Using Writing as a Tool for Learning Economics

Suggestions are offered on how to use writing as a way of involving students as active participants in the learning process, with sample assignments included.     

Improving customer-focused marketing capabilities and firm financial performance via marketing exploration and exploitation

Evidence within the marketing literature has shown that marketing capabilities are important drivers of firm performance. However, very little is known about how firms improve their marketing capabilities via the embedding of new market knowledge. Organizational learning theory provides us with a theoretical lens through which we can examine how existing customer-focused marketing capabilities may be improved and new customer-focused marketing capabilities may be created via marketing exploitation and exploration capabilities. In addition, this study investigates whether ambidexterity in marketing exploration and exploitation exists and finds that firms cannot do both at high levels without risking a negative impact on customer-focused marketing capabilities. This study also presents findings demonstrating how improving the two customer-focused marketing capabilities in our study, brand management and customer relationship management, impacts objective financial performance.     

Nominal shocks in monopolistically competitive markets: An experiment

A market experiment examines the capacity of price and information frictions to explain real responses to nominal price shocks. Results indicate that both price and information frictions impede the response to a nominal shock, as predicted by the standard dynamic adjustment models. Observed adjustment delays, however, far exceed predicted levels. Results of a pair of subsequent treatments indicate that a combination of announcing the shock privately to all sellers (rather than publicly) and a failure of many sellers to best respond to their expectations explains the observed adjustment inertia.     

Scanning the internal environment: Impossible precept or neglected art?

A wave of recent empirical studies draws our attention to the view that successful firms display a heightened alertness and responsiveness to environmental changes (e.g. Hooley and Lynch 1985). Also to be found is a plethora of normative expositions of the organisational systems, techniques and procedures that can be used to generate the data and analyses that provide the basis for knowledge of the firm's market environment (Brownlie 1987).

Students of marketing may be forgiven for congratulating themselves that the merit of one of the basic maxims of the subject is at last achieving widespread recognition. The author would just counsel a moment of caution. In this paper he argues that the popular thrust towards environmental awareness may bring about an overriding concern with the environmental appraisal, to the detriment of its indispensable obverse, the internal appraisal.

The writer reminds us that survival and prosperity are also determined by the match the firm achieves between its distinctive competences and market opportunities. In doing so he calls for a reawakening of interest in what is in danger of becoming the Cinderella function of strategic marketing, i.e. the internal appraisal.

The paper discusses the execution of the internal appraisal and its role in the overall strategic management of the firm. It introduces a conceptual framework which integrates the tasks of defining, identifying and evaluating the firm's strengths and weaknesses. It also looks at functional areas of the firm and gives examples of the strengths and weaknesses to be found in each.     

Research in accounting for income taxes

This paper comprehensively reviews the Accounting for Income Taxes (AFIT) literature. We begin by identifying four distinctive aspects of AFIT and briefly covering the rules surrounding AFIT. We then review the existing studies in detail and offer suggestions for future research. We emphasize the research questions that have been addressed (most of which relate to whether the tax accounts are used to manage earnings and whether the tax accounts are priced by equity market participants). We also highlight areas that have not received much research attention and that warrant future analysis.     

THE ROLE OF LOGISTICS MANAGERS IN THE CROSS‐FUNCTIONAL IMPLEMENTATION OF SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

There is confusion about the domain of supply chain management, and the functions and processes that should be included. In this paper, we describe the key supply chain management processes, the role of logistics managers in each of these processes, and what the logistics function gains from this involvement.     

The U.S. Phillips curve: The case for asymmetry

Recent statistical rejections of convexity in the Phillips curve have been uninformative because researchers have employed measures of business cycle gaps that are inconsistent with the implications of convexity. The paper shows that identifying convexity in the Phillips curve will become even more difficult if policymakers are successful in avoiding large boom and bust cycles. To the extent that convexity in the Phillips curve is used as a rationale for stabilization policy, our findings present an interesting conundrum because successful policymakers will further weaken the empirical evidence on which such policies are based.     

Intra-Industry Effects of Earnings Restatements Due to Accounting Irregularities

Abstract:  This paper investigates the intra-industry effects of earnings restatements due to accounting irregularities. We detect a significant contagion effect for rival firms whose cash flow characteristics are similar to those of the restating firm. The restatement doesn't seem to influence all the firms in the industry or firms that have a high probability of involving the same type of accounting irregularity as the restating firm does. We do not detect any competitive effect; nor do we find a significant change in the implied cost of equity capital of the rival firms, suggesting that the contagion effect is due to the revision in the expected short-run future earnings of the rival firms.     

Safety of nonfederally insured versus federally insured credit unions in the United States

The recent failure of the Rhode Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation has heightened the debate about mandating federal deposit insurance for credit unions. To date, however, opponents of and proponents for required federal deposit insurance for credit unions have relied primarily on anecdotal evidence to support their positions. The objective of this study is to provide empirical evidence concerning differences in the behavior of federally insured versus nonfederally insured credit unions in the United States in 1989. Results suggest that the problems occurring in Rhode Island are not symptomatic of widespread differences in the safety of the two groups of credit unions throughout the country.