Consumers’ response to the EU Quality policy allowing for heterogeneous preferences

Using dry-cured ham as an anchor product, consumers’ preferences for EU Quality Certification schemes, region of origin and price have been investigated with conjoint analysis. In order to achieve this aim, a mixed rank-ordered logit which allows for the investigation of heterogeneous preferences and their sources has been estimated. In particular, we have analysed to what extent consumers’ socio-demographic traits affect their price-sensitiveness and whether consumers’ sensory (hedonic) valuations and attitudes towards ham with a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) affect the preferences for specific attributes. Results show that consumers with a low-medium age and income are more price sensitive. Consumers more inclined sensorially towards the regional specialty (with or without PDO) are more likely to purchase this product, and consumers with a more favourable attitude towards PDO ham are also more prone to purchase cured ham with quality certification. Findings also suggest that although the PDO scheme attracts a segment of consumers, the origin by itself is still a more powerful signal of quality, and more specifically the region of origin.     

Green supply chains and the missing link between environmental information and practice

Within the field of green supply chain management (GSCM), an interest in supply chain cooperation to create sustainable competitive advantage, i.e. the collaborative paradigm, has made researchers turn their attention to information related aspects of the supply chain. This study contributes to an understanding of a suboptimal use of environmental information, which is critical for all collaborative efforts aiming at sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of this article is to describe the use of environmental information at different stages of the Swedish food supply chain. The results from this case study of the Swedish food supply chain indicate that environmental information is perceived and used differently by purchasers in the supply chain depending on where (in the supply chain) they are situated in relation to other chain actors. The main contribution of this study is the suggestion of a stage‐dependent connection between perceived environmental cost and perceived environmentally informed consumer demand, which are barriers to GSCM practice discussed in recent GSCM literature. The missing link between information sharing and (environmental) performance of supply chains is explained as distance to end‐consumer in terms of supply chain stages. Implications for GSCM practice and theory are discussed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Economic Benefits of Gender Equality in the EU

To analyse how gender equality measures can contribute to economic growth in the EU, the European Institute for Gender Equality studied the impacts of reducing gender inequalities in areas relevant from a macroeconomic perspective: STEM education, labour market activity and pay. It also considered the demographic changes that would take place if these gender gaps are reduced and a more equal distribution of unpaid care work between women and men is achieved. The study is the first of its kind to use a robust econometric model to estimate a broad range of macroeconomic benefits of gender equality at the EU level. The results of the modelling show that improved gender equality would have a largely positive effect on GDP per capita and on employment of women. The positive impacts are due to an increase in productivity and an improvement to the potential productive capacity of the economy.     

Institutional Investors’ Reaction to SEC Concerns about IFRS and US GAAP Reporting

For the period of 2006 to 2008, we collect Comment Letters issued by the SEC that question the application of US GAAP by US firms or the application of IFRS by European firms registered with the SEC. We investigate whether institutional investors react to the letters by changing their holdings and whether their responses vary for US registrants and European registrants. We do this via a treatment‐effects model in which we test the hypothesis that institutional investors rebalance their portfolio holdings because they view Comment Letters as informative public signals. We find that institutional investors reduce their equity holdings when firms receive SEC Comment Letters, and their negative reactions are most marked for low turnover institutional investors, who we use to represent those informed investors most prepared to incur costs to closely monitor firms. Next, while noting that the number of Letters questioning application of IFRS are smaller in number relative to those questioning application of US GAAP, we investigate whether there are different reactions to Comment Letters questioning different standards. We show that there is a higher probability of the SEC questioning the application of IFRS as compared to US GAAP. After controlling for firm‐specific conditions that impact the issuance of a Comment Letter, we show that this higher probability has economic significance because institutional investors’ react more negatively to Comment Letters that question the application of IFRS as compared to US GAAP. A content analysis confirms the economic importance of the Comment Letters. We find that in almost half of all IFRS cases the Comment Letters request amendments to financial statements.     

Interdependence between consumption in the North and sustainable communities in the South

The issues we want to address and discuss in this article are related to the interdependence between consumption in households in high‐income countries and life in the low‐income countries, seen in a sustainable perspective. In the consumer society the underlying premise is that ever‐escalating consumption is accepted, even desirable. During the past decade, an increasing critique of consumer lifestyle has come from environmentalists, who argue that the resource use to maintain a consumer lifestyle is putting too hard a burden on the ecosystems. We give examples of the abundant evidence of interdependence between North and South at global levels, such as climate change and appropriation of ecosystem capacities, and related to specific types of consumption such as clothing, flowers, food and cosmetics. We argue that the loss of feedback to individual households in the North is a serious barrier for change towards more sustainable consumption habits, and raise a question about how impacts of production and consumption can be communicated to consumers. On the basis of previous and ongoing research, we highlight some impacts of positive and negative labelling schemes as well as extended environmental information.     

Normative,authentic, and altruistic fruit and vegetable consumption as weblog discourses

The Internet is a growing information and communication channel for health- and diet-related issues. Keeping updated on the fruit- and vegetable-related (F&V) discourses among laypeople is important for health communicators in order to promote F&V consumption through tailored health messages. The aim of the present study was to identify F&V-related discourses in weblogs that were maintained, obviously, to influence diet. A theoretically chosen sample of weblogs were analysed applying critical discourse analysis. The analysis showed three partly overlapping F&V-related discourses: (1) normative consumption with a focus on single nutrients and physiological mechanisms; (2) authentic consumption with a desire for naturalness; and (3) altruistic consumption where ethical responsibilities are enhanced. Bloggers have clear perceptions on ideal F&V consumption, but it is a challenge for the reader to make a synthesis of the discourses presented. Filtering contradictory instructions requires health literacy, which may need more support from dietetic professionals.     

Compensating Wage Differentials for Schooling Risk in Denmark*

In this paper we analyse the association between wage differentials and risk using detailed information on length and type of education as seen in Danish administrative registers. Our contribution to the literature is that we distinguish between transitory (time‐series) and permanent (cross‐sectional) income shocks, and estimate the compensation for both sorts of risk. We find that wage risk in a given education cell is associated with higher wages, while skewness is associated with lower wages. As a robustness check, we see that ad hoc risk measures based on earnings‐mobility indicators confirm these findings.     

Political rents in a non-corrupt democracy

A fundamental problem in all political systems is that the people in power may extract rents to the detriment of the general public. In a democracy, electoral competition and information provided by the media may keep such rent extraction at bay. We develop a simple model where rents are decreasing in the degree of political competition and voter information. In line with our theoretical predictions, we find that both increased political competition and increased local media coverage substantially reduce direct measures of legal political rents among local governments in a non-corrupt democracy (Sweden).     

Evaluation of training in African enterprises

The importance of skill-shortage in Africa, combined with the extensive use of training, necessitates appropriate evaluation of training programs. By using firm data from Sub-Saharan Africa, we evaluate the effect of on-the-job training on log wages using matching estimators. We find that training tends to improve wages, and that the effect is larger and more well-determined when we focus on long training durations and large firms.