Spatial determinants of productivity growth on agri‐food Spanish firms: a comparison between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms

This study analyses the effect of the spatial factor, location, and interaction effects among peer companies, on the productivity growth of agri‐food companies in Spain. With this aim, we build a productivity growth index and apply a multiequational Seemingly Unrelated Regression on a sample of 344 Spanish cooperatives and investor‐owned firms for the period 2010–2012. Our findings show that agri‐food firms are influenced by spatial factors finding interesting differences between cooperatives and investor‐owned firms. With regard to the geographical location, cooperatives in the western of Spain show higher productivity growth rates, whereas investor‐owned firms in the northeast of Spain present better results. The interaction effect among closer peer companies is also a relevant factor to determine the productivity growth in agri‐food companies. This factor is more relevant for cooperatives than for investor‐owned firms.     

Learning Styles,Motivation, and Career Choice: Insights for International Business Students From Linguistic Inquiry

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to develop a model of motives and career choice based on learning styles in order to apply the model in teaching business. Although the relationship between learning and McClelland’s (1961) three motives (achievement, affiliation, and power) as confirmed that motives are “learned,” little research has examined if learning styles are the key factor to classify motivation into three different implicit motives and whether those motives affect students’ career choice.

Design: The article first examines the Kolb’s (Kolb, 1984, 1999; Kolb & Kolb, 2005) learning styles including active experimentation (AE), reflective observation (RO), abstract conceptualization (AC), and concrete experience (CE). It then measures the learning styles and Holland’s (1985) six career types including realistic, investigative, artistic, conventional, enterprising, and social by the three McClelland (1985) motives including achievement, power, and affiliation using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) 2015 software (Pennebaker, Booth, Boyd, & Francis, 2015). Finally, the article compared the factors of learning styles and career types against each other based on the three motives in order to discuss the teaching strategies for students in their career choice.

Methodology: The study has used LIWC 2015 (Pennebaker et al., 2015) software to find the scores of achievement, power, and affiliation motives in the four Kolb’s learning styles (Kolb, 1984, 1999; Kolb & Kolb, 2005), and the six career interests (Holland, 1985). Correlation analysis was conducted among the motive values to find the relations among the learning styles, motives, and career choice.

Findings: (a) The two learning styles of AC and AE stimulate the need for achievement; (b) the learning style of RO stimulates the need for power; (c) the learning style of CE stimulates the need for affiliation; (d) people with a high achievement motive would be fit in artistic, investigative, and realistic careers; (e) people with a high power motive would be fit in conventional and enterprising careers; (f) people with a high affiliation motive would be fit in a social career.

Originality of the research: Efficient teaching techniques applied based on the study findings indicate that (a) teaching high achievement students will use more challenge techniques such as assignments and projects for thinking and doing training, (b) teaching high power students will use more control techniques such as discussions and presentations for observation training, and (c) teaching high affiliation students will use more socially oriented techniques such as writing tasks for emotion training.     

An Investigation into the Potential Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards in the United States: Implications and Implementation

International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) have been adopted by most of the G20 countries. Given the broad worldwide acceptance of IFRS and significance of attaining comparability to facilitate free flow of capital, the US standard setter, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) made a commitment to jointly work with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to explore the possibilities of convergence of US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) with IFRS. In 2007, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) eliminated the requirement that foreign companies listed on the US stock exchanges reconcile their IFRS‐based financial statements with the US GAAP. In the same year the US SEC issued a concept release to the public requesting comments on a proposal to allow US issuers to prepare financial statements in accordance with IFRS. Following these initiatives by the FASB and SEC, the aim of the present study is to investigate the implications of a potential full adoption of IFRS by the US. The present study details the challenges and benefits of adoption and outlines the steps required for a successful outcome of this process.     

Conditional interest rate risk and the cross‐section of excess stock returns

Differences in excess stock returns can be rationalized by their sensitivities to conditional interest rate risk. Value stocks are particularly sensitive to upside movements in interest rate growth, while growth stocks react strongly to downside movements in interest rate growth. Consistent with the basic asset pricing theory, the upside interest rate risk commands a negative premium which is higher than the premium associated with the downside interest rate risk. Upside beta pertains its explanatory power after controlling for exposure to regular unconditional interest rate and various sources of financial and conditional macroeconomic risk.     

Tax and the Crisis*

Did taxation play any role in precipitating the financial crisis? Are there lessons to be drawn for future tax reform priorities? This paper reviews the main channels by which tax effects might have been felt and which may require forceful attention. These include in particular the large tax biases favouring debt finance and, in some countries, investment in housing. The complexities of national tax codes, and the international interaction between them, have, moreover, encouraged the use of complicated financial instruments and international tax planning, reducing transparency. Tax distortions did not cause the crisis – in the sense that there are no obvious tax changes likely to have triggered it – but they may well have contributed by leading to higher leverage and more complexity than would otherwise have been the case. Most of these distortions have long been a source of concern, but dealing with them may be more important than previously supposed.     

KfW/ZEW CO2 Panel: Vermeiden oder kaufen – Deutsche Unternehmen im Emissionshandel

The European Emission Trading Scheme (EU-ETS) is the first large-scale and inter-regional trading scheme for greenhouse gas emissions. It is seen as the central instrument of European climate policy. After a first testing-phase (2005–2007), the second trading period of the EU-ETS had started in 2008, with stronger incentives for investment in low-carbon technologies and carbon dioxide abatement. However, there is hardly any evidence how emissions trading fares in practice. The KfW/ZEW CO₂ Barometer shows that trading of emission permits is actively used by 75 percent of German companies, but the price-signals that stem from the EU-ETS were relatively weak so far—too weak to set strong incentives for carbon dioxide emission reductions on the company-level. Also in the case of the ‘clean development mechanism’ (CDM) which was introduced to promote emission reductions in developing counties, there is need for further development.     

Compensatory consumption and consumer compromises: a state-of-the-art review

ABSTRACT

Compensatory consumption has been an increasingly researched yet widely debated area of consumer behaviour over the last 20 years. Extant research formulates the term as overwhelmingly negative, largely due to the simplistic and fragmented conceptualisations assumed in prior work. The purpose of the current paper is to present a comprehensive review of the umbrella term of compensatory consumption, incorporating a continuum of behaviours and accounting for the pre- and post-consumption periods including both positive and negative viewpoints. In addition, expanding upon the theory of need satisfaction, the current paper introduces a novel conceptual distinction between compensation and compromise. Finally, a proposed theoretical framework is presented that differentiates between compensatory and compromisory consumption based on the extent of consumer consciousness, rationality and rationalisation. Future research directions are offered.     

Resource utilization and charges of patients with and without diagnosed venous thromboembolism during primary hospitalization and after elective inpatient surgery: a retrospective study

Aims: To assess incremental charges of patients experiencing venous thromboembolisms (VTE) across various types of elective inpatient surgical procedures with administration of general anesthesia in the US.

Methods: The authors performed a retrospective study utilizing data from a nationwide hospital operational records database from July 2014 through June 2015 to compare a group of inpatients experiencing a VTE event post-operatively to a propensity score matched group of inpatients who did not experience a VTE. Patients included in the analysis had a hospital admission for an elective inpatient surgical procedure with the use of general anesthesia. Procedures of the heart, brain, lungs, and obstetrical procedures were excluded, as these procedures often require a scheduled ICU stay post-operatively. Outcomes examined included VTE events during hospitalization, length of stay, unscheduled ICU transfers, number of days spent in the ICU if transferred, 3- and 30-day re-admissions, and total hospital charges incurred.

Results: The study included 17,727 patients undergoing elective inpatient surgical procedures. Of these, 36 patients who experienced a VTE event were matched to 108 patients who did not. VTE events occurred in 0.2% of the study population, with most events occurring for patients undergoing total knee replacement. VTE patients had a mean total hospital charge of $60,814 vs $48,325 for non-VTE patients, resulting in a mean incremental charge of $11,979 (p?<?.05). Compared to non-VTE patients, VTE patients had longer length of stay (5.9 days vs 3.7 days, p?<?.001), experienced a higher rate of 3-day re-admissions (3 vs 0 patients) and 30-day re-admissions (7 vs 2 patients).

Conclusions: Patients undergoing elective inpatient surgical procedures with general anesthesia who had a VTE event during their primary hospitalization had a significantly longer length of stay and significantly higher total hospital charges than comparable patients without a VTE event.     

Do Extrinsic Incentives Undermine Social Norms? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Energy Conservation

Policymakers use both extrinsic and intrinsic incentives to induce consumers to change behavior. This paper investigates whether the use of extrinsic financial incentives is complementary to intrinsic incentives, or whether financial incentives undermine the effect of intrinsic incentives. We conduct a randomized controlled trial that uses information interventions to residential electricity customers to test this question. We find that adding economic incentives to normative messages not only does not strengthen the effect of the latter but may reduce it. These results are consistent with recent theoretical work that suggests a tension between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives.