Fair-trade beliefs,attitudes and buying behaviour of Belgian consumers

• A survey of 858 Belgians (615 people drawn from the general public and 243 visitors to Oxfam World Shops), examined the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of consumers with respect to fair-trade issues. The results showed that the respondents' knowledge and attitudes generally supported the fair-trade concept. However, many of the people questioned believed that fair-trade organizations should provide more and better information on fair-trade products, especially in shops and on the items themselves. In addition, fair-trade products should be more readily available in regular supermarkets, and their price should be lowered. The most interesting socio-demographic target group for non-profit fair-trade organizations appears to be older people with higher education and income. Consumers from the south (French-speaking) part of Belgium in general have a more positive attitude towards fair trade.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Alliances and negotiations: an incomplete information example

We study a bargaining game between an individual and an ‘alliance’ in the sense of Manzini and Mariotti (J Econ Theory 121:128–41, 2005), in which the opponent of the alliance is incompletely informed about the relative strengths of its members. The best equilibrium outcome for the alliance under a unanimity rule is not attainable with a non-unanimity rule. However, unlike in the complete information model, less than optimal outcomes and delays may occur with positive probability even under unanimity, depending on the prior beliefs and the preferences of the agents. We are grateful to a careful referee for comments. We wish to thank Clara Ponsati for useful comments.     

外生拉动的城市化困境及出路——以珠江三角洲地区为例

区域城市化受外生拉动和内生成长两种驱动力推进,具有相对清晰的发展轨迹:工业化→小城镇化→城市化→大城市化(城市区域化)。而我国城市化速度最快的地区之一珠三角受香港等外生拉力驱动,表现出城市化滞后于工业化、内部需求滞后于外部需求、城市化质量滞后于城市化数量等特征。区域内工业和城市节点发展强于工业化和城市化过程发展,以内生成长力为基础的城市化发展链条并不健全,在城镇向城市发展,城市反哺乡镇等方面的城市化循环链条甚至出现断裂,导致本地区受2008年全球经济危机影响严重,区域发展严重受阻。基于此,提出四方面建议打通珠三角地区内部农村、小城镇、城市、城市区域之间的资源补给通道,从而构建内生成长力和外生拉动力共同作用的珠三角城市化良性运转机制。     

My Strengths Count!

This article builds on the argument that research on the link between HRM and performance benefits from investigating how HR practices are envisioned by managers (in terms of underlying philosophies), and how they are perceived by employees (in terms of psychological climates). Our study focuses on the effects of a strengths‐based HR philosophy assuming that employee performance can be maximized through leveraging individual strengths. This philosophy relates to a strengths‐based psychological climate, that is, employee perceptions of the opportunities they get to identify, develop, and use their strengths. We hypothesized that a strengths‐based psychological climate positively influences employees’ positive affect, which in turn enhances their in‐role and extra‐role performance. In our study, 442 respondents working in 39 departments of eight Dutch and Belgian organizations gave ratings on the strength‐based psychological climate of their organization, and indicated their level of work‐related positive affect, in‐role performance, and extra‐role performance. Results of multilevel hierarchical regression analyses supported our hypotheses by indicating that strengths‐based psychological climate was positively linked to in‐role and extra‐role performance, and that this link was mediated by positive affect. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Identification and Estimation of Engel Curves with Endogenous and Unobserved Expenditures

When dealing with the estimation of Engel curves, measurement errors in expenditure data and simultaneity are likely sources of endogeneity. In this paper we study identification of the parameters that characterize an Engel curve in the presence of both. We consider specifications where budget shares are polynomials in the logarithm of total expenditure, which is the case frequently encountered in empirical applications. We propose an estimation procedure which is an extension of that in Lewbel ( 1996 ) and exploits a control function assumption to correct for the endogeneity of the true unobserved total expenditure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Money donations intentions among Muslim donors: an extended theory of planned behavior model

• The investigation into determinants of money donation intentions while employing an extended theory of planned behavior model is limited to developed country contexts. However, given the challenges facing charitable organizations and scant theoretical evidence from developing world, such an examination can contribute pragmatically. The current study establishes the impact of subjective norms, perceived behavioral control, past behavior, and attitude on respondents' money donation intentions to charities in Pakistan. The respondents (N = 223), a non‐student population living in the city of Gujranwala, completed a survey. The collected data are analyzed by means of a multivariate analysis, which was comprised of regression and correlation. The results reveal a strong support to the extended theory of planned behavior model in establishing the relationship between identified independent and dependent variables in a developing country context of Pakistan. The study contributes to the establishment of a few strategies, which are useful for managers working in charitable organizations to attract and retain donors to support several causes.

Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Undominated (and) perfect equilibria in Poisson games

In games with population uncertainty some perfect equilibria are in dominated strategies. We prove that every Poisson game has at least one perfect equilibrium in undominated strategies.     

Privatization in PolandWhat was the government trying to achieve?1

This article uses the sequencing of privatization to infer the objective pursued by the Polish government in the privatization of its large manufacturing firms in the second half of the 1990s. We construct a model of mixed oligopoly and use it to evaluate the privatization process; our analysis is based on the assumption that firms which furthered the government's objective function the most would be chosen to be privatized first. Based on the features of the firms that were chosen for early privatization, our empirical analysis suggests that welfare maximization was more important than the desire to maximize the revenues from privatization and the government's budget or to minimize employment losses.     

国家技术安全初探——从利用外资角度

技术安全是个崭新的研究领域。在其定义和内容上，目前我国学者看法不一。冯鹏志等将技术视作宏观经济的影响变量之一，着重阐述科学技术发展对国家的社会、政治、经济、军事和信息等方面的安全所产生的具体影响。刘跃进认为其内容主要包括科技成果的安全、科技人才的安全和科技活动的安全。滕飞则认为技术安全是指在一定的社会环境条件下，以国家价值准则为依据对国家技术系统及其发展态势的一种动态描述。     

Financial sophistication and the distribution of the welfare cost of inflation

The welfare cost of anticipated inflation is quantified in a calibrated model of the U.S. economy that exhibits tractable equilibrium dispersion in wealth and earnings. Inflation does not generate large losses in societal welfare, yet its impact varies noticeably across segments of society depending also on the financial sophistication of the economy. If money is the only asset, then inflation mostly hurts the wealthier and more productive agents, while those poorer and less productive may even benefit from inflation. The converse holds in a more sophisticated financial environment where agents can insure against consumption risk with assets other than money.