Social Interaction and Beer Consumption

The aim of this article is to describe young consumers’ attitudes and conduct regarding beer consumption, analyzing the consumer as an individual (addressing internal factors) and in a collective (external factors). The research was designed in Brazil involving 52 participants, divided into 16 focus groups, and the respective data was transcribed and analyzed. The findings show three distinct types of consumers were identified. The authors termed these the Inductor, the Induced, and the Sophisticated. The article details how each type of consumer can be distinguished through different attitudes and factors. The results suggest that, rather than thinking of beer consumption as an individual item, beer consumption should be thought of as different types, involving different behavior, attitudes, and social interaction. The article demonstrates originality and value to put forward the notion that beer consumption should not be defined as an individual item. The framework offered in this article will assist future researchers to consider consumption of different types and brands of beer, based on social interaction.     

Patterns of care and burden of chronic idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura in Brazil

Aims: Although several therapeutic options are available for chronic immune thrombocytopenic purpura (cITP), little is known about the treatment of cITP in Brazil.

Materials and methods: A multi-center, retrospective chart review, observational study was designed to describe the treatment patterns, clinical burden, resources use, and associated costs for adult patients diagnosed with cITP and treated in public and private institutions in Brazil. Patient charts were screened in reverse chronological order based on their last visit post January 1, 2012. (All costs were calculated using 1.00 USD?=?3.9571 BRL, from February 2016.)

Results: Of 340 patient charts screened, 50 patients were eligible for inclusion in the study. Single-drug therapy (prednisone, dexamethasone, or dapsone) was the most commonly used treatment, followed by combination therapies (azathioprine?+?prednisone, azathioprine?+?prednisone?+?danazol, and prednisone?+?dapsone). Splenectomy was performed in 22% of patients after at least first-line treatment. Platelet count and number of bleeding episodes at diagnosis were 31,561.1/mm³ (SD?=?±26,396.1) and 40 episodes, respectively; in first-line, 92,631.1/mm³ (SD?=?±79,955.3) and 19 episodes, respectively; in second-line, 96,950.0/mm³ (SD?=?±76,476.4) and 17 episodes, respectively. Private system patients had a higher median cost compared to public system patients (USD 17.49/month, range?=?0–2,020.77 vs USD 9.51/month, range?=?0–192.64, respectively).

Limitations: This study does not allow conclusions for causal explanations due to the cohort study design, and treatment patterns represent only the practices of physicians who have agreed to participate in the study.

Conclusions: The data indicate that available therapeutic strategies for second- and third-line therapies appear to be limited.     

Metatheory as the key to understanding: Schumpeter after Shionoya

In his recent book, Yuichi Shionoya departs from previous Schumpeterianstudies. He sets out to reconstruct Schumpeter's metatheoreticalframework, which he argues is the key to a correct interpretationof his substantive writings. The centrepiece of this projectis the thesis that Schumpeter has a coherent methodologicalposition—instrumentalism—which consistently underpinshis theoretical work. The present paper examines this thesis,and in so doing paves the way for an alternative hypothesison Schumpeter. This hypothesis is based on Tony Lawson's workon the philosophy of economics.     

Purification of Bayesian–Nash equilibria in large games with compact type and action spaces

We present a purification result for incomplete information games with a large but finite number of players that allows compact metric spaces for both actions and types. We then compare our framework and findings to the early purification theorems of Rashid (1983. Equilibrium points of non-atomic games: asymptotic results. Economics Letters 12, 7–10), Cartwright and Wooders (2002 On equilibrium in pure strategies in games with many players. University of Warwick Working Paper 686 (revised 2005)), Kalai (2004. Large robust games. Econometrica 72, 1631–1665) and Wooders, Cartwright and Selten (2006. Behavioral conformity in games with many players. Games and Economic Behavior 57, 347–360). Our proofs are elementary and rely on the Shapley–Folkman theorem.     

The relationship between technology adoption and strategy in business-to-business markets : The case of e-commerce

Firms have been traditionally advised to adopt information and communication technologies (ICT) to support the achievement of existing business objectives. However, entry into business-to-business e-commerce may require the concurrent adoption of new business strategies. This paper argues, therefore, that ICT analysis needs to be considered at the same time and at the same strategic level, as internal, competitor and market analysis. This is because the source of the competitive advantage brought by ICT has changed, to be largely obtained through increase in customers' perceived value. The literature presents a confused picture of the likely consequences to a firm of its adoption of e-commerce. This paper concludes that any such adoption must be evaluated in the environment of the individual firm. A multidimensional analytical framework, taking a combined informational and marketing perspective, is presented to assist with such evaluations.     

Ethnic Marketing Ethics

Culture plays an important role in defining ethics standards because dissimilar cultures socialize their people differently, according to what is acceptable behaviour. The potential significance of ethnic groups for marketing justifies inquiry into the moral judgments, standards, and rules of conduct exercised in marketing decisions and situations arising from decisions whether or not to focus on individual ethnic groups within an economy. Identifying and targeting ethnic groups for marketing purposes are tasks fraught with many ethical difficulties. In a multicultural society consisting of a dominant group and many diverse, minority groups defined by ethnicity, these problems can be expected to increase substantially. Consequently, marketers may include minority ethnic consumers in their mainstream marketing programs. In itself, this has ethical consequences. Alternatively, if marketers seek to target individual minority ethnic groups within the same economy a further set of ethical consequences needs to be considered. This paper reviews the concepts of ethnicity and ethnic groups and their relevance for marketing strategy within an economy where there is a dominant group and also significant minority ethnic groups. The ethical consequences for minority communities arising from the use of non-ethnic, mainstream marketing programs are examined. An alternative approach, ethnic marketing, is also examined and its ethical consequences in terms of other groups within the one country appraised. The ethical dilemma and tradeoffs facing marketers within advanced, culturally diverse countries are then considered.     

CONTINUOUS PREFERENCE ORDERINGS REPRESENTABLE BY UTILITY FUNCTIONS

This paper surveys the conditions under which it is possible to represent a continuous preference ordering using utility functions. We start with a historical perspective on the notions of utility and preferences, continue by defining the mathematical concepts employed in this literature, and then list several key contributions to the topic of representability. These contributions concern both the preference orderings and the spaces where they are defined. For any continuous preference ordering, we show the need for separability and the sufficiency of connectedness and separability, or second countability, of the space where it is defined. We emphasize the need for separability by showing that in any nonseparable metric space, there are continuous preference orderings without utility representation. However, by reinforcing connectedness, we show that countably boundedness of the preference ordering is a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a (continuous) utility representation. Finally, we discuss the special case of strictly monotonic preferences.     

Ex post evaluation of PPP government-led renegotiations: Impacts on the financing of road infrastructure

Renegotiations are often claimed to be the major pitfall in public–private partnership projects. In fact, the literature and empirical evidence suggest a bias toward favoring concessionaires, although there are well-known examples of harmful unilateral decisions by governments. This article establishes a distinction between structural renegotiations (with changes in the risk-sharing agreement) and nonstructural renegotiations (without shifting risk) and analyzes the implications of structural renegotiations in a road concession by comparing the ex ante and ex post financial implications for government, concessionaire, and users. The selected project is one that started as a shadow toll and was later changed to real toll. The analysis shows that the renegotiation essentially transferred costs to the users. The financial burden for the government decreased and the internal rate of return (IRR) of the concessionaire increased slightly although the overall risk profile of the concession decreased. The users supported a 40% higher cost, and the system gained an additional cost component (the electronic tolling system). Overall the global financial costs increased 40% when compared with the initial regime. The article also sets out some discussions and implications for policymakers.     

Drug‐related violence and the decline in the number of Mexican cross‐border workers

This study examines how variations in homicide rates in Mexico are associated with the likelihood of participating in cross‐border work, that is, living in Mexico but working in the U.S. Based on Mexican census data from 2000, 2010, and 2015, and information on homicides, a series of ordinary least squares models are estimated to analyze the relationship between cross‐border commuting and homicide rates at the individual level. Fixed effects models are also estimated to study this relationship at the municipal level. The results show that from 2000 to 2010 the increase in homicide rates in northern border municipalities in Mexico reduced the likelihood of being a cross‐border worker, while from 2010 to 2015 the decrease in the homicide rate increased the probability that workers engage in cross‐border work. The decline in the number of cross‐border workers is likely in part a result of the escalation in drug‐related violence that may have led them to change their country of residence.     

Transformational leadership and absorptive capacity: an analysis of the organisational catalysts for this relationship

Research analysing the antecedents of a firm’s absorptive capacity suggests that transformational leadership (TL) is one of its main determinants. However, the few studies focusing on the relationship between these two variables do not explicitly assess why transformational leaders facilitate knowledge acquisition, sharing and retention inside firms. This paper suggests that the reason is that the former contributes to the creation of an organisational context that favours learning processes. We test our research model on a sample of 467 Spanish industrial firms. Findings provide evidence that TL is positively related to the firm’s absorptive capacity and that this relationship is mediated by some organisational learning facilitators: experimentation, risk-taking, interacting with external environment and dialogue.