The Long‐Term Effects of Legalizing Divorce on Children

We estimate the effect of divorce legalization on the long‐term well‐being of children, by exploiting the different timing of divorce legalization across Europe. We compare the adult outcomes of cohorts raised when divorce was banned with those of cohorts raised after divorce was legalized in the same country. We also have ‘control’ countries where all cohorts were exposed (or not exposed) to legal divorce as children. We find that women who grew up under legal divorce have lower earnings and income and worse health as adults compared with women who grew up under illegal divorce. These negative effects are not found for men.     

Dealing with Ignored Attributes in Choice Experiments on Valuation of Sweden’s Environmental Quality Objectives

Using a choice experiment, this paper investigates how Swedish citizens value three environmental quality objectives. In addition, a follow-up question is used to investigate whether respondents ignored any attributes when responding. The resulting information is used in model estimation by restricting the individual parameters for the ignored attributes to zero. When taking the shares of respondents who took both the environmental and the cost attributes (52–69% of the respondents) into account, then the WTP for each attribute changes if the respondents who ignored the attributes have a zero WTP. At the same time, we find evidence that not all respondents who claimed to have ignored an attribute really did. However, the most commonly ignored non-monetary attributes always have the lowest rankings in terms of WTP across all three environmental objectives. Thus, our results show that instead of ignoring attributes completely, respondents seem to put less weight on the attributes they claimed to have ignored.     

Child care voucher and labour market behaviour: experimental evidence from Finland

This article provides experimental estimates of the impact of a voucher for private care on labour force participation and use of private and public child care within the Nordic system of universal provision of public care. In a market that was providing high-quality, low-cost public child care, a voucher is nevertheless found to have a significant, positive effect for the use of private child care with zero effects on either use of public care or labour force participation. The use of private increased by five percentage points in the whole country and by five to seven percentage points in areas that suffer from excess demand for child care as a result of the introduction of the private child care voucher.     

Understanding consumers' online conversation practices in the context of convenience food

The area of convenience food has become an insightful context for studying consumption because it is full of tensions and contradictions. This context has attracted an ample amount of research on buying motivations, consumer attitudes and preferences. However, the practices of consuming convenience food have remained a rather unexplored area of research. The purpose of this study is to identify and dissect consumers' online conversation practices related to convenience food. Consequently, the study uses a practice theoretical approach to analyse consumers' online conversations about the topic. Three different categories and nine different practices within them are identified. The practices are further dissected to reveal their tension‐increasing and tension‐relieving characteristics. Finally, the article draws conclusions regarding practice theory and convenience food consumption.     

Chris Willett (Ed.): Public Sector Reform and the Citizen's Charter. London: Blackstone Press, 1996.

Journal of Consumer Policy -     

The future sign and its three dimensions

The topic of weak signals has raised its interest especially in Finland in recent years. Weak signals are current oddities, strange issues that are thought to be in key position in anticipating future changes in organizational environments. Scanning for them and using them in scenario work is thought to be successful for looking to the future. However, defining weak signals is problematic, and various authors term the concept differently. The debate about the characteristics of weak signals has been active especially in Finland. The article aims to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of weak signals. For this purpose, a semiotic approach, Peirce's triadic model of sign in particular, is used. The article introduces a new starting point for defining weak signals (signs) by using the novel concept future sign, which consists of three dimensions: the signal, the issue and the interpretation.     

Modelling different types of multilateral co-operation between SMEs

This paper focuses on a theoretical modelling of multilateral SME co-operation. A major part of the previous research has been done on dyadic or bilateral relationships between two partners in a vertical chain although new co-operative ventures increasingly involve multiple partners. The objectives of the paper are to accomplish a conceptualization of different types of multilateral co-operation between SMEs as a synthesis of longitudinal empirical observations and selected theoretical discussions of inter-firm co-operation, to bring out possible advantages and prerequisites of successful co-operation of these types, and to show how co-operation can develop from one basic model to another. The main point in the modelling of SME co-operation is that those who plan, promote or build up co-operative arrangements must know right from the beginning what kind of co-operative model a group of firms will strive for, because the prerequisites of successful co-operation are emphasized differently in different types of co-operation. The empirical examples also suggest that co-operation leads to co-operation, i.e. when a company once joins a net, it is more probable that the company gets access to other nets as well. The basic challenge thus is to get the small or medium-sized company to enter its first co-operative arrangement.     

Stock market valuation of R&D spending of firms acquiring targets from technologically abundant countries

In this paper, we aim to extend the internalization theory by Buckley and Casson [Buckley, P.J., Casson, M., 1976. The Future of Multinational Enterprise. Holmes & Meier, New York] and Caves [Caves, R.E., 1971. International corporations: the industrial economics of foreign investment. Economica 38, 1–27] in two respects. First, we hypothesize that synergies arising from a technology-oriented cross-border M&A increase the stock market value of an acquirer’s R&D spending. Second, we hypothesize that an acquirer’s access to a country with more favorable R&D environment through the target firm is the main source of synergy arising from intangibles in these M&As. Our empirical results of analyzing data from 10 most R&D active countries in Europe are consistent with these hypotheses and support our extension of the internalization theory. Specifically, we find that multinationality of a firm with intangible assets as such does not add value to R&D, but the combination of its own R&D with that of a firm located in a country with highly favorable R&D environment.