Less is more: A theory of minimalist luxury

We show theoretically that when high-quality, low-price counterfeits exist and are visibly indistinguishable from authentic products, the status-seeking wealthy may embrace a “less is more” purchasing strategy or what we refer to as the minimalist luxury strategy, to signal their status. These are the wealthy who have a high disutility of shopping for counterfeits. Specifically, in our model, only buyers know the authenticity of their own purchases. Because of this information asymmetry, these wealthy buyers may purposefully restrain from consuming luxury goods as a sacrifice of functional utility to stand out, a signaling strategy that the rest are not willing to mimic. Thus, “less” functional utility allows those status-seeking wealthy to enjoy “more” symbolic utility that the society bestows on their perceived status. This minimalist luxury strategy is in sharp contrast to Veblen's conspicuous consumption strategy, as well as to the maximalist luxury strategy proposed by Liu et al. We derive this minimalist luxury equilibrium, discuss how signaling in our context can differ from that of Veblen and Liu et al., and explore its managerial implications for the luxury goods industry.     

Existence of an equilibrium for infinite horizon economies with and without complete information

This work proves the existence of an equilibrium for an infinite horizon economy where trade takes place sequentially over time. There exist two types of agents: the first correctly anticipates all future contingent endogenous variables with complete information as in Radner [Radner, R. (1972). Existence of equilibrium of plans, prices and price expectations in a sequence of markets. Econometrica, 289–303] and the second has exogenous expectations about the future environment as in Grandmont [Grandmont, J. M. (1977). Temporary general equilibrium theory. Econometrica, 535–572] and information based on the current and past aggregate variables including those which are private knowledge. Agents with exogenous expectations may have inconsistent optimal plans but have predictive beliefs in the context of Blackwell and Dubbins [Blackwell, D., Dubins, L. (1962). Merging of opinions with increasing information. The Annals of Mathematical Statistics, 882–886] with probability transition rules based on all observed variables. We provide examples of this framework applied to models of differential information and environments exhibiting results of market selection and convergence of an equilibrium. The existence result can be used to conclude that, by adding the continuity assumption on the probability transition rules, we obtain the existence of an equilibrium for some models of differential information and incomplete markets.     

Capital market equilibrium with moral hazard and flexible technology

(Magill, M., Quinzii, M., 2002. Capital market equilibrium with moral hazard. Journal of Mathematical Economics 38, 149–190) showed that, in a stockmarket economy with private information, the moral hazard problem may be resolved provided that a spanning overlap condition is satisfed. This result depends on the assumption that the technology is given by a stochastic production function with a single scalar input. The object of the present paper is to extend the analysis of Magill and Quinzii to the case of multiple inputs. We show that their main result extends to this general case if and only if, for each firm, the number of linearly independent combinations of securities having payoffs correlated with, but not dependent on, the firms output is equal to the number of degrees of freedom in the firm’s production technology.     

Inflationary equilibrium in a stochastic economy with independent agents

We prove the existence of stationary monetary equilibrium with inflation in a “Bewley” model with constant aggregate real variables but with idiosyncratic shocks to the endowments of a continuum of individual agents, when a central bank stands ready to borrow or lend fiat money at a fixed nominal rate of interest and the agents face borrowing constraints. We also find that, in the presence of real micro uncertainty about individual endowments, the rate of inflation is higher (equivalently, the real rate of interest is lower) than it would be in a “certainty-equivalent economy”; to wit, one in which every agent’s endowment is replaced by its expected value. Thus, underlying microeconomic uncertainty and borrowing constraints are shown to generate additional inflation.     

Beliefs,payoffs, information: On the robustness of the BDP property in models with endogenous beliefs

Neeman (2004) and Heifetz and Neeman (2006) have shown that, in auctions with incomplete information about payoffs, full surplus extraction is only possible if agents’ beliefs about other agents are fully informative about their own payoff parameters. They argue that the set of incomplete-information models with common priors that satisfy this so-called BDP property (“beliefs determine preferences”) is negligible. In contrast, we show that, in models with finite-dimensional abstract type spaces, the set of belief functions with this property is topologically generic in the set of all belief functions. Our result implies genericity of (non-common or common) priors with the BDP property.     

Two decades of XBRL: a science mapping of research trends and future research agenda

eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a software standard of significant importance in the current shift in financial reporting. This new standard is representative of the dramatic developments in how financial information is presented and reported. Over the past 20 years (2000–2020), we have witnessed how information systems and technology advancement have continued to shape current practices in accounting, which has resulted in an increasing trend toward Internet reporting, and thus the XBRL adoption. This study investigates the current trends and various characteristics of worldwide research on XBRL using bibliometric analysis, subsequently presenting a plausible future research direction. The Scopus database was searched for articles indexed under the terms “XBRL*” or “Digital Financial Reporting*” or “Internet Financial Reporting*” or “Web financial reporting*”, which yielded a total of 661 documents from the years 2000–2020. We analysed a total of 621 documents as our final sample after excluding those not related to the interest of the study. Our analysis discovered six (6) main research clusters related to XBRL, which are financial reporting, development of XBRL, decision making, XBRL adoption, corporate governance and disclosure, and financial analytics. We also proposed a future research direction within XBRL-related research.

     

Rational expectations equilibrium and the strategic choice of costly information

This paper studies costly information acquisition in one-good production economies when agents acquire private information and prices transmit information. Before asset markets open, agents choose the quality of their private information. After this information stage, agents trade assets in sequentially complete markets taking into account their private information and the information revealed by equilibrium prices (rational expectations equilibrium, (Radner, R., 1979. Rational expectations equilibrium: generic existence and the information revealed by prices, Econometrica 47, 655–678.)). An overall equilibrium in asset and information market is defined as a Nash equilibrium of the information game in which agents’ actions are information choices and their utility payoffs are the ex-ante expected utilities of the corresponding rationale expectations equilibrium. This paper shows that for a generic set of economies parameterized by endowments and productivity shocks, an overall equilibrium in information and asset market (a Nash equilibrium of the induced information game) with costly information acquisition and fully-revealing prices exists. In other words, informational efficiency is in general consistent with costly information acquisition.     

Multi-lateral strategic bargaining without stationarity

This paper establishes existence of subgame perfect equilibrium in pure strategies for a general class of sequential multi-lateral bargaining games, without assuming a stationary setting. The only required hypothesis is that utility functions are continuous on the space of economic outcomes. In particular, no assumption on the space of feasible payoffs is needed. The result covers arbitrary and even time-varying bargaining protocols (acceptance rules), externalities, and other-regarding preferences. As a side result, we clarify the meaning of assumptions on “continuity at infinity.”     

The re-regulation of working communities and relationships in the context of flexwork: A spacing identity approach

Existing studies on flexwork stress its individualizing inclination by showing how it gives autonomy to employees, boosts individual productivity, or supports personal well-being at the expense of group cohesiveness, social ties and other characteristics of the “collective” in organizations. Obviously, flexwork both continues and contributes to an individualization process of working activities and relationships. But, how exactly does flexwork re-regulate working relationships and communities? Is the “collective” irremediably damaged and doomed to disappear? Building on a case study conducted in an insurance company having implemented flexwork, we observe invisibilized employees working from diverse premises (e.g., home, office, etc.) initiating alternative ways of staying united and close. This article shows the re-regulation of these working relationships and communities' through a collective identity process involving de/re-spacing identity; i.e., the spatial and material aspects of flexible work in relation to identity.     

Switching from complete to incomplete information

We construct an elementary mechanism [Dutta, B., Sen, A., Vohra, R., 1995. Nash implementation through elementary mechanisms in economic environments. Review of Economic Design 1, 173–203] that Nash implements the constrained Walrasian correspondence. We extend it to incomplete and non-exclusive information economies by enlarging the message space of agents. In addition, measurability restrictions on allocations with respect to prices proper to constrained rational expectations equilibria are imposed in the outcome function. We show that by imposing such restrictions, the mechanism Bayesian implements the constrained rational expectations equilibrium correspondence. This result shows game-theoretic connections between these two market equilibrium concepts. However, these connections are obtained at the price of strong restrictions on the behavior of agents.     

Endowment-regarding preferences

We consider a general equilibrium model of pure exchange economies with endowment externalities. Consumers’ behaviors depend not only on their own consumption but also on the endowments of the other consumers. Applying the same method of analysis in Balasko (2015) about wealth concerns, we first show that almost all properties of equilibrium, including smooth equilibrium manifold and genericity of regular economies, can be directly extended to the economy where the demand function depends on the endowments of others and wealth of only one consumer. Next, we clarify the sufficient conditions under which those properties remain true in the economy with the most general form of endowment externalities. Finally, we generalize the above sufficient conditions to derive generic regularity results in the economy with both consumption and endowment externalities.     

Existence of a competitive equilibrium when all goods are indivisible

This paper investigates an economy where all consumption goods are indivisible at the individual level, but perfectly divisible at the overall level of the economy. In order to facilitate trading of goods, we introduce a perfectly divisible parameter that does not enter into consumer preferences — fiat money. When consumption goods are indivisible, a Walras equilibrium does not necessarily exist. We introduce the rationing equilibrium concept and prove its existence. Unlike the standard Arrow–Debreu model, fiat money can always have a strictly positive price at the rationing equilibrium. In our set up, if the initial endowment of fiat money is dispersed, then a rationing equilibrium is a Walras equilibrium. This result implies the existence of a dividend equilibrium or a Walras equilibrium with slack.     

Relocation of second degree: Moving towards a new place or returning home?

We study the “Relocations of Second Degree” (RSDs), i.e., the location decisions that modify the country of destination of a previous offshoring investment. Specifically, we distinguish between two types of RSDs, i.e., “Relocation to the Home Country (RHC)”, also known as back-reshoring, and “Relocation to a Third Country (RTC)”, i.e., the choice to move to a second host country.Specifically, we explore how the location advantages underlying the previous offshoring decision affect the probability to undertake an RHC, rather than an RTC. Location advantages reflect the favourable conditions that a foreign country offers with respect to the home one, in terms of market-seeking, asset-seeking and efficiency-seeking (i.e., cost-saving and productivity-enhancing) opportunities. Using data from the European Restructuring Monitor, we focus on the RSDs regarding manufacturing activities, implemented across European countries between 2002 and 2015. We find that, on the one hand, when a previous offshoring investment is driven by market-seeking location advantage, firms undertaking the RSD are more likely to opt for an RHC, except during the economic crisis where market-seeking European firms seem to prefer RTCs. On the other hand, RTC is a preferred choice when the location advantage is of efficiency-seeking type. In addition to offering a broader characterization of RSDs, our study provides empirical evidence of the relationship between the offshoring and relocation decisions. Managers should be aware of this connection when designing their manufacturing internationalization strategies.     

Anonymous price taking equilibrium in Tiebout economies with a continuum of agents: Existence and characterization

We introduce a model of a local public goods economy with a continuum of agents and jurisdictions with finite but unbounded populations, where the set of possible projects for each jurisdiction/club is unrestricted in size. Under boundedness of per capita payoffs, which simply ensures that equal treatment payoffs are bounded above, we apply results of Kaneko and Wooders (1986) to obtain nonemptiness of the core of the economy. We then demonstrate, under the stronger condition of strict small group effectiveness, that the equal treatment core coincides with the set of price-taking equilibrium outcomes with anonymous prices—that is, prices for public goods depend only on observable characteristics of agents. Existence of equilibrium follows from nonemptiness of the core and equivalence of the core to the set of equilibrium outcomes. Our approach provides a new technique for showing existence of equilibrium in economies with a continuum of agents.     

Feedback orientation: A meta-analysis

Feedback orientation reflects an individual difference in one's receptivity to feedback. We present the results of a meta-analysis of the feedback orientation literature. Based on k = 46 independent samples, representing n = 12,478 workers, meta-analytic results suggest that feedback orientation is positively related to learning goal orientation (r_c = 0.39), job satisfaction (r_c = 0.33), work performance (r_c = 0.35), and feedback seeking (r_c = 0.43). Meta-analytic regression and dominance analysis was used to tease apart how related informal feedback constructs (i.e., feedback seeking, feedback environment, & feedback orientation) aid in the prediction of outcomes, above and beyond two established predictors of job attitudes and work performance: role clarity and leader-member exchange. We also present an interactive exploratory data analysis tool to aid in developing future research questions regarding the connection between informal feedback constructs and work outcomes.     

Unbounded exchange economies with satiation: How far can we go?

We unify and generalize the existence results in Werner [Werner, J., 1987. Arbitrage and the existence of competitive equilibrium. Econometrica 55 (6), 1403–1418], Dana et al. [Dana, R.-A., Le Van, C., Magnien, F., 1999. On the different notions of arbitrage and existence of equilibrium. Journal of Economic Theory 87 (1), 169–193], Allouch et al. [Allouch, N., Le Van, C., Page Jr., F.H., 2006. Arbitrage and equilibrium in unbounded exchange economies with satiation. Journal of Mathematical Economics 42 (6), 661–674], Allouch and Le Van [Allouch, N., Le Van, C., 2008. Erratum to “Walras and dividends equilibrium with possibly satiated consumers”. Journal of Mathematical Economics 45 (3–4), 320–328]. We also show that, in terms of weakening the set of assumptions, we cannot go too far.     

Understanding and optimizing multisource feedback

This article integrates the most recent research results on the topic of multisource feedback with what researchers have learned over the years about performance feedback in general. We believe that this review and set of recommendations represent the state of the art at this time. We provide practitioners with new ideas about how to continue to improve the multisource feedback process in their organizations. We also suggest ideas for feedback providers and facilitators about how to maximize the success of the feedback process. Additionally, we provide “food for thought” for researchers concerning ideas for future research. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Leading corporate sustainability: The role of top management team composition for triple bottom line performance

Sustainable development at the corporate level requires balancing social, environmental, and financial performance goals. Achieving such “triple bottom line” (TBL) performance is a very challenging task. In this study, we explore the role the organization's top management team (TMT) plays in leading their organization towards corporate sustainability. We focus on how two distinct aspects of the TMT's structural composition—the presence of a “chief sustainability officer” (CSO) and the TMT's functional diversity—affect the organization's ability to reach high levels of TBL performance. We follow the presence of 22 global energy companies in Corporate Knight's “Global 100” sustainability index for a period of 11 years and find that, surprisingly, the presence of a CSO does not boost TBL performance. However, we do find a positive effect for TMT functional diversity, suggesting that more diverse TMTs are better able to lead their organization to higher levels of TBL performance.     

Reassessing the Relative Power of the Yield Spread in Forecasting Recessions

In this paper, we replicate the main results of previous research showing that the use of the yield spread in a probit model can predict recessions better than the Survey of Professional Forecasters. We investigate the robustness of their results in several ways: extending the sample to include the 2007‐09 recession, changing the starting date of the sample, using rolling windows of data instead of just an expanding sample, and using alternative measures of the “actual” value of real output. Our results show that the Rudebusch‐Williams findings are robust in all dimensions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the diffuseness of incomplete information game

We introduce the “relative diffuseness” assumption to characterize the differences between payoff-relevant and strategy-relevant diffuseness of information. Based on this assumption, the existence of pure strategy equilibria in games with incomplete information and general action spaces can be obtained. Moreover, we introduce a new notion of “undistinguishable purification” which strengthens the standard purification concept, and its existence follows from the relative diffuseness assumption.