Gender Inequality in Education and Kinship Norms in India

Women’s schooling attainment in India continues to lag considerably behind that of men. This paper uses nationally representative district-level data from the 2007–8 District Level Household and Facility Survey (DLHS-3), Indicus Analytics, and the 2011–12 Indian Human Development Survey-II (IHDS-II) to examine the role of socioeconomic and cultural factors in influencing gender differentials in schooling. The results provide quantitative evidence of the role of different economic and sociocultural factors on gender disparities in education. The empirical results show that economic development is an important factor in narrowing gender gaps in education, with wealthier districts more likely to educate girls than poorer districts. However, the norm of patrilocal exogamy, where wives migrate to co-reside with their husband’s kin, is associated with worse outcomes for women’s schooling relative to men’s schooling; and, in keeping with anthropological research, gender-differentiated inequities in education are more pronounced in Northern India.     

Emojis to conversion on social media

Emojis have become popular in online marketing communications. Marketers use emojis to humanize brand voice and elicit an emotional response from target audiences. However, little is known about how emojis are perceived and what kind of reactions they evoke. Therefore, this study aims to verify whether exposure to emojis leads to an increased intention to purchase and whether the use of emojis impacts campaign effectiveness in a real-life environment. In a theory build-up process, we draw upon the Dual Coding Theory and emotional contagion concept and develop seven hypotheses. We performed two data collection studies to test the hypothesized relations. The first study is based on a questionnaire (N = 318), while the second is based on experimental design in a real-life business environment. Surprisingly, we found that using emojis had a negative effect on purchase intention, while the effect was positive when mediated by positive affect. Emojis increased the effectiveness of marketing campaigns for hedonic products and strongly impacted the return on advertising spent. The findings of this study have both theoretical and practical implications in the observed domains, particularly about the type of products emojis are most effective in promoting, gender differences, and real-life consumer behaviour. This is the first study to use an experimental design in a real-life scenario to capture the role of emojis on campaign effectiveness and decipher the differences between genders and their perceptions of emojis. Theoretical and practical implications together with future prospects are discussed.     

The persistence of economic sentiment: a trip down memory lane

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - Although various indicators of economic sentiment are often assessed in macroeconomic studies, the generating process of economic sentiment itself...     

Young adults' online shopping addiction: The role of self-regulation and smartphone use

Online shopping addiction can be defined as an Internet-based behavioural addiction which may lead to economic problems. Even though shopping is increasingly common through mobile devices, the effects of smartphone use on online shopping addiction are underexamined. Following a survey of 1000 18 to 29-year-olds in Finland, we examined young adults' online shopping addiction and economic problems from the perspective of self-regulation and problems in regulating smartphone use. The results indicated that low self-regulation in an online environment facilitates online shopping addiction, which further leads to dissatisfaction toward personal money management through indebtedness. Moreover, we illustrated how distractive stimuli of digital environments can act as primers for addiction by showing how problems in regulating smartphone use facilitates online shopping addiction for young adults with generally low self-regulation. We conclude our article by offering guidance on how the teaching of self-regulatory strategies as well as financial and information communications technology skills may decrease the tendency for online shopping addiction.     

Serbia on the path to modern economic growth

Given the scanty and inadequate studies on Serbia's growth performance before the First World War, this paper presents production-side GDP estimates for Serbia for six years between 1867 and 1910. It probes into the growth dynamics, assessing convergence with the more developed countries of north-western Europe, as well as progress towards achieving modern economic growth. Although the economy showed some dynamism in terms of overall GDP, per capita GDP in pre-First World War Serbia grew by only 0.28 per cent per annum, as much of the overall GDP growth was eroded by rapid population growth. Far from converging with north-western Europe, Serbia continued to fall behind. Sluggish structural transformation and slow income per capita growth suggest that Serbia's transition to modern economic growth was in its infancy. Growth in the dominant agricultural sector was extensive, driven by expanding arable land and population growth. Land was affordable and easy to obtain; hence, peasants invested little in new technologies. Meanwhile, the modern industrial and service sectors were below a threshold that could sustain rapid growth. Nevertheless, this study also highlights the rapid expansion of a small modern sector and export diversification that reflected emergent ‘green shoots’ in 1905–10.     

Media negativity bias and tax compliance: experimental evidence

We study the impact of the media negativity bias on tax compliance. Through a framed laboratory experiment, we assess how the exposure to biased news about government action affects compliance in a repeated taxation game. Subjects treated with positive news are significantly more compliant than the control group. Instead, the exposure to negative news does not prompt any significant reaction compared to the neutral condition, suggesting that participants may perceive the media negativity bias in the selection and tonality of news as the norm rather than the exception. Overall, our results suggest that biased news provision is a constant source of psychological priming and plays a vital role in taxpayers’ compliance decisions.