Six-part series on the state of the RN workforce in the United States

This series on the state of the nursing workforce focuses on describing the results of the national surveys of RNs. The series begins with an analysis of RNs' perceptions of the current nursing shortage and whether they perceive the shortage has gotten better or worse over the past few years. Future topics will include RNs' perceptions of being a nurse and how they perceive certain aspects of their jobs; RNs' awareness of the J&J Campaign and whether they think it has been effective; RNs' perceptions of the impact of the shortage on the quality of patient care in hospitals; and various issues related to the age and diversity of the nursing profession.     

Valuing the social cost of corruption using subjective well being data and the technique of vignettes

Corruption can have an effect on people's happiness and satisfaction, and therefore, can generate a social cost. However, the perceptions of corruption and satisfaction can also vary across subjects, due to socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. This article studies the differences in the perceptions of corruption and satisfaction across subjects, utilizing the technique of vignettes for the correction of the bias that follows from the differences in the response scale across individuals. The evidence comes from a sample of citizens in Spain, who are asked about their perceptions of corruption and personal satisfaction. The results show that there exists a response scale bias, both for corruption and satisfaction. These results are utilized to approximate the social cost of corruption.     

The urban–rural divide

A vast literature has related perceptions of income inequality to individuals' income: the higher the level of income, the less inequality is perceived. Here, examining the perceptions of income and social inequality, we argue that rural or urban residence affects both inequality perceptions and the impact of income on these perceptions. We test the theory using survey data from 12 Central and Eastern European countries and we find that income negatively affects inequality perceptions but only in urban areas. These findings confirm the importance of accounting for urbanity to understand what drives individuals' perceptions of inequality.     

Revisiting the inflation perception conundrum

Households' inflation perceptions and expectations play a key role in many dynamic macroeconomic and monetary models and are important for the ability of central banks to reach their objective of price stability. This paper revisits the issue of overestimation bias in inflation perceptions and expectations based on new and unique microdata from the Danish part of the EU-Harmonised Consumer Expectations Survey linked to rich household-level data from administrative registers. The analysis shows that accounting for even several of the household characteristics and social gradients usually addressed in the literature is far from sufficient to explain the inflation perception bias. Furthermore, we find that respondents participating in the survey more than once tend to be persistent in their degree of perception bias and that overpessimistic households have larger perception bias than other households. This indicates that inflation perception bias is related to fundamental personality traits. Finally, households' expectations of the future inflation level tend to be mean reverting and associated with the same types of bias as inflation perceptions.     

Adapting the Servqual Scale to a Private Hospital Emergency Services： An Empirical Investigation

Most of the time, clients only have one opportunity to evaluate a service received in terms of quality and satisfaction; under this premise organizations have been concerned with developing, in a permanent manner, a quality evaluation culture in the services offered to their clients. To do this, procedures and methods that let them achieve it, have been implemented. That is the case of the model that concedes to measure and evaluate service quality, which is redefined and named Servqual, considering a multidimensional theoretical construct that explains the client＇s perception of quality service considering the differences between what is expected and what is received. Therefore, the goal of this study is to identify the factors that define the quality of emergency services provided by a private hospital in Hermosillo, Sonora, Mtxico, a sample of 384 patients, with a confidence level of 95% and a margin of permissible error of 5%. A questionnaire with 22 items was applied to measure the perceptions and expectations of users in terms of the quality of the service, which was subjected to an extensive evaluation of reliability and construct validity, with an estimate Cronbach＇s alpha of 95.6% and 97.9% respectively. The results showed that Servqual is a valid, reliable, and dependable instrument to monitor and measure the quality of the services offered in private hospitals in Hermosillo, and permit hospital administrators to identify opportunities or improvement areas, from the patients＇ perspective.     

Implications of market orientation on the environmental transformation of industrial firms

This article examines the role of industrial firms' market orientation as a moderator of the economic-ecologic conflict. Specifically, the authors consider the effect of industrial firms’ market orientation on perceptions of the environmental pressure exerted by stakeholders and the environmental practices implemented in response to that pressure. Because market orientation is related to the collection and assessment of and response to opportunities and threats, market orientation should act as a driver of perceptions of and responses to environmental pressures exerted by stakeholders. An empirical analysis of a sample of Spanish industrial firms shows that market orientation is linked to more intense perceptions of pressure from nongovernmental stakeholders. However, the results are not conclusive with respect to the relationship between market orientation and the intensity of the response to environmental pressures characterized by the implementation of environmental practices.     

城市居民对节庆旅游影响的感知研究——以开封菊花文化节为例

节庆旅游给城市社会、经济、文化等带来广泛影响的同时并逐渐深入到人们的生活中,成为当地居民生活的一部分。为了更好地以实证分析当地居民对节庆旅游带来影响的感知,以开封菊花文化节为例,采用调查问卷的形式,分析开封居民对于菊花文化节所产生的社会、经济、文化等影响的感知情况。     

To what extent do network effects moderate the relationship between social media propagated news and investors’ perceptions?

As a prominent social media tool, Twitter enables prompt dissemination of financial news and information, which can have a substantial impact on investors’ perceptions and decision-making processes. The propagation of financial news and information through Twitter can either positively or negatively affect investors’ perceptions. As per network theory, the impact of information on one's perception and behavior is known as the network effect. Since Twitter is also a network, we tried to contribute more to this theory in this study by considering other factors that can have an impact on the perceptions of investors. We argue that the impact of financial information and news on investors’ perceptions is moderated by other factors such as connectivity, social ties, and network size of the network. To establish the links between them, we considered three key factors in investors’ networks: (1) network connectivity (network structure); (2) social ties circle (friends, family, colleagues); and (3) size of the network (number of contacts). The results of this study indicate that highly connected investors receive more information and hence, the impact of news is derived from the connectivity of investors within the network. The findings of the study also show that the social ties circle plays a crucial role in determining the impact of the news. The findings further indicate that the impact of news on investors’ perceptions also depends on the theme of the news.     

Corruption perceptions vs. corruption reality

This paper examines the accuracy of corruption perceptions by comparing Indonesian villagers' reported perceptions about corruption in a road-building project in their village with a more objective measure of ‘missing expenditures’ in the project. I find that villagers' reported perceptions do contain real information, and that villagers are sophisticated enough to distinguish between corruption in a particular road project and general corruption in the village. The magnitude of the reported information, however, is small, in part because officials hide corruption where it is hardest for villagers to detect. I also find that there are biases in reported perceptions. The findings illustrate the limitations of relying solely on corruption perceptions, whether in designing anti-corruption policies or in conducting empirical research on corruption.     

Inflation (mis)perceptions in the euro area

There has been a growing interest on inflation perceptions in the euro area, in particular, following the euro cash changeover. It has been pointed out that a gap emerged between observed and perceived inflation since the introduction of the euro notes and coins. Such a statement relies on the fact that inflation perceptions, measured by the well-known balance statistic from the European Commission’s consumer survey, hiked after January 2002 and remained high thereafter, as opposed to the observed inflation, which has remained fairly stable. In this paper, we discuss the measurement of inflation perceptions, by comparing the balance statistic with a refined alternative measure, which is computed using the probability method. We argue that the balance statistic should be used carefully, as it can lead to misleading conclusions. In fact, we find no evidence, both for euro area and individual countries, of the breakdown in the relationship between observed and perceived inflation, as measured by the proposed alternative measure, at the time of the euro cash changeover.     

THE FORMATION OF INFLATION PERCEPTIONS: SOME EMPIRICAL FACTS FOR EUROPEAN COUNTRIES

This paper investigates how households form their perceptions of consumer price inflation. Using data from the harmonized European Union consumer survey, we find that inflation perceptions are inefficient and highly heterogeneous, yet contemporaneously related to the actual rate of inflation. Consequently, we estimate how often households update their beliefs using Carroll's (2003) epidemiological model. Our results indicate that inflation perceptions are generally less responsive to new information than expectations. Unlike studies on expectations, we cannot confirm that a constant fraction of the population updates information every month. Also, the cross‐sectional heterogeneity of perceptions is higher than implied by infrequent updating alone.     

Social identity and perceived income adequacy

Economists are increasingly interested in subjective well‐being, but the economic literature on perceptions of income adequacy, which is one of the factors that shape subjective well‐being, is little. Our paper fills this lacuna. We utilize nationally representative data on perceptions of amounts considered as remunerative earnings from self‐employment in India and examine how these are earnings shaped by social identity, namely, caste. We also investigate if institutional change such as the introduction of an employment guarantee scheme alters these perceptions. Finally, we examine the relationship between caste identity and actual earnings. We find that caste identity does shape both perceptions of income adequacy and actual earnings: lower‐ranked groups perceive lower amounts as being remunerative and also earn lower amounts. Further, the employment guarantee scheme alters self‐perceptions differentially for different caste groups, but in more nuanced ways than our ex‐ante beliefs.     

Environmental Valuation with Imperfect Information The Case of the Random Utility Model

This paper considers welfare analysis with therandom utility model (RUM) when perceptions ofenvironmental quality differ from objectivemeasures of environmental quality. Environmental quality is assumed to be anexperience good, so that while perceptions ofquality determine choices, ex postutility is determined by objective quality. Given this assumption, I derive a measure ofthe welfare impact of changes in environmentalquality, and I show how this new welfaremeasure differs from the traditional welfaremeasure developed by Hanemann (1982). This newwelfare measure provides an approach tomeasuring the value of information aboutenvironmental quality within the framework ofthe random utility model.     

The preferential option for the poor and the Marxian-Christian perspective on distributive justice

Using a social economics perspective, this essay examines the positive and negative effects of job security, insecurity and the perceptions thereof on the welfare of workers, organizations, and society, as well as policy options that could alleviate the negative socio-economic consequences of job insecurity. The essay questions perceived job insecurity as a device to increase worker effort, both on efficiency and ethical grounds. It also suggests that increased perceptions of job insecurity have adversely affected workers' well-being and have undesirable macroeconomic and social effects. Public policy makers and researchers should examine ways to minimize the negative consequences associated with involuntary job loss. They should also consider to what extent both limiting firms' ability to layoff workers and providing incentives to firms that downsize to use alternatives to layoffs are socially desirable.     

企业员工组织信任影响因素的实证研究

本文以湖南省十家大中型企业251名员工为研究对象,对影响企业员工组织信任的因素进行了实证研究。相关分析表明：组织公平、组织气候、组织政治知觉、变革型领导与企业员工组织信任均存在显著的相关。而进一步的多元回归分析结果证实：组织公平、变革型领导对企业员工组织信任具有显著的正面影响;组织政治知觉对企业员工组织信任具有显著的负面影响;组织气候、组织变革知觉对企业员工组织信任的影响不显著。研究结果对于我国企业了解员工组织信任的影响因素,提高企业员工的组织信任水平提供了有益的借鉴与参考。     

Information regulation: Do the victims of externalities pay attention?

Individuals living in metropolitan areas are exposed to a large number of industrial risks. Information regulation is a new tool to manage such risks. We ask if large-scale information initiatives directed at the general public can affect individual risk perceptions. The answer is affirmative. Using the publication of the Toxics Release Inventory as a case study, we find a decline in predicted property values when new information on pollution became available, indicating that homebuyers adjusted their risk perceptions upward. The response, however, is limited to sources of toxic emissions that are located at a moderate distance from the properties in our sample.      

Letter from the Editors

The authors explore academic misconduct in various forms and consider the role of student perceptions. They gather data from students in introductory economics courses regarding 31 types of misconduct. They estimate the relevance of various determinants of misconduct, acknowledging that they may vary across misconduct type and that students' perceptions may influence their behavior. Their estimates reveal that although there are determinants that influence student behavior across misconduct type, some types of misconduct have a unique set of determinants. They find that a student's perception of what constitutes misconduct is an important component of this behavioral decision. These results imply that to reduce a particular type of cheating, one must consider its specific determinants and ensure that students believe that the act is misconduct. In addition, students must believe that the probability of being caught is high.     

Social influence and consumer preference formation for pro-environmental technology: The case of a U.K. workplace electric-vehicle study

We investigate the roles of social influence in the formation of consumer perceptions and preferences for pro-environmental technologies, using the example of battery electric vehicles (BEVs). The context was a technology-based workplace in the U.K. with around 500 members of staff, 57 of whom took part in a BEV experience project in 2010. Several months later, we recruited a diverse sample of 21 staff to complete semi-structured interviews. Following a multi-method approach, we elicited details about their perceptions and valuation of BEVs, experiences with BEVs, and social interactions relating to BEVs. Participants reported a wide variety of perceptions of BEV attributes, including environmental benefits and functional drawbacks. The majority of participants indicated that their BEV perceptions were “highly influenced” by at least one social interaction. We use the reflexive layers of influence conceptual framework to categorize social influence according to three processes: diffusion, the sharing of BEV-related information; translation, the discussion of uncertain BEV benefits and drawbacks; and reflexivity, the relating of BEV technology to self-concept. Findings suggest that participant perceptions change in part through social negotiation of meaning, lifestyle and identity. Neglect of social influence processes will underestimate the potential for shifts in consumer preferences regarding emerging pro-environmental technologies.     

The International Financial Crisis Viewed by Experts

The occurrence of the international financial crisis and the spread out of its effects on the global economy prompted experts around the world to think about how to manage the crisis and which measures to implement in order to restore normal economic and financial conditions. In this paper, we present and discuss the results of an international expert survey. We use these experts' perceptions to pursue a twofold target to understand their perceptions about the causes of the crisis, and of the policies to solve it. Interestingly, experts seem to broadly concur on what caused the crisis but their perceptions diverge regarding the policies. Furthermore, substantial differences in perceptions emerge between the Euro Area and the United States. We also find that the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank monetary policies during the crisis are judged barely adequate. Finally, different views distinguish academicians from other experts .