Antecedents and outcomes of digital influencer endorsement: An exploratory study

The advertising and marketing literature have established that celebrity endorsements constitute an effective way to enhance attitudes toward brands and increase purchase intents. However, there are no relevant studies on digital influencers. This study addresses the research gap by examining the effect of digital influencers' attractiveness and the effect of the congruence between a digital influencer and a brand on consumer attitudes and purchase intentions. By applying structural equation modeling to a sample of 307 followers of digital influencers, a model was tested and group analysis was performed for two categories (“entertainment & video games” and “fashion & beauty”). The results show that both brand attitudes and purchase intentions are influenced by the digital influencer's attractiveness (which includes both likeability and familiarity) and by the congruence between the digital influencer and the brand. This study makes several contributions to both theory and practice, which are highlighted in this paper.     

Economic mobility along the business cycle. The case of Peru

The performance of Latin American countries in reducing poverty and expanding the middle class has been remarkable. By taking a close look at the Peruvian experience, we examine how this aggregate behavior relates to business cycle conditions and whether different population groups share this behavior. We find that social mobility is cyclical; it decreases in recessions but increases with strong economic growth. The reduction in poverty in Peru appears to be the result of a sustained increase in the poverty exit rate together with a prolonged decrease in the poverty entry rate. These results hold among heterogeneous groups and are particularly marked for households regarded as initially disadvantaged.     

Improving an outpatient clinic utilization using decision analysis-based patient scheduling

This study presents a predictive model to be used in scheduling patients in an urban outpatient clinic. The model is based upon actual patient characteristics from a physical therapy clinic within an urban health and wellness center situated in a public university. A number of reported patients' characteristics such as age, education level, distance from the clinic, historical attendance records, etc. were examined to determine if they significantly impacted the patients' missing scheduled appointments (no-shows.) Decision tree analysis was used to develop a model that assessed the likelihood of a patient's no-show, using key patient characteristics and attendance records. Such a model can be used to assist with scheduling patients in an outpatient clinic, while attempting to increase the clinic's overall utilization. Four tree growing criteria were examined to develop the model with the strongest predictive power. Predictive power of each method was assessed by using the entire dataset as well as using split sampling. The results were then compared with those of a Bayesian networks model and a neural networks model. In addition, the trade-off between the selected decision tree model's predictive power versus simplicity of the associated classification rules was examined. We also assessed the impact of various levels of overbooking on the clinic's utilization when using patients' schedules based on the predictive model.     

Monetary policy rules with PID control features: evidence from the UK,USA and EU

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the extent to which the monetary policy operations of three major central banks can be regarded as an application of Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) control rules. The paper outlines the general PID framework and estimates a series of dynamic models to identify how interest rate policy adjustments are affected by the rate of inflation and the level of macroeconomic activity. The paper examines data for the UK, the USA and the Eurozone. The results suggest that the PID rules can provide a useful theoretical and empirical framework for estimating central bank responses to the inflation and macroeconomic activity variables by improving the explanatory power of the Taylor rule model and determining the effect of the parameters.     

Pedagogical and technological replanning: a successful case study on integration and transversal skills for engineering freshmen

Replanning is often used to optimize results of an activity in an ever changing world. To address the challenge of preparing future engineers for success, a special course was created for all engineering freshmen of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, in Portugal. Presented as a case study, this special course underwent a careful replanning as a result of several years of experience in teaching practice alongside with a theoretical deepening in pedagogical and technological issues, under the aegis of the action-research methodology. Within the context of the case study course, the mentioned replanning was also based on a theoretical approach that clearly identifies teaching–learning-assessment methodologies that promote regulation from those that foster emancipation, using a specific instrument: a taxonomy of educational processes. The replanning was designed to globally boost results regarding the educational aims of the course such as furthering freshmen’s integration into work environment and preparing them for success by fostering transversal skills (needed for study and work). Technology is seen as a mean of education enrichment as well as a productivity tool. The introduced innovations include fun-but-educational activities, several types of assessment over time and specific technological tools which were critical for the educational impact/achievement of this course. Success is demonstrated by encouraging feedback from the stakeholders, high students’ classifications and a steady reduction in retention. It is advocated that large portions of the reasoning behind the replanning can be extrapolated to other courses.     

Measuring Corporate Environmental Performance: A Methodology for Sustainable Development

Assessing corporate environmental performance (CEP) that is both comprehensive and consistent with sustainable development both for society and companies, while at the same time taking heed of the facts and interests of each stakeholder, is not a simple feat. Due to the multidimensional character of the sustainability concept, several questions must be considered in the evaluation process: (i) the qualitative nature of indicators and the complexity of developing a synthetic index; (ii) the difficulty of choosing properly statistical techniques for aggregation and (iii) the difficulty of introducing stakeholders’ preferences in the assessment models. This paper is an attempt to address this challenge by developing a framework for the assessment of CEP, based on the application of a fuzzy multi‐criterion decision‐making (MCDM) method. To achieve positive scores in a CEP assessment, an organization should be strategically committed and engage in environmental management and governance structures that are translated into good results in terms of both engagement and operational performance. Unless such premises are explicitly incorporated into the assessment criteria, the results would reveal that the CEP measurement could not be brought into a line with an earnest ambition of achieving true sustainable development. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Sports Marketing

Although text messaging as a communication tool in society is rampant, research on its effects within print advertisements is lacking. To help fill this void, we employ three between-subject experiments (i.e., Study 1: text message vs. no text message; Studies 2 and 3: text message vs. traditional language). We posit that using text message copy in print ads is a unique (as grounded in distinctiveness theory) and fitting (as grounded in communication trust theory) approach to commune with targeted viewers and, therefore, should lead to favorable advertising outcomes. The experimental results confirm this notion. For example, responses concerning ad novelty, attention toward the ad, attitude toward the ad, purchase intention, and perceived brand trust are more favorable toward the text message condition ads. Implications and directions for future text message-related research are discussed.     

Fiscal harmonization in the European Union with public inputs

Fiscal harmonization among the European Union member states is a goal involving major difficulties for its implementation. Each country faces a particular trade-off between fiscal revenues generated by taxation and the productive efficiency loss induced by their respective tax code. This paper provides a quantitative analysis of these trade-offs for a number of the European Union (EU-15) member states using a dynamic general equilibrium model with public inputs. Calibration of the model for the EU-15 member states provides the following results: i) the maximum tax revenue level is relatively far from the current tax levels for most countries; ii) the cases of Sweden, Denmark and Finland are anomalous, as productive efficiency can be gained by lowering tax rates without affecting fiscal revenues; iii) in general, countries would obtain efficiency gains without changing fiscal revenues by reducing the capital tax and increasing the labor tax; and iv) capital tax harmonization to the average capital tax rate can be done with quite small changes in both fiscal revenues and output for most countries.     

The Political Economy of Brexit: Why Making It Easier to Leave the Club Could Improve the EU

The UK exit from the EU represents a qualitative change in the nature of EU membership. On the one hand, it conveyed the lesson that for the Union to be sustainable, membership needs to entail constant caretaking as far as individual members’ contributions to the common good are concerned, with both rights and obligations. Countries with preferences that are too divergent for the Union to function properly should then not be discouraged to invoke Article 50 and to opt instead for membership in the EEA or for a free trade agreement. The Union has to deliver to be sustainable, but it cannot do so if there is a constant hold up of decisions that are in the common interest. On the other hand, with the eurozone having established itself as the de facto core of European (political) integration, the UK’s preference for a stand-alone (and incomplete) economic union became untenable, because the need to make the monetary union work calls for further integration and institution-building in the economic union sphere.