Children's Responses to Advertising in Social Games

This study explored children's (ages 9 through 12) level of persuasion knowledge and peer influence susceptibility concerning advertising in social games and investigated how these variables affect children's desire for the brands advertised in these games. Results showed that (1) children have a fairly good knowledge of the advertising in social games yet hold uncritical attitudes toward it and claim to be not very susceptible to peer influence; (2) the most important predictors of children's desire for the advertised brands are a low critical attitude and high peer influence susceptibility; and (3) recognition and understanding of advertising in social games is effective in reducing advertised brand desire only for children who are familiar with social games.     

Industrial restructuring in Russia: early reactions fo firms to the shock of liberalization1

This paper looks at the reaction of Russian firsm to the shock of liberalization. Firms are exposed to two kinds of shocks. A supply affects their profitability. A demand shock reflects the new expression of consumers and the opening of the country to foreign competition. Econometric tests show that firms adapt to these changes. They react by adjusting their output. They are not able to change their production techniques for lack of fresh capital. Employment is more stable that output: it is preserved by the adjustment of real wages. Therefore, firms with a low share of material inputs are relatively better off.     

Disentangling the influence of internationalization on sustainability development: Evidence from the energy sector

This paper aims to deepen our understanding of the relationship between firms' internationalization and their sustainability development. We expected firms with a higher level of internationalization to exhibit better environmental management and performance. A sample of 287 publicly traded firms in the energy and energy‐related utilities sector was used to test these relationships. We focused on the energy sector, as energy production and supply have historically accounted for the lion's share of global greenhouse gas emissions. We found that firms' level of internationalization had a positive effect on their environmental management, whereas its effect on environmental performance was not found to be significant. We also tested whether these relationships change when firms' internationalization is oriented towards developing countries. Upon a closer look, the relationship was found to be significant between internationalization towards developing countries and better environmental management, thus contributing to the line of literature that does not support the pollution haven hypothesis.     

Quakers,coercion, and pre‐modern growth: why Friends’ formal institutions for contract enforcement did not matter for early modern trade expansion

During the late seventeenth century, Atlantic trade grew dramatically. The New Institutional Economists attribute this to institutional developments. During this period, Quakers emerged as the region's most prominent trading community. Some historians explain this achievement as the result of the competitive advantage that Quakers gained from their formal institutions for contract enforcement. This article studies the London Quaker community to show that, in fact, they only began to police the conduct of business regularly after 1750, as part of a wider effort to promote the Society's reputation. Formal institutional advantages cannot explain the Quakers’ early trading success.     

Convergence clubs in Latin America

The aim of this work is to identify convergence clubs in 17 Latin American countries in terms of GDP per capita during the period 1990–2014. To do this, we apply the methodology developed by Phillips-Sul in order to identify the different convergence clubs on the path of growth in the Latin American economy over this period. The empirical results strongly support the existence of convergence clubs, indicating that the Latin American economy consists of four groups, each converging towards its own steady-state path, with two countries being divergent.     

Revisiting the Exchange Rate Pass‐Through to Inflation in Africa’s Two Largest Economies: Nigeria and South Africa

This paper revisits the exchange rate pass‐through (ERPT) to inflation in Nigeria and South Africa by incorporating structural breaks and using time series variables, namely the consumer price index, nominal effective exchange rate, gross domestic product, and crude oil price. Based on the Maki cointegration test and a flexible estimation approach of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model, our empirical evidence suggests that the long‐ and short‐run ERPT to inflation is complete for Nigeria, while for South Africa it is incomplete both in the long run and short run. This result indicates that prices are stickier in South Africa compared to Nigeria. The comparison between Nigeria and South Africa confirms the role of inflation targeting and central bank credibility on the ERPT. The results divulge further that output growth in Nigeria increases inflation in the long run while it is anti‐inflationary in the short run. For South Africa, the effect of output growth is negatively insignificant. In addition, the long‐run effect of oil price is negative and significant for Nigeria, while for South Africa the short‐run effect of oil price is positive and significant. Therefore, the findings of this paper will assist the monetary authorities to achieve monetary policy objectives.     

In search of the roots of corporate reputation management: Being a consistent corporate social performer

Corporate social performance (CSP) has received a particularly high share of attention as one of the main determinants of corporate reputation. However, few studies have tested the extent to which the relationship between CSP and corporate reputation may be affected by industry, country, or other context-related variables. Besides, some conceptual thinking suggests that the impact of CSP on corporate reputation may vary according to the level of consistency of a firm's behaviors. However, this view has not been empirically addressed. For this reason, the main objective of this study is to explore the impact of consistency in CSP management on corporate reputation. Specifically, we analyze both the effect of CSP internal consistency (or consistency between environmental and social performance) and CSP consistency over time on corporate reputation. The results based on data from an international sample of 133 companies for the period 2011 to 2016, support either CSP internal consistency or CSP consistency over time (positive increment of CSP over time) positively affecting corporate reputation. The results also confirm the moderation effect of CSP internal consistency on the relationship between CSP and corporate reputation. These results reveal that consistency in social responsibility management helps a firm to consolidate its corporate reputation.     

The Role of Non-Binding Pledges in Social Dilemmas with Mitigation and Adaptation

Environmental and Resource Economics - This study presents experimental results on the role that non-binding pledges have on the ability of groups to manage a threat of probabilistic group damages...