Ethical consumerism and wage levels: Evidence from an experimental market

This paper contributes to the promotion of multidisciplinary research on ethical consumerism by providing experimental evidence on consumer's willingness to reward sellers by paying higher wages to their workers. We analyze repeated interactions occurring between workers, sellers, and consumers within the framework of an experimental market. By successfully performing a task, workers allow sellers to offer a good through a market. Sellers set the price of goods and decide the wages of workers. Consumers enter the market sequentially and decide whether to accept one of the offers or to leave the market. Our data show that, especially in the first periods of the experiment, some sellers opt to pay high wages to their workers. However, this behavior is not rewarded by consumers, whose purchasing choices are almost exclusively driven by self-interest. In our interpretation, the connection between workers and sellers that connotes our experimental design, with workers who allow sellers to enter the market, may induce consumers to believe that eventual sacrifices for paying high wages to workers must be entirely on sellers. Our result suggests that the more salient is made the importance of some stakeholders in allowing the firm's activity, the fewer consumers' may be willing to sacrifice their monetary payoff to improve these stakeholders' condition.     

Are cryptocurrencies homogeneous?

This article investigates if cryptocurrencies returns' are similarly affected by a selection of demand- and supply-side determinants. Homogeneity among cryptocurrencies is tested via a least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) model where determinants of Bitcoin returns are applied to a sample of 12 cryptocurrencies. The analysis goes beyond existing research by simultaneously covering different periods and design choices of cryptocurrencies. The results show that cryptocurrencies are heterogeneous, apart from some similarities in the impact of technical determinants and cybercrime. The cryptocurrency market displays evidence of substitution effects, and design choices related explain the impact of the determinants of return.