Financial literacy and shrouded credit card rewards

Credit card companies charge an interchange fee for each transaction, and almost half of this fee is returned to consumers in the form of a reward or perk program. Among credit card users who do not use cards for borrowing (convenience users), rewards are a means to negotiate the implicit price of the interchange fee. Any consumer whose time cost is less than the value of rebates should rationally choose a reward card. Half of convenience users do not own a reward card. We hypothesize that credit card companies segment customers by marketing non-salient credit card characteristics to appeal to naïve consumers while offering lower-price cards (net the rebate) to compete for more sophisticated consumers as suggested in Gabaix and Laibson (2006). Consumer sophistication is measured using a 20-question financial literacy instrument in a large national data set. When household characteristics such as education, income and wealth are controlled in a multivariate analysis, respondents in the highest financial literacy quintile were twice as likely to own a rewards card. The relation between literacy and reward cards provides evidence that credit card rebates resemble other markets where hidden product attributes create a welfare transfer from naïve to sophisticated consumers.     

Boredom in Free Time: Relationships with Personality,Affect, and Motivation for Different Gender,Racial and Ethnic Student Groups

The propensity to experience boredom in free time was investigated by exploring relationships with the individual's demographic characteristics, personality, motivational orientation, and affective style assessed through group-administered questionnaires to 999 university students. The self-as-entertainment personality attribute consistently predicted the likelihood that students would be bored, and inverse relationships with extraversion and intrinsic motivational orientation were found for all student groups. Multiple regression analyses revealed that race, ethnicity, and gender were the only significant demographic predictors of the likelihood an individual would be bored in free time. Group similarities and differences in depicting students who were prone to experience boredom in free time are described.     

Barriers and stimuli to the use of information technology in retailing

The retail marketing environment is continuously changing. Changes in retail format, retailing processes and the competitive environment continue to create problems for retail management. This article examines the barriers and stimuli to the adoption of innovation in infonnation technology. Our objective is to demonstrate how managers might anticipate the problems associated with managing significant change and develop appropriate strategies to deal with such problems. Previous research has indicated that it is important to explore the views of a range of managers in the organization. Much of the previous research has relied on a single respondent from many organizations to provide an accurate picture. This research does not follow that tradition. It uses the views of more than one hundred managers within one organization. The research explores the relative attractiveness of the innovation to individual managers, the organization's receptivity to change and the presence or absence of a 'product' champion. It ends with recommendations on ways of improving the rate of acceptance of such technologies.     

Krank durch Nachtdienst?

Gesundheitliche Auswirkungen für Pflegende – Pflegekr?fte im Krankenhaus mit Schichtarbeit sind in besonderer Weise von Nachtarbeit betroffen. Dass Schichtarbeiter unter typischen gesundheitlichen Beschwerden leiden, ist sicherlich weithin bekannt. Doch welche Krankheiten werden durch Nachtdienst begünstigt und was kann man dagegen tun?     

Estimating the effect of a retraining program on the re-employment rate of displaced workers

In this article, we estimate the effects of a French retraining program on the re-employment rate of displaced workers by matching techniques. This program, called ‘Conventions de conversion’, was intended to improve re-employment prospects of displaced workers by proposing them retraining and job seeking assistance for a period of 6 months beginning just after the dismissal. Our empirical analysis is based upon non-experimental data collected by the French Ministry of Labour. Matching estimates show that this program succeeded in increasing the employment rate of trainees by approximately 6 points of percentage in the medium-term, namely in the 2nd and 3rd years after the date of entry into the program. This improvement is essentially due to an increase of their re-employment rate in regular jobs, namely jobs under long-term labour contracts.     

Cardinality versus q-norm constraints for index tracking

Index tracking aims at replicating a given benchmark with a smaller number of its constituents. Different quantitative models can be set up to determine the optimal index replicating portfolio. In this paper, we propose an alternative based on imposing a constraint on the q-norm (0?<?q?<?1) of the replicating portfolios’ asset weights: the q-norm constraint regularises the problem and identifies a sparse model. Both approaches are challenging from an optimization viewpoint due to either the presence of the cardinality constraint or a non-convex constraint on the q-norm. The problem can become even more complex when non-convex distance measures or other real-world constraints are considered. We employ a hybrid heuristic as a flexible tool to tackle both optimization problems. The empirical analysis of real-world financial data allows us to compare the two index tracking approaches. Moreover, we propose a strategy to determine the optimal number of constituents and the corresponding optimal portfolio asset weights.     

Stochastic differential equation modeling the prevalence of rare chronic diseases with an application to systemic lupus erythematosus

In this article we describe a system of stochastic differential equations to model the age‐specific prevalence of rare chronic diseases from incidence and mortality rates. As an application, the age profile of the prevalence of systemic lupus erythematosus in England and Wales in1995 is calculated. The results are in good agreement with the observed epidemiological measures.     

Competitive forces and the importance of management control systems in emerging-economy firms: The moderating effect of international market orientation

Using survey and archival data from exchange-listed Chinese firms, we investigate the relationship between competitive forces (i.e., the threat of foreign entrants and buyers’ bargaining power) and the importance that the firms place on their management control systems (MCS), and whether the firms’ international market orientation moderates this relationship. We examine five MCS practices—formal procedures, strategic planning, budget targets, approval procedures, and participative budgeting—both as a package and separately. We predict and find a positive association between the threat of foreign entrants and the importance that the firms place on their MCS, but this association is larger for firms competing predominantly in the domestic market than for those competing predominantly in international markets. Further, we predict and find that the association between buyers’ bargaining power and the importance that the firms place on their MCS is larger for firms competing predominantly in international markets than for those competing in domestic markets. We probe deeper into our empirical findings using qualitative data collected from post hoc interviews with managers of Chinese firms and those of international firms operating in China. We discuss the implications of our findings and provide some directions for future research.