The product life cycle and sample representativity bias in price indexes

Official price indexes are usually calculated using matched samples of products. If products exhibit systematic price trends at different points in their life cycle then matched sample methods may introduce bias if the life cycle movement in the sample does not adequately reflect that in the population. This article explores the extent of these life cycle pricing effects and then examines the bias it can introduce in measured inflation. A large US supermarket scanner data set for six cities and six products over 12 years is used. Using hedonic methods we find that the life cycle component of price change is important across a range of products and cities. To explore the bias introduced by these movements, we use simulations that construct indexes with different sample update frequency. For indexes that are never completely resampled, we find an annual absolute bias of 0.88 and 0.59 percentage points depending upon whether we use the actual prices or prices imputed from our hedonic model. This compares with absolute biases of 0.34 and 0.10 percentage points for the corresponding cases for samples, which are re-selected annually. Thus our results provide strong support for more frequently updating index samples.     

The value relevance of major media advertising expenditures: Some U.K. evidence

This study examines whether ACNielsen MEAL major media advertising expenditure measures, that are publicly available at a cost, have value relevance. Our results suggest that these advertising-expenditure measures are positively associated with market value. We also find little difference in the value relevance of these expenditures among different sizes of firms. Value relevance is found to be present only for nonmanufacturing firms. This suggests that the costly information provided by ACNielsen MEAL surveys may be potentially useful to market participants in valuing firms, at least for nonmanufacturing firms.     

Is money an omitted variable in the production function? Some further results

In recent years, numerous studies have emphasized the role of real balances in the production function in terms of money being useful: as an intermediate good; as liquid reserves for investment; and also serving as a link between aggregate supply and the nominal interest rate. In this paper we report new Canadian empirical evidence regarding the important role of money in the production process of aggregate manufacturing industries based on a flexible translog cost function approach. In general, our results support the hypothesis that money is an important factor in the production function and that there are potential supply side effects of a change in the interest rate.     

Portfolio selection in a lognormal securities market

Conclusion This paper, therefore, once again establishes the usefulness of the two parameter distributions in the analysis of portfolio selection and taxation. Assuming a lognormal securities market and a chance-constrained portfolio choice model, we derive the well known results of portfolio separation and the effects of taxation which were earlier obtained under more restrictive mean-variance assumptions.This paper, an earlier version of which was presented at the 8th International Symposium on Mathematical Programming, Stanford University, August 27–31, 1973, is based on a chapter of the author's Ph. D. thesis (Ahsan, 1974). The author is grateful to S. Ahmad, A. B. Atkinson, C. J. Bliss, D. W. Butterfield, A. L. Robb, T. Russell and W. M. Scarth for helpful comments.     

The moderation influence of warranty on customer satisfaction’s antecedents: an empirical evidence from automotive dealerships

The purpose of this article is to investigate the differential influence of product quality and service quality on customer satisfaction (CS) along with the interaction role of warranty presence in the context of automotive dealerships. Survey-based research methodology is adopted in which the population are the car owners who perform repair and maintenance jobs in authorized service centres. It is found that the warranty moderation role is supported wherein the relationship between service quality and CS is strengthened by the warranty presence, contrary to the insignificant relationship between product quality and CS influenced by the warranty moderator; besides, the empirical results provide an evidence that the CS value relies on metrics comprising operational measures for service quality and product quality. The outcome of this study contributes to sensitizing the decision makers from manufacturing and service disciplines to the interdependencies and the prerequisite for overall collaborative development. This study presents the first systematic approach that differentiates the influence of product quality and service quality on CS, wherein the warranty service is primarily introduced as a moderator affecting the antecedent relationship in the context of automotive dealerships.     

Journal Rankings,Collaborative Research and Publication Strategies: Evidence from China

Abstract

The primary focus of our paper is on the potential for in-house journal ranking lists to create friction between international collaborating researchers due to differences in how particular journals are rated on different lists. Using a questionnaire distributed to Chinese accounting researchers, we identify a number of potential friction points between Chinese and UK researchers. We find that almost all of our Chinese respondents use their own school's in-house ranking list as the primary or exclusive reference point for assessing journal quality, and 73% of respondents acknowledge that this has caused problems when working with scholars from other universities because of differences in how their institutions rank journals.     

Spillover across Eurozone credit market sectors and determinants

We examine spillover and its determinants among Eurozone sector level credit markets using time and frequency domain spillover approaches. Based on network theory and connectedness analysis, we identify the sectors that are major transmitters and receivers of spillover during normal and crisis periods. The rolling window analysis shows that short-run spillover among credit market sectors intensifies during global and Eurozone crisis periods. Further, using Bayesian model averaging, we find that overall financial conditions and stock market volatility are the main drivers of total and sector-level spillover. Our findings have important implications for policymakers and investors interested in Euro-area credit risk at the sector level.     

The distributional effect of a large rice price increase on welfare and poverty in Bangladesh

This paper studies the distributional effect of a sharp rice price increase on welfare and poverty in Bangladesh. We employ household consumption data and include the indirect effect of price responses to estimate the welfare loss. Our findings suggest that the estimated welfare effect can be misleading if household responses to rice consumption and production are ignored. This study further supports the hypothesis that the poor are the main victims of such a shock. Our examination also indicates that a higher rice price may increase or decrease the poverty head‐count ratio, depending on the choice of the poverty line, but worsens the country's poverty situation when it is measured by the per capita consumption gap. Our analysis reveals that the government can play a central role to prevent and mitigate such shocks, particularly in the medium to long run. On the methodological side, we observe that consumption provides a more consistent outcome across different methods of analysis than household income.     

The impact of the 2005–2010 rice price increase on consumption in rural Bangladesh

This article studies the impact of the rice price increase between 2005 and 2010 on consumption in rural Bangladesh. Using the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) data, we compare net rice buyers and sellers to self‐sufficient households. To identify the effect of rice price changes on household consumption of rice, nonrice food and nonfood items, we employ a difference‐in‐differences (DiD) technique. Our findings indicate that the surge in domestic rice prices between 2005 and 2010 reduced the nonrice food consumption of net rice buyer households by 7%, compared to the households who are self‐sufficient in rice production. However, it did neither affect their rice nor their nonfood consumption. In contrast, while we find no significant effect of rice price increases on the rice consumption of net rice sellers, we observe a 9% increase in their nonrice food consumption. In such situation, a subsidy on low‐quality rice may be effective in fulfilling the nutritional requirement of low‐income households.