A Machine Learning Analysis of the Recent Environmental and Resource Economics Literature

We use topic modeling to study research articles in environmental and resource economics journals in the period 2000–2019. Topic modeling based on machine learning allows us to identify and track latent topics in the literature over time and across journals, and further to study the role of different journals in different topics and the changing emphasis on topics in different journals. The most prevalent topics in environmental and resource economics research in this period are growth and sustainable development and theory and methodology. Topics on climate change and energy economics have emerged with the strongest upward trends. When we look at our results across journals, we see that journals have different topical profiles and that many topics mainly appear in one or a few selected journals. Further investigation reveal latent semantic structures across research themes that only the insider would be aware.

     

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.     

Keeping Teams Together: How Ethical Leadership Moderates the Effects of Performance on Team Efficacy and Social Integration

Journal of Business Ethics - Prior research has demonstrated a strong relationship between team performance and team members’ team efficacy beliefs and perceptions of social integration....     

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).     

Growth,Distribution, and External Constraints: A Post-Kaleckian Model Applied to Brazil

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to analyze whether the Brazilian economy behaved under a wage-led or profit-led regime between 1960 and 2011, considering a Post-Kaleckian model in a context of external constraints. The time span is limited by data availability (i.e., 2011). To answer the question of whether the Brazilian economy works under a wage-led or profit-led regime, we propose a simple Post-Kaleckian model. The model suggests that a profit-led regime is more probable for Brazil. Moreover, a wage-led regime occurs when a balance of payments constrained growth model is taken into consideration. Likewise, the real exchange rate has a positive impact on economic growth through the export channel. This result is a novelty in the recent literature about the relationship between real exchange rate and economic growth within a Post-Kaleckian model. The Brazilian economy was chosen as it is one of the biggest economies in Latin America.     

Dynamics of the Market for Corporate Tax‐Avoidance Advice*

This paper addresses the debate over aggressive tax‐planning models and analyzes the role of tax consultants. It focuses on the dynamic interaction between innovation and imitation of aggressive tax‐planning products and governmental tax regulation, and it highlights the importance of the length of regulatory lag in comparison with the time it takes the tax‐consulting industry to imitate newly innovated tax‐avoidance products. It reveals an alignment of interests between highly innovative tax‐consulting firms and the governmental tax legislator/regulator. The conclusions are also relevant for the policy debate on mandatory disclosure rules about aggressive tax‐planning models.     

Sentiment-scaled CAPM and market mispricing

This study explores the conditional version of the capital asset pricing model on sentiment to provide a behavioural intuition behind the value premium and market mispricing. We find betas (β) and the market risk premium to vary over time across different sentiment indices and portfolios. More importantly, the state β derived from this sentiment-scaled model provides a behavioural explanation of the value premium and a set of anomalies driven by mispricing. Different from the static β–return relation that gives a flat security market line, we document upward security market lines when plotting portfolio returns against their state βs and portfolios with higher state βs earn higher returns.