DO WEALTH DIFFERENCES AFFECT FAIRNESS CONSIDERATIONS?*

The influence of relative wealth on fairness considerations is analyzed in an ultimatum game experiment in which participants receive large and widely unequal initial endowments. Subjects initially demonstrate a concern for fairness. With time however, behavior becomes at odds with both subgame perfection and fairness. Evidence of learning is detected for both proposers and receivers in the estimation of a structural reinforcement learning model. The estimation results suggest that, guided by foregone best responses and an acquired sense of deservingness, rich subjects become more selfish, whereas poor subjects, influenced only by their own experience, learn to tolerate this behavior.     

In-work policies in Europe: Killing two birds with one stone?

Generous social assistance has been held responsible for inactivity traps and social exclusion in several European countries, hence the recent trend of promoting employment through in-work transfers. Yet, the relative consensus on the need for ‘making work pay’ policies is muddied by a number of concerns relative to the design of the reforms and the treatment of the family dimension. Relying on EUROMOD, a EU-15 integrated tax-benefit microsimulation software, we simulate two types of in-work benefits. The first one is means-tested on family income, in the fashion of the British Working Family Tax Credit, while the second is a purely individualized policy. Both reforms are built on the same cost basis (after behavioral responses) and simulated in three European countries suspected to experience large poverty traps, namely Finland, France and Germany. The potential labor supply responses to the reforms and the subsequent redistributive impacts are assessed for each country using a structural discrete-choice model. We compare how both reforms achieve poverty reduction and social inclusion (measured as the number of transitions into activity). All three countries present different initial conditions, including existing tax-benefit systems and distribution of incomes and wages. These sources of heterogeneity are exploited together with different labor supply elasticities to explain the cross-country differences in the impact of the reforms.     

Should countries block foreign takeovers of R&D champions and promote greenfield entry?

Abstract In R&D intensive industries, governments promote greenfield foreign investments, while being sceptical towards foreign acquisitions of domestic high‐quality firms. We develop a theoretical model that shows that foreign acquisitions are conducive to high‐quality targets because of strategic effects on the sales price. However, foreign firms ‘cherry pick’ high‐quality targets to expand R&D rather than to downsize. Otherwise, rivals expand R&D, making the acquisition unprofitable. Thus, our model predicts that acquired affiliates invest more in R&D than greenfield affiliates. Using affiliate data, we find evidence that acquired affiliates have a higher level of sequential R&D intensity than greenfield affiliates.     

Downstream labeling and upstream price competition

This paper analyses the economic consequences of labeling in a setting with two vertically related markets. Labeling on the downstream market affects upstream price competition through two effects: a differentiation effect and a ranking effect. The magnitude of these two effects determines who in the supply chain will receive the benefits and who will bear the burden of labeling. For instance, whenever the ranking effect dominates the differentiation effect, the low-quality upstream firm loses from labeling while all downstream actors are individually better off. By decreasing the low-quality input price, the label acts as a subsidy and leads to an increase of the downstream market welfare. This analysis furthers our understanding of the economic consequences of labeling in cases like those of GMOs or restaurants.     

Distributional consequences of labor-demand shocks: the 2008–2009 recession in Germany

The distributional consequences of the recent economic crisis are still broadly unknown. While it is possible to speculate which groups are likely to be hardest-hit, detailed distributional studies are still largely backward-looking due to a lack of real-time microdata. This paper studies the distributional and fiscal implications of output changes in Germany 2008–2009, using data available prior to the economic downturn. We first estimate labor demand on 12 years of detailed, administrative matched employer-employee data. The distributional analysis is then conducted by transposing predicted employment effects of actual output shocks to household-level microdata. A scenario in which labor demand adjustments occur at the intensive margin (hour changes), close to the German experience, shows less severe effects on the income distribution compared to a situation where adjustments take place through massive layoffs. Adjustments at the intensive margin are also preferable from a fiscal point of view. In this context, we discuss the cushioning effect of the tax-benefit system and the conditions under which German-style work-sharing policies can be successful in other countries.     

Organizational Citizenship Behaviour for the Environment: Measurement and Validation

While the importance of employee initiatives for improving the environmental practices and performance of organizations has been clearly established in the literature, the precise nature of these initiatives has rarely been examined (particularly the issue of their discretionary or mandatory nature). The role of organizational citizenship behaviour in environmental management remains largely unexplored. The main objectives of this paper were to propose and validate an instrument for measuring organizational citizenship behaviour for the environment (OCBE). Exploratory (Study 1, N?=?228) and confirmatory (Study 2, N?=?651) analyses were conducted to examine the factor structure of OCBEs. The factor structure that emerged from Study 1 indicated that the three main types of OCBEs were eco-initiatives, eco-civic engagement and eco-helping. The factor structure found in Study 1 was confirmed by Study 2. Analysis of the three types of OCBEs highlighted the complexity of discretionary initiatives for the environment in the workplace and points to a number of avenues for further research.     

International banking and transmission of the 1931 financial crisis

In May to July 1931, a series of financial panics shook central Europe before spreading to the rest of the world. This article explores the role of cross‐border banking linkages in propagating the central European crisis to Britain and the US. Using archival bank‐level data, the article documents US and British banks’ exposure to central European frozen credits in 1931. Central European lending was mostly done by large and diversified commercial banks in the US and by small and geographically specialized merchant banks/acceptance houses in Britain. Differences in the organization of international bank lending explain why the central European crisis disturbed few US banks but endangered many British financial institutions.     

Bond offerings in China

This study appraises the value created by a bond offering in China, where high levels of state ownership and insider ownership raise concerns about the use of the proceeds. To estimate the impact of a bond issue on the firm's value, we apply an event‐study methodology on a sample of 481 issues of 347 Chinese companies over the period 2009–2013. It turns out that state ownership has a positive impact on the value of a bond offering for shareholders, which is consistent with an implicit guarantee of the issue by the state. For privately owned companies, insider ownership exerts a nonlinear impact on the firm's value, supporting an aligning effect in the use of the proceeds. Overall, the study confirms the key role of ownership structure in Chinese firms.     

Measuring and forecasting mobile game app engagement

Monetization strategies in the large and strongly growing mobile app space must go beyond traditional purchase revenue as most mobile apps are now free to download. One key marketing innovation allows mobile app publishers to monetize ongoing engagement — in-app advertising.We study ongoing user engagement with a mobile app after the initial download decision using the $40 billion mobile gaming industry as an example. Our study investigates and forecasts user engagement after the initial download aiming to help publishers to monetize their engagement via in-app advertising. We leverage a novel dataset containing user-level engagement for 193 mobile games and propose a hierarchical Poisson model on a mobile-game level. We find significant usage heterogeneity across the mobile games studied and generate forecasts publishers can use when trying to monetize engagement via pre-sold contracts.