Conflicting attitudes and scepticism towards online shopping: the role of experience

Researchers typically study how levels of risk perception about online shopping affect whether and how consumers use the channel to buy products. In this paper, we propose to study how different types of attitudes towards online shopping are formed when consumers consider both the benefit and the risk of using the Internet to do their shopping. We consider the possibility that general types of attitudes are formed when consumers' perception of the risk and the benefit of using online shopping conflict. We pay particular attention to the concept of online shopping scepticism where consumers may fully realize the benefit of using the Internet to do their shopping, but also express a certain level of concern about the risk of using that channel. In the risk literature, researchers have shown that experience and increased exposure to a particular technology usually involves the accumulation of more and better knowledge that in turn may lead to a reduction in the perception of the risks involved. In this research, we also explore the role of experience in the context of consumers' intention to use online shopping. More specifically, we postulate that online shopping experience has a direct effect as well as an indirect effect on the intention to use online shopping. Experience with online shopping directly increases the consumer's intention to use the Internet to buy products but it also reduces the degree of scepticism and risk aversion, and that in turn, also increases the intention to use online shopping.     

An Econometric Study of Quits Rate Trends in the United States since the Great Recession: Cyclical Movement or Structural Change?

This paper attempts to identify the possible reasons behind a drop of the quits rate in the period since the Great Recession. (As defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the quits rate is the number of quits during the entire month as a percent of total employment.) The paper examines several essential questions on the quits rate using econometric models and analysis: What are the crucial determinants that explain the movements in the quits rate? Is the postrecession stagnation of the quits rate a result of current cyclical macroeconomic conditions, or does it reflect a structural change? As far as we know, no recent research has attempted to model this indicator to answer these questions. Quits rate data have been systematically collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics through the Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) only since the end of year 2000. By dividing our data set into 12 industrial categories and four regions, we are able to come up with empirical models to explain quits rate behavior over a consecutive time span and also across industries and regions. After developing our model, we are then able to examine if there is evidence of structural change using several methods.     

La Participation des Adhérents Dans Leurs Coopératives Agricoles: Une Étude Exploratoire du Secteur Céréalier Français

When a farmer joins an agricultural cooperative, he or she undertakes to participate in the cooperative economically, as a co‐operator, and also in its administration, as an associate. Yet, today, researchers and directors of cooperatives are observing a drop in member participation in both spheres. The goal of this paper is to build a typology of the members of grain farmer agricultural co‐operatives in France, based on the members’ participation, and then use a multinomial probit model to identify the factors that come into play and result in a member belonging to a given category in the typology. We make the hypothesis that attitudes with respect to organizational involvement and the member's confidence in his or her co‐operative can explain these differences in behavior, along with individual variables tied to the member and his or her farm business, and variables associated with the co‐operative to which the member belongs. Following the analysis of the participation behavior of the 290 members in the sample, the members can be grouped into three distinct categories: “individualists,” “good soldiers,” and “engaged.” The results of the multinomial probit model on these three categories show, in particular, that attitude toward organizational involvement has a significant effect, as do the presence of storage on the farm and the size of the cooperative on the probability of being an “individualist” rather than a “good soldier” or “engaged.”     

How Sensitive are Individual Retirement Expectations to Raising the Retirement Age?

This paper investigates the causal effects of the announcement of an increase in the statutory pension age on employee retirement expectations. In June 2010, the Dutch government signed a new pension agreement with the employer and employee organizations that entailed an increase in the statutory pension age from 65 currently to 66 in 2020 for all inhabitants born after 1954. Given the expected increase in average life expectancy, it was also decided that in 2025 the pension age would be further increased to 67 for those born after 1959. This new pension agreement received huge media coverage. Using representative matched administrative and survey data of public sector employees, we find that the proposed policy reform increased the expected retirement age by 3.6 months for employees born between 1954 and 1959 and by 10.8 months for those born after 1959. This increase is reflected in a clear shift in the retirement peak from age 65 to ages 66 and 67 for the respective treated cohorts. Men respond less strongly to the policy reform than women, but within couples we find no evidence that the retirement expectations of one spouse are affected by an increase in the statutory pension age of the other. Furthermore, we show that treatment effects are largely driven by highly educated individuals but are lower for employees whose job involves physically demanding tasks or managerial and supervisory tasks.     

Flexible Contracts and Human Capital Investments

As suggested by human capital theory, workers with flexible contracts participate less often in training than those with permanent contracts. We find that this is merely due to the fact that flexworkers receive less employer-funded training, a gap they can only partly compensate for by their own training investments. Flexworkers particularly participate less in firm-specific training that is meant to keep up with new skill demands than workers with permanent contracts. However, for those who participate in employer-funded firm-specific training, a temporary contract appears to facilitate the transition to a permanent contract with the same employer. However, this does not hold for participation in self-paid training. This training, which is usually general training, does not help in finding a better job.     

A portfolio approach to the optimal mix of funded and unfunded pensions

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we address the optimal funding of pensions by means of portfolio choice approach. Considering the unfunded (Paygo) pension system as a ‘quasi-asset’ with hedging and diversification properties, we derive the optimal portfolio mix of funded and Paygo systems within a mean variance and Bell linear exponential models. Our analysis involves both analytical computations and empirical estimations of optimal values using real long-term data for equity, bonds and the Paygo asset for several OECD countries and several time periods covering the time span 1897–2016. We find that in most cases a mix of both systems is desirable with a larger magnitude of Paygo system in the case of the Bell framework as we capture attitudes towards asymmetry and tail risks that are typical to equity markets.     

Efficient Equilibria in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism with Private Information

We characterize generally the Bayesian Nash equilibria of a voluntary contributions public goods game for two consumers with private information.The two consumers simultaneously make voluntary contributions to the public good, and the contributions are refunded if the total falls short of the cost of the public good. Several families of equilibria (step‐function, regular and semi‐regular) are studied. Necessary and sufficient conditions for regular and semi‐regular equilibrium allocations to be interim incentive efficient are derived. In the uniform distribution case we prove (i) the existence of an open set of incentive efficient regular equilibria when the cost of production is large enough and (ii) the existence of an open set of incentive efficient semi‐regular equilibria when the cost of production is low enough. Step‐function equilibra are proved to be interim incentive inefficient.     

Regulating a manager whose empire-building preferences are private information

We obtain the optimal contract for the government (principal) to regulate a manager (agent) who has a taste for empire-building that is his/her private information. This taste for empire-building is modeled as a utility premium that is proportional to the difference between the contracted output and a reference output. We find that output is distorted upward when the manager’s taste for running large firms is weak, downward when it is strong, and equals a reference output when it is intermediate (in this case, the participation constraint is binding). We also obtain an endogenous reference output (equal to the expected output, which depends on the reference output), and find that the response of output to cost is null in the short-run (in which the reference output is fixed), whenever the manager’s type is in the intermediate range, and negative in the long-run (after the adjustment of the reference output to equal expected output).     

Municipal support of wireless access network rollout: A game theoretic approach

Next generation access networks are expected to bring ubiquitous broadband access and have attracted interest of municipal governments. This paper investigates the support by municipal authorities for the rollout of such a city-wide wireless broadband access network. Different business cases for 3G and WiFi operators are developed and it is indicated how to model the specificities for commercial versus public players. Furthermore, a game theoretic approach is used to investigate the investment options of the municipal player. It is shown that a partnership between a commercial and public player is the most likely investment strategy. However, bringing more players into the competitive environment reduces the intention of the commercial partner to engage in the public–private partnership (PPP).