Uncertainty and the Great Recession

Has heightened uncertainty been a major contributor to the Great Recession and the slow recovery in the United States? To answer this question, we identify exogenous changes in six uncertainty proxies and quantify their contributions to GDP growth and the unemployment rate. The answer is no. In total we find that increased macroeconomic and financial uncertainty can explain up to 10% of the drop in GDP at the height of the recession and up to 0.6 percentage points of the increased unemployment rates in 2009 through 2011. Our calculations further suggest that only a minor part of the rise in popular uncertainty measures during the Great Recession was driven by exogenous uncertainty shocks.     

Market volatility and inequality in earnings: experimental evidence

We analyze the volatility of actions in experimental oligopoly markets. Can the volatility, measured as the total variation in actions, be predicted by inequality in earnings of the previous period? We examine two types of differentiated markets, Cournot and Bertrand, and two informational conditions. We find for both types of markets and regardless of the information available to firms that inequality in earnings is a major factor for explaining volatility. The more equal profits are distributed, the less volatility is observed.     

Trust,Commitment, and Older Women: Exploring Brand Attachment Differences in the Elderly Segment

Understanding older adults’ product consumption behavior is of high importance to consumer and marketing research. Prior studies have mainly focused on older adults’ cognitive decline and compared their behavior to that of younger consumers. A neglected area of research has been older consumers’ brand attachment that is associated with potential differences between consumers in their fifties and in their seventies. In this article, the authors provide insights into the under‐researched field of elderly women's brand attachment. Drawing on socioemotional selectivity theory, a shift toward emotional aspects in brand relationships is proposed. A model involving trust and commitment processes is developed and empirically tested in a survey among 341 older women. Moderator analyses reveal significant differences between the “younger elderly” and the “older elderly” in relationships among self‐concept connection, partner quality, trust, and commitment. For the younger elderly, how a brand is (based on trust judgments) seems to be more important. For the older elderly, what a brand does in its role as relationship partner becomes more relevant.     

Sponsorship of the FIFA world cup,shareholder wealth,and the impact of corruption

The Fédération Internationale de Football Association's World Cup (FIFA WC) is one of the most popular sporting events in the world in general and Europe in particular, and famous for the extraordinary amount of sponsorship fees it attracts. To create value for the stockholders of FIFA’s respective commercial affiliates, these sponsorship expenses should be exceeded by (discounted) future cash flows in order to make this investment profitable. This study analyses return effects for stockholders of FIFA WC Commercial Affiliates, while distinguishing between several image scenarios pertaining to FIFA and applying several models for calculating abnormal returns. We find weak evidence for significant positive abnormal returns of announced FIFA sponsorships in case of a stable FIFA image across different return models. In contrast, we find negative abnormal returns when the latest corruption scandals around FIFA became public. We also detect negative price effects when Gianni Infantino was announced as new FIFA president. The image-related price effects become less pronounced for FIFA Partners and initially closed sponsorship contracts. Finally, we do not find any image-related spillover effects for main competitors of firms sponsoring FIFA.     

Should uniform pricing constraints be imposed on entrants?

This paper analyzes uniform pricing, coverage constraints and price caps in markets newly opened to competition, e.g. broadband services. We show that the requirement of uniform pricing has strong repercussions on coverage decisions. Imposed on incumbents only it may distort their coverage decision downward to avoid duopoly entry. If also imposed on entrants it increases the likelihood that entry leads to independent monopolies rather than competition. A sufficiently large coverage constraint on incumbents reestablishes incentives for duopoly entry, but may lead to higher prices.      

Universal Service and Entry: The Role of Uniform Pricing and Coverage Constraints

Universal service objectives are pervasive in telecommunications, and have gained new relevance after the introduction of competition in many markets. Despite their policy relevance, little work has been done allowing for a thorough discussion of instruments designed to achieve universal service objectives under competition. We intend to fill this gap, and disaggregate the problem into interacting forms of regulatory intervention such as uniform pricing and coverage constraints. It is shown that these are not competitively neutral and may have far-reaching strategic effects. Under uniform pricing, equilibrium coverage of both incumbent and entrant may be lower than without regulation. These effects depend on which measures are imposed at the same time, thus no single measure can be evaluated in isolation. We also point out that different groups of consumers are affected in different ways, making welfare comparisons difficult.     

European Green Mutual Fund Performance: A Comparative Analysis with their Conventional and Black Peers

In recent years, several countries have enacted guidelines and/or mandatory laws to increase the presence of women on the boards of companies. Through these regulatory interventions, the aim is to eradicate the social and labor grievances that women have traditionally experienced and which has relegated them to smaller-scale jobs. Nevertheless, and despite the advances achieved, the female representation in the boardroom remains far from the desired levels. In this context, it is now necessary to enhance the advantages of board gender diversity from both ethical and economic points of view. This article examines the relation between board gender diversity and economic results in Spain: the second country in the world to legally require gender quotas in boardrooms and historically characterized by a minimal female participation in the workforce. Based on a sample of 125 non-financial firms listed on the Madrid Stock Exchange from 2005 to 2009, our findings show that in the period analyzed the increase of the number of women on boards was over 98 %. This suggests that compulsory legislation offers an efficient framework to execute the recommendation of Spanish codes of good governance by means of the increase in the number of women in the boards of firms. Furthermore, we find that the increase in the number of women on the boards is positively related to higher economic results. Therefore, both results suggest that gender diversity in boardrooms should be incremented, mandatory laws being a key factor to do so.