A cross-country comparison of accommodation manager perspectives on online review manipulation

Accommodation businesses are increasingly dependent on a limited number of reservation platforms. A significant feature of these platforms is guest evaluations, which are transformed into ratings and rankings. As the positioning of the business in comparison to competitors determines customer demand, accommodation managers have considerable interest in maintaining or improving their online reputation. One response may be to engage in manipulation strategies. This paper presents the results of a survey including 270 hotel managers in five countries, Germany, Israel, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Managers confirm growing competition as a result of ratings and rankings, and they report that guests are increasingly aware of the importance of reviews. To avert negative online feedback impacts, managers intervene strategically. The paper discusses new market pressures, emergent consumer judgement culture and consumer citizenship, opportunities for legal redress and the emerging importance of reputation management strategies.     

Why are some modes of acquisition more profitable? A study of the credit card industry

A key challenge in financial services marketing is attracting good customers to the firm. For most financial services firms, including credit card firms, a good customer is also a profitable customer. Managers would like to use marketing tactics that attract the most profitable customers while closely monitoring and perhaps limiting expenditures on marketing tactics that tend to attract relatively less profitable customers. Therefore, managers need to understand the relative effectiveness of different modes of new account acquisition and the impact that the various modes of acquisition may have on overall account profitability. To date, there have been very few studies that have calculated individual level customer profitability and then investigated the relationship between new customer acquisition source and customer profitability. That is, how do modes of acquisition differ in their ability to attract profitable customers? We answer this question using a proprietary and novel data set from the credit card industry. Of the four modes of acquisition used in this industry, we find that Internet and direct mail efforts generate more profitable customers than telemarketing and direct selling. We provide possible explanations for these findings. Our work adds to the growing literature in customer relationship management and our results have important managerial implications for resource allocation among acquisition strategies.     

European women: why do(n’t) they work?1

To increase labour market participation is a major challenge currently faced by the EU, and attracting women into the labour force appears as a promising avenue to do so. Therefore, a clear understanding of what the factors influencing the evolution of female participation rates are in Europe is essential for a successful design of policy measures aiming at increasing participation rates. This article provides empirical evidence on the role that institutions have played in determining participation rates of women in the European labour markets. Our findings discard any doubt on the influence of institutions on women's participation in Europe. The strictness of labour market institutions negatively affects female participation rates. We also find that institutional features aimed at reconciling motherhood with professional life such as maternity leave schemes and part-time work favour participation rates of prime-age women. Additionally, fertility rates and education enrolment have been relevant for the evolution of participation rates during the sample period considered for prime-age and young females, respectively, while cohort effects drive the developments of older females.     

Revisiting measure of R&D spillovers: empirical evidence on OECD countries and industries

Using data for 17 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries over 29 years for 28 industries, this paper estimates industry-wise research and development (R&D) spillovers from the largest R&D investors and the most R&D-intensive industries that contribute 80% of global R&D. In doing so, it tests several assumptions made in the literature, and data rejecting them, proposes a methodology on R&D return estimation devoid of these assumptions. Results show that R&D has substantial spillovers, justifying R&D support policy. Each dollar of R&D generates about 29 cents in spillovers domestically and 4 cents in foreign countries. However, both intra- and inter-industry spillovers vary by industries, implying that the policy of supporting each R&D dollar uniformly across industries is suboptimal. Contrary to industry heterogeneity, the R&D spillovers from an industry do not vary substantially across countries, suggesting that optimal R&D policy across OECD countries might be uniform. An industry-by-industry technology matrix shows that sometimes an idea generates a greater impact on other industries than where it is generated.     

Social networks and citizen election forecasting: The more friends the better

Most citizens correctly forecast which party will win a given election, and such forecasts usually have a higher level of accuracy than voter intention polls. How do citizens do it? We argue that social networks are a big part of the answer: much of what we know as citizens comes from our interactions with others. Previous research has considered only indirect characteristics of social networks when analyzing why citizens are good forecasters. We use a unique German survey and consider direct measures of social networks in order to explore their role in election forecasting. We find that three network characteristics –  size, political composition, and frequency of political discussion – are among the most important variables when predicting the accuracy of citizens’ election forecasts.     

Age at marriage,social norms,and female education in Nepal

We study the impact of age at marriage on female education. We hypothesize that in cultures where women marry young, parents discount the pecuniary benefits of educating girls; the earlier the anticipated age at marriage the greater this discount. We empirically test this effect using household data from Nepal. We control for potential endogeneity of age at marriage by exploiting variations in cultural norms regarding dowry and differences in the average age of female marriage among ethnicities and regions as instrumental variables. The econometric results support the hypothesis that female education is negatively affected by cultural norms that favor early marriage.     

GROUNDWATER MANAGEMENT THROUGH COLLECTIVE PARTICIPATION: WHY SOME INSTITUTIONS SUCCEED AND OTHERS FAIL?

In response to prolonged drought situations, water collectives have been promoted and exist in most water scarce farming regions to help them sustainably manage groundwater resources. However, the sustainability of the collectives itself is prone to groundwater depletion and to the risk of its irreversible future loss. The role of groundwater loss risk in determining the success or failure of groundwater collectives is inadequately understood. In this paper, a stylized dynamic optimization model of institutional participation is developed and results are analyzed for several cases of collective and non‐collective farming behaviour. Results indicate that risk of groundwater loss may increase the tendency to free ride and exacerbate its depletion. This tendency may increase with a larger collective size when there are no deterrence mechanisms in place. However, when staying out threatens institutional stability, it is optimal for the profit maximizing farmer to join the collective and help with groundwater conservation.     

Wage‐setting Decisions on Newly Hired Employees: Survey Evidence from Colombian Firms

This paper uses a survey on wage formation applied to 1305 Colombian firms to study wage‐setting decisions of newly hired employees. The survey indicates that wages of the newly hired are based mainly on a predefined wage structure. This may help to explain, in part, the presence of downward nominal wage rigidities in the Colombian formal labour market, since firms are unwilling to differentiate the pay of new hires from the wages of existing workers. Using multinomial logit models, we find that firm size and the share of temporary workers increase the relative risk of using a predefined internal structure over bargaining between employee and employer when setting the wages of the newly hired employees. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantile-regression estimates of cigarette demand elasticities for the United States

Using a simple model and state-level cross-section U.S. data from 1993 to 1999, quantile-regression estimates of price elasticity and income elasticity for cigarette demand are obtained. It is noted that price elasticity shows a sizable variation across the high and low quantity-quartiles. There is a similar variability in the income elasticity, but most of these estimates lack statistical significance. Besides providing an indication of the variation in the price (and income) elasticity for different consumption levels, the exercise suggests some interpretative caution in regard to estimates from constant-elasticity models.     

Domestic Violence Against Rural Women in Colombia: The Role of Labor Income

This paper analyzes the effect of women’s earnings on domestic violence in rural Colombia during the period 2009–2013. To this end, it builds an indicator of domestic violence against women at the municipal level, based on the number of visits of women who attended health facilities where a report on suspected domestic violence was issued by their physician, which overcomes the bias introduced by self-reporting victims. Results indicate that greater income generation by women in rural areas in most economic activities (coffee, fruits, commerce, and industry) decreases domestic violence, while in services, the opposite occurs. The latter could be the result of the mainly menial jobs women perform in this sector, which may be undervalued in their homes, thus making them more vulnerable. The study also finds that improvements in the municipality’s economic activity and access to education contribute to the reduction of domestic violence against women.