Consumer Segments Based on Attitudes Toward Luxury: Empirical Evidence from Twenty Countries

This article proposes an international segmentation of consumers based on their attitudes toward luxury. We perform a two-stage empirical study with a data set that combines samples from 20 countries. We provide a substantive interpretation of the results to show that three attitude segments dominate in a Western cultural context. We discuss several directions for future research based on the findings.     

THE INTERPLAY OF INEQUALITY AND REFERENCE DEPENDENCE WITH TRUST AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

Using a canonical trust game, we investigate whether the inequality of endowment between trustor and trustee and the acquired versus permanent financial state affect trust and trustworthiness. We found that trust and trustworthiness are reference‐dependent and that individuals with permanent financial state receive more trust and are more trustworthy than others. In our experiment, unequal endowments do not significantly affect trust, but trustworthiness increases significantly when the trustor is poorer.     

The effects of the subprime crisis on the Latin American financial markets: An empirical assessment

The aim of this article is to answer the following question: can the considerable rise in the volatility of the LAC stock markets in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 crisis be explained by the worsening financial environment in the US markets? To this end, we rely on a time-varying transition probability Markov-switching model, in which “crisis” and “non-crisis” periods are identified endogenously. Using daily data from January 2004 to April 2009, our findings do not validate the “financial decoupling” hypothesis since we show that the financial stress in the US markets is transmitted to the LAC's stock market volatility, especially in Mexico.     

Is international entrepreneurship a field? A bibliometric analysis of the literature (1989–2015)

The abundant academic literature on international entrepreneurship has attracted the attention of many researchers in various fields (international business, entrepreneurship, management, marketing, to mention a few). A debate has been opened on whether international entrepreneurship is indeed a field. In this article, we seek to contribute to this debate. We applied a bibliometric analysis to 567 articles on international entrepreneurship published during the 1989–February 2015 period. The main indices that this is an emerging field are as follows: a concentration of publications on central contributors and universities, key dates of social events, the creation of a journal dedicated to the topic and a strong identity of keywords. A co-citation analysis shows that the international entrepreneurship field is structured on a stable body of references, organised into five key clusters, distinct from its mother disciplines: international business and entrepreneurship. Our work helps to identify the paradigmatic approaches that structure international entrepreneurship.     

The changing role of house price dynamics over the business cycle

In this paper, we attempt to analyse the relationship between house price dynamics and the business cycle. Employing a time-varying transition probability Markov switching framework, we provide empirical evidence that house price growth may prove a useful leading indicator for turning point detection. Focusing on three countries, the US, UK and Spain, we furthermore provide evidence that although potentially informative from an overall perspective in business cycle modelling, the significance of signals contained in house prices may not be symmetric across the identified high growth and low growth states. In addition, we suggest a possible range of values for house price deflation which may trigger a recession the following period.     

Uncertainty and Amenity Values in Renewable Resource Economics

In this paper, we study the effects of amenities and uncertainty on the optimal exploitation of a renewable resource. First, if society displays a protection motive (in the presence of amenities), its optimal harvesting strategy will be more conservative. Second, we show that ecological uncertainty leads society to develop the opposite behavior, thus reducing its exposition towards risk. A stationary analysis is undertaken to analytically quantify and compare these two effects. With a Gompertz natural regeneration function and a proportional risk, the amenity effect is proved to prevail if and only if stochastic fluctuations on the resource stock are not too large.     

Policy consequences of limited cognitive ability

This paper analyses the welfare effects of price restrictions on private contracting in a world where agents have a limited cognitive ability. We deal with that by assuming that people compute the costs and benefits of entering a transaction with an error. We first discuss an example of an auction that will attract the least efficient buyers, because these are those who have made the largest mistake. We then study the case for government intervention when the government knows the distribution of true costs and benefits as well as that of errors. By imposing constraints on transaction prices, the government eliminates some that are on average inefficient - because the price signals that one of the parties has typically grossly overestimated its benefit from participation. This policy may increase aggregate welfare even though some of the transactions being blocked are actually efficient.JEL Classification: D81, J38, K31Gilles Saint-Paul: This paper is based on my Spanish Economic Review lecture at the Spanish Economic Association meeting, Salamanca, December 2002. I am grateful to the organizers for inviting me, and to participants and especially Juan Dolado for their useful comments.     

Claiming Rights To Mobility Through The Right To Inhabitance: Discursive Articulations from Civic Actors in Montreal

How do claims for rights to mobility intersect with grievances pertaining to spatial justice in the city? This article addresses the issue by studying the concrete connections made by activists promoting car alternatives in Montreal. The activists' discursive categories point to the centrality of their conditions of inhabitance in their claims for certain rights to mobility. The discourses are analysed in the context of demands for safe spaces to walk and cycle in Montreal, and in the context of opposition to the rebuilding of the Turcot highway interchange. The article discusses internal dynamics of collective action, as well as the external influences and controls on activists contesting automobility to various degrees and with different spatially grounded priorities. The claims for rights to mobility rely on locally articulated priorities for better conditions of inhabitance, yet with a transversal reliance on a shared sense of threat and vulnerability, and on the representations of a community (whether local or multi‐scalar), enabling changes in the physical framing of mobility.