrieve cases by specifying either attributes alone or attributes and values associated with them. Currently the system has been implemented in Pascal on a Cray. The case base contains 250 cases relating to Section 183 of the tax code.     

A circumplex model for the behavioral constructs towards television advertising

The purpose of this study was to test the proposed model in order to explain some ambiguity in the advertising process. The model was formulated by focusing attention on relevant socio-psychological parameters motivating television viewers regarding television commercials. The fundamental structure of this model stemmed from a theory advanced by Louis Guttman. Utilizing this theory, an attempt was made to demonstrate empirically the advertising process from the consumer-viewer side.