Wage and employment effects of a wage norm

Most transition countries used tax‐supported wage norms in the early 1990s, as a part of their market liberalization programmes. This article analyses how a firm‐level tax (or subsidy) on deviations from a pre‐set wage norm may promote employment by rotating the labour demand curve perceived by the workers’ union around the value of the norm. We derive the conditions under which it yields a positive employment effect. We test the effect of the norm on the wages on a sample of Polish firms in 1990 and 1991. The data support the role of the wage norm on the position of the perceived labour demand curve and the role of the tax rate on its slope.     

Capitalization of Flood Insurance and Risk Perceptions in Housing Prices: An Empirical Agent‐Based Model Approach

Federally regulated or insured lenders in the United States are mandated to require flood insurance on properties that are located in areas at high risk of flooding. Despite the existence of this mandatory flood insurance requirement, take‐up rates for flood insurance have been low, and the federal government's exposure to uninsured property losses from flooding remains substantial. Meanwhile, the value of capital at risk varies significantly with flood events and changing risk perceptions, which necessitates mechanisms that stabilize these dynamics. In this article we discuss how a scenario of complete insurance uptake, under various risk attitudes, affects the value of properties in the 100‐year and 500‐year flood zones. Our results indicate that an increase in flood insurance uptake may provide such a mechanism by lowering the value of capital at risk in the flood zone consistently, independent of homeowners' risk attitudes. We apply an empirical adaptive agent‐based model to examine the capitalization of insurance costs, risk premiums, and their interaction in housing prices. Our approach combines widely‐used empirical hedonic analysis with the computational economic framework. We highlight the usefulness of our method in capturing the marginal implicit price of homeowners' preferences that may change over time and separately assess the effect of various factors and policies on property values, illustrating the agent‐based modeling as a valuable complement to traditional hedonic analysis.     

Design principles of hybrid approaches in new product development: a systematic literature review

Setting the right approach for new product development (NPD) in the presence of uncertainty remains an ongoing debate in innovation management. Stage-gate systems (SGS) and agile methodology (AM) are the dominant approaches. Recently, hybrid approaches (combining SGS and AM) have been proposed. Although these hybrid approaches represent a significant development in NPD, combining them without considering their design principles might lead to contradictory and competing conceptual formulations, thus increasing the difficulty of comparison among studies. Moreover, scholars and practitioners may struggle to understand when, why and how a certain configuration of the NPD process provides the right response to different manifestations of uncertainty. The current literature faces problems regarding the clarity of design principles (e.g. flexibility and adaptability), and this has led to research gaps concerning the uncertainty contingency and outcomes of hybrid approaches. This study combines bibliometric and content analyses to identify four design parameters and principles of NPD hybrid approaches: flexibility, adaptability, velocity and integration. Our findings might help advance the development and comparison of different hybrid approaches.     

The effect of capital requirement regulation on the transmission of monetary policy: evidence from Austria

This paper analyzes the role of banks’ regulatory capitalization in the transmission of monetary policy. We use a confidential dataset for Austrian banks spanning from the first quarter of 1997 to the fourth quarter of 2003. We find evidence that Austrian banks react in an asymmetric way to monetary policy depending on their regulatory excess capitalization, i.e. low capitalized banks react more restrictively to a monetary tightening than their highly capitalized peers.

Riskiness of Real Estate Development: A Perspective from Urban Economics and Option Value Theory

In this article, we define a new construct for urban economic and investment analysis, which revisits the conventional wisdom that investment in real estate development is riskier than investment in stabilized property assets. This new construct, referred as a “development asset value index” (DAVI), is a value index for newly developed properties (only) in a given geographical property market. It tracks longitudinal changes in the highest and best use (HBU) value of locations, and it reveals developer and landowner behavior taking advantage of the optionality inherent in land ownership. In particular, the DAVI reflects developers' use of flexibility in the exercise of the call option to (re)develop the property to any legal use and density. We empirically estimate a DAVI for commercial property (i.e., central locations) and compare it with a corresponding traditional transaction‐price‐based property asset price index (PAPI) corrected for depreciation. We believe that the difference primarily reflects the realized value of flexibility in land development. We find that the DAVIs display greater value growth and are smoother over time and less cyclical than their corresponding PAPIs for the same locations. This suggests that developers successfully use flexibility, and that development may be riskier than stabilized property investment due primarily only to leverage effects (construction costs). Practical implications are also discussed.     

“A profit table or a profit calculator?” A note on the design of Cournot oligopoly experiments

We report on an experiment conducted to evaluate the effects of varying the way in which market information is presented to participants in laboratory Cournot duopolies. We find that the most standard variations, which are the use of a profit table or a profit calculator, yield indistinguishable performance. However, the addition of a best-response option to the profit calculator tends to increase aggregate output to the Cournot level and decrease the incidence of tacit collusion.     

Investigating the gap between citizens' sustainability attitudes and food purchasing behaviour: empirical evidence from Brazilian pork consumers

Consumers worldwide are increasingly concerned with sustainable production and consumption. Recently, a comprehensive study ranked 17 countries in regard to their environmentally friendly behaviour among consumers. Brazil was one of the top countries in the list. Yet, several studies highlight significant differences between consumers' intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour: the so‐called ‘Attitude‐Behaviour Gap’. In developing countries, few studies have been conducted on this issue. The objective of this study is therefore to investigate the gap between citizens' sustainability‐related attitudes and food purchasing behaviour using empirical data from Brazil. To this end, Brazilian citizens' attitudes towards pig production systems were mapped through conjoint analysis and their coexistence with relevant pork product‐related purchasing behaviour of consumers was investigated through cluster analysis. The conjoint experiment was carried out with empirical data collected from 475 respondents surveyed in the South and Center‐West regions of Brazil. The results of the conjoint analysis were used for a subsequent cluster analysis in order to identify clusters of Brazilian citizens with diversified attitudes towards pig production systems, using socio‐demographics, attitudes towards sustainability‐related themes that are expected to influence the way they evaluate pig production systems, and consumption frequency of various pork products as clusters' background information. Three clusters were identified as ‘indifferent’, ‘environmental conscious’ and ‘sustainability‐oriented’ citizens. Although attitudes towards environment and nature had indeed an influence on citizens' specific attitudes towards pig farming at the cluster level, the relationship between ‘citizenship’ and consumption behaviour was found to be weak. This finding is similar to previous research conducted with European consumers: what people (in their role of citizens) think about pig production systems does not appear to significantly influence their pork consumption choices. Improvements in the integrated management of this chain would better meet consumers' sustainability‐related expectations towards pig production systems.     

Continuous-time mean-variance portfolio optimization in a jump-diffusion market

In this paper, we take up an approach of (Lindberg, in Bernoulli, 15(2):464–474, 2009) who introduced a new parameterization of the Black–Scholes model that allows for an easy solution of the continuous-time Markowitz mean-variance problem. We generalize the results of (Lindberg, in Bernoulli, 15(2):464–474, 2009) to a jump-diffusion market setting and slightly correct the proof and the assertion of the main result. Further, we demonstrate the implications of the Lindberg parameterization for the stock price drift vector in different market settings, analyse the dependence of the optimal portfolio from jump and diffusion risk and finally indicate how to use the method. We particularly also show how the optimal strategy can be obtained with the restricted use of historical data.