Envisioning a future purchase: The effects of consumption imagery perspective and identity on consumer motivation

When people visualize a potential purchase, they can adopt either a first‐person or a third‐person perspective. The present research examines whether the perspective adopted would affect consumer motivation, and whether this effect would depend on the extent to which the imagined purchase is connected to identity. In four studies, third‐person imagery resulted in stronger consumer motivation than first‐person imagery, but only for purchases that were tied closely to identity. Furthermore, the results suggest that the motivational effect of third‐person imagery is not based on concerns about others’ views of the self, but rather on the extent to which one feels that the imagined behavior is tied closely to identity.     

Questionable Language in ‘Help Wanted’ Advertising: A Comparison of the Practices of Small and Large Newspapers

For 25 years the US Congress and the courts have expanded employment protection for workers. Despite such actions ‘help wanted’ (i.e., situations vacant) advertisements in newspapers utilize phrases and words which are questionable or overtly discriminatory. Previous studies have analysed the type and rates of incidence of such advertisements in large metropolitan areas. The present study expands earlier research by contrasting the practices of small and large newspapers. Recommendations are made regarding actions to provide fairer employment practices.     

Analysing moral issues in stakeholder relations

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for analysing managers' attitudes toward moral issues in stakeholder relations, and to operationalise the developed framework by defining statements to be used as empirical measures in survey research. The research question, how can moral issues in business be examined with the stakeholder approach, is answered by paying attention to both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. The paper reveals that by analysing a company's stakeholder relations, we can discover the important moral issues in business. To validate the framework developed and the empirical measures which result, the development process is described in detail. The argument is that making the development process visible is an important task in validating empirical measures in survey research. As a result of the research process, a total of 50 moral issues in eight stakeholder relations are identified, and operationalised with 58 itemised statements. The final conclusion is that the empirical measures developed in this paper are suitable for measuring moral issues in stakeholder relations, and that they can later be used in analysing real life managers' perceptions of moral issues in stakeholder relations.     

A moment-based test for extreme-value dependence

This paper proposes a new rank-based test of extreme-value dependence. The procedure is based on the first three moments of the bivariate probability integral transform of the underlying copula. It is seen that the test statistic is asymptotically normal and its finite- and large-sample variance are calculated explicitly. Consistent plug-in estimators for the variance are proposed, and a fast algorithm for their computation is given. Although it is shown via counterexamples that no test based on the probability integral transform can be consistent, the proposed procedure achieves good power against common alternatives, both in finite samples and asymptotically.     

Improved output gaps with financial cycle information? An application to G7 countries’ new Keynesian Phillips curves

In search for more robust cyclical imbalance indicators, recent research has highlighted the interactions between business and financial cycles. Output gap formulations increasingly take imbalances of the financial cycle into account, postulating finance-neutral output gaps (FNGAPs). To test their increased explanatory power in econometric models, we compare FNGAPs to univariate output gaps in their ability to explain inflation dynamics in hybrid new Keynesian Phillips curves. Results indicate FNGAPs to exercise (dis)inflationary pressure, but not to outperform traditional output gaps. Nonetheless, they have become increasingly significant in the course of the 2007/08 Global Financial Crisis.     

Investment Choice with Polluted Capital

This paper develops a two-sector overlapping generations model in which one sector produces an externality on the environmental quality and the other has no effect. We assume that environmental quality degradation results from production activity of one sector. Then, we characterise the dynamical system globally and establish sufficient conditions for the global uniqueness of a perfect-foresight equilibrium path in the case of a Cobb-Douglas production function and a CES utility function. We show that the existence and the stability of the steady state depend on substitution and income effect and on the degree of pollution.     

Social security and cross-country differences in hours: A general equilibrium analysis

I develop a general equilibrium life cycle model with an intensive and extensive margin of labor supply and endogenous human capital accumulation. I use the model to assess the effects of changes to various features of social security on labor supply outcomes. Of particular interest are changes to the scale of the program and to the relevant eligibility rules. I find that the cross-country differences in social security programs account for at least 79% of the differences in employment rates of people aged 55–64 and 17–31% of the differences in aggregate hours worked between the US and continental Europe.     

The effectiveness of personalized marketing in online banking: A comparison between search and experience offerings

This study reports the results of personalized online promotions in a context where personalization has not been researched before – in online banking. Genuine online bank customers were shown personalized banner advertisements when they logged in to their online bank account. Three financial offerings consisting of different search and experience attributes were promoted to three groups of customers. We examined the attention, elaboration and choice measures, and compared the effectiveness of personalized banners to default banners, and the online promotions to direct-mail promotions. Despite the goal-directed routines that reflect the dominant customer behaviour in online banking, personalized banners attracted more attention than default banners. Furthermore, messages that promote fairly simple search-type offerings that are easy to apply and are linked to the context in which the promotion occurs are more effective than messages that do not fulfil these criteria. The results offer implications both for research and practice.