Value relevance of advertising expenditure: A review of the literature

This paper presents a review of the relevant empirical literature on advertising value relevance. The current dominant accounting practice is to treat advertising as a current period expense. There has been growing evidence, however, to suggest that advertising should be viewed as an investment in long‐term brand equity. While the primary focus is on the valuation studies of advertising expenditure, the paper also provides an overview of various other studies that relate advertising to profitability or sales of the firm or industry to investigate the effects of advertising expenditure. As a consequence, it is emphasized that there has been a recent shift to the use of valuation models in exploring the nature of advertising expenditure. Since market value captures both the current and future profitability effects of advertising, valuation models are often seen as a better alternative in exploring the intangible nature of advertising expenditure. It is found that the bulk of evidence on advertising value relevance comes from the US, where there has historically been greater disclosure of advertising expenditure. There appears to be little evidence on this matter in the UK, however. This may largely be attributed to the lack of advertising data availability in the UK.     

Measures of discrimination for latent group-based trajectory models

In clinical research, patient care decisions are often easier to make if patients are classified into a manageable number of groups based on homogeneous risk patterns. Investigators can use latent group-based trajectory modeling to estimate the posterior probabilities that an individual will be classified into a particular group of risk patterns. Although this method is increasingly used in clinical research, there is currently no measure that can be used to determine whether an individual's group assignment has a high level of discrimination. In this study, we propose a discrimination index and provide confidence intervals of the probability of the assigned group for each individual. We also propose a modified form of entropy to measure discrimination. The two proposed measures were applied to assess the group assignments of the longitudinal patterns of conduct disorders among young adolescent girls.     

COVID-19 and threats to irregular migrants in Kuwait and the Gulf

Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Gulf region was home to ~29 million foreign residents, an estimated 20–40% of whom were residing there in an irregular status. Most of them had skilfully devised strategies to survive in this irregular situation, with friends and relatives acting as essential support networks. The COVID-19 Pandemic suddenly disrupted this well-established social order. This article outlines the lived experiences of 26 irregular migrants residing in Kuwait when the Pandemic occurred. Twelve of our interviewees were planning to leave in response to the amnesty declared on 1 April, while 14 were planning to stay or were uncertain. Network support continued to provide an essential element in enabling their survival. Intermediaries such as kafeels (sponsors) were often unavailable or unwilling to provide assistance. The health and welfare of irregular migrants require special policy attention since they now face an enhanced risk of being apprehended and deported.