Peer group influences on children’s product preferences

In contrast to earlier studies using adult subjects, this experiment with first graders did not f’md a high degree of brand loyalty development in response to a minimally differentiated product. In fact, while some brand preferences did develop, most subjects appeared to seek some degree of variety in their choices. It is interesting to speculate that children have a “greater need for novelty” than adults and are thus less likely to develop brand loyalty. However, extensive research will be required to remove this proposition from the realm of speculation.     

On the interaction between public and private capital in economic growth

This paper introduces two forms of interaction between private and public capital in an endogenous growth model in which productive government expenditure takes the form of a stock-variable and public capital is used in part as an input in the production of final output and in part to increase its own supply. While the first form of interaction involves the stocks of the two capital-goods and takes place within the final output sector through the specification of the aggregate production function (Cobb?CDouglas vs. CES), the second one concerns the rates of investment in the two kinds of capital. The share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production can be either exogenous or endogenous. Our results suggest that when this share is exogenous, along the balanced growth path the optimal growth rate of the economy is a positive function of the degree of complementarity between the two forms of investment. When the share of productive public expenditure devoted to output production is endogenous, the public capital share in GDP becomes, along with the model??s preference parameters, an important determinant of the economy??s long run growth. We also find that the optimal growth rate is an increasing function of the elasticity of substitution between public and private capital inputs in goods production, and is independent of the complementarity/substitutability between the two forms of investment.     

Ecosystem Service Value and Agricultural Conversion in the Amazon: Implications for Policy Intervention

We explore the welfare implications of agricultural expansion in the Brazilian Amazon by comparing spatially explicit estimates of soybean rents and the value of ecosystem services. Although these estimates are generated from different datasets, models, and estimation techniques, the values are comparable, such that the value of ecosystem services is greater than soybean rents for about 61% of the total area and 24% of the area where soybean rents are positive if protected areas are well enforced. Based on the balance between the benefits and costs of conversion, failure to value ecosystem services reduces total social welfare by 7.13 billion dollars annually relative to an optimum. Policy instruments that internalize the value of ecosystem services via protected lands, land conversion taxes, conservation subsidies, or excise taxes can avoid much of this loss. Regardless of intervention regime, policy makers should be cognizant of the diminishing net benefits of converting natural ecosystems to agriculture. Realizing the final 3.8% requires the conversion of an additional 15% natural ecosystems to soybean production.     

A Self‐Tuning Model for Smart Manufacturing SMEs: Effects on Digital Innovation

With the changing way people live, communicate, and work, enterprises are striving to shift their existing business model into a “self‐tuning” one. Enterprises are becoming more agile, adaptive, and ambidextrous in order to boost innovation in the current digital transformation era. Nowadays, “digital innovation” is closely associated with Industry 4.0 enablers and smart enterprises. Prior research has shown that while multinational enterprises—across many sectors—have already embraced the aforementioned advancements, their adoption by small and‐medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has so far taken place mainly in the manufacturing sector. Thus, based on a sample of 280 self‐tuned smart manufacturing SMEs and having utilized the structural equation modeling (SEM), this study was aimed to investigate how digital innovation is influenced by the three pillars of self‐tuning models—agility, adaptation, and ambidexterity. Our paper has focussed on the digital systems in which SMEs, spurred by networking and open innovation solutions, operate and innovate in response to external triggers, displaying a balance between exploration and exploitation, and a strong agile capacity.     

Profiling tourists based on their perceptions of the trustworthiness of different types of peer-to-peer applications

This research profiles tourists based on the extent to which they trust user-generated content (UGC) uploaded in different types of peer-to-peer applications, also considering their socio-demographic characteristics, frequency of travel and motivations for using the Internet and UGC when making their travel choices. For this purpose, latent class segmentation was applied on a sample of 609 Italian tourists and three different clusters were identified, namely: “distrustful tourists”, “untrusted tourists” and “social web tourists”. The findings suggest that hospitality marketers should improve their social media strategy by focusing their attention on Travel 2.0 applications according to the socio-demographic and behavioural characteristics of their target market.     

The environmental benefits of changing logistics structures for fresh vegetables

The transport phase is one of the crucial stages that can be improved to reduce the environmental impact of the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain. In this paper, we calculate the environmental impact of feasible logistic alternatives for the above-mentioned supply chain so as to identify the type of transportation that incurs the lowest environmental costs. Specifically, we consider the early potato supply chain as a case study, as it involves one of the main fresh vegetables exported from Italy. Consumers' willingness to pay for the environmental impact of different logistic chains was obtained through life cycle assessment. Our results show that rail transport could reduce environmental impact in terms of tons of oil equivalent, environmental loads, and fuel consumption while ensuring reasonable shipment times. Development of an efficient rail transport system would be positively considered by consumers, enhancing their preferences for Italian products.     

Regulation and rent‐seeking: The role of the distribution of political and economic power

It is shown that the joint distribution of economic and political power plays a key role in determining regulatory and tax policies of national and subnational governments. If both economic and political power are evenly distributed across individuals, then regulatory and tax policies are efficient, but if they are unevenly distributed and positively correlated, then regulatory policy is used by subnational governments to redistribute income in favor of individuals with higher economic and political power at the expense of productivity and output. Consequently, the national government has to raise the tax rate to finance public expenditure. Moreover, if there exists a positive correlation between economic and political power, then the higher the fiscal gap, the larger the gap between equilibrium and efficient policies because subnational governments underestimate more the fall of public revenues caused by inefficient policies.     

Estimating liquidity premia in the Spanish government securities market

This paper investigates the presence of liquidity premia in the relative pricing of assets traded on the Spanish government securities market. First, a classification of bonds into four different categories based on their degree of liquidity is proposed. Second, liquidity premia are estimated introducing liquidity parameters in the estimation of the zero-coupon yield curve. Results suggest the existence of a liquidity premium for post-benchmark bonds (both strippable and non-strippable). The size of this premium is relatively small. In the case of pre-benchmark bonds, the lack of liquidity does not seem to be priced. It is also shown that these pricing discrepancies are robust to the impact of taxes on bonds.