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The purpose of our conceptual introduction is to theorize how brands will continue to be relevant in the future marketplace. We identify three themes that emerge in this special issue that offer intriguing directions for future exploration and managerial action. The first theme is that because of brands' pervasiveness, consumers have developed a meta concept of "brands" that shapes how consumers think about the market, themselves, and others. While marketers consider the power of a particular brand as a valued consumer resource, this theme speaks to the power of "brands" as a category. The second theme contributes to a growing conversation highlighting consumer agency in relation to brands. Consumers manage their relationships with brands; selectively draw on media to create their own brand narratives; and can even upend the "rules" of brand management. The final theme is that brand owners must balance continuity and change, recognizing that brand contestation and cultural change are both inevitable. Brands need to actively consider the sometimes polarized, contesting and agentic voices of consumers and other actors, finding ways to positively influence firm and societal outcomes. We hope this special issue spurs continued new research to imagine future complex dynamics of consumers and brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The consumer literature on branding to date coalesces around the notion that brands are constantly contested. Brand contestation arises where the actions of consumer brand actors meet, and sometimes confront, those of the brands' legal owners. This article integrates the extant branding research, a qualitative prestudy, and two complementary empirical studies to advance a theoretical process model of brand contestation. First, an in-depth analysis of thirty historical cases reveals its dynamics and how both the magnitude of contestation and the momentum of mobilization affect brand contestations' scope and evolution. Second, interviews with upper-level marketing and branding executives add an emerging perspective that brand managers can use the energy generated by consumers' contestation to develop antifragility—a brand's ability to grow and thrive as a result of contestation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their endeavor to establish new products and services, entrepreneurs can face strong resistance from market incumbents whose resources and market position they threaten. This paper looks at the battles between entrepreneurs and market incumbents in a regulated market where various institutional actors (e.g., regulators, courts) have the power to protect the incumbents by hindering the entrepreneurs. Our comparison of one failed and one successful attempt to introduce pay TV in the U.S. reveals how entrepreneurs can first enter a regulated market without facing resistance, and then introduce a new frame to legitimize their product or service despite growing resistance from incumbents. Our framework highlights framing as a strategy and framing contests as a mechanism through which entrepreneurs and incumbents can battle to enable or disable institutional change. As part of this process,we also uncover how entrepreneurs evolve from self-serving actors with no field-level intentions to powerful groups that create a ripple effect in their environment by moving their target of influence from private to institutional actors. Our work constitutes a step toward a more "realistic" tale of institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) into emerging markets, local firms must make critical strategic decisions in order to remain competitive. When faced with multinational enterprises (MNEs) announcing FDI into their industry, local firms can expand operations and challenge theMNE head on, or refrain from responding directly, effectively ceding market share to the MNE investor. We propose that local firms' responses are shaped by their affiliation with, and position in, a business group. Using data on investment announcements byMNEs and local firms in India from1995 to 2010, we find that firms that are affiliated with business groups tend to be more sensitive to MNE investment announcements than are stand-alone firms. More professionally managed group affiliate firms are more likely to respond to MNE threats. Furthermore, firms that are in the group's identity domain--that is, those holding more prominent positions within their group (especially as measured by centrality in the group's directorship network)--appear more likely to respond to MNE investment announcements. Overall, our results highlight the importance of business group affiliation in examining FDI spillovers in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current work gives an overview of the evolution of liberalism, the dominating current trend. The authors show that it does not hold the truth in economy because of both financial and democratic slippage. That is why they submit the model of the Sustainable Development where emphasis is put on the real economy which has turned into an economy for everyone and of all the stakeholders, based on the commitment to the community life. If liberalism promotes the interests of the transnational companies, the Sustainable Development focuses on citizens and on their involvement into the life of the city. That is how the triad is formed: transnational companies-state-community, where the citizen holds the central role, directly involved locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a perfectly competitive model of a market with adverse selection. Prices are determined by zero-profit conditions, and the set of traded contracts is determined by free entry. Crucially for applications, contract characteristics are endogenously determined, consumers may have multiple dimensions of private information, and an equilibrium always exists. Equilibrium corresponds to the limit of a differentiated products Bertrand game. We apply the model to establish theoretical results on the equilibrium effects of mandates. Mandates can increase efficiency but have unintended consequences. With adverse selection, an insurance mandate reduces the price of low-coverage policies, which necessarily has indirect effects such as increasing adverse selection on the intensive margin and causing some consumers to purchase less coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the impact of productivity, corruption, and trade openness on the stock returns of 265 industrial companies listed in eight Eastern European fast-emerging markets, over the 2004-2013 period. Through a three-factor model that includes both measures at firm level and macro-level control variables, our findings suggest that country corruption index is negatively correlated with the total annual return of the stocks of the listed industrial companies of our sample. Moreover, the most productive firms are featured by higher stock returns, while leverage seems not to be a key predictor of stock returns. In addition, the article uncovers innovative evidence about trade openness that is negatively correlated with stock returns due to its connection with the recent financial crisis. That is, firms operating in markets that are more open to trade show a higher degree of interconnection with other economies and are more likely to undergo the effects of negative fluctuations from foreign markets during the economic crisis. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we sought to establish if the idea of liability of foreignness (LOF) also persists in the fast-expanding markets (FEMs) and whether there are certain firm characteristics that can mitigate or accentuate this effect. We utilize data from the World Bank enterprise surveys conducted in Ghana in 2007 and 2013. We operationalize liability as the probability that a firm suffered from a crime in the year under study. We also specify empirical probit and instrumental probit models with controls to answer the above research question. We find that there is LOF in fast-expanding markets, and this effect is robust to different specifications. Given that our liability is crime, we moderate the LOF effect with data on security expenditure. The results still show that even if firms increased their security expenditure, the LOF effect still persisted. The study makes a contribution to the international business literature by testing the LOF effect in a new unit of analysis and is also one of the earliest to operationalize a firm's liability in the form of crime it suffers in its operating environment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kafkas University, Journal of Economics & Administrative Sciences Faculty / Kafkas Üniversitesi Iktisadi ve Idari Bilimler Fakültesi Dergisi is the property of University of Kafkas, Faculty of Economics & Administrative Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study highlights the methodological challenges in determining the value of water in informal water markets. As the decision to participate in water markets is unlikely to be random, self-selectivity is an important issue for an unbiased estimation of the participating farmers’ revealed willingness to pay. The relevance of these issues is illustrated for an informal irrigation water market in Iran. A two-stage random sampling was carried out in pistachio-growing farms which are irrigated by water from the Rafsanjan aquifer in Iran during 2008–2009. A Heckman sample selection model shows that the real willingness to pay can be less than the observed prices in an informal water market. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article is a re-evaluation of recent discourses around financial subjectivity and debt, popularised in the wake of the 2008 crash, from the perspective of critical media studies. Through an examination of the history and development of the Nasdaq market - the world's first electronic stock exchange which came to serve as the engine for the 'New Economy' and the dot-com boom of the 1990s - this paper complicates recent theoretical conversations around the way that financial capitalism shapes political subjects in the neoliberal era in order to take into account the machinic and pre-individual operations of financial markets and the computational infrastructures that undergird them. It argues that the Nasdaq offers insight into the unfolding of a unique socio-technical apparatus that defines contemporary capitalism, one not adequately accounted for in either the popular or scholarly discourse on finance written since the crash. Paying particular attention to the role of the Nasdaq in producing the myths of the New Economy, this paper examines how the Nasdaq model was instrumental in an attempt to resolve the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism. It argues that the Nasdaq marks a crucial moment in the integration of financial markets and new mechanisms of control in contemporary capitalism that work on the dividual, always rendered in a subjugated and reactive position to the flow of automated financial information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a methodology to employ high frequency financial data to obtain estimates of volatility of log-prices which are not affected by microstructure noise and Lévy jumps. We introduce the “number of jumps” as a variable to explain and predict volatility and show that the number of jumps in SPY prices is an important variable to explain the daily volatility of the SPY log-returns, has more explanatory power than other variables (e.g., high and low, open and close), and has a similar explanatory power to that of the VIX. Finally, the number of jumps is very useful to forecast volatility and contains information that is not impounded in the VIX. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Online workplaces such as oDesk, Amazon Mechanical Turk, and TaskRabbit have been growing in importance over the last few years. In such markets, employers post tasks on which remote contractors work and deliver the product of their work online. As in most online marketplaces, reputation mechanisms play a very important role in facilitating transactions, since they instill trust and are often predictive of the employer's future satisfaction. However, labor markets are usually highly heterogeneous in terms of available task categories; in such scenarios, past performance may not be an accurate signal of future performance. To account for this natural heterogeneity, in this work, we build models that predict the performance of a worker based on prior, category-specific feedback. Our models assume that each worker has a category-specific quality, which is latent and not directly observable; what is observable, though, is the set of feedback ratings of the worker and of other contractors with similar work histories. Based on this information, we provide a series of models of increasing complexity that successfully estimate the worker's quality. We start by building a binomial model and a multinomial model under the implicit assumption that the latent qualities of the workers are static. Next, we remove this assumption, and we build linear dynamic systems that capture the evolution of these latent qualities over time. We evaluate our models on a large corpus of over a million transactions (completed tasks) from oDesk, an online labor market with hundreds of millions of dollars in transaction volume. Our results show an improved accuracy of up to 25% compared to feedback baselines and significant improvement over the commonly used collaborative filtering approach. Our study clearly illustrates that reputation systems should present different reputation scores, depending on the context in which the worker has been previously evaluated and the job for which the worker is applying. This paper was accepted by Lorin Hitt, information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Regional Studies is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Stability of the utility maximization problem with random endowment and indifference prices is studied for a sequence of financial markets in an incomplete Brownian setting. Our novelty lies in the nonequivalence of markets, in which the volatility of asset prices (as well as the drift) varies. Degeneracies arise from the presence of nonequivalence. In the positive real line utility framework, a counterexample is presented showing that the expected utility maximization problem can be unstable. A positive stability result is proved for utility functions on the entire real line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Brand management and marketing have focused on brand-new goods, thus largely neglecting the emergence of markets for used products. This study sheds light on how consumers determine the perceived value of fashion brands in online flea markets. In addition, this study aims to illustrate how fashion brands are perceived when sold second-hand in Facebook flea markets.Design/methodology/approach Empirical data, consisting of internet discussions, were collected for this study from seven Facebook flea market forums between Fall 2014 and Fall 2015. The discussions were analyzed by means of qualitative content analysis.Findings In the context of flea markets, the perceived value is negotiated and evaluated through six antecedents: perceived quality, price, design, origin, authenticity and brand availability. Not surprisingly, price and quality appear as focal aspects when determining the value of a used brand in second-hand markets. However, the aspects of availability, origin and design complicate the considerations of the perceived value and can distinguish between different flea markets for fashion brands. In online second-hand markets for fashion brands, the passing of time appears to be an important factor grounding the consumers’ considerations of the perceived value.Originality/value This study brings forward novel viewpoints to brand marketing by discussing the formation of the consumer-perceived value in the growing field of online second-hand sales of fashion brands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a price-based assessment of product market integration in Africa using disaggregated retail prices for 91 products and 12 African cities from 1991 to 2008. We find evidence of substantial deviations from the law of one price − product price differences between the cities averaged 76% over the period – a result that is consistent with the presence of large barriers to trade in the continent. Mean price differences across cities fell by close to a quarter over the period, but the decline was concentrated in the early 1990s with little progress subsequently, despite the regional trade policies implemented by the countries. Gravity-style estimates reveal that reductions in external tariffs and global trends towards price convergence in the early 1990s are the key contributors to the trend in price integration amongst the African cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most relevant challenges that have arisen in electricity markets during the last few years is the emergence of extremely low prices. Trying to predict these events is crucial for market agents in a competitive environment. This paper proposes a novel methodology to simultaneously accomplish punctual and probabilistic hourly predictions about the appearance of extremely low electricity prices in a medium-term scope. The proposed approach for making real ex ante forecasts consists of a nested compounding of different forecasting techniques, which incorporate Monte Carlo simulation, combined with spatial interpolation techniques. The procedure is based on the statistical identification of the process key drivers. Logistic regression for rare events, decision trees, multilayer perceptrons and a hybrid approach, which combines a market equilibrium model with logistic regression, are used. Moreover, this paper assesses whether periodic models in which parameters switch according to the day of the week can be even more accurate. The proposed techniques are compared to a Markov regime switching model and several naive methods. The proposed methodology empirically demonstrates its effectiveness by achieving promising results on a real case study based on the Spanish electricity market. This approach can provide valuable information for market agents when they face decision making and risk-management processes. Our findings support the additional benefit of using a hybrid approach for deriving more accurate predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Different policies have been implemented around the world seeking to deliver demand response potential in the electricity markets. Externalities, namely the CO 2 externality, have been one of the key concerns in the debate on the effectiveness of different policies regarding demand response development. Although most previous researches have centred on the short-term assessment of different policy choices to tackle the CO 2 externality, little work has been focused on the long-term impacts, such as changes in welfare and investment dynamics, in consequence of the implementation of such policies. This paper relies on a long-term market simulation model to examine long-term dynamics of two specific policies presently used by policy makers. The first policy relates to the correction for the externality by setting a CO 2 price at a level equal to the social cost of the associated CO 2 emissions. The second policy consists in subsidizing carbon-free technologies such as demand response. We test for each policy two different scenarios regarding the possibility of internalization of the CO 2 externality. The results show that in the long-run different policies should affect both investments and social costs, a market-driven development of demand response with the internalization of the CO 2 externality being the most efficient approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the dynamics of capital accumulation in Latin America economies. The hypothesis is that in these economies the role of the State is comparatively broader than in the economies of the centers of the capitalism by structural reasons. The argument is mainly based on Marx and Kalecki, besides historical elements of Latin America economies, particularly the Brazilian economy. Then the paper explores the dynamics consequences of this nature at the national levels, concluding that this condition gives a higher degree of instability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aims to evaluate crop, pasture and forest land prices in Brazil, between 1994 and 2010, in the light of Post-Keynesian theory. The results provide evidence that land, more than just a simple factor of production, must be conceived of as an economic asset. In fact, the price of rural land is determined not only by the expected profitability deriving from agricultural activities but also by the agents' expectations about its future appreciation and liquidity in an economic environment permeated with uncertainty. In this context, as an object of speculation, land has been particularly important as a store of value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to analyze the concept of emerging power established to the understanding of international affairs. The work observes that the use of the lexicon emerging - regarding to markets, countries or powers - as qualifier for a range of international relations phenomena became a constituent part of the matter. In spite of that, the empirical denotation of the predicate is ahead of the amount of efforts on its theoretical contextualization. Our methodological hypothesis is that the rational denial of the concepts prevailing connotative spectrum by acknowledging the embedded wisdom about cognate phenomena synthesizes a theoretical framework on its accurate use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bstract We examine insurance markets with two-dimensional asymmetric information on risk type and on preferences related to regret. In contrast to Rothschild and Stiglitz (), the equilibrium can be efficient; that is, it can coincide with the equilibrium under full information. Furthermore, we show that pooling, semipooling, and separating equilibria can exist. Specifically, there exist separating equilibria that predict a positive correlation between the level of insurance coverage and risk type, as in the standard economic models of adverse selection, but there also exist separating equilibria that predict a negative correlation between the level of insurance coverage and risk type. Since optimal choice of regretful customers depends on foregone alternatives, the equilibrium includes a contract that is offered but not purchased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Transformations in Business & Economics is the property of Vilnius University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the sensitivity of various financial markets to surprises in the federal funds rate. We employ the methodology outlined by Kuttner [2001] to reevaluate prior results and expand the analysis to include data up until the financial crisis, inclusive. Our data set includes additional events to previous studies, which led our results to differ than those earlier studies. For our sample excluding the financial crisis (1994-2007), we found that Fed funds surprises had a significant effect on the percent change in the S&P 500 index, but generally had little significant effect on Treasury yields and the trade-weighted dollar. We also studied a decomposition of the yield curve and found that the lack of significant effect on Treasury yields was a result of the offsetting effects of surprises on the term premium and risk-neutral yield. In addition, our analysis of the financial crisis revealed several shifts in the response of many asset classes, likely a result of the large signaling effects contained in monetary policy combined with the extraordinary events that were occurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The right questions to ask about China's future concern politics and policy, not financial markets or even the state of the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For investment managers and asset owners, investing in global markets is an important source of diversification and alpha. Even for passive investment managers who seek to replicate an index, gaining access to markets around the globe is an important component of executing their investment strategies. From an operational perspective, global market entry is a complex web of jurisdictions, local market conventions and regulatory requirements. How do investors gain sufficient understanding of local markets and how can they adequately assess the operational risk of investing in such markets? This raises another question: who should make the decision regarding country selection, the investment manager or the global custodian? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper formalizes the use of flexible labour contracts in an efficiency wage framework, and derives market dualism as an endogenous outcome. By allowing temporary contracts to be either renewed or converted into permanent contracts, we obtain new theoretical insights into the market equilibrium. The conversion rate is itself an incentive device that acts as a substitute for the wage, and firms pay a wage differential in favour of permanent workers. The model also predicts that even if firms hire exclusively under flexible contracts, dualism arises as a feature internal to each firm and, consequently, as a market property. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our study applies empirical scrutiny to the network effects of a leading European online dating platform. While one might expect equal gender representation on such a platform to yield the best user experience and the highest revenue per user, our analysis shows that the platform requires only 36.2 % of its user base to be female to maximize revenue, primarily because women exert stronger positive cross-side network effects on men than vice versa; this optimum results in 17.2 % higher sales than a 50/50 split. Intermediaries of two-sided markets can use our model to improve user acquisition strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the growth- and welfare-maximizing government spending in an economy that is characterized by market imperfections, namely, unionization in the labor market and monopolistic competition in the goods market. To thoughtfully explore the optimal spending, two distinct scenarios where the government spending is financed by labor/capital income taxes are considered. Our analysis shows that the optimal growth-maximizing government spending is inconsistent with the welfare-maximizing government spending. Moreover, the growth-maximizing/welfare-maximizing government spending have quite different responses to distinctive market imperfections (markups in the goods and labor markets), particularly in the scenarios with distinctive financing modes. Our numerical study indicates that the growth-maximizing and welfare-maximizing government expenditures, in general, are more responsive to the change in the labor market friction than that in the product market friction and the growth-maximizing government spending is more likely to be lower than the welfare-maximizing government spending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theories emphasize the market's capacity of correctly aggregating disperse information so long as the market holds complete information. Recent empirical evidences suggest that the extent of information aggregation also depends upon the dissemination of existing information. In laboratory market, I investigate the market's aggregation capacity in response to the spreading of existing information. The results demonstrate that prices gradually converge to intrinsic value and exhibit momentum in the process of information diffusion. The analysis suggests that aggregation of disperse information is mitigated by the presence of equilibrium multiplicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early models in finance posit that security prices respond quickly to new information and accurately reflect their fundamental values. More recent work indicates that market frictions and the psychological limitations of traders can cause asset prices to deviate from their fundamental values for a considerable length of time. In this paper, we develop an empirical method that tests for and estimates the degree of valuation bias. Being better able to detect valuation bias reveals profit opportunities and may improve the efficiency of financial markets if it sufficiently changes trader behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses aspects of construction and market rules assembled which represents a remarkable collective contribution. The author is critical on the complete diversity of surveyed commodities from high-school education to municipal services as well as from financial derivatives to credit of greenhouse gas emissions. Also investigated is the implications of agents, activities and discourses in market space.

The article investigates the challenges in regulations contributed to the rendering of an operational separation of markets. It highlights the disassembly of the mesh holding markets together in material realities and objects of inquiry. It also emphasizes the engagement with contingent socioeconomic, and spatiotemporal relations with markets.

The author discusses aspects of production in economic geography along with marketization of social and economic policy. The author is critical on the analogy to auctions and the functions of stock exchanges which is significant for the economic geography emergence. Also investigated is the purified understanding of markets and its capability of bringing economic and social realities.

This paper studies the impact of software piracy on prominent and non-prominent software developers in markets based on a two-sided platform business. User behavior is imperfect and, when adopting a platform, users only take prominent software into account. We show that prominent software exhibits higher piracy rates than non-prominent software. However, contrary to intuition, this does not necessarily mean that prominent software developers benefit more from increased software protection. Indeed, we show that prominent developers may lose out whereas non-prominent developers may gain from better software protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dalits find themselves included in India's markets at adverse terms, due to the lack of social networks based on caste locations. This paper argues for considering caste as a specific Indian form of civil society--as a site of accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the stock return impact of “lucky” numbered days in markets dominated by Chinese participants. The existence of such patterns might present arbitrage opportunities for investors who do not share a belief in the Chinese system of “lucky” numbers. Design/methodology/approach – In univariate and multivariate analyses, the author examines the statistical significance of return differences between “lucky” numbered days and other days. The author examines samples which only consider single digit days and months, and the author also considers samples based on the last digit of the day or month. Based on the findings in these tests, the author designs and tests a trading strategy on the Shenzhen Exchange that produces significant risk-adjusted returns in excess of the buy-and-hold return on the Shenzhen Composite Index. Findings – The author shows that “lucky” numbered dates impact stock returns in Chinese markets and demonstrate a “lucky” number date trading strategy for the Shenzhen market that produces risk-adjusted returns in excess of the market return. Originality/value – Prior research on home address numbers and stock trading codes shows that, in markets dominated by Chinese participants, assets with identifiers containing numbers defined by Feng Shui as “lucky” sell at a premium and assets with identifiers containing “unlucky” numbers sell at a discount. In such markets, prices are more likely to end in a “lucky” number than an “unlucky” number. Chinese firms also tend to price their shares at IPO using “lucky” numbers and avoiding “unlucky” numbers. The author extends this literature to examine whether dates containing “lucky” and “unlucky” numbers experience stock returns significantly different than other days on Chinese stock exchanges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an estimator for a country's market risk premium that involves optimally combining an estimator based upon only local data and the cross-country average of these estimators. The analysis suggests that the usual practice of invoking only local data to estimate a country's market risk premium is significantly inferior to the use of a cross-country average or a combined estimator with high weighting on the cross-country average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main objective of this paper is to realize a comparative study regarding the theory and practice of financial audit in Romania and Spain. To achieve this goal, we performed a documentary research of the main papers in this area and of the applicable regulations research that allowed us to identify convergences and differences as concerns the financial audit in Romania and Spain. There are many divergences, on different levels: the perimeter of regulations, the conditions for becoming a financial auditor, but also regarding the evolution of the financial audit markets, the mandatory limits for auditing the financial statements, etc. Although Spain has a longer tradition in the area of financial audit, in Romania, there were also conducted financial audit missions in accordance with the international audit standards since the recognition of this activity, in 1999. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the inter-linkages and long run cointegration of Indian economy with other economies of the world (US, Europe, Other Emerging markets, and World economy) using standard indices of MSCI over the period April, 2001 to March, 2013. We also investigate Indian economy's response to recent global turbulence European Debt crisis (EDC). We use Granger causality test, Johansen co-integration test and Impulse response analysis of Vector auto-regression framework to test various hypotheses. There is no contagious effect of EDC on Indian economy. During post-EDC, the Indian economy is granger caused by US and world economies. Further during the pre as well as post-EDC period, no cointegrating relationship has been found. This low level of co integration, despite presence of short run causal relationship, shows that global shocks might destabilize Indian economy in long run. Especially, Impulse response analysis revealed that Indian economy seems to be affected from the shocks created in the European markets and such shock persists in Indian economy for more than 10 months.These results have important policy implications. The policy makers need to understand that although there is no contagious effect of EDC on Indian economy but interdependency can destabilize Indian economy for much longer period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The vehicle routing problem under capacity constraints based on ubiquitous computing in a perspective of deploying PSS (Product-Service Systems) configurations for urban goods transport, is addressed. It takes into account the specificities of city logistics under an emerging markets context. In this case, it involved: i) low logistical capabilities of decision makers; ii) limited availability of data; and iii) restricted access to high performance technology to compute optimal transportation routes. Therefore, the use of free download software providing inexpensive solutions (time and resources) is proposed. The paper shows the implementation of results to a software tool based on Graph Theory used to analyze and solve a CVRP (Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem). The case of a local food delivery company located in a large city in Mexico was used. Based on small fleet vehicles with the same technical specifications and comparable load capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated at the intersection of markets and development, this commentary aims to promote a cross-fertilization of macromarketing and Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) that directs attention to the sociocultural context and situational embeddedness of consumer experience and well-being, while acknowledging complex, systemic interdependencies between markets, marketing, and society. Based on a critical review of the meaning of development and an interrogation of various developmental discourses, the authors develop a conceptual framework that brings together issues of development, well-being, and social inequalities. We suggest that these issues are better understood and addressed when examined via grounded investigations of the role of markets in shaping the management of resources, consumer agency, power inequalities and ethics. The use of markets as units of analysis may lead to further cross-fertilizations of TCR and macromarketing and to more comprehensive theorizing and transformational impact. Two empirical cases are provided to illustrate our framework. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Increased economic power has positioned China within the global elite, yet China’s legitimacy remains low with regard to hierarchies of taste. Drawing from Bourdieu and Elias, this article offers an account of the global dynamics of status contests, and the role played by cultural capital and notions of civility and vulgarity. Specifically, we examine how U.S., UK, and Chinese media represent Chinese consumption of fine wine, and particularly that of Château Lafite, in the 2000 to 2013 period. Our analysis reveals four major ways in which Chinese fine wine consumption is framed—as vulgar, popular, functional, and discerning—and highlights tensions between Western and Chinese terms of cultural legitimacy. The research uncovers nuanced dimensions to the “East/West” divide in terms of the grades of cultural capital, competing logics of valuation, and modes of civility at play. Macromarketing implications of fine wine consumption in a fragmented and complex market are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the last few years, there has been an enormous decline on all fronts and in all areas. The world, Europe and Spain undoubtedly suffer its effects. Our political leaders have surrendered to the rules of the markets and obediently subjected our society to "austericide", with profound negative social effects. The present economic guidelines don't work and there is no end in sight to the widening inequalities originated by budget cuts. Although it will require much effort, changing course is possible for the first time in history: in a short period of time human beings are experiencing an unprecedented transition from invisible to visible, from anonymous spectators to identifiable protagonists. At present, thanks to modern communication and information technologies, the urban era is fast becoming the digital era. "We, the peoples...", as the United Nations Charter so lucidly commences, may now become a reality for those who at last can take in their hands the reins of their common destiny. It is intolerable that the values of the stock market have replaced ethical values. It is time to oppose neoliberalism and reestablish social justice, to eliminate groups of oligarchs (G-6, G-7, G-8... G-20) and re-found a strong United Nations System. In the last few decades, women, with their inherent faculties, are rapidly increasing their role in decision-making. "The peoples" can express themselves freely and participate, with global consciousness, in building a culture of peace and non-violence worldwide. The time of silence and submission is over. A "new beginning" can now take place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an increasingly competitive environment, some local television station owners in the United States have turned to shared services agreements (SSAs) to keep their stations afloat, despite concerns that such business arrangements may violate Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ownership policy. In this policy-based study employing secondary data sources, a national sample of local television stations (N = 270) was content analysed to determine the proportion of SSAs existing within the United States. Findings reveal that mid-sized markets are the most common locations for such arrangements. Implications for news audiences and the industry are addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the asymmetries in price transmission from international to local markets. We expect the presence of large intermediaries in agricultural markets to lead to a stronger price transmission when international prices decline than when they rise. The empirical evidence confirms the presence of asymmetric price transmission consistent with the presence of large intermediaries with monopsony power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the links between international financial and trade integration and financial development in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. It is based on a panel data set using methods that tackle slope heterogeneity, cross-sectional dependence and nonstationarity. The results do not point to a general direct robust link between trade and financial integration and financial development in SSA, once we control for other factors such as GDP per capita and inflation. The findings may be due to a number of factors including distortions in domestic financial markets, relatively weak institutions and/or poor financial sector supervision. We find some indication that financial integration is more important for financial development in countries with better institutional quality. Stronger scores in some measures of the quality of banking regulation and supervision are also linked to a positive association between integration and financial development in some of our results. Thus, African policy-makers should be cautious about expectations regarding immediate gains for financial development from greater international integration. Such gains are more likely to occur slowly and through indirect channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses the lens of information asymmetry and transaction costs to explore the problems of rural credit markets in less-developed countries. We show that in the absence of efficient markets in factor services, interlinked credit seems to provide a good solution to the typical problems of poor agrarian economies. These issues include seasonality, non-standard factor services, uncertain input supply, adverse price fluctuations, and the opportunistic behaviour of transacting agents. The article also postulates a theoretical model of interlinked credit with the output market as a direction of future research and makes few policy recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]