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.     

Reflections on the Dasgupta Review on the Economics of Biodiversity

Environmental and Resource Economics - The Dasgupta Review provides a rich overview of the economics of biodiversity, paints a bleak picture of the current state of biodiversity, and is a call to...     

Probabilistic access forecasting for improved offshore operations

Improving access is a priority in the offshore wind sector, driven by the opportunity to increase revenues, reduce costs, and improve safety at operational wind farms. This paper describes a novel method for producing probabilistic forecasts of safety-critical access conditions during crew transfers. Methods of generating density forecasts of significant wave height and peak wave period are developed and evaluated. It is found that boosted semi-parametric models outperform those estimated via maximum likelihood, as well as a non-parametric approach. Scenario forecasts of sea-state variables are generated and used as inputs to a data-driven vessel motion model, based on telemetry recorded during 700 crew transfers. This enables the production of probabilistic access forecasts of vessel motion during crew transfer up to 5 days ahead. The above methodology is implemented on a case study at a wind farm off the east coast of the UK.     

The politics of experimentation: Political competition and randomized controlled trials

This paper provides an analysis of how political factors affect the incidence of the evaluation of public policies, with a focus on Randomized Control Trial (RCT) experiments in international development. We argue that political environments where incumbents face greater electoral competition and smaller ruling margins are more likely to host RCT experiments. Using various data sources for the incidence of RCTs both at the cross-country level and at the sub-national level in India, we find that RCTs are more likely to occur in politically competitive jurisdictions. We employ fixed effects regressions using various estimators and an instrumental variable strategy that exploits an electoral reform in India which limited the entry of independent candidates and exogenously affected the degree of electoral competition in state-level politics. The effect seems concentrated on RCTs that have the government as a partner, suggesting that political competition has an important demand-side effect on the incidence of RCTs.     

Evaluating museum visitor experiences based on user-generated travel photos

ABSTRACT

This research introduces online travel photos published on social media platforms as a complementary data resource to examine the behavior and experience of museum visitors. The practical value of online travel photos is demonstrated through a case study of popular Hong Kong museums, particularly by using the photo content and metadata available from the Flickr platform. The proposed approach is a generic method for understanding museum visitor behavior and preferences, and supports museum practitioners in developing improved products for visitors. The case study findings are particularly beneficial for tourism managers, especially those in Hong Kong, in promoting and attracting tourists to visit local museums.     

Writing on the Wall: Street Art in Graffiti‐free Singapore

The legalization of graffiti in many cities has impacted urban landscapes and the way artists and the public view graffiti, street art and the city as well. This article considers the genesis, process and consequences of legal walls programmes firstly by introducing and differentiating the key terms ‘graffiti’, ‘street art’ and ‘legal walls’, then by examining an empirical case, that of Singapore. Renowned as a graffiti‐averse and litter‐free city, Singapore's recent about‐turn in legalizing illicit art forms illustrates changing government perspectives on creativity and legality in the country. Why the government has effected this change, how artists and members of the public have responded to it and the resultant art forms are critically explored. The conclusion reflects on four key lessons from Singapore for cities in general.     

The Complementarity between Tax Avoidance and Manager Diversion: Evidence from Tax Haven Firms

We investigate whether tax avoidance and manager diversion are complementary when the costs of diversion are low by comparing dividend payouts, performance, and overinvestments of tax haven firms versus other multinational firms based in countries with weak and strong investor protections. Desai and Dharmapala (2006, 2009a, b) and Desai et al. (2007) set forth a theory of tax avoidance within an agency framework (the D&D theory) based on the assumption that tax avoidance and manager diversion are complementary when the corporate governance system is “ineffective” (i.e., the manager's expected costs of diversion are low). Tax haven firms are corporate groups whose parent firms are incorporated in tax haven countries that are not the countries where the groups’ headquarters or primary operations are located (i.e., their “base” countries). We argue that tax haven incorporation potentially lowers the costs of diversion for managers of firms based in countries with weak investor protections. Using a sample from 28 base countries, we provide evidence that manager diversion and tax avoidance are complementary for tax haven firms based in countries with weak investor protections but not for tax haven firms based in countries with strong investor protections. Our results are consistent with the complementarity assumption underlying the D&D model and provide additional insights into the potential impact of the decentralization of the global firm.     

Advertising to the masses: the effects of crowding on the attention to place-based advertising

Advertising situated in environments where people congregate or pass through on their way to somewhere else benefit from being placed in such high traffic areas. However, these strategically placed ads also suffer from conditions of human crowding that prevents them from being noticed and processed. We undertake a study of place-based advertising in a shopping mall using facial recognition software to determine the effect of human density on the attention directed to advertising. We find that as human density increases, attention to advertising decreases, but only to a point where it begins to increase again. Our research also finds that human density plays a moderating role on the motivation to process advertising.     

Does Monetary Policy Respond to Uncertainty? Evidence from Australia

We construct a novel measure of uncertainty using expert monetary policy recommendation data for Australia. Our results suggest that the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) tends to lower the cash rate when expert uncertainty is high. This result is robust to using other uncertainty measures.     

Transmission of information within transnational social networks: a field experiment

Several studies have shown a relationship between the stocks of migrants and country-level investment in the home country; however the mechanism through which this relationship operates is still unexplored. We use a field experiment in which participants who are recent immigrants send information about risky decisions to others in their social network in their home country. The results demonstrate how this information influences decisions in the home country. We find that the advice given by family members and decisions made by friends significantly affects an individual’s risky decision-making.