Principles Involving Marketing Policies: An Empirical Assessment

We examined nine marketing textbooks, published since 1927, to see if they contained useful marketing principles. Four doctoral students found 566 normative statements about pricing, product, place, or promotion in these texts. None of these stateinents were supported by empirical evidence. Four raters agreed on only twenty of these 566 statements as providing meaningful principles. Twenty marketing professors rated whether the twenty meaningful principles were correct, supported by empirical evidence, useful, or surprising. None met all the criteria. Nine were judged to be nearly as correct when their wording was reversed.Marketing Principles, Price, Product, Promotion, Place

Price Discovery in the World Sugar Futures and Cash Markets: Implications for the Domincan Republic

This paper examines the relationship between #11 sugar futures prices traded in New York and the world cash prices for exported sugar. It was found that the futures market for sugar leads the cash market in price discovery. However, we fail to find evidence that changes in the cash price causes changes in futures price, that is, causality is unidirectional from futures to cash. The finding of cointegration between futures and cash prices suggests that the sugar futures contract is a useful vehicle for reducing overall market price risk faced by cash market participants selling at the world price (i.e., not enjoying favorable trade incentives). Further reliability on the usefulness of the WSF as a price discovery market is found through the impulse response functions; a shock in the futures price innovation generates a quick (one month) and positive response in futures and cash prices; but not vice versa.

The Relationship Between Social Skills and Problem Behaviors in Adolescent Males with Autism Spectrum Disorders

Adolescent males with autism spectrum disorder commonly display an increased prevalence of problem behaviors and persistent deficits in social skills when compared to their typically developing peers. The present study deployed a single subject, multiple-baseline design to investigate the use of the social skills training program Super Skills: A Social Skills Group Program for Children with Asperger Syndrome, High-Functioning Autism and Related Challengesto promote enhanced social skills and minimize problem behaviors. Two groups of adolescent males with autism (N = 6) participated in weekly social skills training groups also containing typically developing peers (N = 3) once a week over an eight-week period. Results from this investigation indicated that social skills training was effective at increasing student fundamental social skills and social initiation skills. Teachers also reported improved relationships amongst the students with autism. Findings did not support a consistent decrease in problem behaviors for all individuals with autism

PRICE DISCOVERY IN THE FUTURES AND CASH MARKET FOR SUGAR

Pricing function using world sugar futures (WSF) has received limited research interest. Findings indicate that WSF and cash prices for the Dominican Republic appears cointegrated with changing relationships. Previous work suggests that futures markets price the cheapest quality of commodities deliverable on contracts. Cointegration results are consistent with this argument.Marketing,

Forecasting elections using expert surveys: an application to U.S. presidential elections

Prior research offers a mixed view of the value of expert surveys for long-term election forecasts. On the positive side, experts have more information about the candidates and issues than voters do. On the negative side, experts all have access to the same information. Based on prior literature and on our experiences with the 2004 presidential election and the 2008 campaign so far, we have reason to believe that a simple expert survey (the Nominal Group Technique) is preferable to Delphi. Our survey of experts in American politics was quite accurate in the 2004 election. Following the same procedure, we have assembled a new panel of experts to forecast the 2008 presidential election. Here we report the results of the first survey, and compare our experts’ forecasts with predictions by the Iowa Electronic Market .forecasting; elections; expert surveys; Delphi

Predicting elections from politicians’ faces

Prior research found that people’s assessments of relative competence predicted the outcome of Senate and Congressional races. We hypothesized that snap judgments of "facial competence" would provide useful forecasts of the popular vote in presidential primaries before the candidates become well known to the voters. We obtained facial competence ratings of 11 potential candidates for the Democratic Party nomination and of 13 for the Republican Party nomination for the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. To ensure that raters did not recognize the candidates, we relied heavily on young subjects from Australia and New Zealand. We obtained between 139 and 348 usable ratings per candidate between May and August 2007. The top-rated candidates were Clinton and Obama for the Democrats and McCain, Hunter, and Hagel for the Republicans; Giuliani was 9th and Thompson was 10th. At the time, the leading candidates in the Democratic polls were Clinton at 38% and Obama at 20%, while Giuliani was first among the Republicans at 28% followed by Thompson at 22%. McCain trailed at 15%. Voters had already linked Hillary Clinton’s competent appearance with her name, so her high standing in the polls met our expectations. As voters learned the appearance of the other candidates, poll rankings moved towards facial competence rankings. At the time that Obama clinched the nomination, Clinton was ahead in the popular vote in the primaries and McCain had secured the Republican nomination with a popular vote that was twice that of Romney, the next highest vote-getter.accuracy; appearance; forecasting methods; snap judgments

Principles involving marketing policies: an empirical assessment

We examined nine marketing textbooks, published since 1927, to see if they contained useful marketing principles. Four doctoral students found 566 normative statements about pricing, product, place, or promotion in these texts. None of these stateinents were supported by empirical evidence. Four raters agreed on only twenty of these 566 statements as providing meaningful principles. Twenty marketing professors rated whether the twenty meaningful principles were correct, supported by empirical evidence, useful, or surprising. None met all the criteria. Nine were judged to be nearly as correct when their wording was reversed

Accuracy of Combined Forecasts for the 2012 Presidential Election: The PollyVote

We review the performance of the PollyVote, which combined forecasts from polls, prediction markets, experts’ judgment, political economy models, and index models to predict the two-party popular vote in the 2012 US presidential election. Throughout the election year the PollyVote provided highly accurate forecasts, outperforming each of its component methods, as well as the forecasts from FiveThirtyEight.com. Gains in accuracy were particularly large early in the campaign, when uncertainty about the election outcome is typically high. The results confirm prior research showing that combining is one of the most effective approaches to generating accurate forecasts

Forecasting Elections Using Expert Surveys: An Application to U. S. Presidential Elections

Prior research offers a mixed view of the value of expert surveys for long-term election forecasts. On the positive side, experts have more information about the candidates and issues than voters do. On the negative side, experts all have access to the same information. Based on prior literature and on our experiences with the 2004 presidential election and the 2008 campaign so far, we have reason to believe that a simple expert survey (the Nominal Group Technique) is preferable to Delphi. Our survey of experts in American politics was quite accurate in the 2004 election. Following the same procedure, we have assembled a new panel of experts to forecast the 2008 presidential election. Here we report the results of the first survey, and compare our experts\u27 forecasts with predictions by the Iowa Electronic Market