The Evolution of Whistleblowing Studies: A Critical Review and Research Agenda

This study investigates the variations in the quality and comprehensiveness of 104 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports published by the world’s largest financial institutions in 2012. Using a novel measure of CSR report quality, we examine the impact of certain national, legal, and firm-level factors that might explain differences in the overall quality and extent of coverage of various issues in these reports. Our findings show that legal factors and CSR environment in a firm’s country of headquarters play an important role in firms’ CSR reporting quality. Common law countries exhibit systematically higher overall CSR reporting quality than code law countries. Countries with higher CSR standards, policies, and regulations in place also produce significantly higher quality CSR reports. Firm size, on the other hand, has no major impact on the overall quality of CSR reports. In further analysis of the individual aspects of CSR disclosures, namely environment, philanthropy, bribery and corruption, and integrity assurance, we document that larger firms report at a higher quality on philanthropy and bribery and corruption. Bribery and corruption is reported at a higher quality in countries with common law tradition, high-quality legal regimes, and high CSR standards and regulations in place. We also observe higher quality integrity assurance in common law countries. CSR-minded countries and countries with low-quality legal environment also report on philanthropy at a higher quality. Finally, we offer guidelines for companies toward improving the quality of their reports, and suggestions for scholars and researchers for further avenues of research.     

Emotional prototypes,emotional memory usages,and customer satisfaction

In this study, we investigated the positive and negative emotion concepts in the prototype perspective and then tested them on customer satisfaction. By studying 612 customers in luxury restaurants, we found that two levels of customer emotions (i.e. positive and negative emotions) as a super-ordinate level, 4 positive emotions (i.e. contentment, happiness, love, and pride) and 5 negative emotions (i.e. anger, fear, sadness, shame, and disgust) as a basic level, and 49 specific emotions as a subordinate level are significantly related to customer satisfaction. We also examined the moderating role of emotional memory (EM) usage in the relationship between consumers’ emotions and their satisfaction. We found that product (food and beverage)-related EM strengthens and service-related EM usage weakens the relationship between customers’ negative emotions and their satisfaction. Interestingly, we found that positive and negative emotions are significantly related to customer satisfaction regardless of experience and store-related EM usage.     

Macroeconomic sources of foreign exchange risk in new EU members

We address the issue of foreign exchange risk and its macroeconomic determinants in several new EU members. We derive the observable macroeconomic factors—consumption and inflation—using the stochastic discount factor (SDF) approach. The joint distribution of excess returns in the foreign exchange market and the factors are modeled using a multivariate GARCH-in-mean specification. Our findings show that both real and nominal factors play important roles in explaining the variability of the foreign exchange risk premium. Both types of factors should be included in monetary general equilibrium models employed to study excess returns. To contribute to the further stability of domestic currencies, the new EU members should strive to implement stabilization policies aimed at achieving nominal as well as real convergence with the core EU members.     

Web-hosting market development status and its value as an indicator of a country's e-readiness

A country's e-readiness is essentially a measure of its business environment, a collection of factors that indicate how amenable a market is to Internet-based opportunities. An e-readiness assessment is based on several quantitative criteria, and among them the ICT market development indicators are considered as the most influential. Studies in the past have shown that the well-known indicators used for assessing the level of ICT market development in countries with emerging economy are not directly applicable. This paper provides another insight into the level of ICT market development in an emerging economy by analysing the adoption of web-hosting services in the country's business sector. The potential of such assessment to be as an indicator of the level of ICT development in a country is analysed. The underlying study of the web-hosting development was carried out as part of the European project WEBHOSTS. The approach applied and the findings were intended to be used as a decision support in locating and managing some of the risks in e-business development and potential investment by new entrants in a region that is accessing the developed part of Europe.     

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Analyzing of innovations influence on economic growth by fuzzy system

Economic growth may be developed on the basis on combination of different factors. In this investigation was analyzed the economic growth prediction based on the innovations by field of technology. Gross domestic product (GDP) was used as economic growth indicator. The method of adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) was applied to the data in order to detect the influential parameters for the GDP prediction. Five inputs are considered: number of granted patents in electrical engineering, number of granted patents as instruments, number of granted patents in chemistry, number of granted patents in mechanical engineering and the number of granted patents in other fields. Results shown that the innovations in electrical engineering has the highest influence on the GDP prediction.

     

Person-level assessment of measurement invariance

Quality & Quantity - Existing procedures for testing measurement invariance focus mainly on group-level comparisons rather than individual comparisons (i.e., the main conclusion typically...     

Macro‐Fiscal Volatility and the Composition of Public Spending*

Earlier empirical literature has examined some long‐ and medium‐term aspects of macro‐fiscal volatility while leaving its short‐term fiscal impact unexplored. To help fill that gap, we examine the impact of macro‐fiscal volatility on the composition of public spending. To that end, we analyse a panel of 10 EU countries during 1991–2007. Our results suggest that increases in the volatility of regularly‐collected and cyclical revenues such as the VAT and income taxes tend to tilt the expenditure composition in favour of public investment. In contrast, increases in the volatility of ad hoc taxes such as capital taxes tend to favour public consumption spending, albeit only a little. We interpret such volatility innovations as conveying news to the fiscal policymaker about the underlying economic conditions, with especially regularly‐collected and cyclical taxes prompting short‐term cyclical fine‐tuning.     

An alternative method for identifying booms and busts in the Euro area housing market

This article develops a model-based method to detect booms and busts in the Euro area housing market. A model is constructed and tested, whereby the user cost rate, a demographic variable, unemployment rate, disposable income, debt-to-income ratio and housing stock are fundamental variables significantly explaining house price (HP) developments. Booms/busts are identified as episodes when the HP index exceeds the levels implied by those economic fundamentals. Furthermore, a cross-check with boom/bust episodes based on other methods is carried out to substantiate the results, while the ability of the model in predicting booms/busts in real time is also tested.     

A differentiated tolls system – an effective transport policy tool for Slovenia?

We provide an econometric model of passenger and freight transportation demand based on panel data for 10 sections of toll roads in Slovenia. Transportation demand on Slovenian motorways is price inelastic. The price elasticity of transportation demand statistically varies among different parts of the toll sections, so it would seem sensible to introduce a differentiated toll system that would allow the simultaneous achievement of multiple objectives, such as increasing the internalization of the external costs of transport, increasing transportation demand management on the basis of price and increasing cost recovery for the maintenance and development of toll roads in Slovenia. Transportation demand is even more responsive to changes in fuel price than changes in tolls, so transportation policy can manage transportation demand using differences in fuel prices. Based on estimates of demand models differentiated according to several geographical groups of road sections, we also find that growth in the price elasticity of transportation demand in Slovenia can be achieved through the expansion of the transport supply by increasing the competitiveness of rail transport and alternative transportation routes.