Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).     

房产税能否抑制实体经济"脱实向虚"——来自上海和重庆的经验分析

本文利用我国35个大中城市2006-2018年的平衡面板数据,基于上海和重庆在2011年实施的房产税试点政策,运用合成控制法检验房产税政策能否抑制实体经济"脱实向虚"发展的趋势.研究结果显示,房产税政策能够有效地遏制地区房地产业新增产值占GDP的比重的上升,促使实体企业回归主业,增加实体投资,实现促进实体经济朝着"脱虚返实"方向发展的作用.鉴于此,本文提出应加快推进房产税政策在全国范围内的实施,并在政府补贴、银行贷款等方面采取一系列配套措施鼓励实体企业进行更多的实体投资.     

团队科学创造力的提升需重视团队成就目标导向——被调节的中介效应

基于创造力成分等多维理论，构建以团队反馈寻求行为为中介变量，团队凝聚力为调节变量的被调节的中介效应模型，以期深入解释创新团队成就目标导向如何影响其团队科学创造力。基于129个理工科大学生科技创新团队数据，研究结果表明，团队学习目标导向和团队表现目标导向分别与团队科学创造力有显著的正向和负向关系；团队反馈寻求行为在团队成就目标导向与团队科学创造力间起部分中介作用；团队凝聚力负向调节团队反馈寻求行为与团队科学创造力间的关系，并弱化了团队成就目标导向通过团队反馈寻求行为对团队科学创造力的间接影响。结论对提高科技创新团队科学创造力有一定指导价值。     

All work intensity is not created equal: Effort motives,job satisfaction and quit intentions at a grocery chain

Prior research has shown that the well-being of employees engaged in intensive work can vary with the discretion their jobs afford regarding how and when to carry out the work. This article explores a different avenue. It argues that well-being also varies with employees’ individual motives for working intensively. The article introduces self-determination theory to the domain of work intensity and focuses on two hypotheses. The first is whether intensive work driven by explicit or implicit incentives is more positively associated with an employee's job satisfaction than intensive work driven by job demands. The second is whether intensive work driven by intrinsic motives is more positively associated with job satisfaction than that driven by explicit or implicit incentives. In both these cases, the article also examines whether equivalent effects exist on (reduced) quit intentions. Original data from a major Greek grocery chain provide corroborative evidence that is robust to a rich set of covariates, including increasingly demanding adjustments for job discretion. The findings contribute to a more complete understanding of why differences in well-being exist among employees performing intensive work, with implications for workers and employers.     

Asymmetric effects of housing wealth on college enrolment

We investigate the impact of housing wealth, credit availability and financial distress on college enrolment decisions. We find that housing wealth is negatively related to enrolment in public schools and positively related to enrolment in private schools. This evidence suggests that, on average, students substituted away from private schools towards public institutions during the recent financial crisis.     

A new perspective on the exporter productivity premium: online trade

We use a unique firm-level data set including 9000 companies from 26 European Union countries covering four different sectors to take a close look at the relationship between online exports and productivity. The online exporter productivity premium is estimated using different techniques (ordinary least squares, quantile regressions and robust estimation). Results consistently indicate that the estimated online exporter productivity premium is statistically different from zero, positive and significant from an economic point of view. European online exporters, according to these results, are approximately 2% more productive than non-online exporters. Productivity differences between firms could be related to variables that are not included in the empirical model. More research would be needed to address this issue in the future.     

Data-based mechanistic modelling and forecasting globally averaged surface temperature

The main objective of this paper it to model the dynamic relationship between global averaged measures of Total Radiative Forcing (RTF) and surface temperature, measured by the Global Temperature Anomaly (GTA), and then use this model to forecast the GTA. The analysis utilizes the Data-Based Mechanistic (DBM) approach to the modelling and forecasting where, in this application, the unobserved component model includes a novel hybrid Box-Jenkins stochastic model in which the relationship between RTF and GTA is based on a continuous time transfer function (differential equation) model. This model then provides the basis for short term, inter-annual to decadal, forecasting of the GTA, using a transfer function form of the Kalman Filter, which produces a good prediction of the ‘pause’ or ‘levelling’ in the temperature rise over the period 2000 to 2011. This derives in part from the effects of a quasi-periodic component that is modelled and forecast by a Dynamic Harmonic Regression (DHR) relationship and is shown to be correlated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) index.