The impact of environmental regulation on Chinese spatial development

We examine the relationship between environmental regulation and spatial development in China. Exploiting changes in national pollution standards for three industries, ammonia, paper and cement, we measure the impact of environmental regulation on industry productivity. Our results suggest that national pollution standards do not affect industry productivity, but they reallocate productivity spatially. We show that regulated industries located in developing cities increase their productivity compared to similar industries in other cities. This means that environmental regulation affects the spatial distribution of technology in China and might influence long‐term spatial development by reducing geographical disparities.     

Evidence of different models of socially responsible HRM in Europe

Socially responsible human resource management (SR‐HRM) is becoming increasingly important for academics and managers. The interface between HRM and corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the subject of analysis in this article. It adopts a contextual perspective to analyze whether the institutional context influences the implementation of socially responsible HRM (SR‐HRM). Considering the differences in the national institutional contexts across Europe, this study explores the different models of SR‐HRM in that region. The research is focused on a sample of 153 companies headquartered in Germany, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The findings evidence the influence exerted by the national institutional context on the implementation of SR‐HRM. Differences among country clusters suggest the existence of different models of SR‐HRM in Europe. However, these models do not correspond to the blocks on HRM or on CSR identified by the literature but instead provide a novel categorization.     

Upgrading peripheral wind sectors

The implementation of traditional policies does not consider institutional singularities in peripheral sectors. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the interaction among local capabilities and multinational agents to upgrade a peripheral wind sector. The case study conducted in the peripheral region of Galicia (Spain) emphasises the challenges concerning policy design and implementation in this kind of regions. The theoretical foundations are based on the systemic and evolutionary approach of the innovation system and the global value chain perspective. This combination enables to analyse how local contexts could shape governance patterns within value chains in peripheral regions. Likewise, the target approach is also applied concerning the design and implementation of a policy programme and its timing. Empirical evidences underline the complementarity of market size and foreign direct investment policies, as well as the diversification towards green transitions through enhancing local capabilities.     

Do movie contents influence box-office revenues?

This article studies the determinants of box-office revenues in the motion picture industry. We first adopt an approach that takes into account quality signals (e.g. talent concentration, movie budget and Oscar awards, among others) to analyse the empirical relationship between category-specific parenthood ratings (R-ratings) and box-office revenues. Then, by matching movie contents with economic performance records, our original approach reveals that offensive contents like profanity or nudity may be a hindrance to achieve economic returns, while violent contents seems to enhance box-office revenues. Further research is needed to clarify the interaction in this regard between production budget and movie contents.     

Valuation of forward start options under affine jump-diffusion models

Under the general affine jump-diffusion framework of Duffie et al. [Econometrica, 2000, 68, 1343–1376], this paper proposes an alternative pricing methodology for European-style forward start options that does not require any parallel optimization routine to ensure square integrability. Therefore, the proposed methodology is shown to possess a better accuracy–efficiency trade-off than the usual and more general approach initiated by Hong [Forward Smile and Derivative Pricing. Working paper, UBS, 2004] that is based on the knowledge of the forward characteristic function. Explicit pricing solutions are also offered under the nested jump-diffusion setting proposed by Bakshi et al. [J. Finance, 1997, 52, 2003–2049], which accommodates stochastic volatility and stochastic interest rates, and different integration schemes are numerically tested.     

Tuition fees and social segregation: lessons from a natural experiment at the University of Paris 9-Dauphine

Using a natural experiment, a sharp rise in tuition fees in some of the programmes at the University of Paris 9-Dauphine, we study the impact of tuition fees on students’ pathways, and outcomes. We apply an optimal matching method to the national database of students’ registrations (SISE) to define a typology of pathways. We then use a nonordered multinomial logit model to evaluate the impact of the rise in tuition fees on the types of pathways selected by the university. We show that there is a significant impact on these pathways. The increase in tuition fees reduces geographic and social mobility, thereby accentuating the phenomena of social segregation. Furthermore, contrary to what some of the studies assert, the rise does not appear to encourage greater effort: we find no impact on the graduation success rate.     

Unobservable persistent productivity and long term contracts

We study the problem of a firm that faces asymmetric information about the persistent productivity of its potential workers. In our framework, a worker's productivity is either assigned by nature at birth, or determined by an unobservable initial action of the worker that has persistent effects over time. We provide a characterization of the optimal dynamic compensation scheme that attracts only high productivity workers: consumption—regardless of time period—is ranked according to likelihood ratios of output histories, and the inverse of the marginal utility of consumption satisfies the martingale property derived in [Rogerson, William P., 1985. Repeated moral hazard. Econometrica 53 (1) 69–76]. However, in the case of i.i.d. output and square root utility we show that, contrary to the features of the optimal contract for a repeated moral hazard problem, the level and the variance of consumption are negatively correlated, due to the influence of early luck into future compensation. Moreover, in this example long-term inequality is lower under persistent private information.     

The role of role uncertainty in modified dictator games

We compare behavior in modified dictator games with and without role uncertainty. Subjects choose between a selfish action, a costly surplus creating action (altruistic behavior) and a costly surplus destroying action (spiteful behavior). While costly surplus creating actions are the most frequent under role uncertainty (64%), selfish actions become the most frequent without role uncertainty (69%). Also, the frequency of surplus destroying choices is negligible with role uncertainty (1%) but not so without it (11%). A classification of subjects into four different types of interdependent preferences (Selfish, Social Welfare maximizing, Inequity Averse and Competitive) shows that the use of role uncertainty overestimates the prevalence of Social Welfare maximizing preferences in the subject population (from 74% with role uncertainty to 21% without it) and underestimates Selfish and Inequity Averse preferences. An additional treatment, in which subjects undertake an understanding test before participating in the experiment with role uncertainty, shows that the vast majority of subjects (93%) correctly understand the payoff mechanism with role uncertainty, but yet surplus creating actions were most frequent. Our results warn against the use of role uncertainty in experiments that aim to measure the prevalence of interdependent preferences.     

Improving Group Attention: An Experiment with Synchronous Brainstorming

In this paper we address the problem of information overload in synchronous group work: the large quantity of information, multiple information sources, and the need to sustain reciprocal interdependence have a negative impact on the capacity to attend to the group. We propose a group attention model characterizing the dynamic coupling between the group members and the mediating technology. Based on that model, we developed a compensation mechanism capable to estimate the most adequate time to raise the users?? attention to the group. We describe how this compensation mechanism was applied to synchronous brainstorming and present results from a laboratory experiment. The obtained results indicate that groups using the compensation mechanism produced 9.6% more ideas when compared to the control groups. A detailed post-hoc analysis of the data obtained in the experiment also indicates that users using the compensation mechanism had 7.5 s of extra uninterrupted time to think about and type an idea, which they began to write 6.4 s sooner, and completed in 4.2 s less time.