Uncovering the practices of evidence-informed policy-making

This paper analyses two reports of efforts to strengthen evidence-informed policy-making within government departments; one from the UK and one from the USA. It reveals a series of specific evidence-related practices which share common purposes. These are assessed against Parkhurst's principles of the good governance of evidence. A suite of seven practices is identified that could form the basis for a holistic strategy to embed an evidence-informed approach to policy-making.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

How do US investors perceive the risk of local political corruption? Evidence from acquisition announcement

This study examines the impact of local political corruption on investors’ evaluation of firms’ mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the US. Using the number of corruption convictions of government officials reported by the US Department of Justice, we find that acquirers in more corrupt court districts experience lower acquirer announcement returns, lower combined acquirer and target announcement returns, and are less likely to complete acquisitions. We further find that the relation between local political corruption and acquirer announcement returns is worsened when acquirers operate primarily in the headquarters state. Overall, the results suggest that local political corruption has an adverse impact on investors’ evaluation of a firm’s M&A profitability.     

Who Works for Whom and the UK Gender Pay Gap

This study reports novel facts about the UK gender pay gap. We use a representative, longitudinal and linked employer–employee dataset for 2002–2016. Men's average log hourly wage was 22 points higher than women's in this period. We find that 16 per cent of this raw pay gap is accounted for by estimated firm-specific wage effects. This is almost three times the amount explained by gender occupation differences. When we decompose a pre-adjusted measure of the pay gap, we find less than 1 percentage point or a 6 per cent share is accounted for by the gender allocation across high- and low-wage firms. In other words, only a small share of what is traditionally referred to as the ‘unexplained’ part of the pay gap is explained by the differences between men and women in whom they work for.     

TRADE LIBERALIZATION AND RACIAL ANIMUS

Since the year 2000, the number of recorded hate groups in the United States has increased by more than 50 %. Some argue that the strain caused by unemployment or other socioeconomic stressors can play a critical role in the prevalence of extremist groups and crimes. We examine whether a change in U.S. policy to normalize trade relations with China, which fueled a surge in import competition that led to higher levels of unemployment, affected the presence of hate crimes. Using a difference‐in‐differences model and an event‐study framework, we find that areas most exposed to import competition experienced an increase in the number of anti‐Black hate crimes. We also find a qualitatively similar effect on the number of active hate groups in response to import competition. This result holds pre‐ and post‐the Great Recession and is consistent across levels of aggregation. The results are consistent and robust to various controls and specifications. (JEL F13, F16, Z13)     

Emotional exhaustion and job performance: the mediating role of organizational commitment

We analyze the impact of emotional exhaustion (EE) on turnover intention, task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among hospital nurses in China. The differential mediating effects of affective organizational commitment on the associations between EE and turnover intention, task performance and OCB were examined. Data were collected from both nurses and their supervising physicians using a questionnaire survey in Mandarin. The results revealed full mediation effect for turnover intention and for OCB directed at the organization. There was a significant indirect effect for OCB directed at individuals and no mediation effect for task performance.     

Dimensions of small business performance from the owner-manager's perspective: a re-conceptualization and empirical validation

Owner-managers make decisions and manage their firm as governed by the manner in which they conceptualize or ‘conceive’ performance for themselves and their firm, rather than being governed by researchers' and experts' conceptualizations of small business performance. On the basis of survey data obtained from 433 Canadian small businesses, this study aims at a deeper understanding of what owner-managers conceive performance to be, and to what extent this conception is determined by their objectives and social influences.     

Seven Steps Towards Sustainability: Tourism in the Context of New Knowledge

This paper is about tourism and change. It examines changes that have taken place in politics, policy, development, conservation, human–environmental relations, and the convergence of these areas over the past 30 years, especially during the past decade. As the result of international cooperative scholarship, some old concepts of how the world works are shown to be givingwayto anewfocus. It discusses how, instead of managing tourism through attempting to maintain stability, new thought guided by close observations of reality, depicts a world full of uncertainty that is constantly changing and evolving, and where enhancing resilience to disturbance replaces the former focus on achieving stability. This is not a universal paradigm shift, but it is a shift nevertheless. It shows how a new world-view is gradually supplanting the old, and it suggests that this view and its leaders, cannot be ignored. The paper presents readers with seven introductory steps on the road to greater understanding of sustainable tourism in the context of complex system dynamics, in the hope of enabling a more effective transition to sustainability.     

Emotions, store-environmental cues, store-choice criteria, and marketing outcomes

This study integrates extant research relating to store-related cognitions, customer emotions (arousal and pleasure), satisfaction, and loyalty into one framework. The researchers administer a survey to 274 customers in four coffee shops of a major chain. Using these data, the researchers test the hypotheses and model with structural equation modelling. The findings suggest that (a) store-related cognitions differentially affect emotions and customer outcomes (satisfaction and loyalty) and (b) the two emotions of arousal and pleasure differentially mediate the relationships between store-related cognitions and customer outcomes.