Fiscal transparency or fiscal illusion? Housing and credit market responses to fiscal monitoring

International Tax and Public Finance - Nongovernmental stakeholders, including taxpayers and investors of government bonds, have an interest in government financial information. Fiscal transparency...     

Urban flight: A short-term phenomenon or long-term trend?

We investigate whether the urban flight from more to less dense locations identified by previous housing studies for the early COVID period is a temporary, pandemic-induced phenomenon, or long-term trend. We focus on the period of 2017–2022, 14,961 single-family home transactions from Southwestern Ontario, and three housing market metrics. Our results for sales price in the early pandemic periods are in line with previous studies. However, our results for sales price in the last pandemic phase (2022), marketing time, and visit activity suggest that the urban flight was a temporary phenomenon characteristic of the early COVID phases.     

Disaster selfies: How ethical reminders can mitigate morally questionable consumption practices

Joyful selfies taken at disaster sites create a controversial topic in terms of moral boundaries in digital life. While some consider it acceptable to take smiley selfies in a tragedy zone, others find this behaviour morally questionable. This article demonstrates empirically that excessive time spent on social media explains, at least partially, a greater tendency to like morally ambiguous content on social media. Specifically, this article shows that consumers tend to like more questionable content (such as smiley disaster selfies) on social media when they spend more time online. Further, this article shows that this effect is mediated by increased individualistic thinking. Responses to the survey experiment (N = 206) compared the tendency to like morally ambiguous content between groups of little, moderate and excessive use of social media, and tested for the mediating role of individualistic thinking on the relationship between time spent and liking behaviour. Second, the moderating role of an ethical reminder on time spent and the fact of liking morally ambiguous contents is demonstrated. In the presence of an ethical reminder, the effect of time spent on social media and liking morally ambiguous content becomes insignificant. This article contributes to theory on social media consumption by offering a novel underlying mechanism, such as increased individualistic thinking, as one variable that partly explains the liking for morally ambiguous content. This article also offers practical contributions for social media platforms and policy makers, showing that ethical reminders could be a possible and simple nudge to help consumers act more morally or become aware of morally questionable content.