The Credit Rating Industry: Competition and Regulation

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of credit rating economics and draws conclusions on the nature of regulation. It starts with an overview of the credit rating industry and introduces a framework that structures multiple rating agency functions. At the heart of the credit rating business model lies the reputation mechanism, which is analyzed in detail. Despite several frictions in the process that give rise to entry barriers and market power, the quality assuring function of the reputation mechanism is very robust � contrary to the fear of many. After analyzing the reputation mechanism, the study takes a wider look at the industry and identifies the forces behind credit rating supply and demand. The structure of demand is dependent on the relation between the �information value� and the �license value� attached to ratings because they are used in �rating-based regulations�. On the supply side the question is whether the high industry concentration is a �natural� result of market forces or whether it is the result of state interference. Aspects such as economies of scale, switching costs, and market segmentation are discussed. From an industrial organization perspective competition in the credit rating industry is limited. A comprehensive review of potential reasons for regulating the credit rating industry reveals that there are only few compelling arguments despite the large number of different aspects discussed by practitioners and researchers. In general, the reputation mechanism and competition should be strengthened. Specifically, the study discusses five regulatory areas: the use of rating-based regulation, competition, official recognition, civil liability, and implementation methods. The regulatory approaches of the EU under the Capital Requirements Directive of 2005 and the USA under the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006 are contrasted against an optimal regulatory regime. The study closes with a summary and a tabular literature review

The effect of countries’ health and environmental conditions on restaurant reputation

Corporate reputation enhancement in the restaurant industry has recently been increasingly driven by the central importance of consumer review websites and customers’ greater awareness of sustainable practices regarding health and the environment. In this context, the research question of the present study was if there is a relationship between health and environmental conditions, and restaurants’ corporate reputation on a country level. Trying to answer this question, the present study sought to analyze the e ects of countries’ health and environmental conditions on their restaurants’ corporate reputation, thereby contributing to the existing knowledge about how sustainable environments influence the industry’s competitiveness. The research design included di erent methodological approaches, and was divided into three main phases: restaurant corporation identification, reputation database design, and results. To this end, reputation data from a consumer review website were gathered for a sample of restaurant corporations and establishments connected to the European countries on the Healthiest Country Index.The methods were based on regression analysis. The results indicate that restaurant reputation improves in healthy, sustainable environments, specifically in countries ranked as the healthiest. These findings provide a better understanding of how aspects related to health and environmental sustainability influence corporate reputation.FCT: UIDB/04020/2020;info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Incentive-Centered Design for User-Contributed Content

We review incentive-centered design for user-contributed content (UCC) on the Internet. UCC systems, produced (in part) through voluntary contributions made by non-employees, face fundamental incentives problems. In particular, to succeed, users need to be motivated to contribute in the first place ("getting stuff in"). Further, given heterogeneity in content quality and variety, the degree of success will depend on incentives to contribute a desirable mix of quality and variety ("getting \emph{good} stuff in"). Third, because UCC systems generally function as open-access publishing platforms, there is a need to prevent or reduce the amount of negative value (polluting or manipulating) content. The work to date on incentives problems facing UCC is limited and uneven in coverage. Much of the empirical research concerns specific settings and does not provide readily generalizable results. And, although there are well-developed theoretical literatures on, for example, the private provision of public goods (the "getting stuff in" problem), this literature is only applicable to UCC in a limited way because it focuses on contributions of (homogeneous) money, and thus does not address the many problems associated with heterogeneous information content contributions (the "getting \emph{good} stuff in" problem). We believe that our review of the literature has identified more open questions for research than it has pointed to known results.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/100229/1/icd4ucc.pdf7

Opinion mining and sentiment analysis in marketing communications: a science mapping analysis in Web of Science (1998–2018)

Opinion mining and sentiment analysis has become ubiquitous in our society, with applications in online searching, computer vision, image understanding, artificial intelligence and marketing communications (MarCom). Within this context, opinion mining and sentiment analysis in marketing communications (OMSAMC) has a strong role in the development of the field by allowing us to understand whether people are satisfied or dissatisfied with our service or product in order to subsequently analyze the strengths and weaknesses of those consumer experiences. To the best of our knowledge, there is no science mapping analysis covering the research about opinion mining and sentiment analysis in the MarCom ecosystem. In this study, we perform a science mapping analysis on the OMSAMC research, in order to provide an overview of the scientific work during the last two decades in this interdisciplinary area and to show trends that could be the basis for future developments in the field. This study was carried out using VOSviewer, CitNetExplorer and InCites based on results from Web of Science (WoS). The results of this analysis show the evolution of the field, by highlighting the most notable authors, institutions, keywords, publications, countries, categories and journals.The research was funded by Programa Operativo FEDER Andalucía 2014‐2020, grant number “La reputación de las organizaciones en una sociedad digital. Elaboración de una Plataforma Inteligente para la Localización, Identificación y Clasificación de Influenciadores en los Medios Sociales Digitales (UMA18‐ FEDERJA‐148)” and The APC was funded by the same research gran

Charles Stewart Mott Foundation - 2006 Annual Report

Contains annual message, program information, grants list, finances, and lists of board members and trustees

Homelessness as an Impediment to Urban Revitalization: the Case of Dallas, Texas

Homelessness has long been recognized as a serious problem in many American cities, and Dallas in no exception. What’s more, the homeless tend to congregate in the downtown districts (DD) since most service providers are also located in the urban core. Though homelessness is typically considered a social problem, it also has economic consequences. The latest homeless census for the city of Dallas totaled 6,000, and annual outlays by governmental, non-profit, charitable, and faith-based organizations to provide them with services probably exceed $50 million. This estimate doesn’t include thousands of volunteer hours. But the true economic cost of homelessness is much greater. A survey of downtown business owners found that the presence of homeless persons is having a negative affect on their operations and burdening many of them with additional costs for security and cleaning. A majority of retail respondents report that proximity to the homeless was scaring off customers and reducing their sales. An examination of downtown properties using Dallas County Appraisal District (DCAD) records reveals that average values in the southern sector, where most of the homeless are concentrated, are well below those in the northern half of downtown. Consequently, the City of Dallas, Dallas County, and the Dallas Independent School District are losing$2.4 million per year due to valuation disparities from a lack of development in the southern half of the DD. What’s more, we estimate the southern half of downtown can potentially support almost 2.2 million square feet of additional commercial, office and residential space. This development scenario would create more than 5,000 new jobs and generate about $6.6 million per year for local taxing entities. But the revitalization of Dallas’ DD, an avowed goal of the city’s political and business leaders, will not be fully realized until a comprehensive plan for improving homeless services is developed and implemented. Most importantly, the proposed central intake facility should be located away from—but close to—the downtown district. In this regard, the City of Miami can serve as a model. Miami has significantly reduced the visible homeless count and greatly improved the delivery of services. By creating an umbrella agency to oversee all homeless programs—whether provided by government, voluntary or faith-based institutions—the city has avoided duplication and overlap of services. Significantly, Miami has located both of its central intake facilities, known as Homeless Assistance Centers (HACs), away from their downtown district. Miami’s businesses community has recognized that reducing homelessness is a community and economic development issue as well as a social problem, and to that end they have contributed about$50 million over the past decade. The results are tangible, as evidenced by the construction boom currently underway in Miami’s downtown. As with Miami, an effective approach for dealing with Dallas’ homeless population must include greater participation and support by the region’s business leaders. Homelessness has significant economic as well as social consequences for the City of Dallas. While offering our compassion to the homeless, we should also acknowledge that the overwhelming presence of homeless persons on the streets of downtown has negative economic impacts on individual businesses, the prospects for redevelopment, and the city’s finances.

Managing Unsolicited Ideas for R&D

Existing academic and popular literature suggests that unsolicited ideas, the non-contractual and voluntary submission of innovation-related information from external sources to the firm, offer the promise of a bountiful and low-cost tool to sustain and extend firms' R&D efforts. Yet, in practice, many organizations find it difficult to deal with unsolicited ideas because of high quantity, low quality, and the need to transfer IP ownership. This article identifies a range of practices that allow organizations to meet these challenges and therefore realize some of the potential of unsolicited ideas for R&D

Marketing Privacy: A Solution for the Blight of Telemarketing (and Spam and Junk Mail)

Unsolicited solicitations in the form of telemarketing calls, email spam and junk mail impose in aggregate a substantial negative externality on society. Telemarketers do not bear the full costs of their marketing because they do not compensate recipients for the hassle of, say, being interrupted during dinner. Current regulatory responses that give consumers the all-or-nothing option of registering on the Internet to block all unsolicited telemarketing calls are needlessly both over- and underinclusive. A better solution is to allow individual consumers to choose the price per minute they would like to receive as compensation for listening to telemarketing calls. Such a name your own price mechanism could be easily implemented technologically by crediting consumers\u27 phone bills (a method analogous to the current debits to bills from 1-900 calls). Compensated calling is also easily implemented within current don\u27t call statutes simply by giving don\u27t-call households the option to authorize intermediaries to connect calls that meet their particular manner or compensation prerequisites. Under this rule, consumers are presumptively made better off by a regime that gives them greater freedom. Telemarketing firms facing higher costs of communication are likely to better screen potential contacts. Consumers having the option of choosing an intermediate price will receive fewer calls, which will be better tailored to their interests, and will be compensated for those calls they do receive. Giving consumers the right to be compensated may also benefit some telemarketers. Once consumers are voluntarily opting to receive telemarketing calls (in return for tailored compensation), it becomes possible to deregulate the telemarketers—lifting current restrictions on the time (no night time calls) and manner (no recorded calls). And faced with increasing caller resistance, we imagine that survey groups, such as the Gallop Poll, might welcome the opportunity to compensate survey respondents so that they might be able to produce more representative samples