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The purpose of this paper is to test the main theories of corporate debt maturity in a multi‐country framework, in an attempt to understand country‐specific constraints.

Dynamic panel data analysis estimated by the generalized method of moments, techniques that account properly for cross‐section and time series variation allowing for dynamic effects.

There is a substantial dynamic component in the determination of a firm's maturity structure; firms face moderate adjustment costs towards its optimal maturity, and the determinants of maturity structure and their effects are similar between Latin American countries and the USA; and there is a partial empirical support for each of the theoretical hypotheses tested.

Firm ownership, accounting standards, financial market depth, and the degree of supervision on financial reporting may vary across countries, which may affect the quality and consistency of some variables.

Firms face costs in adjusting the maturity of their debt, which gives such decision a long‐term character, and the determinants of debt maturity do not seem very sensitive to a country's business and financial environment.

The paper focuses on a sample of developing countries that have so far been ignored in empirical studies, employs empirical techniques that account properly for cross‐section and time series variation, and the model allows for dynamic effects that have seldom been considered in previous research.

This study delves into the transformation of UAE-Israel relations, which transitioned from a long-term rivalry to a formal peace agreement in 2020. It aims to uncover the multifaceted elements that influenced both nations’ pursuit of bilateral negotiations, with a special emphasis on the role of unofficial collaboration.

Employing a case study approach, the research traces the evolution of the UAE-Israel ties, mapping their progression from covert collaborations to public accords. This exploration is set against a backdrop of political, economic, and societal factors that have historically characterized the broader Israel-Arab conflict. Real-world dynamics and theoretical constructs are analyzed in tandem to derive comprehensive insights.

Key drivers for the transformation of UAE-Israel relations included the threat from Iran, internal disturbances, economic stresses, and the strategic advantages of discreet diplomacy. Exogenous catalysts like the Covid-19 pandemic and Israel's annexation plans in 2019-2020 played pivotal roles, capitalizing on pre-existing covert collaborations and shared regional interests. Constructive strategies, notably inducements, effectively reshaped their adversarial relationship. The resultant U.S.-mediated agreement conferred strategic, security, economic, and diplomatic benefits to both parties. Importantly, the potency of conengagement conflict management strategy, especially when bolstered by exogenous factors and growing mutual interest, emerged as a game-changer in terminating longstanding rivalries.

This study offers a unique perspective on Israel-UAE relations, emphasizing the significance of covert engagements, inducements, and the innovative conengagement strategy in conflict resolution. By examining a relationship devoid of direct armed conflict, the research underscores the interplay of economic, political, and societal factors in reshaping rivalries. This case study serves as a testament to the potential for transformative change in enduring disputes when the right conditions and strategies align, supplementing conventional perspectives and offering valuable implications for policy and mediation initiatives in the Middle East.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sales impact of different types of online word-of-mouth based on their source (user vs critic) and form (structured vs unstructured).

The paper proposed a model by adopting the heuristic-systematic perspective of information processing and tested it using online movie reviews collected from Rotten Tomatoes. A unique dataset was constructed, which matched critic reviews and user reviews with metadata such as box-office sales and advertisement spending for 90 movies. Sentiment information from the textual contents of both user and critic reviews were text-mined and extracted. Data analyses were used to compare the box-office responsiveness of four types of reviews: user numeric ratings, user text reviews, critic numeric ratings and critic text reviews.

Critic reviews and user reviews influence sales through different forms: while user reviews impact sales through their aggregate numeric ratings, critic reviews exert their impact through textual narratives.

This study provides managerial implications to businesses on how to allocate their resources on different social media-related marketing strategies to maximize the economic value of online user-generated information.

The major contribution of this study is to extend the current understanding of the sales impact of online reviews to their textual aspect, as well as investigate how these textual narratives play different roles when offered by critics and users.

This study takes the cinema industry as the research context and investigates the impact of online to offline (O2O) platforms on cinemas' performance. Specifically, the purposes of this paper are threefold: first, to study the influence of platform multihoming on cinemas' performance; second, to examine the interaction impact of platform multihoming and vertical integration; third, to investigate how the influence of platform multihoming varies with cinemas' performance.

This study collects data from 1918 cinemas in China, employs quantile regressions to estimate the model and test the proposed hypotheses and adopts an instrumental variable method to examine the robustness of our results.

The findings confirm the positive role of platform multihoming for cinemas' performance. However, when a cinema has low-degree platform multihoming, the cinema's vertical integration is positively associated with its performance; when a cinema has high-degree platform multihoming, the cinema's vertical integration is negatively associated with its performance. Furthermore, results from quantile regressions indicate that low-performance cinemas benefit more than high-performance cinemas from employing platform multihoming strategy.

This paper extends previous research by investigating the impact of platform multihoming on heterogeneous firms and the impact of interaction between platform multihoming and vertical integration. The findings imply that the impact of platform multihoming on firms' performance depends on firms' performance attributes and their vertical relationships.

Platform multihoming can be a double-edged sword for local service firms. When multihoming platforms, a local service firm should think about the fit between platforms and its own attributes, and identify the potential conflict between platform relationships and traditional relationships of industrial organization.

There is a growing interest in understanding platforms' role in the digital economy. The impact of platform participation on local service firms' performance is not sufficiently investigated. Previous research rarely addressed the impact by incorporating local service firms' performance attributes and the existing relationships of industrial organization.

This research investigates when and how brands influence attribute importance weights. Most past studies modelling consumer decision processes treated the brand of a product as an attribute parallel to the price, color or size of a product, and as a result, those studies assigned an equal (i.e. non-contingent) importance weight across brands for each attribute. In contrast, this study introduces a brand-contingent attribute-weighting process, in which brand is a higher-order construct that influences attribute importance.

This study presents a multi-level choice model in which the importance weight of an attribute can vary across brands. This study then estimates the model using real purchase data and survey data from an airline industry.

This study finds that attribute importance weights are contingent upon two aspects of a brand – the perceived relative position of the brand and consumers’ brand usage experiences. Specifically, when consumers perceive a brand to be inferior to its competitors in a given attribute, they generally place greater weight on that attribute for that brand. In contrast, when consumers perceive a brand to be superior to its competitors in a given attribute, only consumers with extensive brand usage experiences place greater weight on that attribute for that brand.

The findings provide managerial insights on brand positioning and segmentation strategies using consumers’ brand usage experiences.

This study advances the literature on consumer decision processes by modeling an attribute-weighting process that is contingent upon brands. The present study models this process based on consumer behavior theories and estimates the model using real market data.

This paper examines how manufacturing firms impacted by the nitrogen oxides (NO_x) Budget Trading Program (NBP) strategically managed working capital to release funds for increased costs and mitigate the negative impact on firm performance.

The study uses a panel data set including 11,302 manufacturing firm-year observations listed on the US exchanges during the period 2000–2008. The authors use Tobin's Q to proxy for firm performance, and cash holding, cash conversion cycle (CCC), days sales outstanding (DSO), days sales inventory (DSI) and days payable outstanding (DPO) for working capital management (WCM). The empirical analysis is conducted using both ordinary least squares (OLS) and propensity score matching (PSM) regressions.

The authors find that firms respond to the higher utility costs imposed by the NBP by decreasing CCC, DSO and DSI. This active WCM response partially mitigated the impact of increased compliance costs on performance for firms affected by the NBP. Results are robust in PSM regressions.

Climate change is a global issue that has attracted increasing attention in recent years. This study shows how firms can adjust short-term financing strategies to address the costs of compliance with climate change regulation.

The paper contributes to the emerging literature on corporate finance and climate policy actions. The authors use the unique experimental setting of the NBP to examine the regulatory impact on corporate financial management. The authors demonstrate how firms used active WCM to mitigate the negative performance impact of regulatory compliance with the NBP, providing novel insight on the implication of compliance with climate change legislation.

When advertising is provided in the form of product placements – the inclusion of branded products within media programming – it can increase or decrease the consumer’s utility. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between product placements and the evaluation of media programming by consumers. The authors hypothesize that consumers do not necessarily consider them as traditional advertising because placements of real brands can enhance realism even if placements sometimes interrupt consumption experience. Thus, the authors believe the relationship between product placements and consumer evaluation is overall positive. However, too many product placements in a single program may reverse this relationship. In addition, the relationship might differ based on the nature of programming, such as art versus entertainment films.

Empirical analyses were conducted on 134 movies released between 2000 and 2007 using a generalized method of moments instrumental variable approach.

The estimation results from product placement data on 134 movies released between 2000 and 2007 show that product placements have a significant positive effect on consumer ratings, but when used in excess, the effect becomes negative. In addition, a significant interaction exists between the nature of the film (mainstream vs independent) and the number of placements, such that consumers of independent films are much less likely to view product placements positively.

This research is the first empirical paper that demonstrates the effect of product placements on the evaluation of the media using secondary data.

This conceptual article outlines the known effects of employee monitoring on employees who are working remotely. Potential implications, as well as practitioner suggestions, are outlined to identify how practitioners can create more supportive employee experiences as well as apply these to workplace health management scenarios.

This overview is based on a selective and practically oriented review of articles that hitherto considered the health implications of remote workers being monitored electronically over the last two years. This overview is subsequently complemented by a discussion of more recent findings that outline the potential implications of monitoring for remote employees, employees' work experience and workplace health management.

Several practitioner-oriented suggestions are outlined that can pave the way to a more supportive employee experience for remote workers, who are monitored electronically by their employers. These include the various health and social interventions, greater managerial awareness about factors that influence well-being and more collaboration with health professionals to design interventions and new workplace policies. Organizations would also benefit from using audits and data analytics from monitoring tools to inform their interventions, while a rethink about work design, as well as organizational reviews of performance and working conditions further represent useful options to identify and set up the right conditions that foster both performance as well as employee well-being.

The article outlines practitioner-oriented suggestions that can directly and indirectly support employee well-being by recognizing the various factors that affect performance and experience.