The Psychological Science Accelerator: Advancing Psychology Through a Distributed Collaborative Network

Source at https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245918797607.Concerns about the veracity of psychological research have been growing. Many findings in psychological science are based on studies with insufficient statistical power and nonrepresentative samples, or may otherwise be limited to specific, ungeneralizable settings or populations. Crowdsourced research, a type of large-scale collaboration in which one or more research projects are conducted across multiple lab sites, offers a pragmatic solution to these and other current methodological challenges. The Psychological Science Accelerator (PSA) is a distributed network of laboratories designed to enable and support crowdsourced research projects. These projects can focus on novel research questions or replicate prior research in large, diverse samples. The PSA’s mission is to accelerate the accumulation of reliable and generalizable evidence in psychological science. Here, we describe the background, structure, principles, procedures, benefits, and challenges of the PSA. In contrast to other crowdsourced research networks, the PSA is ongoing (as opposed to time limited), efficient (in that structures and principles are reused for different projects), decentralized, diverse (in both subjects and researchers), and inclusive (of proposals, contributions, and other relevant input from anyone inside or outside the network). The PSA and other approaches to crowdsourced psychological science will advance understanding of mental processes and behaviors by enabling rigorous research and systematic examination of its generalizability

Board meetings, committee structure, and firm value

In this study, we examine the determinants of board monitoring activity and its impact on firm value for a broad panel of firms over a six-year period from 1999 to 2005. During this period, Congress and the exchanges promulgated regulations that increased pressure upon firms for more independent and active boards. Economists have debated whether board activity and externally imposed regulations benefit or harm firms. We develop and examine several proxies for board monitoring and examine the relationship between board monitoring activity, firm characteristics, and firm value in a structural equation framework. One set of our proxies is based on the number of annual board and Audit Committee meetings. We show that prior performance, firm characteristics and governance characteristics are important determinants of board activity. We also show that the board monitoring is driven by corporate events, such as an acquisition or a restatement of financial statements. We find that board activity has a positive impact on firm value. Our results also indicate that the external pressure has had a salutary effect and recent regulations have led to some increase in firm value. A second set of proxies is based on the shift to a fully independent Audit, Compensation and Nominating Committees. We find that firms increased the independence of these Board committees following the enactment of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act.Corporate governance Board meetings Board committees Firm value

The Marketing Mix Decision Under Uncertainty

This paper develops a marketing mix model under uncertainty using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) valuation framework. The model is general because it treats price, advertising and personal selling simultaneously, and allows for general patterns of uncertainty. Because the manager often lacks precise quantitative information about the sales response function, the analysis focuses on the qualitative properties of the model. The methodology of comparative statics is used to determine how the marketing mix should be modified when market conditions change. Specifically, the comparative statics are shown to depend on how advertising and personal selling influence price-sensitivity, the interaction between advertising and personal selling and the relationship between sales and the return earned in the capital markets. The comparative statics for risk depend, in addition, on the precise mathematical form with which uncertainty enters the random demand function (i.e., additive, multiplicative or generalized). For example, suppose demand uncertainty increases in the additive case and sales covary positively with the return of the market portfolio. Then, if advertising and personal selling are complementary, advertising decreases if increased advertising and increased personal selling decreases price-sensitivity. However, if advertising and personal selling are substitutes, then advertising decreases if increased advertising decreases price-sensitivity but increased personal selling increases price-sensitivity.uncertainty, marketing mix, CAPM