Influence of virtual communities in purchasing decisions: The participants' perspective

This study intended to fill some gaps in knowledge about virtual communities and their influence on consumers' purchasing decisions. A Brazilian Orkut community, whose central theme is preparing for wedding ceremonies, was investigated to reveal relationships among members and group influences on purchasing decisions. Twenty-one interviews were conducted by telephone. Results unveil a basic code of conduct, suggesting that the community can also act as a normative reference group, with strong identification among participants. Although the central interest – the wedding ceremony and party – could be considered as episodic, many members actively stay in the community after being married, just to help others. Group leaders seemed to be active participants, those with more experience with products related to the group's interests, or those perceived as having refined tastes. There was evidence that purchasing intentions and behavior can be altered as a result of interactions among members.     

The Effects of Ownership Structure and Intragroup Loans on Leverage: Evidence from Family Firms in Chile

This article examines the effects of family control and pyramidal ownership on firms’ capital structure decisions. After studying a sample of listed family and nonfamily firms in Chile, we find that families take a conservative approach to debt and financial risk exposure. We test the hypothesis that family firms restrict the use of debt in order to avoid the monitoring role of creditors, which could limit their enjoyment of the private benefits of control. In keeping with this hypothesis, we find a U-shaped relationship between leverage and the degree of pyramidal ownership that is more pronounced among family firms than nonfamily firms. We do not find any evidence that is consistent with the hypothesis that family-controlled firms have low leverage ratios due to their access to internal capital markets. In fact, conversely, we find that listed family firms provide more loans to related companies than comparable nonfamily firms.     

CAPE VERDE: THE CASE FOR EUROISATION

After a decade of a successful peg to the euro, the authorities of Cape Verde are considering the official euroisation of the country. For an ex ante economic evaluation of such a move, this paper assesses whether Cape Verde fulfills key economic criteria devised by the optimum currency areas literature, using as benchmark the comparable records of the 27 European Union (EU) countries. The answer is positive. Overall, we find that Cape Verde is not less suited for euroisation than some of the current euro area members and most of the remaining members of the EU.     

Factors affecting the next generation of women leaders: Mapping the challenges,antecedents, and consequences of effective leadership

This article introduces a conceptual model for understanding how young women perceive the current challenges of leadership. Numerous studies and articles claim that women are better educated, more experienced, and better suited for leadership positions than ever before. This news is encouraging, but the number of women in leadership roles in American politics gained less than one percentage point this year, hovering around 22%, while in the private sector many organizations have yet to place a single woman on their board. The proportion of women on corporate boards is 16%, with no evidence that this is likely to grow in the near future. What is even more discouraging is that these low numbers are not significantly higher than those in many developing nations. It is evident that women are underrepresented in top leadership positions and must intensely challenge the status quo. This article presents results of a study based on in‐depth interviews with college women who are seeking paths to leadership. The researchers employ qualitative analytical research tools to explore the complexities of the phenomena. The findings bring a greater understanding of the antecedents and consequences that lie beneath the challenges affecting the next generation of women leaders.     

Intra‐household allocation of parental leave

We introduce childcare sharing in a collective model of household behaviour to investigate which factors make spouses increase or decrease their share of parental leave. The concern about future consumption motivates parents to invest in their human capital and to limit their leave duration. Using relative income and the age difference between spouses as distribution factors, we cannot reject Pareto efficiency in childcare sharing. Higher relative incomes and larger age differences shift the conditional leave allocation towards the relatively poorer and younger partner, respectively. Households with higher total income purchase more professional childcare.     

Top Teams and Strategy in a UK University

This paper reports on the results of an in-depth study of how a top management team (TMT) puts strategy into practice in a UK university. A study of the top team in Warwick University was conducted to analyse how strategy was formulated and implemented. The results suggest that a combination of two broad theoretical lenses provides useful analytical insight. These are strategy as practice and strategy as process. The main elements of this university's strategy result from an interplay of localized routines and patterns of action within an organizational context, which both produces and is a product of such actions. The TMT itself was found to be clearly identifiable and stable in composition. The team exhibited identifiable patterns of strategic thinking and acting. However, the role of organizational structure was also found to be a key influence on the actions and processes of the TMT with strong central control tendencies in the team being counterbalanced by devolved operational control to individual departments. The data also reveal inter-relationships between organizational structures and the TMT in four key areas: direction-setting, monitoring and control, the alloca- tion of resources, and processes of interaction. The overall conclusion is that to understand how strategy is practised, analysis needs to focus on how patterns of action are associated with the characteristics of both the team and the wider organization. The nature and characteristics of these patterns can be related to how strategy is put into practice.     

Intra-industry trade by types: What can we learn from Portuguese data?

We provide evidence on intra-industry trade (IIT) in the Portuguese case from 1994 onwards by disentangling vertical from horizontal IIT with two different indexes—the Grubel-Lloyd and the so-called CEPII index- and analyse the determinants of both IIT types. Distinct explanatory factors are identified for each IIT type and we confirm the comparative advantage explanation in the vertical case. The regression results are robust to different estimation methods and to alternative IIT indexes. Nonetheless, sensitivity of the IIT levels to the arbitrary criterion of the CEPII measurement points out to the Grubel-Lloyd index as a preferable method. JEL no. F12, F14     

Inflation,growth and exchange rate regimes in small open economies

Summary. This paper compares the merits of alternative exchange rate regimes in small open economies where financial intermediaries perform a real allocative function, there are multiple reserve requirements, and credit market frictions may or may not cause credit rationing. Under floating exchange rates, raising domestic inflation can increase production if credit is rationed. However, there exist inflation thresholds: increasing inflation beyond the threshold level will reduce domestic output. Endogenously arising volatility may be observed independently of the exchange rate regime. Private information - with high rates of domestic inflation - increases the scope for indeterminacy and economic fluctuations.Received: 26 March 2002, Revised: 29 October 2002JEL Classification Numbers: E32, E44, F33.P.L. Hernandez-Verme: I would like to thank Leonardo Auernheimer, Valerie Bencivenga, Dean Corbae, Scott Freeman, Todd Keister, Beatrix Paal, and Maxwell Stinchcombe for very helpful comments and suggestions. Very special thanks are due to Bruce D. Smith. The paper also benefited from the discussions in the seminars in CIDE, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Indiana University, ITAM, Purdue University, the Second Annual Missouri Economics Conference, Texas A&M, the University of Missouri and the University of Texas at Austin.     

Alternative food consumption (AFC): idiocentric and allocentric factors of influence among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the factors that drive consumer demands for alternative food consumption (AFC) options in western society (i.e. plant-based, organic and local diets) as means to achieve sustainability and a state of food well-being. Specifically, we propose a holistic framework in order to identify factors that influence its adoption: idiocentric (functional, ideological and experiential) and allocentric (situational, sociocultural and institutional). The proposed framework provides a basis for discussion on how marketing can contribute to the establishment of AFC in western society and contribute to sustainability and food-well-being among low socio-economic status (SES) consumers. Marketing and public policy implications of this framework are discussed in light of food consumption by low SES consumers, a target particularly vulnerable to flawed states of food well-being.