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An interesting issue little explored in the celebrity endorsement literature is whether or not the activities of a celebrity endorser affect company performance. We examine the impact of Tiger Woods' tournament performance on the endorsing firm's value subsequent to the contract signing. We do not find a relationship between Tiger's tournament placement and the excess returns of Fortune Brands (parent of Titleist). This is likely due to Titleist being a very small contributor to the total market value of Fortune Brands. We also fail to find a significant relationship for American Express suggesting the market does not view a golfer endorsing financial services as credible. We do, however, find a positive and significant impact of Tiger's performance on Nike's excess returns suggesting that the market values the additional publicity that Nike receives when Tiger is in contention to win.

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Exchange Traded Funds, Pricing Deviation, G10, G14,

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This paper develops a theory of Giffen behavior that resultsfrom a second rationing constraint. In contrast to standard analysis, this approach is virtually independent of the spec@ form of consumer preferences. The effect isfirst developed in a two-good world along with an example, then extended to a more general case to determine if the effect vanishes as the choice set is expanded. The results demonstrate that Giffen behavior is plausible when a second rationing constraint applies and, furthermore, adding additional goods to the choice set does not necessarily cause the effect to vanish.

PurposeExisting empirical evidence indicates internet banks worldwide have underperformed newly chartered traditional banks mainly because of their higher overhead costs. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of internet banking services on credit union activity.Design/methodology/approachThe impact of internet banking services on credit union over the period 1999‐2006 was studied and regression equations were estimated for the growth in assets, operating expenses and return on assets as functions of portfolio characteristics, economic conditions and a dummy variable indicating if the credit union has adopted internet banking services.FindingsThe operating costs of credit unions providing web access were found to be significantly higher than those credit unions which do not have any web account offerings. There is increased growth in assets for the credit unions which have worldwide web accounts although this relationship is statistically significant in only three of the eight years studied. The return on assets show that the credit unions with web accounts have similar average profitability to those credit unions that do not provide the facility of internet access to their customers.Research limitations/implicationsConsideration could be given to running the regressions with the number of years the web site has been in place instead of just a dummy variable and putting in common bond dummy variables. Some common bonds are so narrow it may not pay to have internet services.Practical implicationsEven though there are costs associated with providing internet services, the retention of profitability and the evidence of potentially higher asset growth rates suggest the importance of internet banking and the trend of internet banking adoption is expected to continue in the near future in the credit union industry.Originality/valueThis is a pioneering study on the effect of internet banking services on the costs, growth and profitability of Credit Unions in the USA.

The "market discipline" of off-balance sheet banking activities (OBSA) has been reexamined by employing contingent claims valuation techniques to derive implied asset variances from bank equity and deposit insurance, and from risk-premia for bank subordinated debt. Specifically implied asset variances have been calculated from contingent valuation models and have been regressed over on-balance accounting risk variables and off-balance sheet activities. These implied asset variances are better than equity variance or risk-premia in proxying total risk because they consider both the non-linear nature of contingent claims model and the impact of closure rules. Empirical results document the existence of "market discipline" of some OBSA. ~rarket participants price these OBSA as risk-reducing. Therefore, regulatory additional capital requirements of such OBS may be inappropriate.