Empowering health care consumers in the era of Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging as a significant development in information technology that aims to link the digital world with the real world to improve human life. IoT refers to digital tools collecting data and providing hyper-personalized information to its users. With the rapid integration of the IoT in the healthcare sector (HIoT), it has been presumed that HIoT devices have an empowering effect on patients; however, this has yet to be investigated. Furthermore, the literature reveals a lack of consistency regarding the definition of patient empowerment. This study aims to fill these gaps and investigates whether HIoT systems increase user empowerment for individuals suffering from chronic illnesses. It also examines how empowerment is defined for HIoT users. To answer these two research questions, we conducted a qualitative research study consisting of 20 semi-structured, in-depth interviews carried out with individuals suffering from Type 1 diabetes (T1D). The interviews were transcribed and content analysis was conducted on the data. The study enabled us to examine whether and how the HIoT triggered empowerment for patients suffering from T1D. Findings reveal four main dimensions of empowerment for HIoT users: (1) self-efficacy, (2) patient control, (3) knowledge development and (4) participation in the decision-making process along with the doctor. Results also highlight that participants feel empowered by personal acceptance of living with their health condition and social support. In addition, the analysis led to the identification of the barriers which need to be overcome to ensure that HloT systems improve patient empowerment.     

Do major customers encourage innovative sustainable development? Empirical evidence from corporate green innovation in China

This paper examines the impact of customer concentration on green innovation in Chinese listed firms between 2006 and 2018 through the dynamic panel generalized method of moments regressions. It is reported that major customers positively impact corporate green innovation, indicating that firms have more incentives to engage in innovative green practices to maintain stable relationships with major customers. In addition, the positive relationship between customer concentration and green innovation is more pronounced in state-owned enterprises, firms located in the provinces with a high level of marketization, and after China's new Environmental Protection Law implementation. Moreover, we observe that the positive impact of customer concentration on corporate green innovation is more significant among industrial firms and firms operating in heavily polluting industries. Furthermore, industrial competition is an essential channel for major customers to affect corporate green innovation.     

What Accounts for the Rising Share of Women in the Top 1 percent?

The share of women in the top 1 percent of the UK’s income distribution has been growing over the last two decades (as in several other countries). Our first contribution is to account for this trend using regressions of the probability of being in the top 1 percent, fitted separately for men and women, in order to contrast between the sexes the role of changes in characteristics and changes in returns to characteristics. We show that the rise of women in the top 1 percent is primarily accounted for by their greater increases in the number of years spent in full-time education. Although most top income analysis uses tax return data, we derive our findings taking advantage of the much more extensive information about personal characteristics that is available in survey data. Our use of survey data requires justification given survey under-coverage of top incomes. Providing this justification is our second contribution.     

Cultured Meat: Promises and Challenges

Environmental and Resource Economics - Cultured meat involves producing meat from animal cells, not from slaughtered animals. This innovation has the potential to revolutionize the meat industry,...     

Feeling red lucky? The interplay between color and luck in gambling settings

This paper investigates the effect of the color red on gambling behavior, as influenced by feeling lucky and cultural background. Four experiments examine how risk‐taking choices and gambling behaviors are affected. Study 1A and 1B establish the red risk‐aversion effect in gambling decision making and responses to a gambling app advert. Studies 2 and 3 test the moderating effect of feeling lucky and cultural background, respectively. The authors provide empirical evidence to the effect of red color on risk aversion. In general, people make more risk averse choices, gambling less and less often when primed with the color red over other colors. Boundary conditions are identified in feeling lucky and cultural backgrounds, such that when participants feel lucky or are from Asian Chinese backgrounds the effect is reversed and they take more risks when primed with the color red. This study highlights the importance of color in managing the interaction between consumers and gambling contexts.     

Second-best pricing for incomplete market segments: Application to electricity pricing

Due to technological, political, or practical considerations, most price mechanisms are not fully differentiated by time, location, and contingency of delivery. Rate or tax designers then face a trade-off between the costs and benefits of using more complex price schedules. This paper studies the second-best problem of designing, for a given market segment, a linear pricing schedule with a limited number of distinct prices while facing exogenous constraints within a large and practically relevant family. Interestingly, we find that second-best prices may be computed using simple machine learning techniques. As an illustration, we apply our framework to retail electricity pricing in California.     

Research Trends of Marketing: A Bibliometric Study 1990–2017

Abstract

Interest in the role of marketing has grown in recent decades due to its impact in brand value, value creation for customers, profitability of customer base, and organizational results. The paper shows an overall view on marketing research to explore the development of research trends, showing the high-frequency keywords at different time periods. Using bibliometric methods, the research analyzes publications between 1990 and 2017 found in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The paper shows the evolution of keywords to reveal emerging topics as demonstrated in the connections network which includes “advertising,” “consumer behavior,” “trust,” “innovation,” and “customer satisfaction.”     

Social Entrepreneurs as Responsible Leaders: ‘Fundación Paraguaya’ and the Case of Martin Burt

A country known for its longstanding struggle with corruption and dubious governments may not be the obvious venue for a socio-economic revolution that is expected to play an important role in the elimination of global poverty. However, Paraguay, an ??island without shores??, as the writer Augusto Roa Bastos once described it, is home to one of the world??s most innovative social enterprises??the Fundación Paraguaya. While its achievements and success are the result of a team effort, its remarkable development can be largely attributed to Martín Burt, the founder and chief executive. We study the case of Fundación Paraguaya??the first and longest-running non-governmental organisation in Paraguay??with two primary research objectives: (1) to analyse the organisation??s pioneering way of solving social problems under difficult socioeconomic circumstances and its increasingly global outreach to eradicate poverty; (2) and to analyse the responsible leadership of Martín Burt.     

Social connections,reference point and acquisition premium

This paper examines the impact of acquirer-target social connections along with the target 52-week high (Baker et al., 2012) on acquisition premiums. We show that acquisition premium is more sensitive to first-degree connection than the reference point, suggesting that information is the main driving force for determining acquisition premiums. The findings also indicate that connected directors are more likely to favour firms where they hold higher positions and negotiate favourable premiums. Acquirers pay lower premiums when target directors are retained in the new entity. Connected acquirers are also more likely to finance their deals with equity. Overall, this paper provides support to the information flow hypothesis that acquirers with social connections have better access to target information and enhanced bargaining power in negotiations.