Is similarity a constraint for service-to-service brand extensions?

Are service brands constrained in launching new service offerings? Both research evidence and managerial wisdom suggest brands should extend to similar categories. However, in five studies using real-life brands - four experiments and one large-sample survey - we provide evidence that similarity is less of a constraint for service brands extending to other service categories (service-to-service extensions), compared to cases involving parent brands or extension categories of a product nature. Importantly, we demonstrate that such an effect occurs because service brands possess associations relevant across the spectrum of service categories. Our results suggest that service brand managers have the opportunity to stretch their brands to dissimilar service offerings; yet, they need to ensure the marketing execution does not make the brands’ service associations inaccessible to consumers. The findings suggest that even product brands can build service associations by adding service components to their offering, thus becoming “servitized” and better able to extend to dissimilar service categories. Overall, our work contributes to the academic debate documenting that the principles governing the management of product vs. service brands are not identical.     

“I live with terror inside me”: Exploring customers’ instinctive reactions to terror

Terrorist attacks occur mostly at public service-oriented sites. Consequently, their victims are likely to be customers. The present study explores how customers instinctively react toward the reality of terror in a matrix of 2 × 2 aspects concerning terror circumstances: temporal proximity (brief or long) and physical proximity (close or remote) from the terror event. In qualitative in-depth interviews, customers from France and Israel were requested to share their instinctive reactions and coping strategies when approaching hospitality (hedonistic) and transportation (utilitarian) services. Participants (N = 47) comprised customers having a protracted acquaintance with persistent terror threats. The analysis identified differences in reactions, subject to temporal and physical proximities. When terror attacks are physically close, customers’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors undergo modification with time. However, when terror attacks occur at a location remote from the customer, customers’ emotions and cognitions, but not their behavior, change with time. These reactions were comparable for the two service contexts. Practical implications were elaborated to enable service establishments (i.e., hospitality and transportation) to design and manage their operations for the short and long term to assist customers in the difficult era of terror.     

Financing energy efficiency retrofits in Chilean households: The role of financial instruments,savings and uncertainty in energy transition

High firewood consumption for heating produces high levels of pollution in cities in central and southern Chile, with serious consequences for health and quality of life. Energy efficiency measures (EEMs) have been identified as the best strategy to reduce air pollution and maximize social benefits. However, their adoption has been slow. The objective of this article is to investigate household preferences for financial incentives needed to promote private investments in EEMs in Central-Southern Chilean households and study the role of energy savings and the uncertainty about potential savings in the investment decision, with the aim of finding solutions to increase the adoption of these technologies. We use a choice experiment to explore the trade-off between the investment costs, financial instruments, energy savings, and the uncertainty about achieving the theoretical savings provided by engineering and architectural models. The results show that financial instruments play the most important role in this decision, followed by the savings achieved by the retrofit. Householders prefer to finance their investments with a mix of their personal resources and medium-term credits, trying to avoid long-term commitments. Although uncertainty was found to be a significant variable, it seems to play a small role in the investment decision.     

Accounting practice,fiscal decentralization and corruption

In prior studies, accounting and decentralization corruption solutions have so far been analysed in isolation. In this article, we connect these two strands of literature on corruption. Understanding this connection is important because weak financial accounting and reporting systems can inhibit monitoring incentives and thus reduce decentralization benefits in countering corruption. We argue that the effectiveness of decentralization as an anti-corruption barrier is complemented by the quality of the accounting practice in a country. Using multiple sources of data, we find that decentralization has a positive and increasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with a high-quality accounting practice. In contrast, decentralization has a negative and decreasing effect on reducing corruption among countries with weak-quality accounting practices. These findings are robust to alternative measures of accounting, decentralization and corruption and to endogeneity tests. Our findings demonstrate the crucial information role of accounting in enhancing decentralization monitoring mechanisms and in thereby reducing corruption.     

Financial development and economic growth in a microfounded small open economy model

The global financial crisis since 2008 revived the debate on whether or not and to what extent financial development contributes to economic growth. This paper reviews different theoretical schools of thought and empirical findings on this nexus, building on which we aim to develop a unified, microfounded model in a small open economy setting to accommodate various theoretical possibilities and empirical observations. The model is then calibrated to match some well-documented stylized facts. Numerical simulations show that, in the long run, the welfare-maximizing level of financial develop is lower than the growth-maximizing level. In the short run, the price channel (through world interest rate) dominates the quantity-channel (through financial productivity), suggesting a vital role of international cooperation in tackling systemic risk of the global financial system.     

农机社会化服务采纳、禀赋差异与农村经济相对贫困缓解

进入以缓解相对贫困为重点的后扶贫时代，农村经济相对贫困问题仍不容忽视。农机社会化服务作为小农户与现代农业有机衔接的桥梁，对于推进乡村振兴战略和脱贫攻坚有序衔接具有重要作用。文章讨论的核心议题是农机社会化服务采纳如何缓解农村经济相对贫困，并尝试建立了“农机社会化服务采纳——禀赋差异缩小——农村经济相对贫困缓解”的理论分析框架。为此，文章首先对农机社会化服务采纳影响农村经济相对贫困的作用机制进行了理论分析，然后利用2750份河南省农户问卷调查数据，运用Logit模型，实证检验农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困的影响，并通过替代核心自变量和变更样本的方法进行稳健性检验，运用PSM模型和IVProbit模型以及ERM模型进行内生性讨论，最后通过中介效应模型对其作用机制进行验证。结果表明，农机社会化服务采纳对农村经济相对贫困具有显著负向影响，缓解了农村经济相对贫困。考虑内生性后，结论仍具有稳健性。进一步的机制验证发现，农机社会化服务采纳通过缩小劳动力禀赋差异和技术禀赋差异，缓解农村经济相对贫困，劳动力禀赋差异缩小和技术禀赋差异缩小的中介效应占比分别为21.22%和7.36%。可见，应将完善农机社会化服务供需体系纳入农户相对贫困治理机制考虑范畴，引导农户从传统家庭化生产转向现代社会化生产，扩大农机社会化服务采纳范围；同时完善就业服务等相关配套体系以吸纳释放的弱劳动力，促进农户收入增长，缓解农村经济相对贫困。     

科技服务业产出测算：指标确立、数据收集与未来预测

科技服务业产出测算是对科技服务业产出数据的统计与分析，加强科技服务业产出数据的规范统计和应用分析可为我国政府调整产业政策提供重要数据支撑。以科技服务业产出测算为研究对象，结合学者观点、国家标准及各级政府相关产业政策，提出将分支产业作为初始指标的横向统计思路，构建科技服务业产出测算指标体系。在数据收集方面，强调要做好“收”与“填”两个基本工作；在指标确立和数据收集基础上，进一步提出未来预测的两种方法，以此作为科技服务业产出数据预测的初步探索；提出应从统一数据统计标准、完善数据调查与公开制度、加强数据资源开发3个方面建立健全我国科技服务业产出数据测量与管理体制机制。     

Risk spillover between Bitcoin and conventional financial markets: An expectile-based approach

In order to challenge the existing literature that points to the detachment of Bitcoin from the global financial system, we use daily data from August 17, 2011–February 14, 2020 and apply a risk spillover approach based on expectiles. Results show reasonable evidence to imply the existence of downside risk spillover between Bitcoin and four assets (equities, bonds, currencies, and commodities), which seems to be time dependent. Our main findings have implications for participants in both the Bitcoin and traditional financial markets for the sake of asset allocation, and risk management. For policy makers, the findings suggest that Bitcoin should be monitored carefully for the sake of financial stability.     

Is it U.S. GAAP or IFRS? Understanding how R&D costs affect ratio analysis

While financial reporting standards under U.S. GAAP and IFRS are fundamentally similar, differences do exist that may affect our analysis of company financial statements. This is particularly true when comparing a U.S. company following U.S. GAAP to a firm that uses IFRS. To illustrate, we compare research and development (R&D) accounting methods under both sets of standards and illustrate how they affect the analysis of financial results of firms in a specific industry—automotive manufacturers. Our results provide insight into settings in which differences in R&D accounting may have the greatest impact on financial analysis.     

Does bank competition promote financial inclusion? A cross-country evidence

The idea of financial inclusion has recently been discussed as one of the key strategies to enhance economic development (World Bank 2014). We move this discussion forward by examining if bank competition is a crucial component enforcing financial inclusion, which is arguably a finance supply-side driven process. In this study, we compute the financial inclusion index built on Sarma (2008) approach to better reflect banks’ willingness and capability to provide financial services. Applying System Generalized Method of Moments to the panel of 93 countries, we find that bank competition promotes financial inclusion.