ABSTRACT Using dealer's quotes and transactions prices on straight industrial bonds, we investigate the determinants of credit spread changes. Variables that should in theory determine credit spread changes have rather limited explanatory power. Further, the residuals from this regression

assistance, the time and insights from many advertising industry participants, and the extremely helpful and thoughtful comments from the anonymous reviewers for this journal. Special thanks to Matthew Bidwell, Sean

Science Foundation, the Dean's Research Fund at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and the Ira Katz Research Fund at the University of Michigan for financial support. This paper discusses a neglected aspect of financial systems of many countries: government ownership of banks

Studies find that about 20-30 % of all advertising is comparative in nature. Many of the comparisons are on products sold with the help of retailers. For a retailer, a manufacturer’s comparative ad campaign is a double-edged sword: an increase in its sales of the favored manufacturer’s product

individuals and reach them with advertising based on this information. For instance, as many readers know, an individual’s web browsing activities may be tracked via information stored in his browser as long as he “participates ” by not regularly deleting it, allowing ads to be customized to him upon visiting

Abstract: We model the contest among full-service advertising agencies as a score auction. The score auction allows the advertiser to select the agency that offers the best combination of creative quality and media cost, and to determine the contract price. To participate in the contest, each

. Porter, W. Thurman, and seminar participants at many institutions and meetings for comments. We especially thank K. Hendricks for insightful suggestions. We also thank S. Sakata for help with a version of his genetic algorithm and T. Whalen at the Department of Justice for useful insights on airlines

participants at MIT and the NBER for helpful comments. I appreciate the advice of Jerry Hausman and Nancy Rose in particular. All remaining errors are mine. I also thank IMS America for permission to use their data, and Merck and Co. for providing access to that data. I am grateful for financial

Each year many agricultural commodity groups spend millions of dollars advertising and promoting generic products. However, empirical analyses of particular generic promotion ventures are scarce (Clement, Henderson, and Eley; Hochman, Regev, and Ward; Nerlove and Waugh). Advertising and promotional

"Informal" know-how trading is the extensive exchange of proprietary know-how by informal networks of process engineers in rival (and non-rival) firms. I have observed such know-how trading networks to be very active in the US steel minimill industry and elsewhere, and they appear