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A variety of factors motivate firms' managers to initiate new relations with advertising agencies. Principal among the factors is the desire to improve the firm's financial performance. The authors examine whether initiating new relations results in a change in the market value of the firm, that is, whether there is a wealth effect. Three situations involving new relations are studied a firm's announcement that a new account is established with an advertising agency, a firm's announcement that a new account is established with an agency already linked to the firm, and a firm's announcement that a new account is established for a new business activity by the firm. One overall sample and three subsamples corresponding to the three situations were compiled for analysis. The results for the overall sample show significant negative wealth effects associated with the announcements of new agency-client relations. Similarly, negative wealth effects are observed for the first subsample. However, significantly positive wealth effects are observed on a delayed basis for the second subsample (announcements of new accounts with agencies already linked to the firms) and for the third subsample (announcements of new accounts for new activities). Announcements associated with more prestigious agencies resulted in more positive wealth effects. Finally, announcements by firms with relatively poor financial performance were associated with relatively lower wealth effects. Possible managerial implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The biggest issue facing the United States in recent years is the poor economy, most dramatically illustrated by the lack of job creation. The lack of jobs is not a phenomenon that began with the 2007-2009 Great Recession and sluggish recovery, but has been a feature of the entire early 21st Century. There are federal fiscal and monetary policy responses that would help lift job creation. Yet, in lieu of federal efforts, state and local officials have aggressively promoted job creation by a host of schemes including cluster-based policies and tax incentives and subsidies. While data are hard to come by, anecdotal evidence suggests that state and local efforts to lure businesses with generous inducements have escalated to a feverous pitch. The distinctive feature of such efforts is that governments are increasingly more inclined to offer these inducements to individual firms or industries as opposed to general business tax cuts for all firms, in which the former is a case where officials are "picking winners," while in the latter, markets and relative comparative advantage determine business location. State and local officials justify such "picking winners" as a way to fend off competition in neighboring jurisdictions and as a way to make their region more competitive. In this paper I examine whether these efforts have helped matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Offers a link between crime and fertility and establish joint effect on growth. [•] Increase in probability of escaping arrest raises crime and fertility non-linearly. [•] Increase in probability of escaping arrest has ambiguous growth effect. [•] Empirics confirm effects on crime and fertility and support a negative growth effect. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]