Economic policy uncertainty nexus with the value relevance of advertising: Evidence from an emerging market
研究了新兴市场中经济政策不确定性如何影响广告支出的价值，发现不确定性越高，广告对提升企业绩效的作用越明显，因为此时财务信息可靠性下降，非财务特征如品牌形象等变得更重要。
Abstract This paper aims to document the effect of economic policy uncertainty on the value of advertising expenditures within the context of an emerging market. The paper shows that the value of advertising expenditures is an increasing function of economic policy uncertainty. The impact of advertising on firm performance is more pronounced during the periods characterized by higher economic policy uncertainty. We argue that, during uncertain times, the financial information loses its relevance. Therefore, during these periods, non‐financial traits, such as brand image, customer equity, relationship capital, and familiarity that characterizes firms with high advertising become more important. The findings hold in various sub‐samples and across various proxies of advertising activity. The findings also hold under alternate estimation procedures (pooled OLS regression, panel data with fixed effects and instrument variable regression). More importantly, this paper also shows that, relative to other agency reducing mechanisms (such as analyst coverage, asset utilization ratio, expense ratio and dividend payments), advertising is more valuable during periods with high economic policy uncertainty.