Cross-cultural factors in international branding

Abstract

This is the second special issue resulting from the symposium titled ‘The Brand and Its History’. This issue aims at deepening the knowledge of the historical and cultural roots of the origin, uses, and meanings of modern branding. This editorial summarises previous contributions from economic, marketing, and historical literature; presents the main findings of the seven articles included in this issue; and reflects on possible further research.     

Promote or Perish? A brief note on academic social networking sites and academic reputation

ABSTRACT

This commentary explores some of the reputational issues of using academic social networking sites (ASNS) such as ResearchGate, ResearcherID, ORCID, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and Mendeley for academic self-promotion and considers whether the adage of ‘Publish or Perish’ has been recently overshadowed by the new imperative of ‘Promote or Perish’?     

Service Regulations,Input Prices and Export Volumes: Evidence from a Panel of Manufacturing Firms

Using a panel of firm‐level data from Spanish manufacturers, this study shows that better service regulation reduces the price of intermediate inputs paid by downstream firms. The beneficial cost effects of services reforms extend to both large and small‐to‐medium sized corporations (SME’s), but the former tend to enjoy greater gains. This feature also manifests itself in international markets. We find evidence of an input cost channel through which service regulations affect the volume of exports of large manufacturers, while the evidence of such a channel is weaker for SME’s. Our estimates indicate that, from 1991 to 2007, large firms increased their volume of exports by an average of 20 per cent as a result of the direct input cost effect of services reforms, such that the firms that benefited the most typically belonged to industries more dependent on service inputs. Furthermore, convergence to the ‘best practice’ regulatory framework in services would have raised exports at least by an additional nine per cent. We conclude that firm size is relevant for the connection between services reforms, intermediate input prices and export volumes.     

How do extended benefits affect unemployment duration? A regression discontinuity approach

This paper studies a targeted program that extends the maximum duration of unemployment benefits from 30 weeks to 209 weeks in Austria. Sharp discontinuities in treatment assignment at age 50 and at the border between eligible regions and control regions identify the effect of extended benefits on unemployment duration. Results indicate that the duration of job search is prolonged by at least 0.09 weeks per additional week of benefits among men, whereas unemployment duration increases by at least 0.32 weeks per additional week of benefits for women. This finding is consistent with a lower early retirement age applying to women.     

An Empirical Assessment of the Contract Based Exception to the Employment-At-Will Rule

While extensive, the existing literature on the employment-at-will doctrine and its various exceptions has been remarkably uniform. By relying on a discussion of selected court opinions on specific aspects of the doctrine, scholars have focused primarily on normative issues such as what the courts should do when deciding job security disputes, or what plaintiffs/employees and defendants/employers should argue when litigating employment disputes. Our approach and focus are different. Instead of relying on a discussion of selected cases, we rely on a more comprehensive sample of cases. Instead of focusing on normative issues, our goal is to provide a more complete picture of the state of the at-will doctrine as reflected in those cases. Our data should be of interest to legal scholars interested in understanding the characteristics and outcomes of litigated employment-at-will cases. Our data should also be relevant to the current debate among management scholars regarding conflicts that might arise due to aggressive recruitment practices which highlight long term employment opportunities and the realities associated with at-will employment.     

The role of small bettors in price formation in betting exchanges

ABSTRACT

The presence of small bettors in betting exchanges generates mispricing, which can lead to exploitation by informed traders or result in permanent price deviations. This paper shows that mispricing from this source is also dependent upon variables of established relevance such as tournament round, the level of attention to the event, the volume of the betting, and bet type, further confirming these findings by means of cumulative accuracy profile (CAP) curves. It also offers evidence of the relevant role played by the type of device used to place the bet, whereby higher mispricing is observed in live bets placed via a mobile device, which appears to be associated with impulsive betting. This last finding could have practical implications for the regulation of the use of mobile devices to access gambling platforms.     

The business plan as a project: an evaluation of its predictive capability for business success

Although there is extensive research aimed at identifying the main success factors for new ventures, efforts directed at evaluating the real effect of the existence and quality of a business plan on a firm's survival chances have been limited. This study attempts to fill this gap by analyzing to what extent the quality of a business plan, measured according to its economic, financial and organizational viability, constitutes a good predictor of business survival; and how other variables related to the characteristics of the entrepreneur and the business can affect the predictive capability of the model under consideration. Hypotheses are tested using data collected from 2142 service firms. The results show that none of the three variables that evaluate business plan quality (economic, financial and organizational viability) seems to have a determining influence on survival chances. Adding essential characteristics related to the entrepreneur and the business (education and training, experience, kind of motivation, number of employees and start-up capital) does little to increase the model's predictive capabilities.     

Automated Certification for Compliant Cloud-based Business Processes

A key problem in the deployment of large-scale, reliable cloud computing concerns the difficulty to certify the compliance of business processes operating in the cloud. Standard audit procedures such as SAS-70 and SAS-117 are hard to conduct for cloud-based processes. The paper proposes a novel approach to certify the compliance of business processes with regulatory requirements. The approach translates process models into their corresponding Petri net representations and checks them against requirements also expressed in this formalism. Being based on Petri nets, the approach provides well-founded evidence on adherence and, in case of noncompliance, indicates the possible vulnerabilities.     

Pricing equity default swaps under the jump-to-default extended CEV model

Equity default swaps (EDS) are hybrid credit-equity products that provide a bridge from credit default swaps (CDS) to equity derivatives with barriers. This paper develops an analytical solution to the EDS pricing problem under the jump-to-default extended constant elasticity of variance model (JDCEV) of Carr and Linetsky. Mathematically, we obtain an analytical solution to the first passage time problem for the JDCEV diffusion process with killing. In particular, we obtain analytical results for the present values of the protection payoff at the triggering event, periodic premium payments up to the triggering event, and the interest accrued from the previous periodic premium payment up to the triggering event, and we determine arbitrage-free equity default swap rates and compare them with CDS rates. Generally, the EDS rate is strictly greater than the corresponding CDS rate. However, when the triggering barrier is set to be a low percentage of the initial stock price and the volatility of the underlying firm’s stock price is moderate, the EDS and CDS rates are quite close. Given the current movement to list CDS contracts on organized derivatives exchanges to alleviate the problems with the counterparty risk and the opacity of over-the-counter CDS trading, we argue that EDS contracts with low triggering barriers may prove to be an interesting alternative to CDS contracts, offering some advantages due to the unambiguity, and transparency of the triggering event based on the observable stock price.     

Functional dependence and productive dependence of SMEs

This article analyzes the quality of business structure from a macroeconomic perspective in the regional context. In addition to “traditional” variables such as innovation, internationalization, or entrepreneurial collaboration, new variables have been introduced: functional dependence and productive dependence. Two different economic territories have been chosen within the Spanish economy: the province of Barcelona (high relative income per capita) and the province of Seville (low relative income per capita). We find it is possible to distinguish two types of firms: a) “product-maker” firms (mainly located in advanced areas) and b) “market-maker” firms (mainly located in less developed areas).