Antecedents of Perceived Value and Repurchase Intention of Organic Food

The rise of the natural and organic products market follows a global trend of increasing demand largely due to the growth of environmental awareness and the concern of having a healthier diet. Thus, the objective of this study is to propose and test a theoretical model based on antecedent constructs of perceived value and repurchase intention on the consumption of organic products. The results, based on 256 consumers of organic products, confirm the positive relationship between environmental awareness and perceived quality, healthy consumption, and perceived price fairness. Moreover, they underpin the influence of healthy consumption, perceived price fairness and perceived quality on perceived value, and lastly, the influence of perceived value on repurchase intention. Therefore, this study can help practitioners and consumers comprehend in a more systematic way the buying behaviour of this food category.     

Measuring systemic importance of financial institutions: An extreme value theory approach

This paper proposes a set of market-based measures on the systemic importance of a financial institution or a group of financial institutions, each designed to capture different aspects of systemic importance of financial institutions. Multivariate extreme value theory approach is used to estimate these measures. Using six big Canadian banks as the proxy for Canadian banking sector, we apply these measures to identify systemically important banks in Canadian banking sector and major risk contributors from international financial institutions to Canadian banking sector. The empirical evidence reveals that (i) the top three banks, RBC Financial Group, TD Bank Financial Group, and Scotiabank, are more systemically important than other banks, while we also find that the size of a financial institution should not be considered as a proxy of systemic importance; (ii) compared to the European and Asian banks, the crashes of the U.S. banks, on average, are the most damaging to Canadian banking sector, while the risk contribution to the Canadian banking sector from Asian banks is quite lower than that from banks in the U.S. and euro area; (iii) the risk contribution to Canadian banking sector exhibits “home bias”, that is, cross-country risk contribution tends to be smaller than domestic risk contribution.     

Proxy-quality thresholds: Theory and applications

We consider alternative models of a regression containing a proxy for an unobserved regressor. For each model at most two pieces of prior information are necessary to determine the sign of any regressor coefficient: the sign of the partial correlation between the proxy and the unobserved regressor, and a lower bound on the partial or simple correlation between the proxy and the unobserved regressor. We apply our technique to investment and leverage regressions that contain a proxy for the incentive to invest. In both cases proxy quality must be high for the coefficient of interest to be non-zero.     

Is It Inefficient Investment that Causes the Diversification Discount?

Diversified conglomerates are valued less than matched portfolios of pure-play firms. Recent studies find that this diversification discount results from conglomerates' inefficient allocation of capital expenditures across divisions. Much of this work uses Tobin's q as a proxy for investment opportunities, therefore hypothesizing that q is a good proxy. This paper treats measurement error in q . Using a measurement-error consistent estimator on the sorts regressions in the literature, I find no evidence of inefficient allocation of investment. The results in the literature appear to be artifacts of measurement error and of the correlation between investment opportunities and liquidity.     

A Crisis of Banks as Liquidity Providers

Can banks maintain their advantage as liquidity providers when exposed to a financial crisis? While banks honored credit lines drawn by firms during the 2007 to 2009 crisis, this liquidity provision was only possible because of explicit, large support from the government and government‐sponsored agencies. At the onset of the crisis, aggregate deposit inflows into banks weakened and their loan‐to‐deposit shortfalls widened. These patterns were pronounced at banks with greater undrawn commitments. Such banks sought to attract deposits by offering higher rates, but the resulting private funding was insufficient to cover shortfalls and they reduced new credit.     

Assessing the relationships between Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders using Bergstrom's approximate discrete model

Although Nationalism, Ethnocentrism, and Individualism in Flanders have been the subject of several studies before, a longitudinal analysis has not been performed on all three concepts simultaneously nor have their relationships and the direction of their relationships been studied in continuous time. In this study we performed a continuous-time state-space analysis on panel data collected from 1274 subjects, in the years 1991, 1995 and 1999. The LISREL program is used for estimating the approximate discrete model (ADM), and for comparison, also the exact discrete model (EDM) is estimated by means of the Mx program. Details of continuous time modeling, especially the EDM and ADM, are dealt with. Individualism and Ethnocentrism turn out to be connected in a moderately strong feedback relationship with the effect from Individualism towards Ethnocentrism somewhat stronger than that in the opposite direction. Both Individualism and Ethnocentrism have small effects on Nationalism. The autoregression functions, cross-lagged effect functions, and mean predictions are shown.     

Assets and African Americans: Attempting to Capitalize on Hopes for Children Through College Savings Accounts

Although some racial inequalities have lessened in the half-century since the passage of the first major civil rights legislation, the racial wealth gap remains and in recent years seems to be widening. Households with children are the least likely to be asset secure or have sufficient resources to enable investment in opportunities for mobility. Viewing inequality from this perspective indicates that what households are able to save and invest for the future might have a more lasting impact on the life chances of children than their current income and consumption. Summarizing data from the Saving for Education, Entrepreneurship, and Downpayment (SEED) Initiative, a quasi-experimental study that is part of a national demonstration of Child Development Accounts (CDAs) in the United States, this paper describes how African-American households engage with one important investment opportunity - college savings accounts for their pre-school children. Combining account monitoring, survey, interview and focus group data, we explore the reasons that many households chose not to open accounts or invest their own money. We offer suggestions for making asset development programs viable for low-income African-American families and their children.     

Wettbewerbsmessung im Bankensektor: alternative Maße — divergierende Ergebnisse

Precise assessment of the competitive conditions is the necessary foundation of numerous stability, productivity and profitability analyses of the banking industry. From a theoretical point of view, a wide range of alternative approaches are available. Nonetheless, the operationalisation of these measures has proved difficult due to regional market conditions, individual business models and generally high data requirements. Considerable divergences and contradictory results are revealed by a comparison of more than 50 studies from four decades. In reference to the resilience and comparability of regulatory inferences, the question remains as to which measure should be favoured in the future.     

The Effect of Bank Credit on Asset Prices: Evidence from the Japanese Real Estate Boom during the 1980s

This paper studies whether bank credit fuels asset prices. Financial deregulation during the 1980s allowed keiretsus to obtain finance publicly and reduce their dependence on banks. Banks that lost these blue-chip customers increased their property lending, and serve as an instrument for the supply of real estate loans. Using this instrument, I find that a 0.01 increase in a prefecture's real estate loans as a share of total loans causes 14–20% higher land inflation compared with other prefectures over the 1981–91 period. The timing of losses of keiretsu customers also coincides with subsequent land inflation in a prefecture.