Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend

We estimate the effect of fertility on female labor force participation in a panel of countries using abortion legislation as an instrument for fertility. We find that removing legal restrictions on abortion significantly reduces fertility and estimate that, on average, a birth reduces a woman’s labor supply by almost 2 years during her reproductive life. Our results imply that behavioral change, in the form of increased female labor supply, contributes significantly to economic growth during the demographic transition when fertility declines.      

The Learning Tourism Destination: The potential of a learning organisation approach for improving the sustainability of tourism destinations

Globalisation, increasing complexity, and the need to address triple-bottom line sustainability have seen the proliferation of Learning Organisations (LO) who, by definition, have the capacity to anticipate environmental changes and economic opportunities and adapt accordingly. Such organisations use system dynamics modelling (SDM) for both strategic planning and the promotion of organisational learning. Although SDM has been applied in the context of tourism destination management for predictive reasons, the current literature does not analyse or recognise how this could be used as a foundation for an LO. This study introduces the concept of the Learning Tourism Destinations (LTD) and discusses, on the basis of a review of six case studies, the potential of SDM as a tool for the implementation and enhancement of collective learning processes. The results reveal that SDM is capable of promoting communication between stakeholders and stimulating organisational learning. It is suggested that the LTD approach be further utilised and explored.     

Career Identity and its Relation to Career Anchors and Career Satisfaction: The Case of Convention and Exhibition Industry Professionals in Asia

This paper explores career identity and its relation to career anchors and career satisfaction, key demographic and job variables, specific to convention and exhibition (C&E) industry professionals in Asia. It reviews the key literature relating to career identity and career anchors, which is followed by a discussion of findings of an online survey of C&E industry professionals in Asia. Study results indicate that the majority of C&E professionals displayed a strong cognitive and affective identification with their career in the C&E industry. However, career identity varied significantly with the time respondents had been in the industry, job seniority and age. In terms of career anchors, the lifestyle anchor was found to be the most dominant career anchor, followed by challenge and autonomy. Examining the relation between career anchors with career identity revealed that the lifestyle anchor was more important to respondents with a weak career identity, whereas the challenge anchor was more important to respondents with a strong career identity. Managerial implications of the study findings and suggestions for future research are provided.     

Demokratische Internet-Öffentlichkeit? Ein Vergleich der öffentlichen Kommunikation im Internet und in den Printmedien am Beispiel der Humangenomforschung

The importance of the internet has increased significantly in recent years. The easy access of this »new« medium sparked many hopes for a democratization of the public sphere and of public debate: Many authors argued that the internet will make actors and interpretations of topics visible to those parts of the broader public who are usually marginalized in »old« mass media. In an empirical analysis, we compared print media coverage and internet communication to assess these claims. For the case of human genome research — i.e. a bioscientific topic that reseived extensive media attention in Germany —, we analyzed which actors were given public standing and which frames came to the fore. In contrast to the claims mentioned above, our findings indicate that the debate in the internet does not differ to a significant extent from the offline debate in print media. We could not find a more egalitarian, democratic communication in the internet.     

What makes you click?—Mate preferences in online dating

We estimate mate preferences using a novel data set from an online dating service. The data set contains detailed information on user attributes and the decision to contact a potential mate after viewing his or her profile. This decision provides the basis for our preference estimation approach. A potential problem arises if the site users strategically shade their true preferences. We provide a simple test and a bias correction method for strategic behavior. The main findings are (i) There is no evidence for strategic behavior. (ii) Men and women have a strong preference for similarity along many (but not all) attributes. (iii) In particular, the site users display strong same-race preferences. Race preferences do not differ across users with different age, income, or education levels in the case of women, and differ only slightly in the case of men. For men, but not for women, the revealed same-race preferences correspond to the same-race preference stated in the users’ profile. (iv) There are gender differences in mate preferences; in particular, women have a stronger preference than men for income over physical attributes.     

Price relationships between qualitatively differentiated agricultural products: organic and conventional wheat in Germany

Organic agriculture, which produces commodities that can be qualitatively differentiated from conventional food products, has grown into an important market in many countries. The dynamics of commodity prices in both sectors are partly interdependent, but are also shaped by independent determinants and have rarely been studied. We analyze organic food markets and their interdependencies with conventional markets in the context of wheat markets in Germany, which have been subject to a number of fundamental changes during the last two decades. Based on institutional market characteristics, we suggest a flexible Markov‐switching asymmetric time series model. We find a pronounced temporal sequence of market phases that differ in their asymmetric dynamics and the extent to which the organic price is influenced by the conventional price. Organic wheat prices tend to be increasingly connected to prices of conventional wheat.     

Fare Thee Well? An Analysis of Buyout Funds’ Exit Strategies

This paper analyzes exit strategies of buyout funds in portfolio companies following initial public offerings (IPOs). We use a data set of 222 buyout‐backed IPOs in the United States from 1999 to 2008, including hand‐collected data about each exit process, to draw a detailed roadmap of buyout investors’ divestment processes. Using this data, we document the timing and aggressiveness of the exit strategies, and analyze to which degree a multitude of possible determinants influence the choice of a given exit strategy. Our results indicate that buyout funds remain invested in their portfolio companies for a substantial period of time after the IPO, and that the choice of a given exit strategy depends not only upon the characteristics of each respective portfolio company, but also on the financial success of the deal from the perspective of the buyout investor.     

Contagion of network products in small-world networks

We formulate a model in which agents embedded in an exogenous social network decide whether to adopt a new network product or not. In the theoretical part of the paper, we characterize the stochastically stable equilibria for complete networks and cycles. For an arbitrary network structure, we develop a novel graph decomposition method to characterize the set of recurrent communication states, which is a superset of stochastically stable equilibria of the adoption game presented in our model. In the simulation part, we study the contagion process of a network product in small-world networks that systematically represent social networks. We simulate a generalization of the Morris (Rev Econ Stud 67(1):57–78, 2000) Contagion model that can explain the chasm between early adopters and early majority. Our numerical analysis shows that the failure of a new network product is less likely in a highly cliquish network. In addition, the contagion process reaches to steady state faster in random networks than in highly cliquish networks. It turns out that marketers should work with mixed marketing strategies, which will result in a full contagion of a network product and faster contagion rates with a higher probability.