How does economic integration influence employment and wages in border regions? The case of the EU enlargement 2004 and Germany’s eastern border

This paper considers the (short-run) employment and wage effects of the 2004 EU enlargement on firms located close to Germany’s eastern border. We use a 50% sample of Germans plants and apply difference-in-differences estimators combined with a matching approach. We evaluate changes in total employment, the employment shares of low-skilled and East European workers and the wages for low-skilled, skilled and high-skilled workers in various sectors. Our results suggest basically no short-run employment effects of the EU enlargement except for firms active in wholesale and retail trade, hotels and restaurants. We also find some evidence for a stronger employment of East European workers in almost all border firms, although the effects are quantitatively small. Negative wage effects are only found for skilled workers in consulting, research and related activities.     

The Use of the Repertory Grid for Collaboration and Reflection in a Research Context

The Repertory Grid (RepGrid) technique has been used extensively in Management Sciences research, including Information Systems research, in order to reveal the personal views of individual research subjects regarding the issue being studied. These individual constructs are then used to propose criteria for success amongst other things. This paper uses a distinctly different form of RepGrid, renamed a Reflection Grid, as a collaboration tool. Members of a research team use this new technique to probe their individual understanding of what happened and what was achieved during a research event and then to share these insights. Hence, not only is the application new (reflection and construction of shared meaning rather than the analysis and synthesis of personal constructs) but the original grid technique has evolved.     

Portfolio choice with internal habit formation: a life-cycle model with uninsurable labor income risk

Motivated by the success of internal habit formation preferences in explaining asset pricing puzzles, we introduce these preferences in a life-cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice with liquidity constraints, undiversifiable labor income risk and stock-market participation costs. In contrast to the initial motivation, we find that the model is not able to simultaneously match two very important stylized facts: a low stock market participation rate, and moderate equity holdings for those households that do invest in stocks. Habit formation increases wealth accumulation because the intertemporal consumption smoothing motive is stronger. As a result, households start participating in the stock market very early in life, and invest their portfolios almost fully in stocks. Therefore, we conclude that, with respect to its ability to match the empirical evidence on asset allocation behavior, the internal habit formation model is dominated by its time-separable utility counterpart.     

Negative customer engagement behaviour: the interplay of intensity and valence in online networks

ABSTRACT

Recent marketing and service research highlights the detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behaviour (CEB) in online social networks. Nevertheless, the extant literature captures the impact of what customers say about service providers in their negative reviews and fails to provide any understanding of different intensity levels of negative engagement. This article marks the first attempt to provide a more nuanced view of negative CEB by investigating the impact of six forms of negatively valenced influencing behaviour (NVIB) using two online experiments. Our results provide new insights into intensity levels of NVIB and how they are moderated by positive reviews. Practically, this paper addresses one of the challenges for service providers in managing NVIBs, centred on understanding the heterogeneity of its forms. The results suggest that managers use semantic tools to detect the intensity levels of NVIB and to prioritise handling and/or mitigating the more intense NVIBs when they occur.     

Governments,Exports and Growth: Responding to the Challenges and Opportunities of Globalisation

We live in an increasingly globalised world. Trade has consistently grown faster than GDP and has been an important driver of world growth. What role should government play in this process? This paper considers the rationale for government action and the merits of various policies focusing on the UKs experience: the benefits of openness to trade and overseas investment and the merits of tackling barriers that discourage greater participation by firms in international markets. It also considers whether this approach needs to be adapted given current trends in globalisation, concluding that a continued emphasis on openness and addressing market failures will be welfare enhancing.     

Human capital externalities Evidence from the transition economy of Russia1

The paper tests for the existence of human capital externalities using a micro‐level approach: the Mincerian wage regression augmented with the average level of education in cities. To solve identification problems arising from the endogeneity of average education, the study exploits a natural experiment provided by the process of economic transition: average education at the end of communism can be seen as exogenous in respect of wages prevailing after the start of transition. Our empirical results based on the RLMS data show that a 1 percentage point increase in the share of city residents with a university degree results in an increase of wages of city residents by about 1 percent.