Assessing the What Is Beautiful Is Good Stereotype and the Influence of Moderately Attractive and Less Attractive Advertising Models on Self-Perception,Ad Attitudes,and Purchase Intentions of 8–13-Year-Old Children

This paper investigates (1) whether the physical attractiveness stereotype applies to children, (2) whether children’s self-perception is influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, (3) whether children’s attitudes towards an ad and buying intentions for a non-beauty-related product are influenced by the attractiveness of an advertising model, and (4) whether age affects (1), (2), and (3). Results of two experimental studies with respectively 8–9-year-old (N?=?75) and 12–13 year old (N?=?57) girls and boys confirm the presence of the physical attractiveness stereotype in children. The presence of a moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) model has a negative influence on general self-worth for 8–9-year-old boys, but not for girls, nor for 12–13-year-old children. Exposure to a moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) model also has a positive influence on perceived physical appearance of 8–9-year-old girls, but this effect does not occur for boys, nor for 12–13-year-olds. The studies also show that moderately attractive (vs. less attractive) models increase attitudes and buying intentions for 8–9-year-olds, but not for 12–13-year-old boys and girls.     

Eclipsing: When Celebrities Overshadow the Brand

This paper applies Gestalt psychology and associative network theory to examine the effect of eclipsing in celebrity endorsement on consumer attitude towards the endorsed brand. Eclipsing occurs when the celebrity overshadows the endorsed brand by dominating in an advertisement and diminishing the associative link between the celebrity and endorsed brand. Three studies take into account match‐up, celebrity attachment, brand familiarity, and the moderating role of eclipsing, through manipulating two levels of eclipsing in advertising: (1) high eclipsing, when the celebrity is the focus, and (2) low eclipsing, when both the celebrity and brand are emphasized. Consumers who have a weak attachment to the celebrity endorser report a more positive brand attitude when they see the celebrity and endorsed brand both emphasized in an advertisement (low eclipsing) than when the celebrity overshadows and dominates the brand (high eclipsing), irrespective of whether consumers perceive the celebrity and brand to match or mismatch. For consumers with strong celebrity attachment, high eclipsing enhances brand attitude, regardless of whether they perceive the celebrity and brand to either match or mismatch. The findings of these studies have significant implications for advertisers and brand managers in the execution of their advertisements featuring endorsements.     

Using a Structural‐Form Model to Analyze the Impact of Home Ownership on Unemployment Duration

It is often found that the impact of home ownership on the hazard rate for leaving unemployment is positive, indicating that home ownership helps workers to leave unemployment for a paid job. However, little emphasis has been given to how such a relationship can be explained. This paper estimates a structural‐form model that allows for self‐selection into home ownership and the risk of home owners losing their property during a spell of unemployment. We find a substantial amount of self‐selection using indirect inference based on a mixed proportional hazards‐rate model and find virtually no impact of home ownership on individual labor market performance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

IS THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE LOGIC OF CORPORATE FINANCE APPLICABLE TO INSURERS? REVIEW AND ANALYSIS

Since the financial crisis of 2008, next to banks, insurers have received increasing attention from researchers and regulators because of their crucial role in the financial system. A key point for a stable insurer is its capital structure, i.e. the choice between equity, debt and provisions in financing its operations. Based on earlier work a quickly developing literature has directly applied capital structure theories (in particular trade-off and pecking order) from corporate finance to insurers’ financing choices. Corporate finance concepts used herein however, are developed for industrial firms. In this paper we provide an overview of the literature on the capital structure of insurers, but contribute by systematically clarifying how to account for the specificities of insurers when transferring the trade-off and pecking-order logic from an industrial to an insurer context. This way, we add several new insights on an insurer's choice between equity, financial debt and provisions. In particular, we are able to explain why, as compared to industrial firms, insurers use less financial debt, and why insurers focus so strongly on self-financing. Finally, we identify multiple avenues for future research.     

Exchange rate pass-through: evidence from the Syrian economy

This paper studies the exchange rate pass-through in the Syrian economy over the period 1990Q1-2009Q4. To this end it constructs a cost of imports indicator which is used in an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach. The findings point to a high and fast exchange rate pass-through effect. As a consequence, Syrian macro-economic performance is very sensitive to international price evolutions as well as depreciations of the Syrian Pound.     

Environmental sustainability in container transport: the attitudes of shippers and forwarders

The transport sector accounts for 25% of the global CO₂ emissions. All firms in the transport industry share a responsibility for this environmental impact. This paper explores, as one of the first, the attitude of both shippers and forwarders, as the main purchasers of transport services, towards environmental sustainability in the sourcing of transport services. Based on a literature review we develop several hypotheses and test those through a survey among shippers and forwarders in the Netherlands. We conclude that shippers focus more on sustainability than forwarders, the size of shippers has a positive influence on the demand for transparency of the environmental performance, explicit sustainability targets have a positive influence on the demand for sustainable solutions and the vast majority of shippers and forwarders expect an increased importance of sustainable purchasing.     

Network brokers or hit makers? Analyzing the influence of incubation on start-up investments

Incubators are a prominent way to support technology based start-ups. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these incubators enhance start-up performance, nor is it known through which mechanisms this would occur. In this paper we test two mechanisms to explain the relationship between incubation and the amount of investments raised by early stage start-ups as performance measure. The ‘hit maker’ mechanism refers to beneficial effects of the direct transfer of resources and organizational or business knowledge from the incubator to the start-up. The ‘network broker’ mechanism refers to the benefits that start-ups enjoy from being connected to external funding sources through the incubator’s networks. We test which of these mechanisms contribute to the performance of early stage start-ups. Our data comes from a unique survey from 935 entrepreneurs with early-stage technology based start-ups in Western Europe and North America. We find that incubators have a positive effect on (1) the amount of funding that start-ups attract and (2) the ability of start-ups to attract funding from formal investors and banks. Moreover, our results provide evidence for the network broker mechanism, but not for the hit maker mechanism.     

Transfers of landowner willingness to accept: A convergent validity and reliability test using choice experiments in two Canadian watersheds

We examined the reliability and validity of transferring estimates of marginal willingness to accept and compensating surplus. In doing so, we used data from two case studies applying choice experiments to elicit landowner preferences for incentive-based wetland conservation programs in two adjacent watersheds in Southern Ontario, Canada (Grand and Upper Thames Rivers in parallel in 2013). The choice experiment data were modeled in willingness to accept space using a generalized multinomial logit. Transfer reliability was investigated by calculating transfer errors, while validity was investigated by testing the equality of utility functions as well as by assessing the similarity of welfare estimates using traditional hypothesis tests and equivalence tests. The main findings are that transfers of willingness to accept are similar to existing transfers of willingness to pay in terms of validity and reliability. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis finds that including demographic variables in the choice model can lead to lower transfer validity though does not substantially affect reliability. Though further research is required, our results suggest that willingness to accept can be transferred as part of policy analyses.     

Some Remarks on Modified FDH

One of the tools in theoretical and empirical work on the measurement of productive efficiency is the socalled Free Disposal Hull (FDH) method. As a result of its very generous character, many of the observations belonging to an evaluated dataset are labeled efficient by this method. Modified FDH, similar in spirit as Andersen and Petersen's modified Data Envelopment Analysis, may thus be used to discriminate between FDH-efficient units. We aim to show why particularly for FDH this method seems quite apt and may be called for as a valuable complementary tool to standard FDH analysis.