Too much of a good thing? Why altruism can harm the environment?

Success of eco-labeling schemes, broadly defined, varies among products and across countries. Based on a simple theoretical framework, we show that the nature of environmental attributes among products (i.e., private versus public) and the consumer type (i.e., egoist versus altruist) shape the overall performance of such schemes. In addition, we demonstrate that altruistic consumers exhibiting a too high willingness to pay for the eco-labeled product can inadvertently prevent egoistic consumers from purchasing it, leading to a sub-optimal outcome in terms of environmental performance. Several policy and managerial implications are drawn.     

Do You Prefer Having More or More than Others in the Workplace? A Quasi‐experimental Survey in Algeria

We examine the relevance of relative standings in Algeria (North Africa). We focus on the workplace, by considering domains generally important in this specific context: income, extra wage, office size, free days, worked hours, days being ill, offered company car, traffic jam when going to work, and being praised and berated by supervisor. Respondents prefer equality situations (i.e., where everyone has the same endowment) rather than positional and absolute ones (i.e., where they have the highest relative and absolute levels, respectively). An exception is found regarding praise by supervisor where the proportions of individuals choosing positional states are the highest. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Monitoring and Sanctions on Cheating: Experimental Evidence from Tunisia

Using a laboratory experiment in a developing country (Tunisia, North Africa), we investigate whether the level of monitoring and both the nature (monetary versus moral) and magnitude of sanctions influence cheating levels. Our findings show that the introduction of weak monetary sanctions and monitoring is likely to increase cheating. However, a perfect monitoring is found to decrease the level of cheating. Moreover, when combined with a perfect monitoring, moral sanctions matter and may be even more effective than strong monetary sanctions in reducing cheating. We draw some policy implications regarding cheating in various domains. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

EMAC Distinguished Marketing Scholar 2012: Respect the data!

Consumer research suffers from a lack of respect for data. Researchers routinely fail to report full experiments that do not produce expected results and often eliminate alleged “outliers” on the basis of inappropriate rules, leading to biased test reports. Scholars appear to be relying less on non-experimental data, even as the serious limitations of experimental data may create structural discrepancies with the other, non-experimental cases of a phenomenon or process, such that it becomes impossible to study some major consumer phenomena. The lessons from empirical data get accepted only when they can be described as confirming preexisting conceptual frameworks. This article presents an extensive analysis of multiple forms of a lack of respect for the data and proposes some remedies. Overall, data should never play a subordinate part.     

Is there a relationship between workplace atmosphere and innovation activities? An empirical analysis among French firms

We examine empirically the relationship between workplace atmosphere and innovation activities. A generalized method of moments estimator of Poisson regression is applied to a set of 5574 observations in French firms. Our estimation results show that firms in which employees report good workplace atmosphere are more likely to engage in innovation activities. Nevertheless, while a positive relationship is found between workplace atmosphere and product/service innovation, other types of innovation activities, namely process, organizational and marketing, are not related to better workplace atmosphere.     

Friedman and Keynes: divergences and convergences *

Milton Friedman claims to have succeeded the Keynesian revolution with a counter-revolution which, incorporating certain features of Keynes's thought, triumphed at the end of the 1960s. This paper presents a general assessment of the relationship between these thinkers, in the domain of politics, methodology and economics, the emphasis being put on Friedman's reading of Keynes. In many places, Friedman stresses the convergences between his vision and Keynes's, as against the latter's Walrasian disciples. However, despite certain points of agreement at the methodological level, the two authors are radically opposed in terms of political vision and economic analysis.     

Semi-core equivalence

Summary. The main requirements for equivalence of the core of an economy and the Walrasian equilibrium allocations are largeness and the freedom to form almost arbitrary coalitions in the Edgeworthian barter processes. We investigate whether constraints on coalition formation and coalitional barter alter these insights. Our notion of the semi-core imposes a restriction on the collection of formable coalitions that does not affect the fundamental equivalence property. Using our concept of the contract-core we show that additional constraints on coalitional barter can only be alleviated within an environment with sufficiently many formable coalitions: besides a contract-core equivalence theorem we show certain non-equivalence results.Received: December 11, 1995; revised version: September 17, 1996This revised version was published online in February 2005 with corrections to the cover date.     

Does advertising the green benefits of products contribute to sustainable development goals? A quasi‐experimental test of the dilution effect

Using two studies, we examine the dilution effect for green products, by testing whether advertising green benefits decreases their perceived instrumentality and thus harms sustainable development. We use a between‐subject design and ask participants to evaluate the efficacy of a pen (Study 1) and a dish detergent (Study 2) with and without environmental attributes. Our results are inconsistent with the predictions of the dilution model because the perceived instrumentality of both products does not decrease when environmental benefits are added. Our findings are relevant for eco‐labeling given anecdotal evidence suggesting that adding green information can harm the perceived quality of products.