Alternative Indicators for the Risk of Non‐response Bias: A Simulation Study

The growth of non‐response rates for social science surveys has led to increased concern about the risk of non‐response bias. Unfortunately, the non‐response rate is a poor indicator of when non‐response bias is likely to occur. We consider in this paper a set of alternative indicators. A large‐scale simulation study is used to explore how each of these indicators performs in a variety of circumstances. Although, as expected, none of the indicators fully depict the impact of non‐response in survey estimates, we discuss how they can be used when creating a plausible account of the risks for non‐response bias for a survey. We also describe an interesting characteristic of the fraction of missing information that may be helpful in diagnosing not‐missing‐at‐random mechanisms in certain situations.     

Discrete choice models of firms’ strategic decisions

This paper outlines the methods and applications related to the nascent area of empirical discrete games in marketing. Many key strategic decisions firms make involve discrete choices such as deciding the location of a new store, determining where in product space to position a product, or what options to offer in a service contract. These decisions are fairly complex and typically involve the consideration of a number of demand, cost, and competitive factors. What makes these discrete choices particularly interesting (and challenging to analyze) is that they are interrelated with the choices of other firms because firms take into account the actions of their competitors when making their own decisions. We describe the basic problem of dealing with interrelated discrete choices in a game-theoretic framework and present the various estimation methods available. A discussion of the existing applications and future research opportunities concludes the article.     

Family Control of Firms and Industries

We test what explains family control of firms and industries and find that the explanation is largely contingent on the identity of families and individual blockholders. Founders and their families are more likely to retain control when doing so gives the firm a competitive advantage, thereby benefiting all shareholders. In contrast, nonfounding families and individual blockholders are more likely to retain control when they can appropriate private benefits of control. Families are more likely to maintain control when the efficient scale is small, the need to monitor employees is high, investment horizons are long, and the firm has dual-class stock.     

Memory and Anticipation

The introduction of memory imperfections into models of economic decision making creates a natural role for anticipatory emotions. Their combination has striking behavioural implications. The paper first shows that agents can rationally select apparently dominated strategies. We consider Newcomb's Paradox and the Prisoners' Dilemma. We provide a resolution for Newcomb's Paradox and argue it requires the decision maker to ascribe only a tiny weight to anticipatory emotions. For some ranges of parameters, it is possible to obtain cooperation in the Prisoners' Dilemma with probability arbitrarily close to unity. The second half of the paper provides a theory of reminders.     

The finite sample properties of the GARCH option pricing model

The authors explore the finite sample properties of the generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) option pricing model proposed by S. L. Heston and S. Nandi (2000). Simulation results show that the maximum likelihood estimators of the GARCH process may contain substantial estimation biases, even when samples as large as 3,000 observations are used. However, it was found that these biases cause significant mispricings only for short‐term, out‐of‐the‐money options. It is shown that, given an adequate estimation sample, this bias can be reduced considerably by employing the jackknife resampling method. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 27:599–615, 2007     

Do CRA‐Related Events Affect Shareholder Wealth? The Case of Bank Mergers

This study explores how Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) protests and their resolution affect the market value of merging banks. We find, in contrast to earlier research, that CRA‐related events are not associated with significant negative market reactions for either bidder or target institutions. Rather, the market does not seem to respond strongly to CRA‐related events at all. The results appear to stem from the choice of an estimation period for establishing an institution's baseline stock‐market price dynamics that does not include abnormal security price movements induced by the merger announcement.     

Exchange rate pass-through into import prices revisited: What drives it?

A large sample of developed and emerging economies is utilized to investigate import exchange rate pass-through. Panel models reveal that various economic aspects of the destination country can explain about one third of the total variation in pass-through elasticities and the remaining variation comes largely in the form of unobserved country-specific effects. Inflation, exchange rate volatility, openness and relative wealth play a clear role as drivers of emerging markets’ pass-through whereas the output gap and protectionism appear influential more generally. Nonlinearity regarding large-versus-small changes in the exchange rate is quite pervasive. Our evidence challenges the widely-held view that pass-through has been universally falling in developed markets and that it is higher for emerging markets. The economic drivers are shown to play a role as out-of-sample predictors of pass-through. The findings confirm pricing-to-market theories and have implications for the optimal conduct of monetary policy.     

A reflection on analytical work in marketing: Three points of consensus

This article presents three points of consensus about game-theoretic work in marketing: First, equilibrium analysis is necessary for studying situations that have strategic interactions. In many cases, empirical examination of these strategic scenarios is difficult or impossible, at least without the guidance of an equilibrium model. Second, more general models are not necessarily ??better,?? because institutional details matter. Thus, the appropriate compromise between generality and specificity depends on the scope of the research question. Finally, there should be a two-way road between theory and empirics??theory is necessary to interpret empirical results, while empirical findings should guide theoretical modeling choices.