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The aim of this paper is to study the role of bribery in subsidized credit markets in developing countries. First, the authors use the data to test whether more productive borrowers will pay larger or smaller bribes since the theoretical literature offers conflicting findings regarding the relationship between the size of the bribe and the productivity of borrowers. Second, the authors test whether being eligible to borrow from a microfinance institution affects the frequency or the magnitude of the bribe paid when borrowing from a (non-microfinance) subsidized bank.

The empirical analysis is based on existing theoretical models of bribery. The data set uses publicly available survey data from the Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies. The primary linear model is estimated using OLS. Because left-censoring affects the data, the authors also estimate a Tobit model. Finally, to correct for potential selection bias, the authors also estimate a Heckman selection model.

The authors find that more productive borrowers pay lower bribes than less productive borrowers and that being MFI-eligible affects the frequency of bribery, but not the magnitude of the bribe.

To the authors' knowledge, the paper is the first empirical study of bribery in subsidized credit markets.

Increasing availability of data obtained via the internet and the proliferation of direct mail advertising provides tremendous opportunities for marketers to reach their customers. However, increased risks to the personal privacy of consumers, and attention in the media to these risks, provide unique challenges. Companies and especially direct marketers are finding that they need to change their tactics to deal with the increase in consumer concerns and privacy‐protecting behaviors. This paper aims to address these issues.

Using the results of a multinational privacy survey, the paper examines consumer privacy concerns and privacy‐protecting behaviors in the USA and Canada. It uses factor analysis and multiple regression techniques to analyze the data.

While consumer concerns about privacy are essentially the same between the two countries, the privacy‐protecting behaviors differed significantly. The paper also suggests that demographic variables influence a consumer's level of concern and likelihood to take privacy‐protecting behaviors.

The behaviors in the paper are self‐reported and therefore potentially subject to self‐desirability bias. Also, missing data limited the ability to test for the impact of income.

The paper provides recommendations for marketers to address customer concerns and behaviors such as providing greater transparency and use of privacy seals.

International companies face even greater challenges with regard to privacy issues and related customer behaviors due to cultural and governmental policy differences. This paper provides some guidelines for companies that need to provide privacy protection to customers from a variety of cultures.

American choral music of the present day reflects the variety of styles found in vocal and instrumental music throughout the Western world during the twentieth century. However, the majority of choral music is more conservative in form and tonality than is instrumental music, due probably to the heritage of American choral music. Approximately the first two hundred years of choral singing in America were based on religious texts and simple tunes. Choral music in America did not “flower” until the nineteenth century, when composers began to write in a variety of styles, using secular as well as sacred texts.

This study aims to investigate the interconnectedness across the risk appetite of distinct investor types in Borsa Istanbul. This study also examines the causal impact of global implied volatility indices on the risk appetite of these investor groups.

The authors use a novel time-varying frequency connectedness framework of Chatziantoniou et al. and a new time-varying Granger causality test with a recursive evolving procedure by Shi et al. over June 2008 and July 2022.

The results show a high level of interconnectedness across the risk appetite of different investor types. The sizable spillovers to domestic types of investors either occur from professional or foreign investors, indicating the long-term dominant effect of foreign and more qualified investors on the domestic investors in Borsa Istanbul. The authors provide significant evidence of causality from the global implied volatility to the Borsa Istanbul risk appetite indices, which are getting stronger after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Unlike the previous studies, the authors analyze the risk appetite sub-indices of various types of investors to reveal behavioral distinctions and interconnectedness across them. The authors use a novel econometric framework to assess investors’ risk appetite in different investment horizons in a time-varying system. Together with volatility index (VIX), the authors also use volatilities of oil (OVX), gold (GVZ) and currency (EVZ), considering the information transmission not only from stock markets but also energy, metals and currency markets. The present data set covers significant financial crises, socioeconomic events and the COVID-19 outbreak.