The welfare costs of urban outdoor water restrictions

Outdoor water restrictions are usually implemented as bans on a particular type of watering technology (sprinklers), which allow households to substitute for labour-intensive (hand-held) watering. This paper presents a household production model approach to analysing the impact of sprinkler restrictions on consumer welfare and their efficacy as a demand management tool. Central to our empirical analysis is an experimentally derived production function which describes the relationship between irrigation and lawn quality. We demonstrate that for a typical consumer complete sprinkler bans may be little more effective than milder restrictions policies, but are substantially more costly to the household.     

Keynesian impulses versus Solow residuals: identifying sources of business cycle fluctuations

We employ a neoclassical business‐cycle model to study two sources of business‐cycle fluctuations: marginal efficiency of investment shocks, and total factor productivity shocks. The parameters of the model are estimated using a Bayesian procedure that accommodates prior uncertainty about their magnitudes; from these estimates, posterior distributions of the two shocks are obtained. The postwar US experience suggests that both shocks are important in understanding fluctuations, but that total factor productivity shocks are primarily responsible for beginning and ending recessions. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The determinants of corporate sustainability performance

This paper investigates the factors that drive high levels of corporate sustainability performance (CSP), as proxied by membership of the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index. Using a stakeholder framework, we examine the incentives for US firms to invest in sustainability principles and develop a number of hypotheses that relate CSP to firm‐specific characteristics. Our results indicate that leading CSP firms are significantly larger, have higher levels of growth and a higher return on equity than conventional firms. Contrary to our predictions, leading CSP firms do not have greater free cash flows or lower leverage than other firms.     

Work‐life support practices and customer satisfaction: The role of TMT composition and country culture

Despite the growing prevalence of work‐life support (WLS) practices in companies, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical clarity on their benefits to organizational performance. It is also unclear if the organizational performance effects of WLS practices vary based on an organization's internal and external environments. The dual objective of this paper is to investigate whether WLS practices relate to customer‐focused outcomes and, if so, under which conditions WLS practices yield benefits. Drawing on contingency theory, we examine how the boundary conditions of internal firm characteristics (e.g., percentage of top management team [TMT] members with children) and external environmental factors (e.g., gender egalitarianism of the country) moderate the relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. We shed light on these issues by examining multisource, longitudinal data collected over three years from a multinational corporation operating in 27 countries. The results show that both percentage of TMT members with children and gender egalitarianism of the country strengthen the relationship between WLS practices and customer satisfaction. The findings provide insights into the circumstances when WLS practices provide performance benefits for firms and the translatability of these benefits from one country to another.     

Other-regarding preferences and giving decision in a risky environment: experimental evidence

Review of Economic Design - We investigate whether and how an individual giving decision is affected in risky environments in which the recipient’s wealth is random. We demonstrate that,...     

Infringing use as a path to legal consumption: Evidence from a field experiment

Digitization has transformed how users find and use copyrighted goods, but many existing legal options remain difficult to access, possibly leading to infringement. In a field experiment, we contact firms that are caught infringing on expensive digital images. E-mails to all firms include a link to the licensing page of the infringed image; for treated firms, we add links to a significantly cheaper licensing option. Making infringers aware of the cheaper option leads to a 14-fold increase in the ex-post licensing rate, albeit from an extremely low baseline for the control firms. Two additional experimental interventions, designed to reduce search costs for (i) price and (ii) product information, also have large positive effects. Our results suggest that ex-post monetization (e.g., licensing after use) may expand the market, and that rights holders can create value by minimizing search and transactions costs.