A story to sell: The influence of storytelling on consumers' purchasing behavior

Storytelling can arouse consumers' emotions and affect purchasing behavior through desires and attitudes. While the marketing literature discusses storytelling, there is a lack of consensus because of the diverse conceptual and operational definitions used. To untangle the complexities and consolidate the fragmented knowledge about storytelling in marketing, this research examines how the marketing literature has addressed the influence of storytelling on consumers' purchasing behavior. The findings aid in understanding how the topic has been discussed from a marketing perspective in consumer behavior studies. Through a systematic literature review using a bibliometric analysis, we demonstrate that the marketing literature features four strands about the uses of storytelling to influence consumers' purchasing behavior. First, storytelling stimulates the consumer's identification with the brand. Second, storytelling allows consumers to experience emotional value. Third, storytelling supports engagement behaviors. Finally, storytelling has a downside in that it also propagates harmful speech. This study concludes with a roadmap for future research about how storytelling impacts consumers' purchasing behavior.     

Efficient regulated entry in competitive markets with demand uncertainty

It is well-known that, in a competitive market, the number of firms in a free-entry equilibrium is the efficient one. This paper shows that this textbook result breaks down if firms face demand uncertainty. In this case, entry is excessive relative to the optimum and, therefore, regulation improves market efficiency. This occurs because, in the absence of regulation, entry is motivated by the profits that firms expect to receive if market demand turns out to be high. However, when choosing the optimal regulated entry, the planner also considers that some surplus is lost if demand turns out to be low.     

Wikipedia pageviews as investors’ attention indicator for Nasdaq

The attempt to measure investors’ mood to find an early indicator of financial markets has evolved and developed with the advancement of technology over the years. The first attempts were based on surveys, a long and expensive process. Nowadays, big data has made it possible to measure the investor’s mood accurately and almost entirely online. This paper analyzes the explanatory and predictive capacity of Wikipedia pageviews for the Nasdaq index. For this purpose, two econometric models have been developed. In both models, the explanatory variable is the number of Wikipedia visits, and the endogenous variable is Nasdaq index return. As an alternative to this approach, an algorithmic trading system has been developed. It uses Wikipedia visits as investment signals for long and short positions to check the predictability power of this indicator. It is determined that the volume of queries about Nasdaq companies is a statistically significant variable for expressing the evolution of this index. However, it has no predictive capacity. Keeping in mind the capacity of Wikipedia to exemplify Nasdaq trends, further studies should be conducted to determine how to make this indicator profitable.     

From boom to gloom: Brazilian labour productivity in manufacturing relative to the United States, 1912–2019

Whereas manufacturing seems to hold the key to modern economic growth, the role of manufacturing in economy-wide convergence across countries is debatable. One strand of scholarship argues that productivity levels in manufacturing tend to remain stable across countries, and that economy-wide convergence takes place through structural transformations. Another strand maintains that productivity levels of less-developed countries tend to approach those of developed countries unconditionally, and that deindustrialization thwarts economy-wide convergence. We examine productivity in Brazilian manufacturing relative to the United States, 1912–2019. The result shows dramatic swings in the Brazilian/US productivity ratio, increasing in the decades following the Second World War, peaking in the late 1970s at impressively high levels, and declining precipitously thereafter. This sluggish performance of Brazilian manufacturing since the peak in the late 1970s has probably hindered income convergence with richer countries.