Gamified interactions: whether,when, and how games facilitate self–brand connections

Firms increasingly use games to interact with their customers. Yet, surprisingly little is known about whether, when, and how such “gamified” interactions engage consumers with a firm’s brand, thereby facilitating self–brand connections. Building on flow theory, we show that gamified interactions that are highly interactive and optimally challenging facilitate self–brand connections, because such games lead to emotional and cognitive brand engagement. A field study and three experiments across various product domains and game designs support our theory. We also identify conditions under which consumers do not become engaged with a brand, namely when firms restrict their decisional control either to voluntarily participate in the game (i.e., compulsory play) or to spend as much time as desired playing the game (i.e., time pressure). Our findings advance existing knowledge about the use of games in marketing and provide important implications for how marketers can harness their potential to build self–brand connections.     

Beware of Financial Repression: Lessons from History

Intereconomics - As austerity policies are unpopular with voters and high debt levels are a drag on growth, several economists, most famously Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, have suggested that...     

Relative risk aversion, relative prudence and comparative statics under uncertainty: The case of (μ, σ)‐preferences

From the expected‐utility approach, relative risk aversion being smaller than one and relative prudence being smaller than two emerge as preference restrictions that fully determine the optimal responses of decisions under uncertainty to certain shifts in probability distributions. We characterize the magnitudes of relative risk aversion and relative prudence in terms of the two‐parameter, mean‐standard deviation approach. We demonstrate that this characterization is instrumental in obtaining comparative static results in the two‐parameter setting. We further relate our findings to the results in the expected‐utility framework.     

Economic Implications of Alternative Allocation Schemes for Emission Allowances*

For reasons of political feasibility, emission trading systems may have to rely on free initial allocation of emission allowances in order to ameliorate adverse production and employment effects in dirty industries. Against the background of an emerging European‐wide emission trading system, we examine the trade‐off between such compensation and economic efficiency under output‐based and emissions‐based allocation rules. We show that the emissions‐based allocation rule is more costly than the output‐based rule in terms of maintaining output and employment in energy‐intensive industries. When the international allowance price increases, the inferiority of emissions‐based allocation vis‐à‐vis output‐based allocation becomes more pronounced, as emission subsidies drastically restrict efficiency gains from international trade in emission allowances.     

The LeChatelier-Samuelson principle revisited

Within the context of a linear Leontief model, the LeChatelier-Samuelson principle examines the effects of an increase in some final demand on the output levels under the constraint that the production of certain goods is held at its original value. The principle states that the increase in any output is larger when fewer output levels are kept constant. The present paper discusses bounds for such incremental changes, second-order effects, the consequences on the markets for the products with restricted output levels, and generalizations of the original assumptions.I would like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.