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Scholars recognize that international marketing effectiveness requires adapting to cultural values, and at the same time, paradoxically, acknowledge the possibility of cultural convergence. The purpose of this paper is to take the context of Puerto Rico as a US territory to reconcile these two propositions by analyzing culture and gender’s influence on apparel purchase.

Via multiple regression analysis, the study considers seasonality as a factor of apparel purchase patterns, developing a consumer behavior model for the apparel industry.

Results confirm that culture influences purchase behavior, an influence moderated by gender. Additionally, they show that seasons and special occasions are strong predictors of apparel purchase patterns.

The findings assert the claims of cultural convergence, yet preserve the notion that cultural values are reflected in patterns of consumer behavior in the case of apparel.

The study develops highly explanatory models indicating that Puerto Rico expenditure reflects cultural patterns of special occasions, but overshoots expectations for its US counterpart.

The results show that Puerto Rico has appropriated several US cultural aspects (e.g. special holidays), which are expressed differently as reflected by apparel purchase behavior, supporting the notion that Puerto Rico should be treated as an international market. The study demonstrates that cross-cultural studies may be robust in absence of available Hofstede’s dimensions for a country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between single-state municipal bond fund risk and water scarcity in the USA.

The authors compare the risk profiles of funds from states with limited water resources with those from states without this issue.

The authors find that, as expected, funds from southern and western states, which suffer from water scarcity, are riskier than funds from other regions within the mainland USA. Although this study is concerned with which funds are riskier, it is noted that funds from the northeast are significantly less risky than funds from other regions.

Due to limited water resources, crumbling water infrastructure and continuous water-rights legal battles, water resources in the USA have become a highly sought-after commodity. In this study, we contribute to the discussion on the many repercussions of water scarcity on financial assets.

This paper aims to study the market timing skill of USA-based foreign open-end mutual funds in their geographical focus market.

The authors use daily fund data and two multi-factor extensions of the Treynor-Mazuy (1966) and Henriksson-Merton (1981) timing models to measure US-based foreign funds’ market timing skill during 1999 to 2010. In particular, the authors study fund managers’ skill to time their geographical focus market.

The authors report that, in general, foreign funds do not accurately time their geographical focus market. However, during January 2008 to December 2010, the sub period that includes the 2008 global financial crisis, most foreign funds in this sample not only focused on their domestic market, the USA, but also demonstrated statistically significant, good timing skill.

Although US-based foreign funds’ market-timing skill is not an unexplored topic, this study is the first to consider these funds’ skill to time their geographical focus market, a skill that has been studied in the context of hedge funds.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast market risk exposure and diversification of single-listed American depository receipts (“ADRs”) with those of dual-listed ADRs from the same geographical region during 2004-2012.

The study uses orthogonal returns in two-factor models to infer exposure to the US and ADRs’ home markets.

The authors found that both ADR types provide no diversification and are significantly exposed to US market risk. The authors also found that portfolios of both single- and dual-listed ADRs behave significantly differently than their home markets.

Only several academic papers discuss single-listed ADRs, and to the best of the knowledge, this study is the first to assess their diversification value.