Inequality‐averse well‐being measurement

We construct individual well‐being measures that respect individual preferences and depend on the bundles of goods consumed by the individual. Building on previous work in which general families of well‐being measures are identified, we introduce basic transfer principles that apply either to bundles or directly to indifference sets, and we characterize specific well‐being measures that involve either the ray utility or the money‐metric utility.     

Assessing Productivity Gains from International Trade in a Small Open Economy

Empirical evidence suggests that exporter firms tend to charge higher markups than non-exporters due to trade barriers. The exporters’ markup premium, however, may disappear in a special case, namely when the home country is small relative to its trade partners and trade barriers are low. This can be because competition is more intense in the large export destination than in the small home country, so that firms are able to set higher markups for locally sold products but not for exports. This paper provides empirical evidence on the validity of this special case by estimating markups for firms in Luxembourg who generally export to larger countries. The estimated negative markup premium for exporters has important implications for the productivity measurement. In a sufficiently small open economy, exporters’ productivity may be biased downward, when the firm-level markup variation is not controlled for in the productivity estimation. The bias in the productivity estimates further leads to the inaccurate conclusion that openness to international trade lowers allocative efficiency.     

Crowding,satiation, and saturation: The days of television series' lives

The performance of firms depends not just on the structure of the industries in which they compete but also on their relative positioning within those industries, in terms of operating within particular niches. We propose that demand for these niches depends endogenously on the historical ecology of the products offered: Niches become saturated—reduced in their ability to support products—as a large number of previous offerings allows the audience to satisfy its desire for products of a particular type. Analyzing the survival rates of television series aired in the United States from 1946 to 2003, we found that the survival rates of future entrants fell with the extensiveness of recent offerings in the niche, and that the negative association between crowding and survival also weakened with this saturation. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Price Rigidity in Turkey: Evidence from Micro Data

In this study we investigate the duration of consumer price spells and price change patterns for Turkey by employing a comprehensive micro price data covering around 6,000 items over four years. In detail, we analyze how long typical price spell lasts and we investigate the size, frequency, distribution and synchronization of price changes. Compared to advanced economies, a higher frequency of price changes is estimated. Findings suggest substantial heterogeneity among sub-groups in terms of frequency and synchronization indicators. The mixed evidence of both state and time-dependent pricing is also relevant for Turkey, an emerging market economy.     

Knowledge of campaign finance regulation reduces perceptions of corruption

We use an experimental survey design to measure how campaign finance regulation influences perceptions of political corruption and trust in politicians when citizens are exposed to information about regulation. Unlike most observational studies, results of this experimental study suggest that knowledge of campaign finance regulation substantially reduces citizens’ perceptions of corruption but has only limited effect on trust in politicians. Findings have crucial implications for public policy. At a time when public cynicism about politics is high, a significant reduction in perceptions of political corruption through successful dissemination of campaign finance regulation would be a boost to the legitimacy of democracies.     

When Feedback Interventions Backfire: Why Higher Performance Feedback May Result in Lower Self‐Perceived Competence and Satisfaction with Performance

In relative performance evaluation systems, appraisers may choose to adopt stricter or laxer evaluation criteria. When laxer (vs. stricter) criteria are used, higher absolute performance evaluations become easier (vs. harder) to achieve. Thus, each appraisee's absolute performance feedback and the mean of the distribution of absolute performance feedback are shifted upward (vs. downward). Yet, relative performance remains constant. When evaluation outcomes depend solely on relative performance, can the adoption of laxer (vs. stricter) criteria—leading to higher absolute performance feedback but no change in relative performance—influence appraisees’ satisfaction with performance? Despite the ubiquity of such systems in organizations, research has not addressed this question. This article points to an important gap between practitioners’ beliefs and research findings. We show that while most appraisers believe that higher absolute performance feedback will automatically result in more satisfaction with performance, the opposite may also happen. Specifically, we find that appraisees with a stronger (vs. weaker) chronic or contextual need to engage in social comparison are more satisfied with lower (vs. higher) absolute performance feedback. Overall, we demonstrate why and how feedback interventions in relative performance evaluation systems may backfire, and suggest a set of practical guidelines for maximizing appraisees’ satisfaction with performance in such systems. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Spirituality,Moral Identity,and Consumer Ethics: A Multi-cultural Study

Competitor pressure is one of the major reasons that a SME engages in environmentally friendly or damaging activities. Extant research has argued that environmental strengths and concerns have mirror opposite relationships with stakeholder antecedents as well as with performance outcomes. We suggest this argument does not reflect the reality. Building on stakeholder management and Red Queen theories, we hypothesize that environmental strengths and concerns have differential relationships with competitors–firm power exchange and financial performance for Chinese SMEs. Results of ten interviews, a pretest, and a large-scale field study indicate that competitors–firm power divergence has a positive relationship with environmental strengths, yet the link between this divergence and environmental concerns does not exist. Further, environmental strengths mediate the relationship between competitors–firm power divergence and financial performance of Chinese SMEs.