Do Voluntary Biotechnology Labels Matter to the Consumer? Evidence from the Fluid Milk Market

This article examines the effects on the demand of voluntary labeling for the use of genetically modified growth hormone for retail fluid milk using supermarket scanner data. Retail fluid milk tracks one of the first biotechnology products approved, is fairly standardized and ubiquitous, and allows for cross-sectional differentiation between labeled and unlabeled products and between conventional and organic brands. The results indicate that voluntary labeling increases the demand for recombinant bovine growth hormone free milk. In addition, the estimated effects of labeling appear to have increased over time.     

No Contagion, Only Interdependence: Measuring Stock Market Comovements

Heteroskedasticity biases tests for contagion based on correlation coefficients. When contagion is defined as a significant increase in market comovement after a shock to one country, previous work suggests contagion occurred during recent crises. This paper shows that correlation coefficients are conditional on market volatility. Under certain assumptions, it is possible to adjust for this bias. Using this adjustment, there was virtually no increase in unconditional correlation coefficients (i.e., no contagion) during the 1997 Asian crisis, 1994 Mexican devaluation, and 1987 U.S. market crash. There is a high level of market comovement in all periods, however, which we call interdependence.     

The Signaling Effects of the US Food and Drug Administration Fast‐Track Designation

Pharmaceutical firms are reluctant to disclose proprietary information about a drug's likelihood of approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for fear of losing their competitive advantage. Instead, firms may use signals, like the FDA fast‐track designation, to indicate to investors the likelihood of a drug's approval. This analysis uses an event study methodology, with stock and market data from the Center for Research in Security Prices. The results show that the fast‐track designation is a strong, positive signal to investors (1998–2015), but its strength has markedly decreased over time. Results also show that the signal is strongest for the smallest firms. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Website development by nonprofit organizations in an emerging market: a case study of Thai websites

• Nonprofit organizations are pertinent players in making the world a better place. Their websites aid in fulfilling their socially beneficial missions by being a platform to present themselves, to interact with stakeholders around the world, and to perform e‐transactions to raise funds. This interdisciplinary research explores nonprofit websites in Thailand, an emerging market, to determine their progress through an adapted e‐business stage model. A manual website decoding process was used to determine the development of websites, within the sector. On average, almost three‐quarters of the websites offered interactivity and just less than half conducted online transactions, but internationally connected organizations in Thailand were significantly more likely to do so. The findings suggest that while nonprofit websites in Thailand are progressing, there is significant lag between local Thai websites and those that have international connections. While the model successfully provided new data for understanding nonprofit websites in less developed markets, it may need to be modified in future studies.

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

From Paperwork to Network

The importance of understanding multiple roles and resources of documents in work practices for designing document systems is emphasized in this paper. The difficulties one faces in the transition from paperwork to digital work are discussed based on a case study. The observations show that documents are coordinating artifact as well as important in peoples' awareness of other's work. How documents are placed on shelves indicate status in work and, hence, reduce the articulation work. These resources often vanish when documents become digital. Prototypes are described to illustrate ways of capturing resources that "keep the work practice together".