Culture influences on emotional responses to on-line store atmospheric cues

On-line retailing created a global marketplace with an innumerable array of competitors. Essential to on-line store's ability to attract and retain customers globally is its store atmospherics, which are design elements used to garner attention and create a positive buying environment [Kotler Phillip. Atmospherics as a marketing tool. Journal of Retailing 1974; 49: 48-64.]. The research presented here assesses how behavioral and emotional responses to on-line store atmospherics vary across collectivist and individualist cultural value systems. The contribution is significant because additional research on understanding how culture affects customers' responses to the on-line store site design is needed [Chan Ricky Y. K. and Tai Susan. How do in-store environmental cues influence Chinese shoppers? A study of hypermarket customers in Hong Kong. Journal of International Consumer Marketing 2001; 13 (1): 73-104.; Eroglu Sevgin, Machleit Karen and Davis Lenita. Atmospheric qualities of on-line retailing: A conceptual model and implications. Journal of Business Research 2001; 54 (2): 177-184.; Menon and Kahn, 2002]. Using two different site designs for a fictional on-line retailer, American and Chinese University students evaluated their shopping experience at an assigned site. Findings: Cultural values do affect customers' responses to atmospheric cues. The study examines the inter-relationships between customers' emotional responses.     

The contrasting interaction effects of improvisational behavior with entrepreneurial self-efficacy on new venture performance and entrepreneur work satisfaction

Although improvisation is often considered to be an elemental component of entrepreneurship, little work has been done to evaluate factors that influence the relationship of entrepreneur improvisational behavior with important outcome variables. In an attempt to partly fill this gap, the current study examines the moderating effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy on the relationship of founders' improvisational behavior with both the performance of their startups and their individual level of work satisfaction using a national (United States) random sample of 159 entrepreneurs. In alignment with our predictions, improvisational behavior was found to have a positive relationship with new venture performance (i.e., sales growth) when exhibited by founders who were high in entrepreneurial self-efficacy, whereas improvisational behavior was found to have a negative relationship with new venture performance when exhibited by founders who were low in entrepreneurial self-efficacy. Contrary to our expectations, entrepreneurial self-efficacy was found to have a negative moderating effect on the relationship between entrepreneur improvisational behavior and work satisfaction.     

Fisher’s hypothesis,survey-based expectations and asymmetric adjustments: Empirical evidence from South Africa

Our study re-examines Fisher’s hypothesis for the South African economy in the post-inflation targeting era and presents two empirical novelties over preceding works for the same country. Firstly, we examine Fisher effect by making use of survey-based inflation expectations data for financial analysts, business sector, trade unions and households, hence making our study more disaggregate in nature. Secondly, we examine both short-run and long-run asymmetric cointegration effects in Fisher’s relation using the nonlinear autoregressive distributive lag (NARDL) model as an econometric framework. For the full quarterly sample of 2002:01 – 2019:04, our study finds interest rates respond more aggressively to falling expectations than rising ones, with a full Fisher effect found for financial analysts, partial effects for households and business, and no effect for trade unions. However, when the data is split into two sub-samples corresponding to pre- and post-financial crisis periods, we observe changing dynamics in which interest rates respond more aggressively to rising inflation, with partial effects being also found for trade unions. Policy recommendations based on our study are offered.

     

Voter turnout and intergenerational redistribution

Electoral reforms that lead to reduced turnout modify the composition of the electorate, potentially overrepresenting specific interests in policy implementation. Intergenerational redistribution tilts in favor of the elderly when they are sufficiently numerous, but in favor of the young rich otherwise. We exploit a natural experiment provided by the repeal of compulsory voting in Austrian parliamentary elections to study how exogenous turnout decline affects intergenerational redistribution through pro-young public education spending in Austrian municipalities. Empirically, education spending falls when the proportion of elderly voters exceeds 21% of the electorate, but rises when the proportion of elderly voters is below this threshold.     

Common ownership and competition in product markets

We investigate the relation between common institutional ownership of the firms in an industry and product market competition. We find that common ownership is neither robustly positively related with industry profitability or output prices nor is it robustly negatively related with measures of nonprice competition, as would be expected if common ownership reduces competition. This conclusion holds regardless of industry classification choice, common ownership measure, profitability measure, nonprice competition proxy, or model specification. Our point estimates are close to zero with tight bounds, rejecting even modestly sized economic effects. We conclude that antitrust restrictions seeking to limit intra-industry common ownership are not currently warranted.     

The U.S. listing gap

Relative to other countries, the U.S. now has abnormally few listed firms. This “U.S. listing gap” is consistent with a decrease in the net benefit of a listing for U.S. firms. Since the listing peak in 1996, the propensity to be listed is lower for all firm size categories and industries, the new list rate is low, and the delist rate is high. The high delist rate accounts for 46% of the listing gap and the low new list rate for 54%. The high delist rate is explained by an unusually high rate of acquisitions of publicly listed firms.     

APPLYING BETA‐TYPE SIZE DISTRIBUTIONS TO HEALTHCARE COST REGRESSIONS

This paper extends the literature on modelling healthcare cost data by applying the generalised beta of the second kind (GB2) distribution to English hospital inpatient cost data. A quasi‐experimental design, estimating models on a sub‐population of the data and evaluating performance on another sub‐population, is used to compare this distribution with its nested and limiting cases. While for these data the beta of the second kind (B2) distribution and generalised gamma (GG) distribution outperform the GB2, our results illustrate that the GB2 can be used as a device for choosing among competing parametric distributions for healthcare cost data. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Epidemiology of fatal and non-fatal drowning patients attended by paramedics in Victoria,Australia

Drowning is a major cause of injury and death worldwide. This study aims to expand the evidence in fatal and non-fatal drowning. A retrospective study was conducted to investigate fatal and non-fatal drowning incidents attended by ambulance paramedics in Victoria (Australia) from 2007 to 2012. A total of 509 drowning incidents were identified, 339 (66.6%) were non-fatal, with 170 (33.4%) resulting in death. Children aged 0–4 years had the highest crude drowning rate (7.95 per 100,000 persons). Non-fatal incidents were more likely to be witnessed by a bystander when compared with fatal incidents (43.7% vs. 20.0%, p < 0.001). Spatial analysis indicated that 35 (43.8%) local government areas (LGAs) were considered at ‘excess risk’ of a drowning event occurring. This study is the first to apply spatial analysis to determine relative risk ratios for fatal and non-fatal drowning. These findings will enable geographically targeted and age-specific drowning prevention activities.