Worth the Risk? The Behavioural Path to Well‐Being

There is increasing interest in the ‘economics of happiness’, reflected in the volume of articles appearing in mainstream economics journals exploring the major determinants of self‐reported well‐being. We contribute by exploring the factors influencing how satisfied farmers are with their quality of life. We find that farm income, subjective perceptions relating to the adequacy of household income, debt, health and personal characteristics such as age and relationship status are significantly associated with farmers’ self‐reported life satisfaction. While significantly associated with farm income, farm structural variables such as farm size, farm type and the presence of a farm successor were not found to be significantly related with life satisfaction. Our results also suggest that farmers who are more risk averse enjoy significantly lower levels of both life satisfaction and farm income than their more risk seeking or risk neutral counterparts. We suggest that, in the same way that risk aversion inhibits farmers from making choices that could lead to an increase in their income, it may also constrain farmers (and the wider public at large) from engaging in certain types of behaviours that could lead to an increase in their self‐reported quality of life. Finally, we find that while farm income is significantly related to self‐reported life satisfaction, the direct correlation between these variables is weak, suggesting that farmer life satisfaction can be distinct from business success.     

Board Composition and Accounting Conservatism: The Role of Business Experts,Support Specialist and Community Influentials

In this study, we examine the relationship between accounting conservatism and board composition. We categorise outside directors according to their skills, abilities, connections and knowledge in three different categories: business experts, support specialists and community influentials. We address three main questions: Is the financial and accounting expertise of directors relevant to improving accounting conservatism? Does specialised expertise in the board affect the speed at which news is reflected in earnings? And how do the political ties of directors affect the sensitivity of earnings to bad news? Our sample consists of active US biotech firms publicly traded on the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ stock exchanges during the 2005–2013 period. Our study confirms that not all outside directors are equally effective in monitoring and contracting and that certain kinds of outside directors, such as politicians, can even lower the sensitivity of earnings to bad news. Our robustness analysis confirms that these results are not conditional on the accounting measure, and suggest that distinguishing directors according to their skills and abilities is crucial to understanding the way in which firm boards affect conservatism.     

The use of intellectual capital information in investment decisions: An empirical study using analyst reports

Do financial analysts convey intellectual capital information in their recommendations? This study of a sample of analyst reports on large, listed Spanish companies provides some evidence on the question. Analysts usually report information regarding a company's strategy, customers, and processes; they less often provide information about research, development, and innovation. When controlling for endogeneity, we find that certain firm characteristics appear to influence the use of intellectual capital information. Analysts use this information in the case of highly profitable companies. The results also show a significant effect of growth opportunities on intellectual capital disclosure by financial analysts.     

Real indeterminacy of equilibria and manipulability

In this paper, we analyze the indeterminacy of equilibria in financial markets and propose a selection mechanism. We suggest that there is one equilibrium that prevails over the others, as a result of the market power of the agents that some states of nature become monopolists of certain commodities. Given a financial assets model, we define a price game and show the existence of mixed strategies equilibria. Then we purify these equilibria by considering a price game with incomplete information.     

Spatial Price Adjustment with and without Trade*

We investigate the possibility that price transmission between spatially distinct markets might vary during periods with and without physical trade flows. We test for differences between trade and non‐trade regimes by using generalized reduced rank regression (GRRR) techniques suggested by Hansen (2003) . We apply these techniques to semi‐weekly price and trade flow data for tomato markets in Zimbabwe and find that intermarket price adjustment occurs in both trade and non‐trade periods. Indeed, the adjustments are generally larger and more rapid in periods without physical trade flows. This finding underscores the importance of information flow for market performance.     

Applying conjoint analysis in economic evaluations: an application to menorrhagia

The increased demand for health care, coupled with limited resources, means that decisions have to be made concerning the allocation of scarce health care resources. This paper considers how conjoint analysis (CA) can be used to aid this decision making process. It is shown how the technique can be used to estimate marginal rates of substitution between attributes, willingness to pay (WTP) if cost is included as an attribute and overall utility scores for different ways of providing a service. The technique is applied to consider women's preferences for two surgical procedures in the treatment of menorrhagia: hysterectomy and conservative surgery. The results suggest conservative surgery is preferred to hysterectomy, as indicated by higher utility scores for the former and a marginal WTP of 7593 to have conservative surgery rather than hysterectomy. The internal validity of CA was also shown. It is concluded that CA is a potentially useful instrument for policy makers. However, numerous methodological issues need addressing before the technique becomes an established instrument within economic evaluations.     

The mediating role of work engagement on the relationship between job involvement and affective commitment

This study examines job involvement and work engagement as predictors of affective commitment. Specifically, we test the proposal of Hallberg and Schaufeli (2006) that work engagement is a mediator of the relationship between job involvement and affective commitment using a survey of 405 Italian working adults. To test the model, mediation effects technique and structural equation modelling were applied to the collected data. Our hypothesis that work engagement fully mediates the relationship between job involvement and affective commitment was supported. This is the first study to demonstrate the importance of job involvement in promoting affective commitment via three dimensions of work engagement. We therefore assert that HR managers should direct their available resources to promoting job involvement and work engagement in their employees.     

Maintaining the Common Pool: Voluntary Water Conservation in Response to Varying Scarcity

Studies of voluntary conservation response to changing information about an environmental problem have traditionally been synonymous with studies of information campaign effectiveness. As such, they have not been able to capture the response to actual changes in the environment. This paper takes a novel approach to identifying voluntary conservation by studying the impact of changing storage levels on urban water usage in the context of a prolonged drought and a highly ’water aware’ community. Our results suggest that voluntary conservation increases substantially when water is scarce and the public value of the savings is greatest. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of environmental information campaigns in general, and urban water demand management in particular.