Consumer Protection Law in Cuba

Journal of Consumer Policy - The authors address the origins and evolution of consumer law in Cuba and the influence of European Union consumer law on development in Cuba. The transition from the...     

Reporting Concerns About Earnings Quality: An Examination of Corporate Managers

Using an experiment with corporate financial managers (e.g., CFOs, controllers), we find that when red flags are present in the financial statements under their review, managers identify those red flags and, in turn, have greater concerns over earnings quality. In addition, when pressure to meet a financial target is high, managers are more concerned about earnings quality when red flags are present. We also document that when red flags are present, managers are more likely to report both internally to their CEO and, if their concerns are not resolved internally, externally to their auditor. Pressure to meet a financial target increases the likelihood managers report internally, but decreases their likelihood of reporting externally when red flags are present. Additional analyses document reporting differences between CFOs and controllers, and examine the important roles that short-term personal costs, job tenure, and a non-accounting background play in the ethical dilemma managers face when deciding whether to report externally.

     

The relevance of mobile tourism and information technology: an analysis of recent trends and future research directions

Although there have been studies concerning information and communication technologies adoption in the tourism industry, the research trends of mobile tourism (m-tourism) are still not very clear due to the short development time and emerging nature of the technologies. To fill this gap, this study reviewed and analyzed articles related to online reviews of tourism and hospitality published in academic journals between 2002 and 2015. Through a keyword-driven search and content analysis, 92 articles are identified as relevant and classified into three topics. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of this promising research direction by presenting the interesting classification methods used by relevant publications and their insights. This paper also discusses significant topical and methodological trends, and contributes to an overall understanding of existing research and its limitations.     

Beyond the Pampas: Global capital and uneven development in Argentine soybean expansion

The article analyses the social processes introduced by globalization into agrarian production systems. In particular, it explores how capital installs a new agriculture that generates an urban fringe in rural localities. We claim that the expansion of agricultural frontiers is also associated with the rise of new actors, residential changes and transformations in labour markets. The objective is to study the transformation that takes place in the agrarian social structure of a marginal agricultural area. It shows how this transformation leads to new residential behaviour that redefines the local relational system and to a transition from a “peasant” way of life to an urban‐type through the logic of the expulsion of the peasant population and the logic of agribusiness.     

On the Stability of the Excess Sensitivity of Aggregate Consumption Growth in the USA

This paper investigates whether there is time variation in the excess sensitivity of aggregate consumption growth to anticipated aggregate disposable income growth using quarterly US data over the period 1953–2014. Our empirical framework contains the possibility of stickiness in aggregate consumption growth and takes into account measurement error and time aggregation. Our empirical specification is cast into a Bayesian state‐space model and estimated using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods. We use a Bayesian model selection approach to deal with the non‐regular test for the null hypothesis of no time variation in the excess sensitivity parameter. Anticipated disposable income growth is calculated by incorporating an instrumental variables estimation approach into our MCMC algorithm. Our results suggest that the excess sensitivity parameter in the USA is stable at around 0.23 over the entire sample period. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tweeting and Retweeting for Fight for $15: Unions as Dinosaur Opinion Leaders?

Advocacy campaigns are central to unions’ efforts to impact labour rights beyond unionized workplaces. Social media and on-the-ground campaign dynamics are intimately related. Thus, if unions can become leaders on social media, they could have more impact on campaign framing and mobilizing. Drawing on primary data and applying a sequential mixed method, we analyse unions’ ability to emerge as opinion leaders in Twitter dialogues on the Fight for $15 (FF$15) campaign. We track FF$15-related activities of Twitter profiles over seven months and compare union actions to those of others along three dimensions: level of activity, prevalence of tweeting versus retweeting and endorsement within FF$15 community and in the Twitter universe. Regression results show unions prefer advancing their own ideas over supporting those of others, and their messages are more endorsed than others’ messages in the Twitter universe. In-depth interviews and a focus group reveal that while their actions are slow and conservative, unions can count on internal support and institutional reputation to gain leadership. The article concludes by noting the implications of the findings for unions’ strategies to become opinion leaders on social media.     

Public employment and compensation reform: the role of social dialogue and structural measures

This paper compiles and compares recent and past measures introduced to contain the public wage bill in a number of emerging and advanced economies to assess their effectiveness in bringing down expenditure in a sustained way. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a number of countries have approved measures on the wage bill as part of fiscal consolidation efforts. These recent episodes are compared to past cases implemented in advanced economies over the period 1979–2009. Findings suggest that public wage bill consolidation episodes pre- and post-2009 are similar in many respects. Moreover, typically countries that were able to achieve more sustained reductions in the wage bill have implemented to larger extent structural measures, and/or these measures were accompanied with substantial social dialogue and consensus.