Global online marketplace: a cross‐cultural comparison of website quality

This study used Loiacono’s WebQual^TM scale to compare 278 US and 347 Korean Internet users in terms of their perceptions of retail website quality. The results of the study suggested that the dimensionality of website quality was not consistent across the two samples. This study also examined which dimensions of website quality influenced shoppers’ satisfaction with the site and purchase intention. The findings indicated that the relationship between website quality dimensions and the two dependent variables varied between the two groups.     

Essential supremum and essential maximum with respect to random preference relations

In the first part of the paper, we study concepts of supremum and maximum as subsets of a topological space X$X$ endowed by preference relations. Several rather general existence theorems are obtained for the case where the preferences are defined by countable semicontinuous multi-utility representations. In the second part of the paper, we consider partial orders and preference relations “lifted” from a metric separable space X$X$ endowed by a random preference relation to the space L⁰(X)$L^0\left(X\right)$ of X$X$-valued random variables. We provide an example of application of the notion of essential maximum to the problem of the minimal portfolio super-replicating an American-type contingent claim under transaction costs.     

Much ado about making money: the impact of disclosure,news and rumors on the formation of security market prices over time

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - This article develops an agent-based model of security market pricing process, capable to capture main stylised facts. It features collective...     

On bubbling dynamics generated by a stochastic model of herd behavior

This paper suggests a class of stochastic collective learning processes exhibiting very irregular behavior. In particular, there are multimodal long run distributions. Some of these modes may vanish as the population size increases. This may be thought of as “bubbles” persistent for a finite range of population sizes but disappearing in the limit. The limit distribution proves to be a discontinuous function of parameters determining the learning process. This gives rise to another type of “bubbles”: limit outcomes corresponding to small perturbations of parameters are different. Since an agent's decision rule involves imitation of the majority choice in a random sample of other members of the population, the resulting collective dynamics exhibit “herding” or “epidemic” features. RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to two anonymous referees for the comments and suggestions. Correspondence to: L. Gaio     

Optimal Incentive Contracts for Loss‐Averse Managers: Stock Options versus Restricted Stock Grants

This paper provides an explanation for the widespread use of stock option grants in executive compensation. It shows that the optimal incentive contract for loss‐averse managers must contain a substantial portion of stock options even when it should consist exclusively of stock grants for “classical” risk‐averse managers. The paper also provides an explanation for the drastic increase in the risk‐adjusted level of CEO compensations over the past two decades and argues that more option‐based compensation should be used in firms with higher cash flow volatility and in industries with a higher degree of heterogeneity among firms.     

No-arbitrage criteria for financial markets with transaction costs and incomplete information

This note deals with criteria of absence of arbitrage opportunities for an investor acting in a market with frictions and having a limited access to the information flow. We develop a mathematical scheme covering major models of financial markets with transaction costs and prove several results including a criterion for the robust no-arbitrage property and a hedging theorem.