Upcoming Events & Recent Seminars

“ESG as the latest entrant to the alphabet soup: The challenges and dynamics of Business & Society research”
by Dirk Matten
York University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

ESG (‘Environment, Social, Governance’) has recently joined the many labels in the ‘Business & Society’ field. I will critically assess the emergence of ESG, the reasons for such new language, and the challenges it poses. In doing so, I will relate my ongoing research work to three core questions that have been defining for the ‘Business & Society’ field for the last 40 years. (1) What is the status of the business case versus the moral case for business responsibility to society? (2) What are the dynamics of business responsibility, temporarily and comparatively? (3) What are the implications of Business & Society research for ongoing work in the field, and for the notion of business in mainstream business/management research?

Bio

Dirk Matten holds the Hewlett-Packard Chair in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at the Schulich School of Business, York University in Toronto, Canada. He is also the founding director of Schulich’s Centre of Excellence in Responsible Business and was instrumental in making his school one of the world’s top ranked institutions in sustainable business research and education. He has a doctoral degree and the habilitation from Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf in Germany.

Prof. Matten has published 30 books and edited volumes as well some 100 journal articles and book chapters which are cited widely and received numerous international awards. For instance, his 2008 paper on ‘Implicit and Explicit CSR’ (with J. Moon) has won the “Academy of Management Review Paper of the Decade” Award, for. He also received the Max Weber-Award for Business Ethics from the Institut der Deutschen Wirtschaft, Berlin, for his textbook “Business Ethics” (with A. Crane, OUP). In 2023, he was ranked in the top five scholars in Political Science in Canada by research.com

He has a truly global focus in his approach on CSR, having taught and done research at academic institutions in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Italy, Turkey, and the USA. In 2018/19 he held the prestigious Gourlay Visiting Professor of Ethics in Business at Trinity College of the University of Melbourne. He is also a Visiting Professor at the University of London, the University of Nottingham, and Copenhagen Business School.

“Brand – pandemic fit and eWOM intentions: The role of ad appeals and future focus”
by Ayşegül Özsomer
Koç University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

Since the outbreak of COVID-19 in March 2020 brands have quickly adapted the content of their advertising to include pandemic related social and health messages. This paper explores the relationship of fit between the advertised brand and the pandemic as a potential influence on consumers’ eWOM intentions in an advanced and emerging market. Inspired by metacognitive fluency theory, we propose and find that pandemic adapted advertisements for brands that are high on brand-pandemic fit enhance consumers’ eWOM intentions in both markets. This relationship is stronger for experiential ad appeals and future focus in the ads. In terms of temporal focus, building on construal level theory, we find that the effect of fit on eWOM is increased by using future focused ads. Together, the results establish relationships between brand-pandemic fit of advertisements, ad liking, ad-appeals, future focus, and eWOM intentions. We conclude with a discussion of how brand advertising can facilitate societal well-being as high fit brands help individuals solve pandemic related challenges and generate more consumer engagement via eWOM intentions.

Bio

Ayşegül Özsomer is Professor of Marketing at Koç University, Istanbul, Türkiye.  She specializes in global marketing, branding, emerging markets and the role of marketing in tough economic times. Prof. Özsomer has taught, consulted, and conducted research in the US before joining Koç University. She has published in top scholarly journals including the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of International Marketing and Human Resource Management. She received several research awards including the 2011 Gerald Hills Best Paper Award for ten-year impact on entrepreneurship research, the 2013 Cavusgil Award for her paper investigating the interplay between global and local brands, and most recently the 2023 Cavusgil Award for her paper on marketing agility. Her research is well read and well cited with more than 5100 google scholar citations. Dr. Özsomer has held visiting scholar positions at the Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the Anderson Graduate School of Management, UCLA, and Harvard University. Her co-authored book, The New Emerging Market Multinationals: Four Strategies for Disrupting Markets and the Competition (McGraw Hill) was selected the best strategy book by Business+Strategy. She is the incoming Editor in Chief of the Journal of International Marketing, an American Marketing Association Journal published by SAGE. https://www.ama.org/press-releases/aysegul-ozsomer-selected-as-next-journal-of-international-marketing-editor-in-chief/

‘Inferring Mutual Fund Intra-Quarter Trading An Application to ESG Window Dressing’
by Dong Lou
London School of Economics

https://zoom.us/j/3370698252?pwd=OWRmQ1hNNWhRWng2QnhsTENzK1hGUT09&omn=91233540305

Meeting ID: 337 069 8252

Abstract

We develop a novel method to infer intra-quarter trading of individual mutual funds. Although mutual funds report their holdings once every quarter, they are required to report their portfolio returns every day. After a mutual fund executes a trade, its reported portfolio returns further deviate from its quarter-end-holdings-based returns (assuming no trading).This sudden jump in return deviation allows us to infer the transaction date and amount.We apply our method to studying strategic trading of ESG stocks by mutual funds aroundquarter ends. Our evidence suggests that in recent years, mutual funds buy high-ESG stocksand sell low-ESG stocks right before quarter ends, and reverse their trades at the beginning of the next quarter. This trading pattern is concentrated among mutual funds right around the cutoff of four and five ESG rating stars, which have the strongest incentives to boost ESG performance. These trades also affect prices: high-ESG stocks outperform low-ESG stocks right before quarter ends, and underperform at the beginning of the next quarter.

Bio

Dong Lou is a Professor of Finance at the London School of Economics, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, and an Academic Consultant and Visitor to the Bank of England. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Management Science. Professor Lou teaches in the Master’s, Executive Education, and Doctoral Programs at the London School of Economics.

Professor Lou frequently advises government organizations and regularly consults for investment management companies. His research has been published in top academic journals, has won many awards, and is frequently profiled in financial media outlets including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Bloomberg. His main research areas include asset pricing, investment management, behavioral finance, and the Chinese financial markets. Professor Lou received a PhD in Financial Economics from Yale University in 2009 and an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2004 (https://personal.lse.ac.uk/loud).

“Political Liquidity Creation: Electoral Cycles and State-Owned Banks”
by Mehmet Özsoy
Özyeğin University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

This paper compares the liquidity creation of state-owned banks in Turkey with that of privately-owned banks both in normal times and around election times. Turkey provides an excellent laboratory to explore the role of state ownership in the banking industry as it is a country with a long history of state ownership of banks. Applying Berger and Bouwman (2009) framework to measure liquidity creation and using quarterly detailed regulatory dataset for the period of 2002-2017, we find that state banks create more liquidity per unit of assets than their private counterparts. More importantly, the documented statistically significant difference widens during the election quarters. Our findings suggest a divergence between behaviors of state and private banks because of political elections. We further show that the liquidity creation of state-owned banks around political elections, with respect to that of privately-owned banks, seem to not increase bank risk measured by RoaVol and Zscore but dampens state-owned banks performance measured by Roa. We finally document that the size effect can only explain the unconditional difference but it does not explain the documented difference around election quarters.

Bio

S. Mehmet Özsoy is an Assistant Professor of Financial Economics at Ozyegin University. He received his Ph.D. in Economics (2013) from Duke University, his M.A. in Economics from Koç University (2008) and his B.A. in Economics from Boğaziçi University (2006). His research interests include financial economics, financial intermediation and climate finance.

“Voice-Pitch Bias in Political and Economic Environments”
by Özgür Kıbrıs
Sabancı University
Place: MA-330

Abstract

We present two studies that respectively analyze the implications of  voice pitch in political and economic decisions. In the first study, we use an online experiment to analyze the relative effect on voter  behavior of a candidate’s voice pitch and policy stance. We demonstrate a strong voice-pitch bias: between candidates who are identical in every other aspect, voters are more likely to choose the one with the lower voice-pitch, and more so in elections between men than women candidates. We then introduce a novel phenomenon: persistence of voice-pitch bias is the amount of policy difference needed to compensate for voice-pitch bias. While persistence is also gender-dependent, the effect is now reversed: voice-pitch bias is more  persistent in elections between women than men candidates. As a possible mechanism, we show that voters perceive candidates with lower voice-pitch as more competent and trustworthy. The second study is an > ongoing project where we aim to experimentally analyze whether employers’ evaluation of current or potential employees is subject to a voice-pitch bias. If this is the case, we aim to measure the premium an employee receives/foregoes in response to a unit change in her voice pitch, the so-called voice-pitch premium. We present the design of our experiment as well as some preliminary findings from its first stage.

Bio

Professor Kıbrıs received a BS in industrial engineering in 1992 and an MA in economics in 1995 from Bilkent university. He received his PhD in economics in 2000 from University of Rochester.
Professor Kıbrıs joined Sabancı University in 2001 as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 2009 and a full professor in 2015. Outside Sabancı University, Professor Kıbrıs also worked at Universite Catholique de Louvain (2000-2001), University of Rochester (2006-2007), and Duke University (2011-2012). At Sabancı University, he previously served as the dean (2017-2020) and the vice-dean (2016-2017) of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Professor Kıbrıs’ research and teaching activities focus on behavioral economics, decision theory, political economy, game theory, and economic design. The Turkish Academy of Sciences has awarded his research with an Incentive Award in 2003 and a GEBIP Award in 2006.  His teaching activities on these fields were awarded by Sabancı University with a Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Teaching Award in 2010. He is a fellow of the Murat Sertel Center for Advanced Economic Studies.

“Investing in Misallocation”
by Şelale Tüzel
University of South California
Place: MA-330

Abstract

We document that 20% of Compustat firms have above-median investment rates despite having below-median marginal product of capital (MPK), seemingly “misallocating” productive resources. These firms are typically younger and significantly more likely to experience a substantial upward jump in their sales and MPK in the following years.  They account for a significant share of innovative activity and their investments predict future aggregate productivity in the economy, creating value in ways not captured by their MPK. We propose and estimate a simple endogenous firm growth model that captures the key features of the cross-section of firms and allows for counterfactual analysis. Hypothetical firm investment policies that ignore the potential for future jumps reduce MPK and investment dispersion but also lower aggregate productivity. 

Bio

Professor Selale Tuzel is an Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics and serves as the Academic Director of the Real Estate Finance and Development program at USC Marshall School of Business. She holds a PhD in Management (Finance) from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Her research spans various areas, including macro-finance, household finance, and real estate, with contributions in both empirical and theoretical domains. Her work has been published in leading finance, management, and economics journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. Currently, she holds the role of Associate Editor at Management Science. Professor Tuzel primarily teaches Real Estate Finance courses to graduate and undergraduate students at the Marshall School of Business.