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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a particular form of sponsorship disclaimer in sponsored content by social media influencers (SMIs), namely a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure. A sponsorship compensation justification disclosure explains why influencers and brands engage in sponsorship collaborations by providing a normative reason that justifies the existence and dissemination of sponsored content.

An experimental design was used to compare the effects of a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure made by either an influencer or the sponsoring brand, to a simple sponsorship disclosure and a no disclosure control post, on consumers’ responses to a product-review video by a YouTube influencer.

The paper offers empirical evidence that sponsorship compensation justification generates more positive consumer attitudes toward influencers receiving sponsorship compensation, and increases source and message credibility, compared to a simple sponsorship disclosure.

The hypotheses were tested on one YouTube video, comprising of a single product category, one SMI and one social media platform. Further studies might replicate the experiment on different product categories and on different social media platforms.

This empirical study can offer brand communication managers and influencers important information on how to communicate and design sponsorship disclosures to reach-desired responses from consumers.

The study is the first study to empirically demonstrate the effects of this particular type of sponsorship disclosure.

Sponsored social media content is one of the advertising strategies that companies implement so that ads appear as native to the delivery platform without making consumers feel that they are directly targeted. Hence, the current study examines whether prominently featuring corporate information on social media ads affects how consumers perceive them. It also investigates whether an ad's evaluation metrics on Twitter (e.g. number of likes/comments) influence its persuasiveness and consumers' behavioral intentions towards the sponsoring company. Underlying cognitive and affective mechanisms through which sponsored content operates are also investigated.

A 2 (corporate credibility: low vs high) by 2 (bandwagon cues: low vs high) between-subjects experiment was conducted.

The findings showed that corporate credibility and bandwagon cues can influence social media ad effectiveness. Sponsored content from high-credibility companies – evoked more favorable attitudes and behavioral intentions – is perceived as less intrusive, and elicits less anger than equivalent posts from low-credibility companies. Furthermore, it was found that bandwagon cues work via different pathways. For high-credibility corporations, a high number of bandwagon cues improved ad persuasiveness by mitigating consumers' anger towards intrusive sponsored content. Conversely, for low-credibility corporations high bandwagon cues enhanced ad persuasiveness, and this triggered more positive attitudes towards it.

This paper is the first to test corporate credibility and bandwagon effects in social media ads, while also exploring consumers' cognitive and affective responses to sponsored content. Implications for how companies with varying popularity levels should promote products on social media are discussed.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.