Well-being effects of self-employment: A spatial inquiry

Our paper presents an empirical analysis of entrepreneurial well-being using a large-scale longitudinal household survey from the UK that tracks almost 50,000 individuals across seven waves over the period 2009–2017, as well as a number of exploratory case studies. We contribute to the existing literature by investigating how entrepreneurial well-being varies across locations along the urban-rural continuum, and across wealthy-deprived neighbourhoods. We use a Coarsened Exact Matching (CEM) approach to compare the well-being outcomes of individuals who switch into self-employment from waged employment, and show that entrepreneurial well-being, in the form of job satisfaction, is significantly higher for those living in semi-urban locations, relative to those living in urban and rural locations. We argue that semi-urban locations provide an optimal combination of ease of doing business and quality of life. Our results also show that individuals in wealthy neighbourhoods who switch into self-employment experience higher job satisfaction than otherwise comparable individuals living in materially deprived neighbourhoods, although the latter experience greater levels of life satisfaction following the switch.     

Income comparison,collectivism and life satisfaction in Turkey

The current research examines the impact of income comparisons on life satisfaction in Turkey which has a feature of “collectivism” or “low individualism”. This is done by analyzing the results of the “Life Satisfaction Survey” applied by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK) for 2011. Using ordered logit estimations, this paper reveals that most of the income comparison, interaction variables and socio-economic variables have a significant explanatory power on life satisfaction levels in Turkey. The main emphasis of the paper is that reference group’s self-reported life satisfaction is related to income comparisons, along with other socioeconomic factors. The impact of comparisons is asymmetric, in that in most cases, under-performing one’s benchmark had a greater effect than out-performing it.     

Innovation Strategy and Entry Deterrence

We model an incumbent’s decision to pursue radical or incremental innovation when facing a rival entrant. The radical innovation may yield lucrative financial returns but entails significant technological and market‐related uncertainties. It is also particularly attractive to the rival entrant: if the market for it pans out, such an innovation obsoletes the existing technology and any incremental improvements to it. Each firm has its own assessment of the market potential for the radical innovation, and the reliability of these market forecasts can differ. We show that when the entrant’s market‐assessment capability is weak, the incumbent will pursue incremental innovation and postpone its plans to develop radical innovation even when it thinks highly of the market potential for the radical innovation. The incumbent does so to avoid validating the high market potential to the entrant, who may otherwise be encouraged to invest aggressively. The incumbent thus prefers to look “soft” with respect to its innovation strategy in order to discourage entry. Even if its innovation strategy is not observable, we show that an incumbent that assesses the commercial potential for a radical innovation favorably may pursue an incremental path and communicate its plans publicly; this strategy serves to reduce entry by affecting the entrant’s beliefs about the market potential of the innovation. Finally, we extend the model to investigate the entrant’s decision to communicate its innovation intentions. We find that the entrant communicates its plans to aggressively pursue radical innovation only if the incumbent’s market‐assessment capabilities are strong. In doing so, the entrant acts preemptively to discourage the incumbent from pursuing the radical innovation, and is less concerned with validating market potential.     

Can free-shipping hurt online retailers?

Quantitative Marketing and Economics - In this paper, we investigate optimal pricing strategies for an online grocery retailer that derives its profits from delivery fees and grocery sales. We base...     

IPO mechanism selection by using Classification and Regression Trees

The Turkish IPO market gives issuers and underwriters a choice of three different IPO selling mechanisms. The current paper sheds new light on the determinants of these issue procedures within the context of the following methods (i) book building mechanism, (ii) fixed price offer, and (iii) sale through the stock exchange. Most of the empirical models in the IPO literature use binary probit and logit models to determine the factors behind the choice of one method over another and try to answer the question of “why is such a mechanism chosen”. To understand the reasons on issuers’ selection of IPO mechanism, we have conducted a Classification and Regression Trees (CART) methodology to represent decision rules in a form of binary trees. Our results indicate that, CART methodology predicts a firms’ IPO selling mechanism with 77.42% accuracy. The most important variable that determines the IPO selling mechanism is the Arrangement Type between the issuer and the underwriter as in the form of best effort and firm-commitment.     

INTEREST RATE RULES AND WELFARE IN OPEN ECONOMIES

This paper analyses the welfare performance of a set of five alternative interest rate rules in an open economy stochastic dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities. A rule with a lagged interest rate term, high feedback on inflation and low feedback on output is found to yield the highest welfare for a small open economy. This result is robust across different degrees of openness, different sources of home and foreign shocks, alternative foreign monetary rules and different specifications for price-setting behaviour. The same rule emerges as both the Nash and cooperative equilibria in a two-country version of the model.     

The relationship between corporate reputation and organizational citizenship behavior: a comparative study on TV companies and banks

Corporate reputation (CR) is an increasingly emphasized issue in the management and organizational studies. Many research studies on the corporate reputation have revealed the impact of that issue on the informal performances of employees. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationship between corporate reputation and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). The survey method has been conducted through random sampling. Four TV companies and four banks have been included in the survey. Results have been evaluated comparatively across two different sectors. The research has been composed of two parts; in the first part the corporate reputations of the chosen companies have been measured according to the Cravens et al. (2003) index. In the second part of the research the organizational citizenship behaviors of the employees in the eight companies have been measured and the relationship between corporate reputations of the companies and the employees’ OCBs have been analyzed through the correlation and regression analysis. It is revealed that there is a statistically significant effect of CR on OCB.     

Price discrimination in service industries

This article outlines recent methods and applications directed at understanding the profit and consumer welfare implications of increasingly prevalent price discrimination strategies in the service sector. These industries are typically characterized by heterogeneity in consumers?? valuation and usage of the service, resale constraints, and a focus on price as the service??s key attribute. The article focuses on how firms use nonlinear pricing or bundling strategies to benefit from the heterogeneity in consumer demand. We describe the basic economic model commonly used in the literature to analyze such strategic choices and present recent methodological improvements to this benchmark. A discussion of existing applications and future research opportunities concludes the article.     

Persuasive Charity Appeals for Less and More Controllable Health Causes: The Roles of Implicit Mindsets and Benefit Frames

This research investigates whether donors' beliefs in changeability influence the persuasiveness of charity ads for less and more controllable health conditions. Across three studies and using different health conditions, we show that fixed-mindset consumers' beliefs about immutability lead them to donate more to less (vs. more) controllable causes. The results show that this effect is driven by their tendency to blame people with more controllable health conditions. Conversely, controllability does not influence consumers with growth mindsets, who believe in the changeability of health conditions. Moreover, we examine benefit framing as a potential persuasive factor encouraging donations of consumers with growth mindsets. Specifically, we find that in less controllable cases, consumers with growth mindsets are more persuaded to donate by other-benefit appeals (focusing on how donating enhances others' lives and makes others feel better); in more controllable conditions, they are more persuaded by self-benefit appeals (focusing on how donating enhances their own lives and makes them feel better). The perceived efficacy of donation drives this effect. Meanwhile, consumers with fixed mindsets are more willing to donate to less (vs. more) controllable causes regardless of benefit frames used in the charity ad. This research offers managerial implications for advertisers and marketers.     

The Impact of Competitiveness on Consumer Responses to Comparative Advertisements

We examine the impact of consumers' competitive tendencies on responses to comparative advertising appeals and the underlying role of schadenfreude: pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others. Consistent with our theory that the depiction of others' misfortunes is compatible with more-competitive consumers' concerns for distinguishing themselves via competition, our studies show that comparative ads are associated with greater schadenfreude, as well as more favorable attitudes and a greater willingness to pay (WTP), among more- (versus less-) competitive consumers. Further results indicate that such relatively more favorable responses among consumers with greater competitive tendencies are limited to comparative ads depicting misfortunes involving brands whose choice is more deserving of failure (i.e., lower-quality brands). Importantly, even less-competitive consumers are revealed to respond favorably to comparative ads and to experience more schadenfreude when they are assured that they will not suffer the depicted misfortune.