How well do individuals predict their future life satisfaction? Evidence from panel data following a nationwide exogenous shock

Abstract .  Using German panel data, we investigate how well individuals predict their own future life satisfaction. The context is the decade following the 1990 reunification of Germany, which provided a large shock to the future prospects of the inhabitants of the former East Germany. We find that the majority of East Germans significantly overestimated the satisfaction gains from reunification in the years immediately after transition, but by 1994 had converged on correct aggregate expectations. Some evidence of micro-heterogeneity in the prediction errors is found by age and education. For West Germans, we find some initial over-optimism, although less than for East Germans.     

A Case for Wanderlust: Travel Behaviors of College Students

A case for wanderlust, or a strong desire to travel, was developed in an elaborate study involving numerous variables. Findings indicate that wanderlust begins with early, and varied, travel experiences and continues and inspires future travel behavior. Overall, college students exhibit a high level of interest in both leisure and business travel. The impact of past experience is dramatic with a strong relationship between travel experiences prior to college, while in college, and expectations after college. A financial commitment to this desire to travel was also found, particularly among females who exhibited a higher level of wanderlust for leisure travel. Overall implications for the travel and tourism industry are discussed.     

From pay to praise? Non-cash employee recognition in Canadian and Australian firms

Despite deep theoretical roots, a prominent place in the practitioner literature, and increasing use by organizations, non-cash employee recognition plans have thus far received relatively little empirical study by academic researchers. Drawing on survey data from 349 Canadian and Australian firms, this study examines the incidence of individually based and group-based non-cash recognition (NCR) programmes, ascertains whether there are relationships between use of non-cash and cash-based reward practices, and identifies possible predictors of NCR programmes. Results indicate that non-cash plans are indeed common in both countries, but do not appear to substitute for cash-based performance plans, contrary to enthusiasts' suggestions. The most important predictor of non-cash programmes is unionization, which is negatively related to both individually based and group-based NCR programs in Canada, and to group-based programmes in Australia.     

What Did You Do to My Brand? The Moderating Effect of Brand Nostalgia on Consumer Responses to Changes in a Brand

Previous research on consumer nostalgia has concluded that nostalgic feelings primarily have a positive effect on consumers, boosting positive feelings and affective responses. However, evidence suggests that consumers who hold nostalgic feelings toward a specific brand sometimes respond negatively to updated or modified versions of the brand. This research tests the moderating effect of consumers’ brand nostalgia on their responses to changes to a brand. Across four studies, the authors find that consumers who are nostalgic toward a specific brand exhibit a positive bias toward the original version of the brand that leads them to perceive the brand as having changed more than do less nostalgic consumers. Further, when the change to the brand is perceived to be large, individuals who are highly nostalgic for a brand show a significantly sharper decrease in reported attitude and behavioral intentions toward the changed brand than do their less nostalgic counterparts. This effect is in opposition to the positive effects of a general tendency toward nostalgia proneness. These results are replicated across multiple product categories and both manipulated and real changes, and the effect is found to be mediated by the consumer's biased perception of how much the brand has changed.     

Subjectivity in developing and validating causal explanations in positivist accounting research

Eliminating alternative causal explanations plays an important role in establishing causality. We analyze two strategies researchers use to eliminate alternatives to their preferred causal explanations: providing persuasive evidence against other plausible explanations and developing a preferred explanation in such a way as to limit the number of alternatives against which evidence needs to be provided. Although positivist accounting research aims at objectivity in the use of these strategies, we argue that subjectivity plays an important role as well. We identify and discuss relatively more objective and more subjective components of these strategies for validating and developing causal explanations.     

Threshold Modelling of Stock Return Volatility on Eastern European Markets.

A common finding for developed stock markets is that negative shocks entering the market lead to a larger return volatility than positive shocks of a similar magnitude. The following paper considers two emerging Eastern European Markets where the first point of investigation is whether an analogous asymmetric characteristic is reflected in emerging markets. The second point of investigation is whether the findings differ depending on the institutional microstructure of the exchange being examined. Hence, econometric techniques are adjusted and a ‘double-censored tobit GARCH’ model is developed. This paper finds that no asymmetry exists on either markets and possible reasons for this are proposed. JEL Classification: G14, G15, P21, P34. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Predictability of stock markets with disequilibrium trading

This paper analyses the predictability of a hypothetical market with freely negotiated prices on which exists a censoring of one-period returns which are in excess of an arbitrary level (‘floor’ and ‘ceiling’). It is shown that the expected value of returns (adjusted for drift) conditional on last period information regarding the censoring are equal to zero (and therefore the market is not predictable in mean) if there is no intertemporal spillover on the market. A simple simulation model is proposed and applied for the analysis of the effects of intertemporal and cross-spillovers resulting from quantity constraints. Statistical predictability tests are proposed, based on the corrected Student-t statistic of a regression of returns of some information concerning the previous censoring. An illustrative empirical analysis of six main time series of returns on the Warsaw Stock Exchange confirms their ex-ante, but not ex-post, predictability.     

Winecon: An Evaluation

This paper presents the results of an evaluation of the WinEcon computer-based learning (CBL) software released into the academic community in September 1995. The focus of the paper is the impact of continued and directed WinEcon use on students' learning as measured by their examination results. The subjects of the study were the 240 Leicester University students enrolled on the 1995/96 introductory microeconomics course who were categorised by their use of WinEcon. Using traditional regression and decomposition techniques, we show that directed use of WinEcon can enhance exam performance by a small but significant proportion, enough to improve the pass rate of the overall course.