The education pillar of the Europe 2020 strategy: a convergence analysis

Empirica - In March 2010, the European Commission launched the Europe 2020 strategy ‘for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ in the EU. Education is a major pillar of the Europe...     

Comparing Compliance Behaviour of Students and Farmers. An Extra-laboratory Experiment in the Context of Agri-environmental Nudges in Germany

Increasing popularity of economic experiments for policy impact analysis has led to an on-going debate about the suitability of students to substitute professionals as experimental subjects. To date, subject pool effects in agricultural and resource economics experiments have not been sufficiently studied. In order to identify differences and similarities between students and non-students, we carry out an experiment in the form of a multi-period business management game that is adapted to an agri-environmental context. We compare the compliance behaviour of German agricultural students and German farmers with regard to water protection rules and analyse their responses to two different green nudge interventions. The experimental results reveal that the direction of the response to the policy treatments is similar. Even unexpected behaviour could be reproduced by the student sample. Nevertheless, the magnitude of the treatment effects differed between the two samples. This implies that experimenters in the field of agricultural and resource economics could use the subject pool of students to analyse the direction of nudge policies. If predictions should be made about the magnitude effects, we suggest using a professional subject pool.     

乌鲁木齐市建设用地对经济增长的贡献及Logistic曲线极限点估计研究

[目的]为提高乌鲁木齐市各生产要素的利用效率,明确经济发展模式,同时也为促进土地资源节约集约利用提供科学依据。[方法]基于C-D生产函数,以2005—2015年乌鲁木齐市统计数据为样本,借助EViews6.0和SPSS20.0软件测算出建设用地对经济增长的贡献率以及Logistic曲线极限点。[结果](1)资本投入要素对经济增长的贡献率(56.72%)最大,建设用地投入要素贡献(32.81%)次之,然后是劳动力投入要素贡献(13.25%),技术进步投入要素贡献(-2.78%)最小,但拥有很大的挖掘空间;(2)建设用地对经济增长的Logistic曲线极限点位于第二、三产业产值为1 522亿元处,对应2011年产值,2005—2011年建设用地对经济增长的贡献呈递增趋势,2011年之后贡献速度呈递减趋势,逐渐趋于平缓。[结论]建设用地对经济增长的驱动作用是有限的,只有通过技术创新才能实现经济发展模式由"依资本型"向"技术驱动型"转变。     

吉林省农用地生态服务功能价值时空演化研究

[目的]该研究从农用地的功能出发,以吉林省9个地市(州)作为研究对象,研究吉林省农用地生态服务功能价值时空演化规律。[方法]运用影子工程法、碳税法、造林成本法和替代法等多种方法测算2005—2015年吉林省农用地的生态服务功能价值,并运用Ar GIS10. 2对2005—2015年吉林省农用地生态服务功能的时空演变进行研究。[结果](1) 2005—2015年辽源市、白山市、四平市、松原市、通化市和延边州等农用地生态服务功能价值分别下降为-24. 33%、-22. 69%、-15. 88%、-12. 53%、-12. 09%、-5. 34%;(2) 2005—2015年白城市、吉林市和长春市农用地生态服务功能价值上升为25. 9%、7. 83%、0. 21%;(3) 2005—2015年吉林省林地和耕地的生态服务功能价值大于草地和水域的生态服务功能价值。[结论] 2005—2015年吉林省农用地生态服务功能价值存在着空间差异,呈现东高西低之势,究其原因是因为吉林省东部地区为低山丘陵地带,林地、水域面积大,生态环境保护比较好,而中西部地区为松辽平原,耕地面积较大,林地和草地面积较小,且伴随经济发展,城市发展不断蚕食农用地,使得农用地面积减少所致。研究结果旨在为保护生态环境、完善农用地价值补偿制度、保护农用地等方面政策的制定提供理论依据。     

Local tax interaction and endogenous spatial weights based on quality of life

This paper studied the role of municipal quality of life as a driver of strategic tax interactions among local governments. A number of studies point out the existence of strategic interactions using spatial econometric models in which the spatial weights are mostly based on non-economic criteria or basic economic variables such as per capita gross domestic product (GDP). We propose the more sophisticated well-being indicator of municipal quality of life as the driver for these interactions. To deal with the potential endogeneity, we rely on instrumental variable estimators. The empirical analysis focuses on the main local tax in Spain (property) and on municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, and it confirms the relevance of differentials in quality of life for the understanding of tax choices.     

Financial Instruments and Promotional Banking in the EU are Growing — But is this Justified?

Institutions and the European Investment Bank are at the forefront of EU investment policy. Their role is expanding and it is now a widely-held position that an improvement in the economy will not eliminate the need for their intervention. The proposals for the 2021–2027 MFF launch more financial instruments and present ‘InvestEU’ as a larger more powerful version of the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). However, promotional banking is often misunderstood and so is the actual size of promotional banking in Europe in which InvestEU will operate.     

The double-edged sword of purpose-driven behavior in sustainable venturing

This paper examines the relationship between purpose and purposeful organizing and how such arrangements influence the entrepreneurial journey as sustainable ventures move from idea to markets. We leverage an iterative multi-stage process-tracing design to understand the mechanisms whereby 14 different B Corp certified organizations embed purpose before, during and after the certification process. Our analyses reveal three types of venture paths for purpose-driven entrepreneurs, which are shaped by distinct imprinting sequences with three critical sensitive windows playing a pivotal role: the definition of scope of purpose, timing of purpose formalization through B Corp Certification and shifts in the source of feedback. Different imprinters occurring within the critical sensitive windows shape particular imprinting sequences triggering situations of both productive and counterproductive path development. Our results challenge the assumed linear relationship between purpose and purposeful organizing and more specifically the belief that seeking (purposeful) B Corp certification at firm foundation is necessarily productive for society and for the ventures themselves regardless of when the certification is achieved.     

Assessing the Reliability of Self‐reported Income Information in Informal Small Business Lending through a Bogus Pipeline Experiment

Coping with asymmetric information plays a major role in successful small business lending. Our purpose is to determine if small business applicants report their income information correctly when requesting a loan. We use a randomised controlled trial bogus pipeline experiment, established during a typical cash‐flow analysis of a bank for small businesses in the Philippines. The bogus pipeline approach is commonly applied in social science and aims to increase the rate of truth telling by informing participants that answers will be verified by a lie detector. The experimental data, which include 243 observations of credit clients that are mainly from the agricultural and food value chain, served to identify asymmetric information. Additionally, debtors’ repayment behaviour for approved loans was observed by the bank. Our results indicate that loan applicants of the treatment group report lower incomes, an effect which is most pronounced in lower income quantile. Our analyses also reveal higher loan delinquencies in the control group.     

Cause-Brand Community: Toward Consumer Citizenship

Brand communities have been proven to be successful with commercial brands. However, a review of the literature indicated that brand community has not been studied in charity organizations. To shed light on this issue, a qualitative research was conducted among stakeholders of an internationally well-known charity organization using three different techniques: in-depth interviews, netnography, and nonparticipant observation at the charity’s brandfest. The results suggest that cause-brand communities exist, sharing the same elements of commercial-brand communities, but the two have some unique characteristics, such as the existence of different stakeholders and small communities that demonstrate an extreme commitment, the promotion of consumer citizenship among them, and the lack of oppositional brand loyalty. A cause-brand community has important managerial implications as it helps build the charity’s brand equity; at the same time, a well-known brand supports the construction of the brand community.     

Individually rational rules for the division problem when the number of units to be allotted is endogenous

We study individually rational rules to be used to allot, among a group of agents, a perfectly divisible good that is freely available only in whole units. A rule is individually rational if, at each preference profile, each agent finds that her allotment is at least as good as any whole unit of the good. We study and characterize two individually rational and efficient families of rules, whenever agents' preferences are symmetric single-peaked on the set of possible allotments. Rules in the two families are in addition envy-free, but they differ on whether envy-freeness is considered on losses or on awards. Our main result states that (a) the family of constrained equal losses rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy justified envy-freeness on losses and (b) the family of constrained equal awards rules coincides with the class of all individually rational and efficient rules that satisfy envy-freeness on awards.