How does the Funding Status of Defined Benefit Pension Plans Affect Investment Decisions of Firms in the United States?

We investigate whether the flexibility in making contributions towards defined benefit pension plans sponsored by firms in the United States allows managers to save cash and increase investments. Firms invest more at higher levels of pension deficit, defined as pension benefit obligations less pension assets, and scaled by total assets. At the median level (90^th percentile) of pension deficit, investments increase by 6.7 cents (9.4 cents) for every dollar increase in cash. As the pension deficit increases, firms deviate more from the predicted level of investment. These findings suggest that the incremental investments are more likely to represent overinvestment by managers. Our results are robust to alternative model specifications and endogeneity concerns that may arise if investments are jointly determined with the funding policy of pension plans and the firm's target cash level. We repeat our main analysis for the United Kingdom and also find for that country that, at a fixed cash level, total investment increases as pension deficit increases.     

Legal Treatment of Abuse of Dominance in Indian Competition Law: Adopting an Effects-Based Approach

Review of Industrial Organization - Abuse of dominance investigations around the world are often form-based, primarily centred on the pre-requisite of dominance. This may lead to false positives or...     

Professionalising gender and development expertise: innovations in capacity‐building and credentialing

Gender training does not adequately prepare gender and development professionals (GDPs) to undertake robust gender integration of development and humanitarian assistance (D&H) policies and programmes and limits their ability to impact gender equity and equality and development overall. In particular, GDPs lack sector‐specific and applied technical skills in gender analysis and integration. These limitations undermine GDPs’ own performance and their credibility with employers and colleagues who rely on them for professional guidance in gender integration. To address these shortcomings and advance the field of gender and D&H, this note describes a new model of gender capacity‐building that introduces three innovations: (1) sector‐specific, job‐related and outcome‐based gender analysis and integration competencies, (2) a professional development capacity‐building short course based on the competencies and applications to D&H policies and programmes and (3) a professional credential that recognizes possession of these critical competencies.     

Domestic violence and women's autonomy in developing countries: theory and evidence

Abstract This paper sets out a simple non‐cooperative model of resource allocation within the household in developing countries that incorporates domestic violence as a vehicle for enhancing bargaining power. We demonstrate that the extent of domestic violence faced by women is not necessarily declining in their reservation utilities, or necessarily increasing in their spouses’. Using the National Family Health Survey data of India for 1998–99, we isolate the effect of domestic violence on female autonomy, taking into account the possible endogeneity of domestic violence through the choice of appropriate instruments. We provide some evidence for the evolutionary theory of domestic violence, which argues that such violence stems from the jealousy caused by paternity uncertainty in our evolutionary past. The findings have strong policy implications suggesting that it will take more than an improvement in women’s employment options to address the problem of spousal violence.     

Determinants of cost efficiencies in the mutual fund industry

We evaluate determinants of cost efficiencies in the U.S. mutual fund industry for 1998-2003. Our empirical results show that cost increases in this industry have been less than proportional to increases in assets. We find that funds without a 12b-1 plan show larger economies of scale than funds with a 12b-1 plan; institutional funds show greater economies of scale than do retail funds; and that fund families that are more focused in their investment objectives reap benefits of lower fund management costs than do fund families that are more diversified in their investment objectives.     

Analysis of regional productivity with capital as a quasi-fixed factor

Most existing studies of regional productivity growth do not incorporate the effect of variations in capacity utilization on changes in output. By failing to do so, their factor productivity estimates are biased. To overcome this shortcoming, we adjust multifactor productivity growth measure for changes in capacity utilization. Our technique recognizes that capital is a quasi-fixed factor which implies that capital in the short run can be either under- or over-utilized by a firm. Our results from 1974 to 1978 show that capacity adjusted multifactor productivity growth measure exceeds capacity unadjusted multifactor productivity growth measure for the nine census divisions. The bias in the capacity unadjusted measure of multifactor productivity growth is approximately 8 percent in East North Central and over 33 percent in Mountain. We find that the aggregate factor productivity growth is slowest in the traditional manufacturing belt (Middle Atlantic and East North Central divisions). The level of aggregate factor productivity in the manufacturing belt, however, is almost 33 percent higher than in regions in the south.     

Mnemonics in marketing: a pedagogical tool

The popular mnemonic techniques are defined, classified, and described. Empirical evidence is cited supporting the effectiveness of mnemonic techniques in a variety of learning contexts. It is explained why mnemonics are effective. Then, a particular mnemonic technique, the first letter mnemonic, is selected to illustrate how the topic of questionnaire design can be taught using mnemonics. The use of mnemonics in classroom teaching is discussed with specific reference to teaching marketing research and other marketing courses.     

Marketing research: A state-of-the-art review and directions for the twenty-first century

This article provides observations on the state of the art in marketing research during 1987–1997. As such, it updates the earlier state-of-the-art review by Malhotra (1988), which won theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) Best Article Award. The primary thrust of articles published in theJournal of Marketing Research during 1987–1997 is reviewed to determine important areas of research. In each of these areas, the authors summarize recent developments, highlight the state of the art, offer some critical observations, and identify directions for future research. They present a cross-classification of various techniques and subject areas, and make some observations on the applications of these techniques to address specific substantive and methodological issues in marketing research. The article concludes with some general directions for marketing research in the twenty-first century. Naresh K. Malhotra is Regents’ Professor in the DuPree College of Management at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America. In an article by Wheatley and Wilson (1987 AMA Educators’ Proceedings), he was ranked number one in the country based on articles published in theJournal of Marketing Research during 1980–1985. He also holds the all-time record for the maximum number of publications in theJournal of Health Care Marketing. He is ranked number one based on publications in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS) since its inception through Volume 23, 1995. He is also number one based on publications inJAMS during the 10-year period 1986–1995. He has published more than 75 articles in major refereed journals including theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Health Care Marketing, and leading journals in statistics, management science, and psychology. He was chairman of the Academy of Marketing Science Foundation from 1996 to 1998, president of the Academy of Marketing Science from 1994 to 1996, and chairman of the Board of Governors from 1990 to 1992. He is a Distinguished Fellow of the Academy and Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. Mark Peterson is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Arlington. His research interests include methods, affect, international marketing, and quality of life. His work has been published in theInternational Marketing Review, theJournal of Business Research, and theJournal of Macromarketing. He is on the editorial review board for theJournal of Macromarketing. Susan Bardi Kleiser is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Texas at Arlington. She holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Cincinnati. Her research interests include consumer decision making, product management, international marketing, marketing ethics, and marketing research and modeling techniques. Her research has appeared inResearch in Marketing, Advances in Consumer Research, and several proceedings.