A comparative study of airport connectivity in China,Europe and US: Which network provides the best service to passengers?

This paper investigates the connectivity of the airport networks in China, Europe and US. Our aim is to analyze which network is most beneficial to final passengers in terms of travel time and which of the network features lead to such a result. A time-dependent minimum path approach is employed to calculate the minimum travel time between each pair of airports in the three networks, inclusive of flight times and waiting times in intermediate airports. We evaluate each fastest indirect connection in terms of waiting times and routing factors to consider the effect of the hubs’ coordination and locations. The Chinese network provides the quickest travels for passengers, but this performance is explained by a small number of airports per inhabitant. The US network is the most coordinated when considering indirect connections. The EU network provides the most homogeneous level of service when comparing airports of different sizes.     

Corporate Scandals and Capital Structure

The present study investigates the influence of self-regulatory focus on consumer ethical beliefs (i.e., consumers’ judgment of various unethical consumer practices). The self-regulatory focus framework is highly influential and applies to an impressively wide spectrum of topics across a diverse array of domains. However, previous research has not yet examined the link between this personality construct and the consumer ethics field. Findings indicate that promotion affects one’s attitude toward questionable consumer practices with those having a stronger (versus weaker) promotion focus being more likely to believe these consumer misbehaviors to be acceptable. Further, this study shows that prevention influences one’s perception of morally dubious consumer practices with those having a stronger (versus weaker) prevention focus being more inclined to believe these questionable consumer activities to be unacceptable.     

Crowdfunding tax incentives in Europe: a comparative analysis

ABSTRACT

Some European countries offer tax incentive schemes to investors and companies in crowdfunding. On one hand, they could be seen as a tool to reduce the system’s dependence on banks and increase the availability of credit for start-ups and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). On the other hand, there is the counterweight of disadvantages that investors may face by investing in crowdfunding (i.e. complex and incomplete laws, and weak protection). This paper is primarily intended as a primer on the use of tax incentives for crowdfunding in Europe. In this study, we first examine the implementation of tax incentive schemes in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Belgium. Then, we analyse and compare the characteristics of such schemes along three dimensions: the incentives structure; the business characteristics; and the type of investor. We find that tax incentive schemes for crowdfunding vary widely in their form and other features of their design. Moreover, the most used forms of tax incentives are those that provide for an up-front tax credit on the amount invested in early-stage ventures. These incentives have an immediate effect on the annual income tax of the investor. A central implication is that the more tax incentive schemes are properly designed and tailored for crowdfunders, the more investors, start-ups and other firms with low liquidity could use crowdfunding as a source of funding.     

Fiscal policy response to cycles under two regimes: Spain 1950–1998

In the second half of the 20th century, Spain provides a case of political regime change, which according to some political economy models should also lead to a shift in the cyclical nature of fiscal policy. We find that in most of the pre-democratic era, there was a strong procyclical bias to fiscal policy. Eradication began in the last years of the autocratic regime under the influence of fiscal institutional reform and perhaps learning. It was completed after the transition to democracy when countercyclical fiscal policy was reinforced in the late 1980s by membership of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. This experience, established by two separate econometric identification procedures, as well as a narrative drawing especially upon OECD and EIU reports, runs counter to the predictions of the political economy models of Lane (J Public Econ 87(12):2661–2675, 2003) and Alesina et al. (J Eur Econ Assoc 5:1006–1036, 2008).     

The effect of fair trade affiliation on child schooling: evidence from a sample of Chilean honey producers

We evaluate the impact of Fair Trade (FT) affiliation on child schooling within a sample of Chilean honey producers with a retrospective panel data approach. From a theoretical point of view, we argue that FT should have a positive effect on child schooling since it generates a short-run pure income effect together with a medium-run productivity effect on both adult and child wages. On the other hand, because of the higher productivity generated by the medium-run effect, the opportunity cost of child education increases if they work with their parents. The direction of the impact of FT affiliation on child schooling is therefore uncertain and requires empirical testing. Our econometric findings document a positive and significant impact of affiliation years on child schooling after controlling for endogeneity and heterogeneity between the treatment and control sample.     

Past,present and future trends of purchasing and supply management: An extensive literature review

This research aims to evaluate the state of the art of Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM). This is carried out through a wide, in-depth, and structured examination of published works. More than one thousand papers (i.e., 1055) published in 20 peer-reviewed journals were collected and analyzed to provide a snapshot of PSM research, including the extent of the overall production, the background theory used, the unit of analysis, the research method, and the main topics investigated. Other literature reviews related to PSM have been conducted in the past but have focused primarily on specific topics and/or considering a narrower set of publications. Furthermore, the authors define a framework useful for analyzing the PSM literature and outline the state of the art of PSM research from a content-specific perspective, including an evaluation of the maturity of PSM research as a discipline.     

Testing for altruism and social pressure in charitable giving

Every year, 90% of Americans give money to charities. Is such generosity necessarily welfare enhancing for the giver? We present a theoretical framework that distinguishes two types of motivation: individuals like to give, for example, due to altruism or warm glow, and individuals would rather not give but dislike saying no, for example, due to social pressure. We design a door-to-door fund-raiser in which some households are informed about the exact time of solicitation with a flyer on their doorknobs. Thus, they can seek or avoid the fund-raiser. We find that the flyer reduces the share of households opening the door by 9% to 25% and, if the flyer allows checking a Do Not Disturb box, reduces giving by 28% to 42%. The latter decrease is concentrated among donations smaller than $10. These findings suggest that social pressure is an important determinant of door-to-door giving. Combining data from this and a complementary field experiment, we structurally estimate the model. The estimated social pressure cost of saying no to a solicitor is $3.80 for an in-state charity and $1.40 for an out-of-state charity. Our welfare calculations suggest that our door-to-door fund-raising campaigns on average lower the utility of the potential donors.     

Management Control Systems in NPOs: An Italian Survey

This paper tries to point out the role and the characteristics of management control systems (MCS) in organisations whose main goal is not for profit (NPO). Are MCS a necessary or (at least) a useful tool to manage these organisations? How have they to fit the typical nature of NPOs? Are the traditional control processes (planning, programming, budgeting, reporting) effective in NPOs? What kind of information do they use? What is the 'state of the art' and the degree of sophistication of MCS in NPOs? To address these issues, a survey has been conducted among 76 Italian NPO top managers, and the results are reported in this paper.     

Some consequences of the unknottedness of the Walras correspondence

Two basic properties concerning the dynamic behavior of competitive equilibria of exchange economies with complete markets are derived essentially from the fact that the Walras correspondence has no knots.     

The evolution of strategic asset-seeking acquisitions by emerging market multinationals

We study the extent to which emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) engage in strategic asset-seeking acquisitions in advanced countries in relation to the strength of their home- and host-country national innovation system (NIS). We suggest that early acquisitions by EMNEs were used to compensate for the EMNEs relatively weak home NIS, and targeted weaker host NIS to limit the cognitive gap EMNEs would need to address. Instead, more recent acquisitions by EMNEs are supported by a stronger home NIS, and target firms in stronger host NIS. We also propose that acquisitions by high-tech (versus non-high-tech) EMNEs need a stronger home NIS due to the technological complexity of the industry, and are limited when the complexity of a stronger host NIS adds to the industry context. We find support for most of our arguments on 179 acquisitions in the Triad by Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese multinationals.