Exploring the relationship between employees’ CSR perceptions and intention to emigrate: Evidence from a developing country

This study contributes to the burgeoning research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) at the individual level of analysis, in a hitherto largely neglected developing country context. Using survey information collected from 297 employees in public and private enterprises in Kosovo, this study examines how and to what extent employees’ perceptions of their employer's CSR activities are associated with their intention to emigrate. Applying a needs-based framework, this research provides evidence that employees’ perceptions of CSR are positively related to the meaningfulness of their work and job satisfaction and negatively related to intention to emigrate. Additionally, results confirm that the association between CSR perceptions and emigration intention is mediated by the meaningfulness of work and job satisfaction. From a practical point of view, this research should encourage private and public enterprises in developing countries to enhance and extend their CSR engagement.     

Revenue Recognition under IFRS Revisited: Conceptual Models,Current Proposals and Practical Consequences

Since 2002, the FASB and the IASB have been undertaking a joint project on the revision and convergence of US GAAP and IFRS revenue recognition. Even though the outcome of the project is still open, the project's course as well as trends in recently published IFRS and other current IASB projects suggest that existing earnings-based and realisation-based IFRS revenue recognition criteria are likely to be replaced by a radically new approach. This paper demonstrates the inconsistencies in current IFRS revenue recognition that have triggered the project and then presents and discusses three conceptually different revenue recognition models that are internationally debated at present. The paper concludes that a major revision of existing IFRS revenue recognition as proposed by the FASB and the IASB is not required. It is argued that the perceived deficiencies should rather be solved on the basis of current transaction-based IFRS revenue criteria.     

(Non-)robustness of maximum likelihood estimators for operational risk severity distributions

The quality of operational risk data sets suffers from missing or contaminated data points. This may lead to implausible characteristics of the estimates. Outliers, especially, can make a modeler's task difficult and can result in arbitrarily large capital charges. Robust statistics provides ways to deal with these problems as well as measures for the reliability of estimators. We show that using maximum likelihood estimation can be misleading and unreliable assuming typical operational risk severity distributions. The robustness of the estimators for the Generalized Pareto distribution, and the Weibull and Lognormal distributions is measured considering both global and local reliability, which are represented by the breakdown point and the influence function of the estimate.     

The external validity of giving in the dictator game

We investigate the external validity of giving in the dictator game by using the misdirected letter technique in a within-subject design. First, subjects participated in standard dictator games (double blind) conducted in labs in two different studies. Second, after four to five weeks (study 1) or two years (study 2), we delivered prepared letters to the same subjects. The envelopes and the contents of the letters were designed to create the impression that they were misdirected by the mail delivery service. The letters contained 10 Euros (20 Swiss Francs in study 2) corresponding to the endowment of the in-lab experiments. We observe in both studies that subjects who showed other-regarding behavior in the lab returned the misdirected letters more often than subjects giving nothing, suggesting that in-lab behavior is related to behavior in the field.     

Foreign direct investment,labour relations and sector effects: US investment outflows to Europe

This paper analyses the impact of national labour relations on foreign direct investment (FDI), with emphasis on macro-markets and sector properties. Since there are sector-specific differences between industries in transferability, labour-relations effects on FDI probably vary across sectors. The paper finds that labour costs dampen FDI, while the impact of national market potential remains inconclusive. Collective labour institutions have a significantly adverse impact on FDI in manufacturing, and a relatively beneficial one on FDI in services. While investment in manufacturing seeks to minimize labour costs at given skill levels, investment in services maximizes skills at given levels of cost.     

Who's got the balance? A study of satisfaction with the work–family balance among part-time service sector employees in five western European countries

Working part-time is frequently considered a viable strategy for employees to better combine work and non-work responsibilities. The present study examines differences in satisfaction with work-family balance (SWFB) among professional and non-professional part-time service sector employees in five western European countries. Part-time employees were found to be more SWFB than full-time employees even after taking varying demands and resources into account. However, there are important differences among the part-timers. Employees in marginal part-time employment with considerably reduced working hours were the most satisfied. Professionals were found to profit less from reduced working hours and experienced lower levels of SWFB than non-professionals. No significant differences in SWFB were found between male and female part-time workers.     

Boundaries for the Retail Geographical Market and Factors Influencing Shoppers' Mobility

A growing number of mergers and their potentially negative impacts on consumer welfare in the retailing sector have prompted discussion on how to define the boundaries of the relevant market. This article explores the boundaries of the geographic market of daily consumer goods through an examination of factors that influence shoppers' mobility in Croatia. The study takes into consideration the purpose of the trip and differentiates between major and fill‐in shopping trips, and demonstrates that different factors impact the shopper mobility for each of the two shopping trips. It provides support for the practice of defining market boundaries empirically on the basis of region and store format specificities, taking into account prevalent shopping occasion, economic situation of the residents, size of the residential area, and geographical placement of the stores among other things. The study shows that the boundaries of the retail market may be more narrow than expected.     

Entry and exit echoes

While aggregate data do not show the investment echoes predicted by vintage-capital models, echoes arise in rates of entry and exit of firms at the industry level. Moreover, industries where prices decline rapidly experience early ‘shakeouts’. The relation emerges naturally in a vintage-capital model in which exit of firms sometimes accompanies the replacement of their capital, and in which a shakeout is the first replacement ‘echo’ of the capital created when the industry is born.     

Passive partial ownership,sneaky takeovers,and merger control

We analyze the impact of passive partial ownership (PPO) on horizontal mergers. We show that antitrust authorities ignoring the effects of previous PPO acquisitions invite sneaky takeovers: a PPO is strategically used prior to a full takeover to get a merger approved which is in fact detrimental to consumers.     

Co-development ventures: Optimal time of entry and profit-sharing

We find the optimal time for entering a joint venture by two firms, and the optimal linear contract for sharing the profits. We consider risk-sharing, timing-incentive and asymmetric decisions contract designs. If the firms are risk-neutral and the cash payments are allowed, all three designs are equivalent. With risk aversion, the optimal contract parameters may vary significantly across the three designs and across varying levels of risk aversion. We also analyze a dataset of joint biomedical ventures, in which, in agreement with our theoretical predictions, both royalty and cash payments are mostly increasing in the smaller firm's experience, and the time of entry happens sooner for more experienced small firms.