Rhetoric versus Reality: Exploring Consumer Empowerment in a Maternity Setting

This study explores consumer empowerment in a maternity setting in the Republic of Ireland. Our results indicate that empowerment is a complex phenomenon influenced by many variables. While the current health services literature is focusing on active consumers of health services, our study shows that not all pregnant women have the same needs for and attitudes toward empowerment: some women do indeed seek to be overtly empowered in the maternity setting and equate empowerment with a high level of control over the service provision; others pursue a more passive role but may still experience such a role as empowering. A theoretical discussion focusing on the complexities of empowerment and issues of power and authoritative knowledge in cultural systems concludes this paper.     

A Generalized Spatial Two-Stage Least Squares Procedure for Estimating a Spatial Autoregressive Model with Autoregressive Disturbances

Cross-sectional spatial models frequently contain a spatial lag of the dependent variable as a regressor or a disturbance term that is spatially autoregressive. In this article we describe a computationally simple procedure for estimating cross-sectional models that contain both of these characteristics. We also give formal large-sample results.     

The influence of funding source and legislative requirements on government cost accounting practices

This paper provides preliminary evidence on the determinants of cost accounting practices in government agencies. Drawing on institutional and contingency theories of management accounting choice, we examine two potential influences on the design and use of government cost systems: legal requirements to be self-funding and mandated requirements for cost accounting data. We test these hypotheses using survey data from the U.S. General Accounting Office. The empirical evidence indicates that organizations using cost system output to satisfy external requirements tend to implement more “elaborate” cost accounting systems than units without external requirements, but are no more likely to use cost system data for internal purposes. In contrast, government organizations that are required to “pay their own way” by fully recovering costs through revenues or fees not only implement more elaborate systems than units funded by appropriated budgets or reimbursement of expenses by other government units, but also tend to make more extensive use of cost system output for a wide variety of internal purposes ranging from pricing to management control.     

The information content of retail investors’ order flow

In this paper, we provide evidence that the trading activity of small retail investors carries significant genuine information that can be exploited for the short-term out-of-sample forecasting of foreign exchange rates. Our findings are based on a unique dataset of around 2000 retail investors from the OANDA FXTrade electronic trading platform. Our results are consistent with the view that in the foreign exchange market private information is highly dispersed, but can be extracted by observing customer order flow. Previous studies, however, focused on the information content of costumer order flow of dealers in the interbank market, whose clients are themselves large institutional and professional investors. Our study is the first that analyzes a crowd of small retail investors and shows that even the trading activity of these investors contains, on aggregate, important non-public information that can be exploited for short-term exchange rate forecasting. Our findings lead us to conjecture that retail investors (on aggregate) are not pure noise traders but process dispersed information at least partially in a similar way as large institutional investors and hence place their orders accordingly.     

Networks of mind and networks of organizations: The map metaphor in business network research

This paper examines the definitions and uses of the network picture metaphor in industrial marketing research. Conceptually, the paper extends our understanding of networks and of representations of networks among researchers and practitioners as pictures or maps. A threefold interpretation is proposed of network pictures as representationalist, mentalist and situated. The representationalist use has dominated business-to-business network research while the mentalist use is prominent in strategic management and has recently made an entrance into industrial marketing research. The representationalist version of pictures, despite its apparent innocence, can either imply or leave unexamined the mentalist version, but mentalism stands in contradiction to much network thinking. This paper seeks to resolve the emerging contradiction of representationalist and mentalist versions of network pictures by advocating a situated version. Seeing network pictures as situated in use is helpful in grasping cognitions and actions in a manner consistent with networks. The paper concludes by developing the situated version of network pictures as ‘actants’ and sketches the benefits and implications for business researchers and practitioners.     

Talent responses to talent status awareness—Not a question of simple reciprocation

How to manage talent effectively is a key question in organisations. Yet we still know relatively little about talent's psychological reactions to their exclusive status. Based on psychological contract theory and research on status, this study analyses a sample of 321 employees identified as talent by their organisations, only some of whom were aware of their exclusive talent status. The results provide evidence that talent status awareness moderates the relationship between a range of employer inducements and talent obligations, such that it increases the importance of some inducements while diminishing that of others. The study contributes to the talent management literature by isolating specific effects of talent status awareness and calling into question extant evidence of its direct positive effects on talent attitudes. The findings also have implications for talent status communication, talent management, and future theorising of talent reactions to their exclusive status.     

Bank liquidity risk and monetary policy. Empirical evidence on the impact of Basel III liquidity standards

We extend the literature on the bank lending channel in two aspects. First, rather than following the literature by analyzing the impact of banks’ liquidity (measured via their asset portfolio) on monetary policy transmission, we study the role of banks’ actual liquidity risk, as measured by the Basel III liquidity regulations. Second, we investigate the effect of complying with the Basel III liquidity standards on monetary policy transmission. We use highly detailed bank-level data from Luxembourg for the period 2003q1--2010q4. Our findings are that monetary policy transmission works its way through small banks that also have a large maturity mismatch, as measured by the Net Stable Funding Ratio. In contrast, large banks with a small maturity mismatch increase their lending following a monetary policy shock, which confirms existing results that Luxembourg’s banks are liquidity providers to the European market. Based upon in-sample predictions and upon simulated data from an optimization model that takes the banks’ business models into account, we conclude that the bank lending channel will no longer be effective once banks adhere to the new Basel III liquidity regulations.     

“Give and take”: how notions of sharing and context determine free peer-to-peer accommodation decisions

ABSTRACT

Building on social exchange theory and value co-creation, the present paper investigates how obligations and expectations of reciprocity as well as value-in-social-context shape preferences for or against free accommodation sharing. Applying a grounded theory approach, we propose a novel theoretical framework linking the notions of mutual giving and taking as asset or burden to the contextual characteristics of travelers’ accommodation decisions. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of consumers’ perceptions of and decisions in favor of true sharing accommodation options. Based on our framework, we derive propositions to stimulate further research and provide implications for actors in the paid accommodation market.     

“Psychological” elements in business cycle theories: old approaches and new insights

This paper identifies a number of “psychological” elements in business cycle theories and shows how these components contribute to the theories’ results. It proceeds by discussing (i) which assumptions on behaviour were used, laying particular stress on expectations and confidence, money illusion, social preferences and interaction, and individual character traits; (ii) how they influenced and determined the theories’ results; and (iii) how more recent behavioural research provides a better and empirically grounded understanding of these factors. For each element, the possibility of incorporating new insights into older models is discussed, and references to work which already does so are given.