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The purpose of this paper is to describe research which introduces attractiveness as a moderator of the relationship between the perceived brand personality and evaluations of the brand as a relationship partner in a product marketing context.

This research tests hypotheses concerning the relationship between the perceived personality of a test brand and perceptions regarding the quality of the test brand as a relationship partner, and the moderating effects of the test brand's perceived attractiveness. The research is based upon a survey of 142 graduate and undergraduate students attending four universities in the southeastern USA. Reliability and validity of the measures were tested using structural equation modeling and the hypotheses tested using multiple linear regression.

This research provides empirical evidence, in a product‐marketing context, that perceived attractiveness significantly influences the consumer‐brand relationship development process in meaningful and predictable ways. Results indicate that consumer perceptions regarding a product brand's possession of certain personality traits can influence their opinion of the desirability of the brand as a relationship partner, and that the brand personality‐partner quality connection depends, to a degree, on the brand's perceived attractiveness. The specific role attractiveness plays in the relationship appears to vary across individual brand personality dimensions.

Limitations of this study include use of a student sample, use of a single test brand selected from a single product category, and reliance upon a subset of ten items from the original 42‐item Brand Personality Scale to represent the brand personality construct.

The results suggest that, for relevant product categories, understanding how perceived attractiveness interacts with other brand perceptions can enhance brand managers' understanding of, and thus their ability to foster, consumer relationships with their brands.

This research reveals that it is appropriate to include perceived attractiveness in the discussion of the impact of psychological brand perceptions on consumer‐brand relationship development.

The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has new salience in the wake of the 2016 presidential contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of presidential voting in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, and demographic data. We show that Bryan did well where interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined. We show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional changes would have had to be large.

This chapter traces the evolution of personality trait research in the behavioral accounting literature and offers suggestions for past and future trends. These personality traits include, among others, those measured by the Myers-Briggs Type and Five Factor models (FFMs), Type A/B, tolerance for ambiguity, locus of control, authoritarianism, and the Dark Triad components of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. In a broad spectrum analysis of accounting journals without regard to timing or geographics, we attempt to capture the major phases of personality trait research and provide suggestions as to the surrounding environment for such progressions in the literature. In addition to more established research streams, this chapter also discusses other personality traits that have only been marginally investigated in the accounting literature, and possible directions for future research.

Wages have been spreading out across workers over time – or in other words, the 90th/50th wage ratio has risen over time. A key question is, has the productivity distribution also spread out across worker skill levels over time? Using our calculations of productivity by skill level for the United States, we show that the distributions of both wages and productivity have spread out over time, as the right tail lengthens for both. We add Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries, showing that the wage–productivity correlation exists, such that gains in aggregate productivity, or GDP per person, have resulted in higher wages for workers at the top and bottom of the wage distribution. However, across countries, those workers in the upper-income ranks have seen their wages rise the most over time. The most likely international factor explaining these wage increases is the skill-biased technological change of the digital revolution. The new artificial intelligence (AI) revolution that has just begun seems to be having similar skill-biased effects on wages. But this current AI, called “supervised learning,” is relatively similar to past technological change. The AI of the distant future will be “unsupervised learning,” and it could eventually have an effect on the jobs of the most highly skilled.

Accounting for stock options is a controversial issue. The FASB recognized that the “intrinsic value” method, which had been used for years, failed to adequately account for the costs involved. To rectify the problem they suggested the use of a “fair value” method. Their proposal met with strong objections from companies, which were concerned with the impact of the proposed standard on their reported profits. Consequently, the board relented and allowed the use of either method. Unfortunately, both the intrinsic value and fair value approaches have deficiencies, particularly in regard to how they measure compensation expense and gains and losses over time. This paper addresses these shortcomings by developing two alternative cost measurement approaches that apply an option‐pricing model on an iterative basis over the life of the option. Both approaches represent specific ways to implement exercise‐date measurement techniques for stock options. The paper argues that both approaches provide more relevant and reliable measures of an option’s cost than either intrinsic or fair value methods.

Libraries undertake mechanisation of serials records both as an end in itself to overcome the stresses of inadequate manual systems, and as a pilot stage towards an integrated overall system of automated processes. American Libraries have been experimenting in this field for some years now in both small and large serials holdings. The total systems approach for dealing with serials is recommended and a wide range of possible outputs of a machine system is described. Automation of accessioning individual parts has also been developed but is not regarded as worthwhile for beginners to attempt. Some writers prefer to concentrate on the catalogue outputs and to leave the administrative areas, subscriptions and binding control, to manual systems. Benefits are widely assumed as the result of an automated system but there is as yet little generalisation of relative costs of these systems within individual libraries and in comparison between libraries. Access to computers that have large memories and that operate at high speeds is considered necessary. The system brought in at San Diego between 1961 and 1964 and that is now being thoroughly revised on account of expansion of holdings and with a view to the use of the LC MARC format is the best developed system under review.