Presenting Volume 25 and Celebrating ABR Reviewers

We are delighted to present the first issue of volume 25 of ABR. We thought we would thank and celebrate our reviewers for their outstanding contribution to ABR on this occasion. The peer-review process in academic publishing involves reviewers who have expertise in a domain (see Ali and Watson 2016). We thought we would explain the ABR review process as we celebrate our reviewers. We believe this would be interesting to authors and readers as this would give a glimpse of the peer review process at ABR. Being a broad-based academic journal brings a discipline expertise challenge to the review process. The research must prima facie be relevant (interesting) and rigorous. But whether the ideas are an adequate contribution to a business discipline can be determined only by disciplinary scholars who study the area in the paper. For example, a CEO Compensation paper is interesting, at face value, to the ABR audience. But it must also seem like a contribution to HR scholars and specifically to the subset of scholars who study CEO Compensation. Thus, we humbly recognize that we do not know the potential contribution without expert reviewers’ opinions, advice, and guidance. Below we explain the ABR review process after receiving a submission in the ABR system. We also include requests to our valued reviewers

Scrub typhus and dengue coinfection in a 17-month-old child

Scrub typhus is reemerging as a worldwide threat. In the tropical countries, where other diseases with overlapping clinical featuresare abundant, the occurrence of scrub typhus poses to be a significant problem to the clinician. We describe the case of a 17-montholdchild who was diagnosed to be having a coinfection of scrub typhus and dengue. Various similar complications such as capillaryleakage, thrombocytopenia, and possibility of seizure found in both the diseases, make such a coinfection very risky. The child wasmanaged with oral azithromycin and fluid support. He became afebrile after 60 h and was discharged after 8 days. This case reportwill alert the pediatricians to anticipate the rare possibility of coinfection with scrub typhus and dengue fever

Do Sympathy Biases Induce Charitable Giving? The Effects of Advertising Content

We randomize advertising content motivated by the psychology literature on sympathy generation and framing effects in mailings to about 185,000 prospective new donors in India. We find significant impact on the number of donors and amounts donated consistent with sympathy biases such as the “identifiable victim,” “in-group” and “reference dependence.” A monthly reframing of the ask amount increases donors and amount donated relative to daily reframing. A second field experiment targeted to past donors, finds that the effect of sympathy bias on giving is smaller in percentage terms but statistically and economically highly significant in terms of the magnitude of additional dollars raised. Methodologically, the paper complements the work of behavioral scholars by adopting an empirical researchers’ lens of measuring relative effect sizes and economic relevance of multiple behavioral theoretical constructs in the sympathy bias and charity domain within one field setting. Beyond the benefit of conceptual replications, the effect sizes provide guidance to managers on which behavioral theories are most managerially and economically relevant when developing advertising content

Lookalike Targeting on Others\u27 Journeys: Brand Versus Performance Marketing

Lookalike targeting is a widely used model-based ad targeting approach that uses a seed database of individuals to identify matching “lookalikes” for targeted customer acquisition. An advertiser has to make two key choices: (1) who to seed on and (2) seed-match rank range. First, we find that seeding on others’ journey stage can be effective in new customer acquisition; despite the cold start nature of customer acquisition using Lookalike audiences, third parties can indeed identify factors unobserved to the advertiser that move individuals along the journey and can be correlated with the lookalikes. Further, while journey-based seeding adds no incremental value for brand marketing (click-through), seeding on more downstream stages improves performance marketing (donation) outcomes. Second, we evaluate audience expansion strategies by lowering match ranks between the seed and lookalikes to increase acquisition reach. The drop in effectiveness with lower match rank range is much greater for performance marketing than for brand marketing. Performance marketers can alleviate the problem by making the ad targeting explicit, and thus increase perceived relevance; however, it has no incremental impact for higher match lookalikes. Increasing perceived targeting relevance makes acquisition cost comparable for both high and low match ranks

Lookalike Targeting on Others\u27 Journeys: Brand Versus Performance Marketing

Lookalike Targeting is a widely used model-based ad targeting approach that uses a seed database of individuals to identify matching “lookalikes” for targeted customer acquisition. An advertiser has to make two key choices: (1) who to seed on and (2) seed-match rank range. First, we assess if and how seeding by others’ journey stages impact clickthrough (upstream behavior desirable for brand marketing) and donation (downstream behavior desirable in performance marketing). Overall, we find that lookalike targeting using other’s journeys can be effective-third parties can indeed identify factors unobserved to the advertiser merely from others’ journey stage to improve targeting. Further, while it is sufficient to seed on upstream journey stages for brand marketing, seeding on more downstream stages improves performance marketing outcomes. Second, we assess the effectiveness of expanding the target audience with lower match ranks between seed and lookalikes. The drop in effectiveness with lower match rank range is much greater for performance marketing (donation) than for brand marketing (click-through). However, performance marketers can alleviate the reduction in ad effectiveness for low match ranks by making targeting more salient; but increasing salience has little impact for high match rank. Overall, by increasing salience, performance marketers can make acquisition cost comparable for high and low match ranks

Introducing ABR Volume 24, May 2021: Some Tips for Submitting Authors

We are delighted to present Volume 24 (Issue1) in May 2021. The COVID pandemic rages on in several parts of the globe, particularly in India at the time of writing. We wish our authors, reviewers, and readers to remain safe and healthy as we come out of this global pandemic. For American Business Review (ABR), it is a matter of great pride and satisfaction that since our relaunch in 2020, we have received over 300 manuscripts and have about a 10% acceptance rate. Our editorial board members come from all continents and have active Google Scholar profiles and have published in A/A* journals in their disciplines. We try to restrict the number of reviews to two per year per reviewer to reduce the burden of review work. In addition, we seek to invite additional reviewers who are domain experts in the subject of the submission received

Mean platelet volume as a marker of Kawasaki disease in children

Background: Kawasaki disease (KD) is a clinical diagnosis, with common confusion among other causes of febrile illnesses. There are no confirmatory laboratory parameters for diagnosing KD. Objective: To investigate whether low mean platelet volume (MPV) is associated more with fever due to KD than due to the other common causes. Methods: This retrospective case-control study was done on febrile children between 6 months and 6 years of age admitted from January 2015 to January 2017. The MPV values of 28 KD and 50 non-KD febrile children admitted to our hospital were obtained from the hospital records. The diagnosis of KD was accepted only when (1) two pediatricians had agreed upon the diagnosis independently based on the American Heart Association guidelines 2004, (2) no other cause of fever coexisted with KD in a particular patient, and (3) prompt clinical response within 48 h of administration of intravenous immunoglobulin. Using suitable statistical software, the range of MPV in KD fever and non-KD fevers was compared. Results: MPV was lower in the KD group (9.75±0.98 femtoliter) than in the non-KD fever group (11.14±1.53 femtoliter). From the receiver operating characteristic curve, it was found that at MPV ≤10.0 fl, KD can be diagnosed with 75% sensitivity and 80% specificity. This means that lower the value of MPV, lower is the probability that a non-KD patientwill be wrongly diagnosed as KD. Conclusion: Our study shows that low MPV is associated with KD. Hence, a low MPV can raise the index of suspicion for KD in febrile children, especially in cases of incomplete KD. Further, prospective studies involving larger sample size are needed to ascertain its diagnostic utility

Relaunching ABR in the Midst of a Global Pandemic: Highlights of Vol. 23 (No. 1)

We relaunched the all-digital American Business Review (ABR) in Fall 2019. Little did we imagine that COVID-19 would appear in Spring 2020 and disrupt life all over the globe. All three audiences of ABR viz. Businesses, Business Students and Business Faculty have had to scramble over the last few months. Businesses that we research, teach and learn about as Business Professors and Students had the most difficult time of all with the global lockdowns. Essential businesses including food, medicine, sanitation and their supply chains and distribution channels had to keep working somehow-anyhow. Along with essential services were our lifesavers including medical, emergency, and national security personnel globally who continued to work at great personal health risk. Those businesses that were not considered essential had to shut down for public health and safety. In the process, all businesses had to suffer great losses. We at ABR recognize and salute you all for your great contribution during this global health crisis. Business students, in the US had to leave campus and continue studies online and at very short notice. Similarly, business faculty had to move face-to-face classes online overnight as campuses went into lockdown. Against this challenging backdrop our review board and referees did an outstanding job of providing knowledgeable and constructive reviews to our authors. Our author/s responded to reviewer comments in great detail and the joint efforts of reviewers resulted in the issue that is before you

GW190412: Observation of a Binary-Black-Hole Coalescence with Asymmetric Masses

We report the observation of gravitational waves from a binary-black-hole coalescence during the first two weeks of LIGO’s and Virgo’s third observing run. The signal was recorded on April 12, 2019 at 05∶30∶44 UTC with a network signal-to-noise ratio of 19. The binary is different from observations during the first two observing runs most notably due to its asymmetric masses: a ∼30 M_⊙ black hole merged with a ∼8 M_⊙ black hole companion. The more massive black hole rotated with a dimensionless spin magnitude between 0.22 and 0.60 (90% probability). Asymmetric systems are predicted to emit gravitational waves with stronger contributions from higher multipoles, and indeed we find strong evidence for gravitational radiation beyond the leading quadrupolar order in the observed signal. A suite of tests performed on GW190412 indicates consistency with Einstein’s general theory of relativity. While the mass ratio of this system differs from all previous detections, we show that it is consistent with the population model of stellar binary black holes inferred from the first two observing runs

Properties and Astrophysical Implications of the 150 M_⊙ Binary Black Hole Merger GW190521

The gravitational-wave signal GW190521 is consistent with a binary black hole (BBH) merger source at redshift 0.8 with unusually high component masses, 85⁺²¹₋₁₄ M_⊙ and 66⁺¹⁷₋₁₈ M_⊙, compared to previously reported events, and shows mild evidence for spin-induced orbital precession. The primary falls in the mass gap predicted by (pulsational) pair-instability supernova theory, in the approximate range 65–120 M_⊙. The probability that at least one of the black holes in GW190521 is in that range is 99.0%. The final mass of the merger 142⁺²⁸₋₁₆ M_⊙) classifies it as an intermediate-mass black hole. Under the assumption of a quasi-circular BBH coalescence, we detail the physical properties of GW190521's source binary and its post-merger remnant, including component masses and spin vectors. Three different waveform models, as well as direct comparison to numerical solutions of general relativity, yield consistent estimates of these properties. Tests of strong-field general relativity targeting the merger-ringdown stages of the coalescence indicate consistency of the observed signal with theoretical predictions. We estimate the merger rate of similar systems to be 0.13_(-0.11)^(+0.30) Gpc⁻³ yr⁻¹. We discuss the astrophysical implications of GW190521 for stellar collapse and for the possible formation of black holes in the pair-instability mass gap through various channels: via (multiple) stellar coalescences, or via hierarchical mergers of lower-mass black holes in star clusters or in active galactic nuclei. We find it to be unlikely that GW190521 is a strongly lensed signal of a lower-mass black hole binary merger. We also discuss more exotic possible sources for GW190521, including a highly eccentric black hole binary, or a primordial black hole binary