The reporting of gross and net earnings in a postal survey

In a controlled experiment involving a sample comprising 8300 school leavers who entered the labour market in 1983/84, half of the sample were asked to report on gross weekly earnings (if employed) or expected gross earnings (if not employed). The other half were asked equivalent questions in terms of net earnings. Comparisons between the responses indicate that those in employment were able to provide consistent responses concerning gross and net earnings. Among the non-employed, however, there is reason to believe that those reporting expected net earnings may have underestimated the impact of the deductions due to tax and National Insurance contributions. The size of this understatement is such as to create a discrepancy of some 9 per cent (in terms of gross earnings) between the two sources of expected earnings.     

Online Marketing: A Boon or Bane for Business in Singapore?

This paper examines the impact of e-commerce through online marketing among the multi-national corporations in Singapore. A survey was carried out to examine the differences between online and traditional marketing strategies, to explore the possibility of online marketing replacing traditional marketing, and consequently, the future of online marketing in Singapore. The findings reveal that MNCs do adopt different marketing strategies, both online and offline, in aspects of product, price, place, promotion, people, physical evidence and promotion. Results indicate that online marketing is still in its infancy in Singapore. Although most MNCs are not selling online but some plan to do so within twelve months.     

The Impact of Letter Grades on Student Effort,Course Selection,and Major Choice: A Regression-Discontinuity Analysis

The authors apply a regression-discontinuity design to identify the causal impact of letter grades on student effort within a course, subsequent credit hours taken, and the probability of majoring in economics. Their methodology addresses key issues in identifying the causal impact of letter grades: correlation with unobservable factors, such as motivation, and direction of causation. They find no evidence that letter grades influence undergraduate students’ course-taking behavior or decision to major in economics. They find that, within a course, the first exam letter grade can affect student performance on the second exam.     

How source cues impact consumer evaluations of direct and indirect persuasion attempts

This research demonstrates how the directness of a persuasion attempt by a sales agent, in this case flattery, changes how source cues influence consumers’ evaluation of the shopping experience. When the persuasion attempt is direct, source cues do not influence consumer evaluations. However, when an indirect persuasion attempt is used, it is only effective when positive source cues are present. In particular, when the persuasion attempt is indirect, evaluations are more effective when the sales agent is attractive to or shares similar opinions with the consumer. Copyright © 2013 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Effect of Regulations on Pension Risk Shifting: Evidence from the US and Europe

This paper provides evidence that pension regulations can incentivize or curb risk shifting in the investment of defined benefit plan assets. We document that in the US, where the pension insurance premium charged by the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is largely flat, financially distressed firms with severely underfunded plans shift pension investment risk. We further find that risk shifting is mitigated in the UK after the implementation of risk‐adjusted pension insurance premiums, and in the Netherlands where full pension funding is mandatory. Overall the results in this paper lend support to the view that structural flaws in the US statutory pension insurance scheme incentivize high‐risk sponsors to gamble their pension assets when distress terminations of their plans become foreseeable.     

Institutionalist Theories of the Wage Bargain: Beyond Demand and Supply

I distill an integrated structure of institutionalist theories of wage determination, linked by overarching views of reality and key principles, and show that three fundamental propositions connect these into one “extended family.” I then outline ten principles that reflect the models and propositions. While very different in form than the familiar Walrasian price-auction model, this relatively succinct approach to wage determination leads to many testable hypotheses. It also explains questions, such as: Why can the minimum wage not often be raised without causing unemployment? Why has wage inequality increased within occupations and educational levels, as well as between? Why does high pay tend to be accompanied by better benefits, working conditions, and on-the-job training (rather than compensating for the lack of one of these)? The insights of many contemporary institutional economists, including Robert Prasch, are particularly important to this analysis, along with earlier work of John R. Commons, John Dunlop, Lloyd Reynolds, and Lester Thurow.     

Great expectations and broken promises: misleading claims,product failure,expectancy disconfirmation and consumer distrust

Previous research in the product failure literature shows that such failures have important implications for evaluations of the target product, and even for evaluations of closely related products. The current studies identify distrust as an additional byproduct of negative expectancy disconfirmation and show that such perceptions are capable of producing even broader carryover effects—pertaining to unrelated products/companies. The effects of distrust are identified through tests of mediation and moderation, and are shown to be distinct from other processes known to relate to product failure. The results also show an asymmetry in the effects of positive and negative disconfirmation, consistent with the predicted negativity bias in judgments of generalized trust versus generalized distrust. Finally, generalized distrust continued to exert a negative influence despite the opportunity to directly examine the second product, and these effects were actually augmented to some extent. The results have implications for the expectancy disconfirmation and product failure literatures, as well as the defensive bias model of distrust.