Climate Change,Heterogeneities, and Stability of International Fiscal Harmonization

This paper analyzes the instability introduced into multilateral agreements by two types of heterogeneity: heterogeneity of countries (size and number of producing members) and heterogeneity of lobbies (asymmetric influence at the national versus the international level). The work extends theoretical prospective analyses on environmental taxation, as illustrated by the harmonization of fuel taxes. We show that the acceptability of the tax set at the multilateral level depends on the type of coalitions that participate in the multilateral negotiation (size and number of producing countries) and the asymmetry in the local (state-level) power of lobbies during negotiations.     

Service quality,scale economies and ownership: an econometric analysis of water supply costs

Issues related to service quality are crucial for water utility management and regulation. Omitting these aspects, especially when they are treated as exogenous, can lead to large biases in estimating cost functions as well as to misleading information concerning technology. In this article, we integrate the output multi-dimension in the cost function, considering delivered water volume and service quality as being endogenous. Network-related scale measures and private versus public ownership are investigated with the objective of evaluating how endogenous quality may affect their impact on costs. A translog cost model is estimated from a dataset of US water utilities. It is shown that including the quality level of the delivered services has a significant impact on scale economies and ownership effects. Significant economies of scope confirm the existence of trade-offs between water production and service quality.     

The effects of ethical leadership on manager job satisfaction,commitment, behavioral outcomes,and firm performance

This study investigates the effects of ethical leadership on a hotel middle manager's job satisfaction and affective commitment, which in turn influence that manager's behavioral outcomes (e.g., extra effort and turnover intention) that can also impact the hotel's performance. Mail surveys were distributed to 30 U.S. hotels, representing more than 8 different national and international brands, and 324 middle managers participated in the survey. This study demonstrates that executives’ ethical leadership is positively related to their middle managers’ job satisfaction and their affective organizational commitment. Middle managers’ job satisfaction is positively related to organizational commitment, but job satisfaction does not necessarily lead to their willingness to exert extra effort. The positive linkage between middle managers’ extra effort and the hotel's competitive performance is also confirmed.     

THE REVOLUTION WITHIN: ICT AND THE SHIFTING KNOWLEDGE BASE OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST COMPANIES

This empirical article analyses the importance of information and communications technologies (ICT) in the technological diversification trend among the world's largest manufacturing firms during the 1980s and 1990s. The objective of the research is twofold: first, to emphasise the emerging differences among technologies when companies from different industries patent outside their traditional technological capabilities; secondly, to investigate whether the tendency among large companies from all industries to patent in ICT is distinctive when compared with the tendency to patent in other technologies. We find that technological diversification in large companies has clearly occurred in ICTs. Non-ICT specialist industries increasingly develop, rather than just utilise, the cluster of ICT-related technologies. We conclude that the development of corporate capabilities in the key technologies of the emerging ICT paradigm is more widespread than previously emphasised in the literature. One implication of this observation is that technological diversification and the information revolution may be related phenomena.     

To challenge the world view or to flow with it? Teaching sustainable development in business schools

This paper explores the fundamental question of what ‘responsibility’ means to different sets of world views adopted implicitly by business students. The exploration adopts the stakeholder theory and three subsets of the Friedman mentality to explain how individuals may value sustainability initiatives. Subsequently, it explores whether it is better to flow with the dominant economic‐driven world view as prescribed by the business school or to challenge it in order to cultivate business students with sustainability‐driven values. The conclusion highlights implications for business and management education, as well as the role of entrepreneurship to promote sustainability values.     

Targeted transfers and the fiscal response to the great recession

Between 2007 and 2009, government expenditures increased rapidly across the OECD countries. While economic research on the impact of government purchases has flourished, in the data, most of the increase in expenditures was in government transfers. After documenting this fact, we argue that future research should focus on the positive impact of transfers. Towards this, we present a model in which there is no representative agent and Ricardian equivalence does not hold because of uncertainty, imperfect credit markets, and nominal rigidities. Targeted lump-sum transfers are expansionary both because of a neoclassical wealth effect and because of a Keynesian aggregate demand effect.     

Productivity-Wage Gaps Among Age Groups: Does the ICT Environment Matter?

This paper disentangles the age-productivity-wage nexus by estimating productivity and wage equations with longitudinal employer-employee panel data for Belgium. Results indicate that workers above 49 years are significantly less productive than their younger colleagues. Moreover, while relative productivities across age groups are not found to differ significantly between ICT and non ICT firms, the upward sloping age-wage profile appears to be somewhat steeper in ICT firms. Yet, whatever the ICT environment, findings show that young workers are paid below and older workers above their marginal productivity. This pattern is in line with the deferred payment model developed by Lazear (J Polit Econ 87:1261–1284, 1979).     

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE ON ENGLISH AUCTIONS: ORAL OUTCRY VERSUS CLOCK

This paper tests experimentally, in a common value setting, the equivalence between the Japanese English auction (or clock auction) and an oral outcry auction where bidders are allowed to call their own bids. We find that (i) bidding behaviour is different in each type of auction, but also that (ii) this difference in bidding behaviour does not affect significantly the auction prices. This lends some support to the equivalence between these two types of auction. The winner's curse is present: overbidding led to higher than expected prices (under Nash bidding strategies) in both types of auction. Although interesting and encouraging, the results clearly indicate that further research is necessary, particularly with a modified experimental design.     

The influence of empathy in complaint handling: Evidence of gratitudinal and transactional routes to loyalty

While most studies on complaint handling are focused on performance outcomes, analysis of the processes that reinforce relationship quality is lacking. Building on the relationship marketing theory of reciprocal behaviours, this research proposes and tests a model of the effects of empathy as a particular relationship recovery investment. Addressing for the first time the role of gratitude in a complaint-handling context, this model assumes that both gratitude and transactional satisfaction mediate the influence of empathy on consumers' trust and commitment. Data from a cross-industry survey of phone and online complaints confirmed the proposed model.