Consumer ethics: An empirical investigation of the ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers

Business and Marketing ethics have come to the forefront in recent years. While consumers have been surveyed regarding their perceptions of ethical business and marketing practices, research has been minimal with regard to their ethical beliefs and ideologies. In addition, no study has examined the ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers even though Austria maintains a unique status of political neutrality, nonalignment, stability, economic prosperity and geographical proximity to the East- and West-European countries. This research investigates the relationship between Machiavellianism, ethical ideology and ethical beliefs of Austrian consumers. The results indicate that Austrian consumers are mostly situationists who, while rejecting moral rules, judge the ethics of a behavior by the consequences and outcomes of the situation. Mohammed Y.A. Rawwas is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Northern Iowa. His research has appeared in the Journal of Business Ethics, Marketing Educational Review, Advances in International Marketing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Hospital Marketing, Health Marketing Quarterly, Medical Marketing and Media,among other journals and proceedings.     

On the real effects of inflation in open economies: theory and empirics

Based on the quarterly data from four open economies (the US, the UK, Canada, and Italy) and estimated correlations and impulse responses within the traditional vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis, we find that inflation, both in the short and long term, negatively affects consumption and investment, and has a positive influence on the current account. We propose an infinite-horizon optimizing model of an open economy with a fixed rate of time preference that explains these empirics. In this type of economy, households consume both durable and non-durable goods, firms operate under costly investment, and all the transactions involving consumption and investment are subject to cash-in-advance (CIA) constraints. Employing the new ‘sign restriction’ identification procedure due to Uhlig (J Mone’t Econ 52(2)381–419, 2005), we corroborate the empirical validity of the proposed model. In order to verify the robustness of our results, we consider another shock, namely, productivity shock in our empirical analysis and find that while productivity shock dominates in the case of the US, inflationary shock has a dominating effect in the case of the UK, Canada, and Italy.     

Religious commitment related to message contentiousness

Using an experimental design, we tested whether viewers with differing levels of religious commitment have differing unaided recall, aided recall and attitudes towards non-contentious and contentious TV commercials in terms of their perceived message cues. The study, using Bahrani Muslim interviewees, demonstrates that religiously stricter Muslims have significantly lower recall and a more negative attitude towards messages perceived as contentious, while their recall and attitude scores for non-contentious messages are similar to those of subjects with lower levels of religious commitment. We recommend that international marketers show increased sensitivity to the cultures and traditions of submarkets by manipulating message cues, like music and dancing, to strengthen the brand communication while retaining its strategic integrity.     

Racial Differences in the Returns to Financial Literacy Education

We examine financial literacy and the returns to financial literacy education, specifically focusing on the racial financial literacy gap. We confirm evidence that whites have higher financial literacy scores relative to minorities and that financial literacy increases with participation in financial literacy education. However, we find the benefit of participation in financial literacy education is higher for whites than that for minorities. Thus, the impact of being white alone persists, indicating a racial financial literacy and/or behavioral difference despite financial literacy education. Our findings have implications for policymakers interested in narrowing the racial wealth gap via financial literacy education.     

Political and Interlocking Connections in the Boardroom on Private Equity Placements

This study examines the influence of directors who are politically connected and/or have boardroom interlocking on private equity placements (PEPs) in Chinese listed firms. We document that interlocked directors can significantly influence the propensity to apply for PEPs and approval of PEPs and reduce the cost of PEPs while providing greater access to proceeds from PEPs through lowering information asymmetry and information cost. Although politically connected directors have a significant role in the approval of PEPs, they are more likely to reduce the monitoring effects and increase agency problems, which lead to increased cost of PEPs and reduced proceeds from PEPs. The results also reveal that political connection diminishes the benefits of interlocking directors for firms having directors with both interlocking and political ties.     

Office Channeling and Its Impact on the Growth of Indonesian Islamic Banking Industry

The purpose of this paper is to analyze that the office channeling policy that based on Bank Indonesia＇s rule No. 8/3/PBI/2006 had an impact on the growth of Islamic banking industry in Indonesia. This research used ordinary least square regression to analyze the impact of office channeling policy on the growth of Indonesian Islamic banking industry. The variable used in this paper is office channeling which is used as a dummy variable, and margin deposit and non-performing financing （NPF） are also used as control variables. The indicators of the growth of Indonesian Islamic banking industry are asset and third-party funds. The result shows that office channeling does not have an impact on the growth of Islamic banking industry which is measured by asset growth and third-party funds growth. According to this result, Bank Indonesia should have an innovative policy to stimulate the Islamic banking industry growth in Indonesia.     

The GCC’s Fixed Exchange Rate: A Major Anomaly for OCA Analysis

From the standpoint of traditional optimal currency area (OCA) analysis, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries are a major anomaly. They successfully maintained pegged exchange rates among themselves for two decades while failing to meet a number of major OCA criteria. Contrary to the optimistic predictions of some of the most enthusiastic advocates of endogenous OCA analysis, intra‐regional trade has remained low and there is little synchronisation of their business cycles or harmonisation of their fiscal positions. We argue that their success in operating a fixed rate regime has been due to a combination of high oil revenue, the heavy use of foreign workers and the limited extent to which their economies rely on market forces. These are conditions that are not met by most other countries.