The impact of scale effects on the prevailing internet-based banking model in the US

Internet-based banks use a technology-intensive production process that may benefit from scale effects as they grow larger. This article analyzes whether the predominant Internet-primary bank in the USA generates technology-based economies of scale in the period 2002–2010. There is evidence of both favorable and adverse technology-based scale effects. As the leading Internet-primary bank gets larger, the financial performance gap with traditional banks shrinks while some of its critical competitive advantages wear down. The results suggest that unless the prevailing Internet-primary bank preserves the distinctive advantages of the Internet-based business model as it improves financial performance, it might end up converging with its branching competitors.     

Modelling of customer retention in multi-format retailing

The objective of this study is to offer a model of the formation process of loyalty towards the services provided by retail food companies. Specifically, the case of a Spanish company, which is a leader in the retail food market is taken. The company operates using different retail formats, and it has customers with various levels of loyalty and behavioural patterns. The research tries to determine implications for managing the loyalty towards the company. Different customer groups are analysed. Four working hypotheses are proposed and contrasted through the formulation and estimation of two theoretical models or conceptual maps. After the empirical analysis, the proposed models show a good fit, and the formulated hypotheses are confirmed. By using this kind of modelling, the companies that operate under the considered framework may reach significant conclusions prior to making decisions in the area of customer retention.     

Trade,scale or social capital? Technological progress in poor and rich countries

Endogenous growth theory suggests scale and trade as the determinants of total factor productivity (TFP) growth. The literature on social capital suggests that the levels of trust and participation in societies may affect cooperation and innovation. While there is evidence of the role of trade and inconclusive evidence on the role of social capital, previous studies have generally omitted two factors, out of the three mentioned, used small sample sizes and emphasized economic growth rather than technological progress. Our study addresses these shortcomings. We find robust evidence of the role of trade in fostering technological progress which is invariant to TFP proxies and independent of the debate on measuring TFP. Moreover, there is no clear role for scale, and a country rate of TFP growth seems to increase the most the more the country trades with dynamic economies that are different from. We uncover a positive effect of social capital, which is more significant in richer countries, suggesting that other characteristics, such as institutional quality, may be complementary to social capital. The paper's results are robust to different specification and estimation methods.     

The US Dollar and the Euro as International Currencies

For many decades the US dollar has remained unchallenged as the world’s dominant international currency. What is behind its persistent pre-eminence in the international monetary system and can this be expected to last? Could the euro rival or even surpass the dollar as the leading currency? If it did, what would be the consequences for Euroland?      

Corporate identity management and employees’ responses

Main goals in this study are to analyse the effects of corporate identity management (CIM) on the employees’ responses, and the moderating effects of two employee personality traits: proactive personality and resistance to change. Two hundred and ninety-three branch managers in the banking sector in Spain participated in the study, and their responses were analysed through structural equation modelling. Results show that organizational identification is a key variable to explain the CIM effects on employees’ responses. Moreover, employees’ proactive personality and resistance to change exert a moderating influence on the way identification leads to extra-role behaviours. Human resource practices should take into account that proactive employees are more prone to externalize their identification by spreading positive WOM. Besides, identification with the organization will lead to loyalty, especially in employees with low resistance to change.     

Energy Informatics

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.     

Disney in Spain (1930–1935)

Abstract

This article looks at the ways in which the global brand par excellence – Mickey Mouse – spread throughout Spain in the early 1930s. In tracing the creative and commercial interplay with the Mickey character we show how the Disney Company failed to obtain any significant intellectual property rights in its own name or obtain a sympathetic hearing by Spanish patent and trademark officials. Yet this was undoubtedly a period of significant global development of the Disney brand. With the attempt to explain such an apparent contradictory situation, this article highlights the importance of the management of particular struggles in the flux of desires, appropriation and investments that contributed to the emergence of the elusive ‘merchandising right’.     

Inconsistency and over‐determination in neo‐Kaleckian growth models: A note

This short note argues that the canonical neo‐Kaleckian growth model does not yield a balanced growth path due to the absence of an inbuilt mechanism by which desired and actual rates of capital accumulation are equalized. Introducing non‐generating capacity autonomous demand does not solve such inconsistency. Contrary to what Lavoie ( 2016 ) claims, we show that the latter is also unable to bring capacity utilization to its normal level. In light of recent contributions (e.g., Nikiforos, 2013, 2016 ), we suggest that making normal capacity utilization an endogenous variable is an alternative better suited to deal with the issue.     

Productivity and efficiency with discrete variables and quadratic cost function

We propose an index of productivity based on a quadratic cost function and developed for discrete data including technical and allocative inefficiency, jointly with technical change and returns to scale, as determinants of Total Factor Productivity. This new index is applied to Spanish stevedoring industry so as to identify the sources of change in the productivity of a multiproductive activity, where some companies do not produce some of the outputs. In this context, the functional quadratic form and the productivity index proposed prove particularly useful.