Does knowledge explain trust behaviors and outcomes? The different influences of initial knowledge and experiential knowledge on personal trust interactions

This paper examines the influences of initial knowledge and experiential knowledge on trust behaviors and trust outcomes, respectively, at an interpersonal level. We use an experimental dynamic trust game, and our results show that (1) the initial knowledge that exists a priori between a trustor and a trustee helps to explain the trustor's trust behaviors toward the trustee, and (2) the experiential knowledge gained directly by a trustor during a specific trust interaction with a trustee influences the trust outcome, i.e. the difference between the original expectations of the trustor and the subsequent trust behaviors. Our results contribute to human resource literature by clarifying the specific influences of different types of knowledge on interpersonal trust relationships (e.g. between managers and employees) and by supplementing the traditional notion that trust within a firm develops slowly by showing that personal expectations have an immediate and important influence on trust output.     

Extending the SAM with Social and Environmental Indicators: An Application to Bolivia

Extending economic accounts with sets of social and environmental indicators is a first step towards a more integrated analysis of aspects of sustainability problems. In this article, therefore, a proposal is made to nest social and environmental indicators into an existing economic accounting framework. The Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) is taken as a basis, because of its flexibility regarding extensions with non-monetary data addressing social and environmental concerns. The main thrust of the paper is methodological. From the discussion of methodological issues and the application to the SAM for Bolivia for the year 1989, it is concluded that it is, in principle, feasible and relatively simple to extend the SAM with the two sets of indicators. However, additional data will have to be collected to be able to address, more adequately, the problems of sustainability.     

Mixed Duopoly,Merger and Multiproduct Firms

The literature on mergers has extensively analyzed the decision to merge by private firms, but it has not considered the decision to merge by private and public firms. We assume that when a private firm and a public firm merge (or when one of them acquires the other), they set up a multiproduct firm in which the government owns an exogenous percentage stake. In this framework, we show that the decision to merge by firms depends on the degree to which goods are substitutes and on the percentage of the shares owned by the government in the multiproduct firm.     

Easing the assessment of emerging technologies in technology observatories. Findings about patterns of dissemination of emerging technologies on the internet

This paper considers the Web as a big data container that can be used by Technology Observatories and administrations to track emerging issues and more specifically emerging technologies. It considers information that is available on the Internet for free from different sources, and proposes a framework that can be useful to characterise them and to detect patterns of dissemination. This framework is made up of 30 metrics obtained from different kinds of sources (general web, patents, scholars?…). Some of them are obtained directly as the number of hits retrieved by queries on a search engine, and other ones calculated by means of ratios. This paper contains the development of a complete case that utilises this framework to characterise emerging technologies included in the well-known Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, in this case the 2015 release¹ and to analyze patterns of dissemination of these technologies on the Internet.     

Why Sweden's pension reform was able to be successfully implemented

Governments that do not reform pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension systems will eventually face a pension crisis. In a democracy, reforms require majority support. The problem is that pension reform requires today's generation to bear the burden to avoid burdening tomorrow's generation. Sweden recently passed pension legislation that specifies a gradual transition from a public defined-benefit plan to a defined contribution plan. Why was Sweden successful in reforming its pension system? We find that a political economy perspective helps to answer this question: there are more winners who would vote in favour of the reform than non-winners who would vote against it. When comparing the net effect (present value of expected benefits minus present value of remaining contributions) of the new and old systems, contributions of the working generation (age < 53) are reduced by more than their expected benefits.     

Fiscal multipliers in the Eurozone: an SVAR analysis

We compute the value of fiscal multipliers (for government primary expenditure, Income and wealth taxes and for Production and import taxes) in the Eurozone countries since the creation of the currency union (2000Q1-2016Q4), in order to understand how the values can vary according to the public debt level, the pace of economic growth, and the output gap. Imposing quarterly fiscal shocks, the results showed that government expenditure had a positive effect on output, with an annual accumulated multiplier of 0.44, whereas tax multipliers presented negative signs: the Income and wealth and the Production and import taxes stood at ?0.11 and ?0.55, respectively. Furthermore, the spending multiplier showed a higher value for countries with lower levels of public debt, during recessions, and in countries with negative output gaps. On the other hand, tax shocks seemed to be recessive in highly indebted countries and those facing positive output gaps.     

Fixed effects estimation of structural parameters and marginal effects in panel probit models

Fixed effects estimators of nonlinear panel models can be severely biased due to the incidental parameters problem. In this paper, I characterize the leading term of a large-T expansion of the bias of the MLE and estimators of average marginal effects in parametric fixed effects panel binary choice models. For probit index coefficients, the former term is proportional to the true value of the coefficients being estimated. This result allows me to derive a lower bound for the bias of the MLE. I then show that the resulting fixed effects estimates of ratios of coefficients and average marginal effects exhibit no bias in the absence of heterogeneity and negligible bias for a wide variety of distributions of regressors and individual effects in the presence of heterogeneity. I subsequently propose new bias-corrected estimators of index coefficients and marginal effects with improved finite sample properties for linear and nonlinear models with predetermined regressors.