Accuracy of self-reports on donations to charitable organizations

In this paper we assess overall accuracy in survey self-reports on giving to charitable organizations, direction of bias in self-reports, and the influence of this bias on relationships. We compare donations to one specific health charity reported in the Giving in the Netherlands Panel Study 2003 with donations recorded in the database (n =  191). We find that (a) reported donations are significantly higher than recorded donations; (b) reported amounts contributed are correlated very strongly with recorded contributions; (c) differences between amounts reported and amounts recorded are positively related to education, religious affiliation, and the tendency to social desirability, and negatively to household income. This suggests that effects of education are overestimated and effects of income and religious affiliation are underestimated using self-reports on donations rather than archival records.     

Organizing women for combat: The experience of the FARC in the Colombian war

The FARC, which used to be Colombia's main guerrilla force and is now in the midst of a peace process, was to a great extent a feminized group. This paper discusses why it recruited so many women, and why it recruited them as combatants. We suggest that only when the FARC adopted a highly hierarchical, self‐contained, and militaristic organizational blueprint did it get involved in the massive recruitment of women as combatants. We discuss the way in which organizational mechanisms and ideology interacted to produce such an outcome, and how this interaction marked both the organization and the trajectories of the women who joined it.     

Making Chile Visible: Purposes,Operationalisation and Audiences from the Perspective of Nation Branding Practitioners

Chile has become the paradigm of nation branding in Latin America, employing branding initiatives to try to shake off the uncomfortable past of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, as well as to create a ‘new’ image that fits into a globalised and neoliberal world. Whilst there has previously been some analysis of Chile’s branding efforts, the viewpoints of the local actors involved in these initiatives have largely been ignored. This article addresses this issue, examining the tensions faced by different individuals who have taken part in nation branding in the country. Drawing on interviews with some of these individuals, this article examines three areas of tension: (1) the conflicting purposes guiding the practice of nation branding, (2) the difficulties around the operationalisation of nation branding and (3) the controversies regarding the intended audiences for their efforts.     

Creating sustainable value in the hospitality industry: a (critical) multi-stakeholder study in the Dominican Republic

This paper identifies sustainable initiatives reported by “sustainability-champion” hotels in the Dominican Republic, while contrasting them against the views of key stakeholders. We adapt and apply Hart and Milstein's Sustainable Value Framework, and complement it with a Critical Management Studies approach. Our analysis relies on a mixed-methods approach (non-hierarchical k-means cluster analysis, as well as thematic and content analysis). Findings indicate that most hotels are engaging more actively in present-oriented strategies such as pollution prevention (especially, the international hotels) and in product/service stewardship. However, in the future-oriented strategies, hotels owned by local investors show higher commitment to both clean technology and innovation, and to the sustainability vision (as the firm's growth path). In addition, although the views of multiple stakeholders show a clear acknowledgment of the hospitality industry's sustainability efforts (particularly regarding education and environmental protection), they also offer differing views about the ultimate impact and value of those efforts for them and for the broader society. Our study offers a new theoretical lens to explore multi-stakeholder approaches and offers practical implications for the Dominican Republic's National Strategy for Development 2010–2030, as well as implications that may be of use for other tourism-dependent countries.     

Country Differences in Material Deprivation in Europe

This paper assesses to what extent differences in the characteristics of individuals (micro‐level perspective) and country‐specific factors (macro‐level perspective) can explain country differences with respect to material deprivation levels. Thus, our work aims to simultaneously consider the macro dimension and the predominantly individually‐oriented study field of material deprivation using multilevel techniques. We make use of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Our results show that country‐specific factors seem to be much more relevant than individual effects in explaining country differences in material deprivation. We estimate that the introduction of country‐specific factors reduces the proportion of total variance due to between‐country differences in deprivation by 72.7 percent, while individual‐level variables reduce this proportion by only 9.4 percent. We also show, through interaction variables, that the effect of sociodemographic characteristics can be shaped by institutional and structural factors, especially by the level of GDP.     

Does personal background influence a finance minister to cook the books? An investigation of creative accounting in Swiss cantons

This article aims to identify the factors influencing the use of creative accounting in the public sector. Its distinctive feature is that it sheds light on creative accounting when used, not to hide public deficits, but to conceal surpluses. It especially explores the impact of the finance minister’s (FM)’s background on the phenomenon. We take advantage of the quasi-experimental settings of the Swiss cantons in which the financial management act sets out the possibility of implementing certain accounting gimmicks, including mainly additional ‘depreciation’ charges. These charges, which are depreciations in name only, enable the FM to artificially inflate expenses, thus increasing the deficit or reducing the surplus. Our panel data set of the 26 cantons over the period 1980–2012 includes a new data set of creative accounting and of 116 cantonal FMs. Our results indicate that the FMs cook the books irrespective of their personal or ideological background with the exception that trained economists tend to apply creative accounting more. Additionally, stringent fiscal rules urge FMs towards more surplus-hiding accounting.     

Can Marketing Help in Tackling Food Waste?: Proposals in Developed Countries

One third of food destined for human consumption is wasted globally, and much of the food waste that comes from high-income or developed countries is caused by poor marketing practices, consumer behavior, and consumption patterns. The present study focuses on developed countries to propose some marketing actions that could help in reducing food waste. A comprehensive analysis was carried out for each marketing variable, to provide a snapshot of actions and proposals that are being developed. Our study highlights the relevance of marketing in contributing to reduce food waste, through the removal of “Buy one, get one free” sales promotions, clarifying date labeling, or raising food waste awareness campaigns. The main contribution of this study is the proposal of marketing actions that help in tacking food waste.     

Expertenwissen im politischen Prozess — Nutzen,Grenzen und Gefahren

Since the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis, confidence in politicians as well as the economists in their advisory expert panels seems to be at an all-time low. Why do politicians reject science-based advice unless it fits into their political agenda? Are economists misunderstood by politicians and vice versa? The tension between the ideal of evidence-based policy-making and the reality of policy-based evidence-making is hardly a new phenomenon. Therefore, the expectation that Donald Trump, the Brexiteers and European populists will necessarily disappoint their voters because they simply cannot deliver what they have promised is misleading. Experts would be well advised to use the debate on the post-factual era as an impetus to reflect critically on their profession. One opinion expressed in this Zeitgespräch is that the contested societal and political impact of modern economics is due to its restricted scientific self-concept. A more open, pluralistic and transdisciplinary self-definition of economics would strengthen its societal influence. Another contributor ponders the proper incentives to persuade academic economists to provide economic policy advice. Key is the independence of advisory institutions like the German Council of Economic Experts. The selection of people with the best scientific qualifications will ensure the reputation of such institutions.     

Stock markets fragmentation,volatility and final investors

The 2000s in equity markets are marked by two major regulatory shocks: RegNMS in the United States, and MiFID in the European Union. Simultaneously, there is a massive increase in the proportion of high-frequency trading, and market orders volume. However, trading volumes do not significantly increase. We propose a theoretical model describing the effects of stock markets fragmentation on two types of investors optimization problems: “intermediary” high-frequency and “final” investors. Volatility has a permanent and a transitory component, whose weights depend on market fragmentation via the share of non-marketable orders of intermediary investors. The trading volume of final investors depends on market fragmentation both directly via transaction costs, and indirectly via total volatility. Finally a shock in fragmentation may lead to a decrease in trading volume, enhanced in the case of an equity markets crisis by a rise in the components of volatility.