Purchasing environmentally sustainable apparel: The attitudes and intentions of female Kuwaiti consumers

The purpose of this study is to examine relationships among knowledge, environmental concern, attitudes about environmentally sustainable apparel (ESA) and ESA purchasing behaviours of Kuwaiti women. This was accomplished by surveying 236 participants using four preexisting scales, measuring knowledge about the impact of manufacturing apparel and textile products on the environment, levels of concern about environmental degradation, feelings about clothing that is environmentally sustainable and ESA purchase intentions. Data analysis determined several findings. First, female Kuwaiti nationals showed a low level of knowledge about the environmental impacts of the apparel and textile industry. The participants also held neutral attitudes of environmental concern and neutral attitudes towards ESA. Finally, despite their knowledge and attitudes, the participants did have positive intentions to purchase ESA in the future. To produce, market and sell ESA effectively in Kuwait, the conclusions from this study are important for manufacturers and retailers of ESA products. Kuwait provides a large market for apparel goods and this study is a contribution to a better understanding of consumers and ESA in that market.     

Leadership and culture in the MENA region: An analysis of the GLOBE project

This paper focuses on leadership and culture in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, using data from the GLOBE Project. The results show that cultural practices are manifested by higher in-group collectivism and power distance, whilst cultural values are represented by a common desire for higher performance and future orientation. Examination of the leadership prototypes shows a preference for honest, just and inspirational leadership that encourages loyalty. Further examination of the leadership prototype using cluster analysis produced four sub-clusters of leadership profiles. These revealed the similarities and differences among the MENA region's leadership preferences. Opportunities for further research and implications for managers were discussed.     

The Role of Happiness in Financial Decisions: Evidence from Financial Portfolio Choice and Five European Countries

This paper investigates the role of happiness in portfolio choices. Previous literature has only emphasized the reverse association. An additional novelty of the paper is that the analysis focuses on a wider country sample, while the literature has mainly focused on the U.S. and U.K. economies. Based on micro data from five European countries, i.e., France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the U.K., spanning the period 2009–2014, the results show that higher levels of happiness lead to higher shares of risky assets in financial portfolios. The findings survive a number of robustness tests. When asset holdings are disaggregated by the extent of the risk associated with them, this effect remains only for safe and low-risk assets, whereas the effect for assets with higher risks is the reverse.

     

Expectations of future income and real exchange rate movements

We show that changes in expectations of future income driven by exogenous factors (such as the discovery of oil and an increase in global demand for natural resources) can cause movements in the real exchange rate (RER) in excess of, and sometimes even in the opposite direction to, what one would expect given the changes in current income. We provide both a theoretical model and empirical evidence of this. In particular, we show that the signing of numerous production sharing agreements (PSAs) between the government of Azerbaijan and foreign oil companies in 1994–1998 fueled expectations of higher future incomes, resulting in a considerable appreciation of the RER. Some of these PSAs subsequently failed or ran into difficulties, which led to a downward revision of expected future income and a depreciation of the RER in 1999–2003, even though the current income started to rise, due to an increase in the current oil revenue.     

Intercultural competence and expatriates

This study examines the simultaneous effects of employees' fit with their organization, job and supervisor on their job satisfaction, organizational commitment and turnover intention in Turkish banks by paying special attention to the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) in these relationships. Survey data collected from 213 employees who work in five different banks operating in Istanbul, Turkey, show that employees' value fit with their organization increases their job satisfaction and organizational commitment significantly while having no direct effect on their turnover intention. The results also suggest a positive association between employees' fit with their job (needs–supplies fit) and their job satisfaction along with the negative, direct impact of job fit on turnover intention. The hypothesized relationships between employees' value fit with their supervisor and selected employee outcomes are not supported. With respect to the moderating role of POS, the overall findings indicate that a high level of organizational support suppresses the effects of employees' value fit with their organization on their job satisfaction and organizational commitment as well as reducing the relationship between their job fit and job satisfaction and turnover intention.     

The role of employee preferences and organizational culture in explaining e-commerce orientations

Culture has always been a cornerstone variable in the study of international business subjects. Several authors have dealt with the concept of culture and its dimensions. Among these Hall's (1981/1976) proposal of high- versus low-context cultures still stands as an important subject matter to be explored. This study is an attempt to explore the significance of high- versus low-context orientation and its implications for communications. Further, strategic orientation of the firm in terms of e-commerce adoption is explored within the framework of high- versus low-context organizational cultures and the internationalization and technological orientation level of the firm. A survey was conducted with 525 employees and managers working in financial services and textile manufacturing firms. Results supported the hypotheses that high- versus low-context values and perceptual and demographic characteristics of employees influence attitudes towards e-communication. Organizational culture regarding high- versus low-context practices, firm's internationalization and technological orientation levels influence the e-commerce adoption at a strategic level.     

Who Supports the ECB? Evidence from Eurobarometer Survey Data

This paper studies the determinants of the support for the European Central Bank (ECB) in the member countries of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and their evolution from 1999 to 2015. Our contribution is to examine micro‐level sociodemographic characteristics from the Eurobarometer surveys jointly with macroeconomic indicators of trust in a central bank in order to evaluate econometrically their relative importance over time. Pseudo‐panel logit estimates reveal that the former have a dynamically stable, and generally stronger influence taken altogether, when compared with the latter. Interestingly, we find that while expected inflation becomes a positive determinant of trust in the ECB after the global financial crisis (GFC), actual inflation gets no statistical significance. Having taken centre stage in the monetary policy debate in the Euro‐area post‐GFC and especially since 2013, excessive disinflation and risk of deflation attracted strong attention by the public and have consequently affected its perceptions about the ECB. Accordingly, our results emphasise forward lookingness of the EMU population with regard to ‘deflation scares’ in determining trust in the ECB, in addition to disentangling the contributions of the key individual‐level sociodemographic factors, and can duly inform ECB's communication strategy.     

PRIVATE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSFERS AND THEIR ABILITY TO OFFSET THE FISCAL BURDEN OF AGEING

The ratio of retirees to workers in developed countries is expected to increase sharply in the next few decades. In the presence of unfunded income support policies, this increase in old age dependency is expected to increase the future fiscal burden of ageing, which is seen as a threat to living standards. Private intergenerational transfers in the form of bequests are also expected to increase in ageing societies, which may offset the adverse effects of the fiscal burden of population ageing on future living standards. This paper quantifies the ability of these private intergenerational transfers to offset the future fiscal burden of ageing in Australia. This is done through developing a dynamic overlapping generations simulation model with realistic demographics. Calculations based on steady-state simulations (with a pay-as-you-go tax rate equal to 3.3% of GDP) suggest that a bequest to GDP ratio of 1% offsets approximately one-third of the fiscal burden over the lifecycle when measured as a proportion of simple labour income and one-eleventh of the fiscal burden when measured as a proportion of full income (labour income plus leisure). The model is calibrated for Australia under a small open economy assumption such that the optimal solution mimics important cross-sectional and time-series fundamentals of the Australian economy. For the non-steady-state, intergenerational accounting suggests that the empirically plausible intergenerational transfers are strong enough to offset most of the tax burden (80–90%) when measured as a percentage of simple labour income and up to one-quarter of the burden when fiscal burden is measured as a percentage of full income.     

Gender differences in charitable giving

This paper examines the mechanisms for giving by investigating the psychological and values differences between men and women's motivations for giving. We explored two of the eight mechanisms for giving developed by Bekkers and Wiepking as a framework for why people give—principle of care and empathic concern. Are there differences in these motives for giving by gender, and can these differences in values and the psychological benefits that people receive when making donations explain gender differences in charitable giving? Are women more likely to give and give more than men because of their higher levels of empathic concern and principle of care? We used two US national data sets to test our hypotheses. Our results for both data sets indicate significant differences in motives by gender, as well as differences in the probability of giving and amount given by gender, even after controlling for empathic concern and principle of care measures. Our findings are discussed in terms of the importance of viewing charitable giving through a gender lens as well as practical implications for practitioners. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Federal reserve monetary policy and the non-linearity of the Taylor rule

We propose and estimate a generalized Taylor rule for the monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve (Fed) to find out how the Fed funds rate is sensitive to changes in inflation and output gap variables in the post war period. We find that Fed's monetary policy has only reacted significantly to changes in inflation when they were between approximately 6.5–8.5%. However, the policy stance change on these changes was relatively small. The findings suggest that the US Fed has been too averse to change from its current monetary policy stance, and that it has not reacted noticeably to changes in the US economic activity, as measured by the output gap. The generalized functional form for the monetary policy rule suggests that similar non-linearity exists in the directional change of the Fed rate.