Marketing the use of headgear in high contact sports

High contact sports have gained popularity among consumers, who often seek thrills and the feeling of invincibility by risking their well-being. One major health risk associated with these sports is head injuries, including trauma, concussion, and sleep disruption. In this research, we investigate the effect of consumers’ product choice difficulty on their health risk assessments. We illustrate a novel mediating route by documenting how and when choice maximization can help consumers make the optimal choice when faced with the many products available in the market. To aid their decisions, consumers require communication about the health benefits of the product (first-stage boundary condition) but not at the expense of reducing their game-playing enjoyment (second-stage boundary condition). The paper concludes with contributions to and implications for theory and practice and a research agenda to guide future inquiries in this under-researched area.     

Testing for Persistence of Profits’ Differences Across Firms

We review the logic and implications underlying both static and dynamic models of competition, and associated tests of competitive effectiveness. Complications arising due to innovation, mergers and cyclical factors are discussed. Points raised in the theoretical discussion are illustrated with case histories and estimates for a number of US and UK companies. The empirical analysis tests a larger set of models than has been used in most previous work, and uses longer time series of company profits. We conclude that the patterns of profits observed in both countries are consistent with a larger and more complicated set of models of the competitive process than has been assumed until now, and that further work remains to be done in clarifying both why some firms are persistently profitable, and the nature of the ‘shocks’ that appear to produce structural breaks in the time series of companies’ profits.     

COVID-19 profit warnings: Delivering bad news in a time of crisis

Profit warnings (large negative earnings surprises) are important corporate reporting documents for delivering bad news and a distinctive corporate communication genre. The 2020 COVID-19 exogenous shock provides a unique worldwide crisis context for company disclosure of bad news.The research develops a genre-based typology/analytical framework for assessing COVID-19 profit warnings’ quality comprising: (1) Four profit warning/forecast quality characteristics and (2) Eight profit warning/forecast disclosures. For a sample of 160 profit-warning documents, the research manually analyses their content, culminating in a disclosure quality score/index. The research tests a model of the factors influencing disclosure quality.The research finds companies regress to silence when investors most need guidance and poor-quality disclosure, coy ambiguous language, possibly reflecting minimal regulatory guidance on this form of corporate report. Two variables are significant – Profit warnings disclosed following Financial Reporting Council guidance are of higher quality and quality varies by industry. The paper finds faux disclosure and the performativity of disclosure, which may allow boards of directors to tick-box compliance with market abuse regulations. The paper concludes with recommendations for policymakers on improvements required to enhance the quality of these highly important corporate documents.     

Is transfer pricing strictness deterring profit shifting within multinationals? Empirical evidence from Europe

This paper examines the extent to which the introduction and tightening of transfer pricing frameworks deter income shifting strategies by European multinational companies. To do so, we have built an index that measures the transfer pricing framework strictness by host country and year. Then, tax rate differentials are used to capture profit-shifting incentives and are interacted with the strictness index to assess whether the host country's transfer pricing framework impacts profit-shifting behaviour. The index is shown to increase significantly over the sample period, indicating that the scrutiny of related party transactions by European governments has increased over the period 2001–2009. Using a sample of European foreign subsidiaries, the results suggest that the stricter the transfer pricing framework the lower the tax rate difference sensitivity of reported earnings. This indicates that tightening the transfer pricing framework is capable of dissuading multinational companies from shifting profits from higher- to lower-tax countries.     

Spatial clustering of time series via mixture of autoregressions models and Markov random fields

Time series data arise in many medical and biological imaging scenarios. In such images, a time series is obtained at each of a large number of spatially dependent data units. It is interesting to organize these data into model‐based clusters. A two‐stage procedure is proposed. In stage 1, a mixture of autoregressions (MoAR) model is used to marginally cluster the data. The MoAR model is fitted using maximum marginal likelihood (MMaL) estimation via a minorization–maximization (MM) algorithm. In stage 2, a Markov random field (MRF) model induces a spatial structure onto the stage 1 clustering. The MRF model is fitted using maximum pseudolikelihood (MPL) estimation via an MM algorithm. Both the MMaL and MPL estimators are proved to be consistent. Numerical properties are established for both MM algorithms. A simulation study demonstrates the performance of the two‐stage procedure. An application to the segmentation of a zebrafish brain calcium image is presented.     

中国中小企业创新绩效空间溢出效应实证研究

本文以马克思分工协作理论为基础,重新审视了中国中小企业创新绩效的空间溢出效应。在具体的实证研究中,本文采用2003~2008年中国中小企业的省级面板数据,用空间自相关模型和空间误差模型从工业产值利税率角度考察了中小企业创新绩效的差异。研究发现,要素投入对于创新绩效的贡献不显著,劳动力存在“去技术化”,但是创新活动的空间溢出效应很显著,特别是东部地区要显著优于中西部地区;企业规模差异对于创新绩效有显著影响。因此,本文建议鼓励中小企业地理上的集聚并实行严格的专利保护制度。     

Gift card program incrementality and cannibalization: The effect on revenue and profit

Many retailers have not measured the magnitude of cannibalization or its impact on revenue and profit when existing customers use a gift card for purchases they would have made without it, particularly when the card was purchased through a 3rd party at a discount up to 15%. We conducted a survey among gift card redeemers of a national casual dining restaurant chain to determine how the gift card affected their purchase behavior. We used this information, combined with operating margin, to model the impact of three different gift card discount scenarios on firm revenue and profit. Although the revenue effect was positive under all scenarios, the same was not true for profit. The profit was much lower than anticipated, even in the best case scenario, and was negative in the worst case scenario.     

我国公司交叉上市行为研究

公司基于诸如融资需求、提高公司治理和管理水平、提升公司国际知名度和品牌价值等多种因素的考虑,纷纷进入国际或国内资本市场。而各大主要证券交易所出于自身利益的考虑,不断吸引优质潜在上市公司到海外上市,从而推动国内公司交叉上市。深入分析国内公司交叉上市的动因及现状,对我国潜在的交叉上市公司吸取历史经验和教训、进而提升这些企业的价值具有非常重要的现实意义。     

A behavioral urban recreation site choice model

Abstract

A multinomial logit site choice model (MNL) derived by utility maximization and based on reported travel distance and perceived site attributes was estimated for 21 forest‐related urban recreation sites in Chicago. Reported travel distance was the dominant explanatory variable. Perceived site attributes included stimulating/educational, quiet, safe, and forested. When estimated for subsets of the 21 sites, the coefficient for travel distance remained stable in sign, magnitude, and significance, while coefficients for “quiet” and “forested” changed in sign and significance. This supports the application of travel cost models at the urban scale, but suggests that site choice criteria may be sensitive to variables not included in the study.     

旅游产品的差异性与城市旅游中心地的区域结构

现代城市的发展不但促进了许多新的旅游中心地的产生，而且形成了不少新的城市旅游中心地的区域结构。这是现代旅游产业集聚的一大特征。本文把旅游消费者行为中关于多样化偏好和追求效用最大化的经济学理论，运用于城市旅游中心地的周边旅游目的地的区位结构研究。全文从消费者对一个周边旅游目的地做单一往返旅游、对全部周边旅游目的地分别做单一往返旅游以及对全部周边旅游目的地做链路旅游等三个方面来分析其总消费效用最大化问题，最后求得城市旅游中心地在总消费效用最大化前提下最优的两种基本区域结构。