Building strong brands in Asia: selecting the visual components of image to maximize brand strength

Asian brands have often struggled to develop quality images. The visual aspects of branding have received little attention on how they might be used to strengthen brand perceptions in Asia. Guidelines for designing visual brand stimuli are developed using evaluations of logos in China and Singapore. There is a significant relationship between design and the responses companies seek, including positive affect, perceptions of quality, recognition, consensus in meaning, and feng shui. How designs are perceived, and their effect on consumer responses, were similar between China and Singapore. Companies are encouraged to leverage design to strengthen their brands. In particular, they should select logo designs that are elaborate, natural, and harmonious as these created positive affect and quality perceptions, clear meaning, true recognition, and feng shui. Many of these relationships hold in the United Sates as well, implying that the visual aspects of brand strategies may accomplish companies' goals across international borders.     

Across-the-Curve Credit Spread Indices

We design a novel across-the-curve credit spread index, AXI, a measure of the recent cost of wholesale unsecured debt funding for publicly listed US bank holding companies and commercial banks. AXI, a benchmark for bank lending and risk management, is the weighted average of credit spreads for unsecured debt instruments with maturities ranging from overnight to five years, with weights that reflect both transaction and issuance volumes. We provide illustrative output of the bond-based component of AXI. By widening coverage to include all corporate debt issuers, we also build a financial conditions index (FXI).     

On Perceptions of Fairness: The Role of Valuations, Outside Options, and Information in Ultimatum Bargaining Games

This study examines fairness perceptions in ultimatum bargaining games with asymmetric payoffs, outside options, and different information states. Fairness perceptions were dependent on treatment conditions. Specifically, when proposers had higher chip values, dollar offers were lower than when responders had higher chip values. When responders had an outside option, offers were higher and were rejected less often than when proposers had an outside option. However, a given offer was rejected more often when responders had an outside option. Therefore, similar to the first mover advantage, the “advantaged” or “entitled” player received a higher monetary payoff than they would otherwise. When there was complete information about payoff amounts (payoff conversion rates and outside options), rejections occurred more often, and given offer amounts were rejected more often than when there was incomplete information. When there was incomplete information, offers were higher in the initial rounds than in the final rounds. These results suggest that proposers made offers strategically, making offers that would not be rejected, rather than out of a concern for fairness.     

Illustrating the Power of fsQCA in Explaining Paradoxical Consumer Environmental Orientations

Prior research on proenvironmental and prosocial behavior focuses primarily on explaining consistent rather than paradoxical tendencies. Even though this field receives wide attention from different scientific disciplines, findings for many causal factors of such proenvironmental orientation are contradictory. Nevertheless, knowing who those individuals are who think and behave in a pro‐/antienvironmental way or show a paradoxical behavior in this regard becomes useful for many different parties in human societies including public policy makers, governmental and nongovernmental environmental protection organizations, and for‐profit firms. Therefore, this study identifies those individuals who show neither consistent proenvironmental nor consistent antienvironmental tendencies as the “walkers‐only” and “talkers‐only” (i.e., for short, “walkers” and “talkers”). The former are defined as persons who put much effort into the recycling of waste materials but do not support pollution standards, whereas the latter term describes individuals who have a strong opinion with regard to the support of pollution standards yet do not engage in recycling efforts. The present study reports evidence of the existence of walkers and talkers. Further, this research is the first study to employ “fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis” to identify the complex antecedent conditions for some individuals’ paradoxical belief–behaviors in the field of socially and environmentally directed behaviors and orientations. The findings yield valuable insights both into the applicability and benefits of configural analysis and for public policy makers and managers in waste management and recycling industries.     

Minimum return guarantees,investment caps,and investment flexibility

We study the merits of capped retirement products with guarantee for investors who have the flexibility to dynamically adjust their investment strategy. All contracts under consideration are fairly priced such that the net profit of the provider is zero. Without the rider, an expected utility maximizing CRRA investor does not want an investment cap. Here, she commits herself to a strategy a priori. With the flexibility rider, the optimization problem changes and the optimal strategy is a response to an exogenously set price. A fair pricing then anticipates the optimal response of the investor. We show that the maximum expected utility of the investor can, for anticipated fairly priced products, be obtained for a finite cap. Thus, a capped product design can give a Pareto improvement to the otherwise uncapped contract version.     

Remittances and the human capital of children: New evidence from Kyrgyzstan during revolution and financial crisis, 2005–2009

We analyze the effect of the receipt of remittances on the education and health of children in Kyrgyzstan during a volatile period of their recent history, 2005–2009. The country experienced revolution in 2005 and the global financial crisis beginning in 2008. Both events impact human capital investment, and the changes vary by region of the country. We use fixed effects estimation and fixed effects, instrumental variables estimation to isolate the effects of remittances and other events on human capital. We find that boys aged 14–18 in remittances’ receiving households are less likely to be enrolled in school than other children. We also find that girls in remittances’ receiving households are more likely to be malnourished (thin). Both effects are relatively small. Remittances do not improve the human capital of children left behind. However, we do find an overall positive improvement in school enrollment among young children between 2005 and 2009 but a negative trend in enrollment among older boys and girls. Nutrition improves over time. Regional differences are apparent in these trends in nutrition and education.     

What do Agricultural Income and Productivity Measurements Really Mean?

Statistical data on labour productivity and income in agriculture reveal large discrepancies between various EC member states, both with respect to their absolute levels and in relation to non-farm productivity and income in the respective countries. Insofar as they appear to reflect the failure of markets in allocating agricultural resources efficiently, and seem to be inconsistent with conventional wisdom concerning structural adjustment of agriculture, however, it can be seen that those data are misleading to a large extent. Based on a simple model of optimal time allocation between farm and non-farm activities of members of farm households, it is demonstrated that farm labour productivity and income must be different according to differences in the relation of farm to non-farm labour supply. The implications concerning international, interregional, intersectoral and intertemporal comparisons of income and productivity are discussed as well as the relevance of market failure in agriculture.     

Dealing with Wicked Issues: Open Strategizing and the Camisea Case

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate, based on an extensive study of the Shell-led Camisea gas project in Peru, how what we believe to be a new approach to dealing with stakeholders, focusing on sense-making and combining industry dynamics and stakeholder empowerment, was developed. The project’s success was measured by the fact that, unlike similar projects around the world, it did not meet with major opposition during its 4-year life span. Those involved in the Camisea project succeeded in creating an open approach to building stakeholder relationships, allowing them to navigate through a number of diverse and challenging socio-political and ecological issues. An integral part of Shell’s approach was acting upon its commitment to high standards of operation and values. The insights from this case clearly indicate that stakeholder management and theorizing can profit from a less controlled, open and sense-making oriented strategizing with stakeholders.     

Is globalisation undermining the welfare state?

This paper analyses the evolution of the welfare states in themajority of OECD countries during the pre-globalisation (1946–80)and globalisation (1980–2000) periods. Our purpose isto find out whether globalisation has produced a convergencetowards a smaller welfare state, funded increasingly by non-mobilefactors such as labour, property and consumption rather thanby mobile factors such as capital. The data presented here challengethe claims about such a convergence, showing that social publicexpenditures and public employment have continued to expandduring the globalisation period in most OECD countries. We alsoshow that the welfare states remain rooted in the politicaltraditions that have governed them.     

Politics matter: changes in unionisation rates in rich countries, 1960–2010

We use the Institutional Characteristics of Trade Unions, Wage Setting, State Intervention and Social Pacts database to examine the changes in collective bargaining coverage and union density among 21 OECD countries over the past 50 years. The observed patterns suggest that national politics are a more important determinant of recent trends in unionisation than globalisation or technological change.