Justifications Offered,Questions Asked,and Linguistic Patterns in Deceptive and Truthful Monetary Interactions

In this study, we investigate verbal production in people playing a monetary negotiation game who freely chose to lie or tell the truth. Participants were randomly assigned to the role of allocator or recipient; the allocator divided a small amount of money and was tasked with convincing the recipient to accept their share. Allocators were free to lie, and 30 % did. Our goal is to investigate the use of justifications, questions, and linguistics to assess if these factors differ between those telling the truth, lying by omission, and lying by commission. We find that liars were more likely to use some types of justifications, while truth-tellers were more likely to assert that their offer was fair. Recipient questions were unrelated to successful detection of deception, and linguistic patterns were largely non-significant, with the exception of liars using more negations. We also find no connection between emotions felt by allocators (more guilt for liars) and linguistic patterns, replicating past results. We discuss how these results mesh with past findings, offer discussion about what this means for the field, and consider where research on linguistic differences between liars and truth-tellers should go next.     

Investment banking in the gulf: A case study of investcorp in bahrain

Investcorp is a low-profile investment banking company that was originally founded on the tiny island of Bahrain in the Arabian Gulf. Although little known to the general public, the company is a major player in North American and European investment markets. This case study presents a profile of the company, its founder, Nemir Kirdar, and his three “founding friends.” It relates details of the company's successes and explores how these were achieved. As most of the original Management Committee members are preparing to retire, efforts are being made to ensure the continuing prosperity of the company. This requires the risky step of appointing an almost completely new management team. Readers are invited to reflect on the likely success of this strategy and whether Investcorp's focus on North America and Europe remains appropriate in a global marketplace.     

A mechanism for reducing small-business customer waiting-line dissatisfaction

This paper presents a technique whereby a small business (i.e. a one-cash register operation) can reduce customer waiting-line time dissatisfaction in the purchase stage of the consumer decision process. When the queue length reaches or exceeds critical value N^*, another employee is temporarily transferred to the role of ‘server assistant’ to increase the effective service rate; when the queue length eventually decreases to a second critical value N_*, the server assistant returns to primary duties. An optimal customer-reneging decision model is utilized to model the reneging character of the queue. Simulation experiments confirm key hypotheses concerning the behaviour of the queue and compare the effectiveness of a computed (N^*, N_*) policy with that of alternatives.     

The Wealth Effects of Land Acquisition

We examine the wealth effects of land acquisition using on a unique set of public land auction data in Singapore. The results of our event study provide evidence of positive excess returns associated with announcements of successful land acquisition. The evidence also supports the hypothesis that the excess return is related positively to the ability of the successful bidder to create value from the development process. In addition, the magnitude of the excess gains is related positively to the level of uncertainty in a development and inversely to the propensity of the winning bidder engaging in non-wealth maximization activities.     

Marketing supplementary food products in LDCs: A case study in Morocco

Developing country governments as well as a number of international agencies have become directly involved in the past two decades in the production and marketing of supplementary food products. This article discusses the Moroccan government's involvement in introducing a weaning food targeted for elaborates on the factors which contributed contributedm to the failure of this and other similar ventures, while drawing attention to the important low-income Moroccan children. It role that marketing plays in launching socially desirable food products in developing country environments.     

Infotainment and the Moral Obligations of the Multimedia Conglomerate

When the Federal Communications Commission considered revamping its policies, many political activists argued that media conglomerates had failed to meet their duties to protect freedom of speech. Moveon’s dispute with CBS over its proposed Superbowl advertisement and Michael Moore’s quarrel over distribution of his documentary, Fahrenheit 911, are cases in point. In matters of pure entertainment, the public expect companies to avoid offensive programming. The press, on the other hand, may well be forced to offend some audience members in order to create a viable forum for political dissent. As journalism and entertainment are increasingly inter-linked, an in depth moral analysis of the media corporation and its obligations becomes increasingly important. I explore Kantian, Utilitarian, and Rawlsian analyses of corporate obligation in the aforementioned cases. I then examine whether or not these results suggest anything more generally about the sorts of mission statements and ethical policies that ought to be endorsed by media conglomerates and whether non-business institutions also require changes. Ultimately, I suggest that at a minimum, media institutions should view the duty to promote the representation of diverse views in a democracy as an imperfect moral and civic duty rather than making programming decisions solely by reference to profit. Ideally, greater access to media access should not be increased for the most powerful unless doing so at the same time increases free speech opportunities for those who currently have the least access.     

Sponsor Backing in Asian REIT IPOs

This paper tests the significance of sponsors in REIT IPOs viz-a-viz quality certification, signal of firm value, and commitment to alleviate moral hazard concerns. We model the REIT pricing and sponsor share retention decisions within a simultaneous decision framework as motivated by Grinblatt and Hwang (Journal of Finance 44:393–420, 1989). We find positive and significant bidirectional relationship between the fraction of shares held by the sponsor in IPO and underpricing which is consistent with Grinblatt and Hwang’s (Journal of Finance 44:393–420, 1989) signaling model. Our results also support the commitment hypothesis that developers that spin off REITs tend to hold more shares at IPO, possibly to compensate investors for the potential moral hazard problems in the aftermarket.     

Women entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa: An institutional theory analysis from a social marketing point of view

This paper takes an international marketing (IM) approach to the study of women entrepreneurs (WEs) in sub-Saharan Africa by examining factors in the environments in which WEs operate. The goal is to understand better how environmental barriers of many types impact the efforts of WEs. Using institutional theory-driven analysis, findings from a wide range of literature are integrated, with special attention to issues of the social legitimacy of women as entrepreneurs. Results of this study demonstrate that WEs in sub-Saharan Africa face a daunting array of challenges arising from the socio-cultural, economic, legal, political, and technological environments in which they live. Moreover, unfavourable conditions in local regulatory, normative, and cognitive systems place additional burdens on women who desire to become entrepreneurs or to expand an entrepreneurial business. In order to address these gender-specific problems, social marketing is recommended with the goals of (1) changing social beliefs, attitudes and behaviours that negatively affect Wes, and (2) improving conditions in institutional systems and market environments. Recommendations in the paper suggest how to bring about changes in attitudes towards women, work and their independent enterprise. In conclusion, directions for future scholarly research are identified.     

Comparisons of linear regression and survival analysis using single and mixture distributions approaches in modelling LGD

Estimating the recovery rate and recovery amount has become important in consumer credit due to the new Basel Accord regulation and the increase in the number of defaulters as a result of the recession. We compare linear regression and survival analysis models for modelling recovery rates and recovery amounts, in order to predict the loss given default (LGD) for unsecured consumer loans or credit cards. We also look at the advantages and disadvantages of using single and mixture distribution models for estimating these quantities.