The Effectiveness of Fear Appeals Featuring Fines versus Social Disapproval in Preventing Shoplifting Among Adolescents

The present study investigates the effectiveness of fear appeals, including type of punishment (social disapproval vs. fines), probability of getting caught when shoplifting, and severity of the punishment, in preventing shoplifting among adolescents. Results show that when the chance of getting caught is low, social punishment messages should stress severe levels of social disapproval. When social disapproval messages imply a high probability of apprehension, the severity of social rejection does not affect shoplifting intentions. Finally, messages focusing on fines should depict large instead of small fines, irrespective of the communicated probability of getting caught.     

Does prestigious board membership matter? Evidence from New Zealand

This study investigates whether ‘prestigious’ multiple board membership is positively associated with firm performance. We employ Resource Dependency theory to explain why performance outcomes may be improved by the presence of ‘prestigious’ multiple directorships. Our analysis relies on extensive hand‐collected data on New Zealand company directorships. The results support the contention that ‘prestigious’ multiple directorships are related to better accounting and market performance. Conclusions reflect upon how Resource Dependency theory informs this phenomenon and how ‘prestigious’ board members may be a valuable resource for firms. We also reveal how these findings expose a new avenue for board governance research.     

Drivers of exceptional job creation – a dynamic probit approach using portuguese firm-level data

Portuguese Economic Journal - It is a well-established fact that a small number of firms, known as Gazelles, drive a disproportionately large amount of net job creation. This fact has attracted...     

Quotas,Productivity, and Prices: The Case of Anchovy Fishing

I exploit a 2009 reform that introduced individual fishing quotas (catch shares) for Peruvian anchovy—the largest fishery in the world—to assess the causal impact of production quotas on within‐firm productivity and market prices. Unique features of the data allow me to create two alternative counterfactuals: (i) anchovy fishing operations in a region of the country that was mandated to implement quotas with a delay, and (ii) variation in quota allocations across ships. I find that quotas do not increase within‐asset or within‐firm productivity in quantities. Instead, a 200% increase in anchovy prices benefits extraction firms through higher revenues, consistent with two mechanisms enacted by individual fishing quotas: more orderly industry operations reducing excess supply and an increase in bargaining power of extraction firms with respect to fish‐processing. Several market characteristics across geographies differentially affect market prices after the quota regime. Supplementary evidence on fewer operational infractions, higher product quality, and a lower banking delinquency observed during the quota regime suggests the existence of efficiency gains rather than purely rent transfers.     

Using a Faculty Survey to Kick-Start an Ethics Curriculum Upgrade

The article briefly reviews the external pressures for teaching business ethics. It then summarizes why teaching business ethics across the curriculum is essentially a necessity in the current environment. This leads to a discussion of six commonly adopted elements used when seeking to improve a business ethics curriculum. The case study uses these six elements to provide insights into contemporary challenges facing many business schools. The particular contribution of this article is in the area of methods to assess the status of the curriculum. The case study provides details about a faculty survey used as a compelling tool to kick-start a business ethics curriculum upgrade, not only based on the information that it yields, but the potent opportunity for conversation and collaboration. The conclusion summarizes the contemporary challenges and opportunities that business schools face. The instrument itself is in the appendix.     

Determinants of risk behaviour: effects of perceived risks and risk attitude on farmer’s adoption of risk management strategies

The importance of risk perception and risk attitude for understanding individual’s risk behaviour are independently well described in literature, but rarely combined in an integrated approach. In this study, we propose a model assuming the choice to implement certain risk management strategies to be directly driven by both perceptions of risks and risk attitude. Other determinants influence the intention to apply different risk strategies mainly indirectly, mediated by risk perception and risk attitude. This conceptual model is empirically tested, using structural equation modelling, for understanding the intention of farmers to implement different common risk management strategies at their farms. Data are gathered in a survey completed by 500 farmers from the Flanders region in Belgium, investigating attitudes towards farming, perceived past exposure to risk, socio-demographic characteristics, farm size, perceptions of the major sources of farm business risk, risk attitudes and the intention to apply common risk management strategies. Our major findings are: (i) perception of major farm business risks have no significant impact on the intention of applying any of the risk strategies under study, (ii) risk attitude does have a significant impact. Therefore, rather than objective risk faced and the subjective interpretation thereof, it is the general risk attitude that influence intended risk strategies to be implemented. A distinction can be made between farmers willing to take risk, who are more inclined to apply ex-ante risk management strategies and risk averse farmers who are less inclined to implement ex-ante risk management strategies but rather cope with the consequences and diminish their effects ex-post when risks have occurred.     

Business cycle co-movement: Evidence from the Great Depression

Recent analysis focuses on the gold standard as a channel for the transmission of the Great Depression. Trade linkages, which loom large in the recent literature, play a smaller role. Both the gold standard and trade were associated with higher co-movement at the bilateral level during the entire interwar period. We document that fixed exchange rates and trade made a comeback after 1932, but co-movement declined. The fall after 1932 appears to be driven by the rise of smaller blocs based on monetary and trade cooperation and an accompanying fall in co-movement between blocs.     

Some Remarks on Modified FDH

One of the tools in theoretical and empirical work on the measurement of productive efficiency is the socalled Free Disposal Hull (FDH) method. As a result of its very generous character, many of the observations belonging to an evaluated dataset are labeled efficient by this method. Modified FDH, similar in spirit as Andersen and Petersen's modified Data Envelopment Analysis, may thus be used to discriminate between FDH-efficient units. We aim to show why particularly for FDH this method seems quite apt and may be called for as a valuable complementary tool to standard FDH analysis.