The influence of branding on adolescent smoking behaviour: exploring the mediating role of image and attitudes

• This study investigates the continuing effects of tobacco marketing communications in a post advertising era, focusing on the constructs of brand awareness, brand image, attitude formation and intention to smoke by adolescents.
• A conceptual model is presented, based on 926 respondents from a UK wide study, to assess brand‐related interrelationships and influences of peers on adolescents' attitudes toward smoking and intention to smoke.
• Results show the strong influence of branding on both attitude and intention, and have implications for government anti‐smoking policies specifically in regard to generic packaging and point of sale displays.

Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A global compass for the great divergence: Emissions versus production centres of gravity 1820–2008

We construct the world's centres of gravity for human population, GDP and CO₂ emissions by taking the best out of five recognised data sources covering the last two centuries. On the basis of a novel distortion‐free representation of these centres of gravity, we find a radical Western shift of GDP and CO₂ emission centres in the nineteenth century, in sharp contrast with the stability of the demographic centre of gravity. Both GDP and emissions trends are reversed in the first half of the twentieth century, after World War I for CO₂ emissions, after World War II for GDP. Since then, both centres are moving eastward at an accelerating speed. These patterns are perfectly consistent with the lead of Western countries starting the industrial revolution, the gradual replacement of coal by oil and gas as alternative sources of energy and the progressive catch‐up of Asian countries in the recent past.     

Wege zwischen beruflicher und hochschulischer Bildung in den deutschsprachigen Ländern

Der neue europ?ische Regulierungsrahmen für Telekommunikation, der bis Mitte 2011 in deutsches Recht umgesetzt werden muss, bietet M?glichkeiten zur Neuausrichtung der Regulierungsziele. Die Autoren diskutieren in diesem Beitrag die M?glichkeiten und potentiellen Probleme der vorgeschlagenen Instrumente sowie weiterer politischer Initiativen der Bundesregierung und der Europ?ischen Kommission in Hinblick auf die ambitionierten Ziele einer fl?chendeckenden Versorgung mit schnellen Internetzug?ngen.     

The ATO Longitudinal Information Files (ALife): A New Resource for Retirement Policy Research

The Australian Taxation Office release of annual longitudinally linked individual tax and superannuation records, known as the ATO Longitudinal Information Files (ALife), opens up opportunities for new research. In this study, we provide an overview of ALife, focusing on its use for retirement income research. To this end, we provide the first longitudinal estimates of superannuation outcomes for 1-year birth cohorts. Results show marked increase in disparity of super balances in the lead-up to retirement as those in the top quartile ramp-up their contributions, possibly to take advantage of the favourable tax treatment of superannuation income in retirement years.     

The politics of preserving gender inequality: de-institutionalisation and re-privatisation

ABSTRACT

A backlash against gender equality is a core component of the contemporary tilt away from liberal democracy in some contexts. The backlash has been enabled by two developments that can de-institutionalise women’s rights. First, the privatisation associated with neoliberalism, and the austerity imposed by financial crises, have hollowed-out public provision of social services. The loss or erosion of public social protection systems reinforces the demand for unpaid care work, imposing a partial re-privatisation of women in their mothering roles. Second, security and immigration crises have inflamed nationalist right-wing populist movements that make the de-institutionalisationof liberal equality protections – including attacks on women’s rights provisions – a core signifier of anti-establishment credentials. The result is a stagnation at the global level since 2016 in the rate at which the gender gap is closing. Today, the active construction of inequality by gender – and its contestation – are more explicit features of national and global politics than ever before.     

Government measures in support of the financial sector in the EU and the United States

In the last issue of Intereconomics, a first article by the present authors looked into the measures that central banks have taken in support of the financial sector in an effort to mitigate the effects of the financial crisis. This second article describes the measures taken by governments to contain the impact of the financial crisis and discusses potential exit strategies. Although the focus is on the measures implemented by euro area governments, the article also compares these measures with the ones taken in the United Kingdom and the United States.     

Gender and Social Consumption

This article examines the relationship between the subordination of women, and the implications of this for female access to, and use of the facilities in public houses and hotels. More research is needed to identify the barriers to female consumption in hotels; the strategies women evolve to overcome these, and the hotel strategies necessary to accommodate female customers.     

Respect and relational contracts

Assuming that people care not only about what others do but also on what others think, we study respect in a labor market context where the length of the employment relationship is endogenous. In our three-stage gift-exchange experiment, the employer can express respect by giving the employee costly symbolic rewards after observing his level of effort. We study whether symbolic rewards are used by the employers mainly to praise employees or as a coordination device to build relational contracts by manipulating the balance between labor demand and supply in the market. We find that a high proportion of long-term relationships have been initiated by the assignment of symbolic rewards. However, the assignment of symbolic rewards decreases when it becomes clear that the relationship is durable, suggesting that employers mainly use symbolic rewards as a coordination device to initiate relational contracts. Compared to the balanced market condition, assigning symbolic rewards in initial relationships is less likely when there is excess demand in the market and more likely when there is excess supply, i.e., when the relationship is more valuable. Receiving symbolic rewards increases the employees’ likelihood of accepting to continue the relationship with the same employer. It also motivates them to increase their effort further but only when the market is balanced. Overall, the ability to assign symbolic rewards does not give rise to higher profits because it is associated with lower rents offered to the employees on average, leading to lower effort levels.