Online marketplaces are a popular platform for buying or selling products. That said, one of the key challenges of e-commerce is managing the reputation of anonymous users. Online reputation trading is a relatively new phenomenon, which is facilitated by the success of e-commerce and social networks. Due to online anonymity, reputation is regarded as an ... Read More

The Protestant Work Ethic (PWE) is a belief system which includes the idea that hard work will breed success. According to the sociologist Max Weber, who introduced the idea, this belief system explains the development of Europe during the Industrial Revolution. Nowadays it is regarded as a secular belief which exists in most cultures, with variations across ... Read More

The past 20 years has seen a marked global increase in the amount of corporate board reforms aimed at increasing firm value. It is believed that with greater outside representation on the board, insiders – such as top executives and shareholders – will be discouraged from reaping private rewards, and instead will encourage investment in projects that benefit ... Read More

Hotels, like any businesses, are motivated by profit. But a strange pattern has emerged when it comes to low-cost amenities such as Internet services. One survey found only 54 per cent of luxury hotels offered free Internet compared to 91 per cent of budget hotels. As Song Lin points out, this phenomenon seems counterintuitive and has not been explained ... Read More

A conventional theory about US Treasury bonds is that when there is uncertainty about inflation, the yield curve should get steeper because investors demand a higher premium for the risk of holding long-term bonds, as opposed to less vulnerable short-term ones. However, recent evidence suggests this yield curve effect may not be happening and this has now ... Read More

Along with the chance to access a myriad sources of knowledge, going online also opens up countless, and often enjoyable, opportunities for distraction from the task at hand. This, of course, is not a problem for individuals who, say, start off on a golfing community site looking for advice on their putting technique only to end up, a few clicks later ... Read More

Dr Samuel Johnson, the celebrated 18th century British writer, is famously quoted as saying, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." While the seriousness of his words has been the subject of some debate down the centuries, the broader question of to what degree creativity comes from within, or is driven by external rewards, has long been an ... Read More

Accounting errors are a commonly acknowledged phenomenon. A 2007 Wall Street Journal report found about 10 per cent of public companies in the US issued financial restatements to address errors, and it is likely many more errors did not get corrected. Yet despite this magnitude, there has been little empirical testing of the effect of errors on firm ... Read More

Whether it is believing in something lucky, like a four-leaf clover, or in bad omens such as breaking a mirror or walking under a ladder, superstition exists around the world. In Chinese culture, for example, the number ‘8’ is believed to be lucky, whereas the number ‘4’ is unlucky. This is because in Mandarin, the pronunciation of ‘8’ sounds like ‘good ... Read More

Marketers are not only keen to get consumers discussing the brands they're promoting, ideally they’d like them to connect and identify with the products on a personal level. But does the mode – written or spoken – consumers use for communicating their thoughts and feelings about a brand, influence how connected they feel to it afterwards? In their recent ... Read More