Corporate social responsibility: attributions,loyalty, and the mediating role of trust

This study investigates whether consumers’ perceptions of motives influence their evaluation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) efforts. The study reveals the mediating role of consumer trust in CSR evaluation frameworks; managers should monitor consumer trust, which seems to be an important subprocess regulating the effect of consumer attributions on patronage and recommendation intentions. Further, managers may allay the negative effects of profit-motivated giving by doing well on service quality perceptions. On the other hand, appropriately motivated giving continues to positively affect trust regardless of the performance of the firm on service quality provision.     

Are patent fees effective at weeding out low‐quality patents?

The paper investigates whether patent fees are an effective mechanism to deter the filing of low‐quality patent applications. The study analyzes the effect on patent quality of the Patent Law Amendment Act of 1982, which resulted in a substantial increase in patenting fees at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Results from a series of difference‐in‐differences regressions suggest that the increase in fees led to a weeding out of low‐quality patents. About 10% of patents in the lowest quality decile were filtered out, with the effect concentrated in the patents of firms whose overall patent portfolio was medium to large (more than 20 patents). The study has strong policy implications in the current context of concerns about declines in patent quality.     

Economic development,food demand and the consequences for agricultural resource requirements: an application to Indonesia

We analyse food demand patterns of Indonesian households from a resource intensity perspective and quantify the impact of changed demand patterns on the use of three major resource inputs: fossil fuel; land; and water in agricultural production. Using Indonesian Family Life Survey data, 13 major food items (which constitute 70 per cent of food expenditure) are categorised into low, moderate and high resource intensity, and income elasticity and Engel curves are estimated for the period from 1997 to 2007. Our results show that income growth in Indonesia is associated with demand patterns that are more resource intensive. By 2007, per capita requirements of fossil fuel, land and water increased by 42.7 per cent (3.13 MJ), 44.9 per cent (1.24 m²) and 50.4 per cent (2.1 kL), respectively, relative to 1997. The results imply that, at least for Indonesia, changed food demand patterns resulting from economic development will increase the demand for natural resources substantially.     

Assessing cost‐effectiveness when environmental benefits are bundled: agricultural water management in Great Barrier Reef catchments

Using economic analysis to prioritise improvements in environmental conditions is particularly difficult when multiple benefits are involved. This includes ‘bundling’ issues in agricultural pollution management, where a change in management action or farming systems generates multiple improvements, such as reductions in more than one pollutant. In this study, we conceptualise and compare two different approaches to analysing cost‐effectiveness when varying bundles of benefits are generated for a single project investment. Each approach requires data to be transformed in some way to allow the analysis to proceed. The index approach requires the transformation on the benefits side so that the effects of multiple pollutant changes can be combined into a measure for each project which can then be compared to costs. By comparison, the disaggregation approach requires the transformation on the costs side where costs for each project have to be apportioned across the different pollutants involved. The paper provides novel insights with an application to agricultural water quality improvements into the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, demonstrating that while both approaches are effective in prioritising projects by cost‐effectiveness, the disaggregation approach provides more insightful results and values that may be relevant for use as upper value guidelines in future project selection.     

A Question of Integrity: Variants of Bt Cotton,Pesticides and Productivity in Pakistan

Bt cotton remains one of the most widely grown biotech crops among smallholder farmers in lower income countries, and numerous studies attest to its advantages. However, the effectiveness of Bt toxin, which depends on many technical constraints, is heterogeneous. In Pakistan, the diffusion of Bt cotton occurred despite a weak regulatory system and without seed quality control; whether or not many varieties sold as Bt are in fact Bt is also questionable. We utilise nationally representative sample data to test the effects of Bt cotton use on productivity. Unlike previous studies, we invoke several indicators of Bt identity: variety name, official approval status, farmer belief, laboratory tests of Bt presence in plant tissue, and biophysical assays measuring Bt effectiveness. Only farmer belief affects cotton productivity in the standard production model, which does not treat Bt appropriately as damage‐abating. In the damage control framework, all Bt indicators reduce damage from pests. Biophysical indicators have the largest effect and official approval has the weakest. Findings have implications for impact measurement. For policy‐makers, they suggest the need, on ethical and productivity grounds, to improve variety information and monitor variety integrity closer to point of sale.     

Erosion mitigation in the Waikato District,New Zealand: economic implications for agriculture

Soil erosion, in its various forms, is caused or aggravated by agricultural activities. Mitigation of surface erosion comprises the construction of shelterbelts, fencing, riparian buffering, and stock reduction. Mitigation of mass‐movement erosion, in turn, takes the form of spaced planting of trees to maintain a persistent, healthy, and complete ground cover. In this article, we assess the economic implications to agriculture of the adoption of mitigation alternatives for erosion control in the Waikato District, New Zealand. The Waikato District presents a spatial pattern of erosion that affects profitability of dairy, and sheep and beef enterprises. We use the Universal Soil Loss Equation and the New Zealand Empirical Erosion Model to estimate erosion figures that are then fed into an economic‐focused, nonlinear, partial equilibrium mathematical programming model of New Zealand land use. Different scenarios are constructed for surface and mass‐movement soil erosion targets ranging from 0% to 50% below baseline levels. We find that achieving surface erosion targets is more expensive than mass‐movement targets, and results in different responses in regional‐level costs, land use, enterprise net revenue, and adoption of mitigation alternatives.     

Multinational Firms’ Motivations and Foreign Direct Investment Decisions: An Analysis of the Software and IT and Financial Services Sectors in the Irish Context

This article focuses on the way greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) in different sectors is influenced by locational characteristics and explores the role of policy in attracting and retaining foreign investment. We contribute to the literature by empirically investigating the investment motivations of multinational companies in the software and information technology (IT) and financial services sectors in Ireland and those locational factors that contribute to the retention of FDI. The methodology used in this research is of a qualitative nature, and an exploratory deductive approach is adopted in order to gain an understanding of firms’ internationalization decisions and motivations. The data demonstrate that companies in the two sectors follow different investment motivations. Firms in the software and IT sector entered Ireland primarily because of the availability of a high‐quality workforce, whereas firms in the financial services sector entered Ireland following the deregulation of markets and the subsequent ease of doing business. The article builds on these findings to develop policy recommendations. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Bundling attractions for rural tourism development

Tourism is often regarded as a viable solution to economic crisis, especially for remote areas without many development options. While many tourism destinations have strong cultural or heritage assets, not all destinations have primary attractions that can bring visitors to the region. Rather than developing special interest “themes”, rural areas that do not have enough of any one type of tourism resource to act as a primary draw may consider bundling different attraction types to increase visitation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of visitors to secondary heritage sites and explore the relationship between heritage tourism and alternative, non-heritage activities in rural areas. Findings revealed that motivation to visit small-scale heritage sites consisted of two dimensions: learning and recreation. The two motivational dimensions influenced visitors’ interest in different heritage attractions and likelihood of visiting heritage tourism “scenarios”. As for alternative activities, there was a cluster of “popular” activities that were enjoyed by both learning-oriented and recreation-oriented respondents, but recreation-oriented visitors were more interested in nature-based activities and sport-related activities than learning-oriented visitors. Findings can help rural communities improve secondary attractions and diversify their tourism product by bundling heritage attractions with non-heritage activities.     

The Persistence of Dominant‐Firm Market Share: Raising Rivals' Cost on the New York Stock Exchange

To explain the persistence of dominant New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) market share in stock trading of listed securities from 1992 to 2002, we develop a dominant‐firm price leadership model and hypothesize that NYSE specialists raised the costs of rival market makers. The model predicts that natural and induced cost advantages will determine the NYSE's market share vis‐à‐vis the regional exchanges, electronic trading systems, and NASDAQ dealers. Empirically, NYSE market share increases with economies of scale and scope, abnormal price volatility, high asymmetric information, and with trading practices that raise rivals' costs, such as failure to display limit orders that bettered the existing quotes.     

Robustly optimal monetary policy in a microfounded New Keynesian model

We consider optimal monetary stabilization policy in a New Keynesian model with explicit microfoundations, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs close enough to model-consistency. We show how to characterize robustly optimal policy without restricting consideration a priori to a particular parametric family of candidate policy rules. We show that robustly optimal policy can be implemented through commitment to a target criterion involving only the paths of inflation and a suitably defined output gap, but that a concern for robustness requires greater resistance to surprise increases in inflation than would be considered optimal if one could count on the private sector to have “rational expectations.”