What drives college-age Generation Y consumers?

Generation Y (individuals ages 14-31 in 2008) are in the marketplace with the numbers and the purchasing power to have an unprecedented impact on the economy. Despite the potential of this group as a whole, especially the middle-aged members of this generation (ages 18-22) who are in the highly coveted college-student market, much is unknown about the motivations behind these individuals' consumption behavior and preferences. This study attempts to address this gap in the literature by exploring the antecedents of the consumption behavior of college-aged Generation Y individuals. The findings indicate that issues relating to socialization, uncertainty reduction, reactance, self-discrepancy, and feelings of accomplishment and connectedness drive Y consumers' product purchases and retail patronage. This article discusses these issues as well as their theoretical and managerial implications.     

Family Control,Socioemotional Wealth and Earnings Management in Publicly Traded Firms

We examine the unique nature of agency problems within publicly traded family firms by investigating the earnings management decision of dominant family owners relative to non-family. To do so, we draw upon literature demonstrating that family owners are loss averse with respect to the family’s socioemotional wealth, or the affective endowment derived from firm ownership and control. Our theory and findings suggest that potential reputational consequences of earnings management lead family principals to engage in less of this practice relative to non-family firms, and that founder family firms are less likely than non-founder family firms to use earnings management. Moreover, the family-firm effect varies with the firm size, the degree of CEO entrenchment, and the firm’s stock structure. We provide important insights regarding differences between family and non-family principals in the use of unethical accounting practices, thereby extending agency theory and advancing an underdeveloped research area.     

Food security as resilience: reconciling definition and measurement

In this article, we draw out a set of axioms for food security measurement that follow directly from the internationally agreed 1996 FAO definition. Building on recent work on the theory and measurement of development resilience, we then propose an empirical strategy to measure food security that addresses these measurement axioms better than do prevailing measures. We empirically illustrate this approach using a panel data set from northern Kenya.     

The Structure of Trust in China and the U.S.

This article investigates the structure of trust in China and compares it with the U.S., using the 2000 and 2005 waves of the World Value Survey (WVS). We analyze two dimensions of trust – trust in people and trust in major companies. It is found that the level of trust has remained stable in China within the 5-year period. On the other hand, trust in major companies has declined dramatically in U.S. while trust in people has increased slightly. The structure of trust in companies is different from trust in people. For both countries, individuals with higher education tend to have a higher level of trust. Individuals who are divorced tend to have lower trust in people. Individuals who think that other people are fair are more likely to trust in people. Preference for competition has a positive effect on trust in major companies. On the other hand, some differences between the two countries are observed. Perception of fairness does not affect trust in major companies in China, while it has a positive effect in U.S. in year 2006. Preference for equality has a negative effect on trust in major companies in U.S. but no significant effect in China. The pattern of trust and its changes over time may reflect differences in market conditions in the two economies.     

Rating of worry about energy sources with respect to public health,environmental health,and workers

Environmental risks of different energy sources pose a significant problem for managers, decision-makers, and the general public. Attitudes and perceptions may differ by type of energy, as well as the recipient of the harm. A post-Fukushima survey of students and others in a university community in central New Jersey was conducted to determine how much people worried about the potential effects of different energy types (nuclear, chemical, coal, hydroelectric, solar, wind, and gas), which aspect they worried about (public health, workers, and the environment), and which form they thought the USA should further develop. Ratings for worry varied significantly by energy type and receptor type. In general, worry was greater for all aspects of chemical, coal, nuclear, and gas, and significantly less for hydro, solar, and wind. Worry was generally higher for exposure from the plant, exposure from food and water, exposure to workers, and exposure for wildlife than for either transportation issues or exposure from everyday occurrences. The same exposures (or targets) were rated for each energy source. The greatest worry for each energy type was as follows: (1) nuclear exposure to radiation in food, although worker exposure and exposure from the plant were very close, (2) chemical exposure was from accidents in the plant, (3) coal was from harmful effects of mercury on wildlife, (4) hydro was from contamination of drinking water, (5) solar was from harmful UV radiation exposure in wildlife, (6) wind was from mortality of birds due to wind turbines, and (7) gas was from harmful gas exposure to wildlife. Overall, the highest rated features in terms of worry (four of seven energy forms) were for wildlife. The survey population believed that wind, solar, tidal, and hydro power should be developed further, and coal should be developed the least.     

Breeding one's own sub-prime crisis: The labour market effects on financial system stability

Crisis may spread through economy via the propagating mechanisms of the labour market - households becoming delinquent due to an initial unemployment shock may be unable to continue servicing obligations versus the financial system. With large debts - e.g. mortgages - such defaults pose a threat to financial system stability. In this paper we use the Polish household budget surveys to simulate the impact of changes in the labour market status of household members on the ability of the household to service its mortgage payments. The simulation results are subsequently aggregated to facilitate a macro-level interpretation of the findings. We simulate various scenarios of labour market deterioration. Finally, we also introduce a policy instrument into the simulations providing, in a fiscally neutral manner, additional stability to the financial system. Based on robustness checks, the findings seem to be reliable. The results suggest that even with shares of debtors among consumers as low as in Poland, the propagation mechanism may indeed result in a considerable threat, while the fiscally neutral instrument is effective and well-suited to be addressed in providing additional stability to the financial system.     

Endogenous R&D spillovers and locational choice with discriminatory pricing

We present a model of spatial price discrimination where R&D spillovers are endogenous as they depend on firms' location. We establish that both the distance between locations and R&D efforts are an increasing function of the transportation cost coefficient and show that there is a continuum of cases where firms will choose an intermediate location. The managerial implications from the model are discussed using examples of marketing behavior by Internet retailers. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Riding off into the Sunset: Organizational Sensegiving,Shareholder Sensemaking,and Reactions to CEO Retirement

We test hypotheses derived from resource dependence and sensemaking/sensegiving theoretical lenses in the context of CEO succession, focusing on an under‐researched yet prevalent type of executive turnover – CEO retirement. Using event study methodology and a sample of CEO retirements from S&P 1500 firms during the 2003–12 period, we find that, all else equal, shareholders’ perceptions of organizations’ capacity to serve their interests are adversely affected when a retirement related change occurs in the leadership structure. Specifically, in line with resource dependence theory, we find that CEO retirement disclosures typically generate negative abnormal returns. Furthermore, in line with the sensemaking perspective, we find that the magnitude of shareholders’ reactions is contingent on the lexical sensegiving cues contained in the organizational narratives that are released to capital markets via executive retirement announcements. Overall, our theory and results point to CEO retirement events as consequential in the eyes of shareholders, challenging an important assumption of extant succession research. Moreover, they suggest that shareholders’ interpretation of these events is influenced by organizational sensegiving, highlighting the important role of organizational communication around succession events.