HEC Paris

About: HEC Paris is a education organization based out in Jouy-en-Josas, France. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Market liquidity & Entrepreneurship. The organization has 584 authors who have published 2756 publications receiving 104467 citations. The organization is also known as: Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales & HEC School of Management Paris.

Communicating product size using sound and shape symbolism

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate children’s perception of a product’s physical attribute (size) when presented with brand elements (brand name and brand logo) manipulated using sound and shape symbolism principles (brand name sounds and brand logo shape), across children of different developmental ages. Design/methodology/approach – The relationship between sounds and shapes was examined in a pilot study. A 2 × 2 experiment was then undertaken to examine the effect of brand name characteristics (front vowel sound versus back vowel sound) and brand logo design (angular versus curved) on children’s (from 5 to 12 years) product-related judgments. Findings – Older children use non-semantic brand stimuli as a means to infer physical product attributes. Specifically, only older children are able to perceive a product to be smaller (larger) when the product is paired with a brand name containing a front (back) vowel sound or an angular (curved) brand logo (single symbolic cue). We illustrate...

The Spillover Effect of Compulsory Insurance

Abstract: The assumption usually made in the insurance literature that risks are always insurable at the desired level does not hold in the real world: some risks are not—or are only partially—insurable, while others, such as civil liability or health and workers' injuries, must be fully insured or at least covered for a specific amount. We examine in this paper conditions under which a reduction in the constrained level of insurance for one risk increases the demand of insurance for another independent risk. We show that it is necessary to sign the fourth derivative of the utility function to obtain an unambiguous spillover effect. Three different sufficient conditions are derived if the expected value of the exogenous risk is zero. The first condition is that risk aversion be standard—that is, that absolute risk aversion and absolute prudence be decreasing. The second condition is that absolute risk aversion be decreasing and convex. The third condition is that both the third and the fourth derivatives of the utility function be negative. If the expected value of the exogenous risk is positive, a wealth effect is added to the picture, which goes in the opposite direction if absolute risk aversion is decreasing.

Regression Modelling Analysis on Compositional Data

Abstract: In data analysis of social, economic and technical fields, compositional data is widely used in problems of proportions to the whole This paper develops regression modelling methods of compositional data, discussing the relationships of one compositional data to one or more than one compositional data and the interrelationship of multiple compositional data By combining centered logratio transformation proposed by Aitchison (The Statistical Analysis of Compositional Data, Chapman and Hall, 1986) with Partial Least Squares (PLS) related techniques, that is PLS regression, hierarchical PLS and PLS path modelling, respectively, particular difficulties in compositional data regression modelling such as sum to unit constraint, high multicollinearity of the transformed compositional data and hierarchical relationships of multiple compositional data, are all successfully resolved; moreover, the modelling results rightly satisfies the theoretical requirement of logcontrast Accordingly, case studies of employment structure analysis of Beijing’s three industries also illustrate high goodness-of-fit and powerful explainability of the models

Aligning Ambition and Incentives

Abstract: Labor turnover creates longer term career concerns incentives that motivate employees in addition to the short-term monetary incentives provided by the current employer. We analyze how these incentives interact and derive implications for the design of incentive contracts and organizational choice. The main insights stem from a trade-off between "good monetary incentives" and "good reputational incentives." We show that the principal optimally designs contracts to create ambiguity about agents' abilities. This may make it optimal to contract on relative performance measures, even though the extant rationales for such schemes are absent. Linking the structure of contracts to organizational design, we show that it can be optimal for the principal to adopt an opaque organization where performance is not verifiable, despite the constraints that this imposes on contracts. (JEL D82, J33, L14) The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.