Losses of agricultural products and productive resources in the Russian federation

The paper is devoted to the problem of losses in the agroindustrial complex at all stages of production and processing of products. The data of balances of food supplies are analyzed, indicating a poor accounting level of losses. It is proved that the actual level of losses of agricultural products and food supplies makes up a significant amount, which affects increase of production value and food prices.     

Understanding online firestorms: Negative word-of-mouth dynamics in social media networks

Social media are, on the one hand, a highly beneficial environment for word-of-mouth (WOM) propagation of new ideas and products, and this has increasingly made them a focus of marketing communications. On the other hand, companies and their brands as well as politicians, governmental institutions, and celebrities have increasingly been facing the impact of negative online WOM and complaint behavior. In reaction to any questionable statement or activity, social media users can create huge waves of outrage within just a few hours. These so-called online firestorms pose new challenges for marketing communications. In this article, we group observations from recent online firestorms, identify related social and economic science theories, and derive generalized factors that form the basis for the proliferation of these dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the consequences of online firestorms for marketing communications, and offer courses of action for marketers to navigate through crises of negative online WOM.     

The internationalization of Australian banks

Since the 19th century, Australian banking has seen high inward and some outward flows of FDI. However, from the 1980s, Australian banks greatly expanded the scale of their FDI, their geographic scope and the range of products that they offered. This recent outward flow of FDI was the result of a complex and inter-related set of factors, including a push from a small and crowded Australian market and the pull of foreign wholesale and retail markets, that liberalization of trade and investment in financial services had made accessible. A combination of what Rugman (Inside the Multinationals: The Economics of Internal Markets, 1981, Croom Helm, London and Columbia University Press, New York) calls country-specific advantages (CFAs) and firm-specific advantages (FSAs), strongly influenced the ability of Australian banks to become successful MNBs. As the nature of international banking altered from the 1960s onwards, this overturned earlier forms of internationalization by Australian banks. Now banks had to acquire and absorb new knowledge to be able to operate effectively in new product and geographic markets.     

Asset Prices as Indicators of Euro Area Monetary Policy: An Empirical Assessment of Their Role in a Taylor Rule

This paper estimates forward-looking and forecast-based Taylor rules for France, Germany, Italy, and the euro area. Performing extensive tests for over-identifying restrictions and instrument relevance, we find that asset prices can be highly relevant as instruments in policy rules. While asset prices improve Taylor rule estimates, different assets prove most relevant across countries and this result could be seen as complicating the tasks of the European Central Bank. Encompassing tests show that forecast-based outperform forward-looking Taylor rules. A policy implication is that central banks ought to release their own forecasts and the basis upon which they are generated.

The Benefit of Mean Auditors: The Influence of Social Interaction and the Dark Triad on Unjustified Auditor Trust

Regulators and researchers have expressed concerns that social interaction leads auditors to unjustifiably trust managers, constituting a lack of sufficient professional skepticism. Using both an abstract laboratory experiment and a contextually rich experiment with practicing auditors we predict and find that higher Dark Triad auditors (those with higher levels of the shared core between psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism) are relatively more resistant to lapses in professional skepticism due to the effects of social interaction. This is likely driven by higher Dark Triad auditors' callousness, lack of empathy, and lack of response to social stimuli. In contrast, while higher social interaction initially increases lower Dark Triad auditors' unjustified trust in managers, this effect reverses in subsequent interactions when lower Dark Triad auditors observe evidence suggesting managers have reported aggressively. These findings add to research on the effect of auditor personality traits, audit-client social interaction, and the interaction of these two variables, and suggest that practitioners and researchers account for the interplay of Dark Triad traits and social interaction and their effect on professional skepticism.     

Comparative Assessment of Mortality Rate of the Population in Russian and Foreign Megacities

The article presents the results of a comparative analysis of mortality trends in two Russian capitals and two cities with population over one million, Krasnoyarsk and Rostov-on-Don, in comparison with foreign megacities (Berlin, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Singapore, Tokyo). From 1990 to 2015, in the Russian “model cities” the standardized mortality rates (SMR) for all causes on average decreased by almost a third: most in Moscow (44% for men and 42% for women) and less for Krasnoyarsk (22% for both men and women). An assessment of the statistical reliability of the decrease in SMR on the basis of long time series showed the absence of a positive dynamic of mortality from diseases of the digestive organs, mainly cirrhosis, which confirms the presence of the alcoholic component. Despite the sufficiently steady decline in mortality in the early 2000s, its level in Russian cities continues to significantly exceed the mortality rate in foreign megacities.