Business Commons^™

Ghana's E-Zwich System And The Characteristics Of Innovation, James T. Arthur

Masters Theses

In 2008, the Central Bank of Ghana launched the first ever biometric money, e-zwich, in hopes of promoting branchless banking and financial inclusion. Despite been hailed as an innovative policy aimed at transforming the financial industry of the country e-zwich has yet to realize its full potential. A number of studies has been conducted to highlight the many challenges the system faces. This study was also aimed at seeking an explanation to the relative ineffectiveness or failures of e-zwich system but through a theoretical framework. Using Rogers' (2003) framework on the characteristics of innovation, the study seeks to explain why …

Friends In High Places: Measuring The Effects Of Compensation Committee Characteristics On Ceo Pay Packages In 2013, Danielle M. Knott

CMC Senior Theses

In the past decade, public scrutiny surrounding rising levels of executive compensation has led to more stringent independence requirements for compensation committees. However, there is little research studying the effects of compensation committees on executive pay from the time these new requirements were implemented. My paper studies the effects of compensation committee chair personal ties to the CEO, economic interests, and group committee characteristics on both the level and structure of CEO compensation. My findings suggest that certain committee chair personal ties to the CEO are associated with both a higher level of CEO compensation and a higher percentage of …

All-Units Discounts As A Partial Foreclosure Device, Yong Chao, Guofu Tan

Yong Chao

All-units discounts (AUD) are pricing schemes that lower a buyer’s marginal price on every unit purchased when the buyer’s purchase exceeds or is equal to a pre-specified threshold. The AUD and related conditional rebates are commonly used in both final-goods and intermediate-goods markets. Although the existing literature has thus far focused on interpreting the AUD as a price discrimination tool, investment incentive program, or rent-shifting instrument, the antitrust concerns on the AUD and related conditional rebates are often their plausible exclusionary effects.

In this article, we investigate strategic effects of volume-threshold based AUD used by a dominant firm in the …

When Less Is More: The Benefit Of Limits On Executive Pay, Peter Cebon, Benjamin Hermalin

Peter Cebon

We derive conditions under which limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having their hands tied in the future allows a board of directors to credibly enter into relational contracts with executives that are more efficient than performance-contingent contracts. This has implications for the ideal composition of the board. The analysis also offers insights into the political economy of executive-compensation reform.

Teleinvestmentevangelists: Celebrity, Ritual And Religion And The Quest To “Beat The Market”, E. Douglas, Mary Keller, Elton Mcgoun

Mary L Keller

Purpose – This paper aims to offer a cultural understanding of investor faith in stock picking despite overwhelming evidence questioning its efficacy. Why, in the face of very widely communicated findings calling into question the advice and assistance offered by financial professionals to help them pick stocks or manage their mutual funds, do so many people persist in these practices? The authors believe that the best way to understand investor faith in the efficacy of stock picking is through teleinvestmentevangelists such as Jim Cramer, whose fusion of celebrity and religion taps into the ritualistic elements of investment that usually lie …

Pay-What-You-Want Pricing: Can It Be Profitable?, Yong Chao, Jose Fernandez, Babu Nahata

Yong Chao

Using a game theoretic framework, we show that not only can pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing generate positive profits, but it can also be more profitable than charging a fixed price to all consumers. Further, whenever it is more profitable, it is also Pareto-improving. We derive conditions in terms of two parameters, namely the marginal cost of production and the psychological cost of the consumer for paying too little compared to her reference price.

The paper makes the following contributions to the existing literature. First, we endogenize the choice of pricing strategies—PWYW vs. fixed price. Thus rather than solely focusing on the …

Vertical Probabilistic Selling: The Role Of Consumer Anticipated Regret, Yong Chao, Lin Liu, Dongyuan Zhan

Yong Chao

This paper studies vertical probabilistic selling (mixing products with different qualities) when firms compete, and consumers have different abilities to anticipate the potential post-purchase regret raised by the possibility of obtaining the inferior products. We show that, when consumers have either no or full ability to anticipate the regret, probabilistic selling emerges only when the product differentiation between firms is intermediate. However, when consumers have partial ability to anticipate the regret, probabilistic selling will arise more often and yield higher profit compared with the previous two cases. This is due to the “reverse quality discrimination”: the perceived quality of the …

"Dual Agent Distortions In Real Estate Transactions", Ken Johnson, Zhenguo Lin, Jia Xie

Jia Xie

Lemons On The Edge Of The Internet: The Importance Of Transparency For Broadband Network Quality, Reza Rajabiun, Catherine Middleton

Reza Rajabiun

Network performance measurements from OECD countries between 2007 and 2012 document a significant increase in the variability of broadband infrastructure quality, which helps explain growing demand for technologies and policies that counteract information asymmetries between network operators and end users. A cross-country analysis documents the negative association between quality uncertainty and variations in digital infrastructure quality. The analysis suggests public policies and business models that promote market transparency can enhance the efficiency of the broadband access market on the edge of the internet and stimulate incentives for the diffusion of next generation platforms.