Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe investigate the role of sellers' commitment power in discouraging consumer search. Theoretically, lack of commitment power transforms sellers' search‐deterring claims into cheap talk, eliminating sellers' ability to deter search in some market environments. However, our experiments show buyers' search decisions are significantly affected by sellers' cheap talk. When future prices are not adjustable, sellers falsely claim exploding offers to deter search. When future prices are adjustable, sellers falsely claim low future prices to lure consumers to return after search and exploit these "captive" consumers with subsequent price hikes. A behavioral model with naïve buyers explains our experimental findings.

AbstractRecent work identified a shift in judgments of moral praiseworthiness that occurs late in development: adults recognize the virtue of moral actions that involve resolving an inner conflict between moral desires and selfish desires. Children, in contrast, praise agents who do the right thing in the absence of inner conflict. This finding stands in contrast with other work showing that children incorporate notions of cost and effort into their social reasoning. Using a modified version of Starmans and Bloom's (2016) vignettes, we show that understanding the virtue of costly moral action precedes understanding the virtue of resolving inner conflict. In two studies (N = 192 children, range = 4.00–9.95 years; and N = 193 adults), we contrasted a character who paid a personal cost (psychological in Study 1, physical in Study 2) to perform a moral action with another who acted morally without paying a cost. We found a developmental progression; 8‐ and 9‐year‐old children and adults recognized the praiseworthiness of moral actions that are psychologically or physically costly. Six‐ and 7‐year‐old children only recognized the praiseworthiness of moral actions that are physically costly, but not actions that are psychologically costly. Moreover, neither adults nor children inferred that paying a cost to act morally required having a moral desire or resolving inner conflict. These results suggest that both adults and children conceptualize obligation as a direct motivational force on actions. They further suggest that costly choice—a hallmark of moral agency—is implicated in judgments of praiseworthiness early in development.

AbstractIn this paper, a new corporate ratings methodology is proposed. The information from the annually accounting ratios and the daily credit derivative spreads are combined through a two‐steps approach to calibrate the credit risk of the corporations. To test the performance of the proposed rating methodology, an empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of 197 public traded corporations with credit ratings from the big‐three credit rating agencies. The ratings generated from the presented approach perform better than the ratings from the external agencies as it is more representative of companies' credit quality over time. This rating method provides an approach to integrate the long term and short term information of corporate credibility.

AbstractWe investigate the effects of analysts' affiliation and reputation on dealers' market making activities. We find that for a given stock, dealers who have affiliated analysts covering the stock quote and trade more aggressively than those who do not have any affiliated analysts. More important, the reputation of affiliated analysts plays an additional role in the affiliated dealer's quote and trade behavior. Dealers with affiliated star analysts post more aggressive quotes and have larger market shares than dealers with affiliated nonstar analysts. Although dealers who post more aggressive quotes also induce affiliated star analysts to cover the stocks, the positive effect of analyst reputation on the affiliated dealers' quote aggressiveness remains significant and robust after controlling for potential endogenous and simultaneous problems.