Purchasing natural personal care products in the era of fake news? The moderation effect of brand trust

Natural personal care products are gaining popularity due to their benefits in terms of health and well-being. However, consumers are wary of these products and are guided by the fake news circulating about them. Since natural product consumption offers several personal and environmental benefits, it would be worthwhile to understand consumers’ tendency to let fake news influence their consumption decisions. Accordingly, the current study examined the association of fake news and purchasing behaviour towards natural personal care products, utilising Stimulus-Organism-Behaviour-Consequence (SOBC) as the theoretical framework. The study proposed openness to change as the stimulus, perceived benefits and perceived risks as organismic internal states, purchase intentions as the behaviour, and the propensity of believing and acting on fake news as the consequence, which is further associated with system trust. The model was tested by analysing data collected from 390 existing consumers, considering the moderation effect of brand trust and controlling the effect of age and gender. The findings confirmed that openness to change is associated with perceived benefits and risks. Furthermore, perceived benefits and system trust are associated with purchase intentions, which are, in turn, associated with the propensity of believing and acting on fake news. The study presents several novel contributions to theory and practice.     

Migration,Unemployment, and Skill Downgrading

In this paper, we analyze the labor market impacts of immigration under flexible and rigid labor market regimes. A general equilibrium framework is developed, accounting for skill heterogeneity and labor market frictions, where unemployed medium‐skilled manufacturing workers are downgraded into low‐skilled service jobs, while low‐skilled service workers might end up unemployed. The analytical analysis shows that medium‐skill immigration decreases low‐skilled unemployment under the flexible regime, indicating a complementarity effect, while the rigid regime induces a substitution effect, leading to low‐skilled unemployment. Moreover, it leads to wage polarization. In a numerical analysis, the economic effects of different migration scenarios are quantified.     

Crowdfunding: The collaborative economy for channelling institutional and household savings

The financial disintermediation mechanism known as “loan-based-crowdfunding” has recently come under regulation in several countries. This competitive investment and finance vehicle is already well established in the US and British markets.By compiling empirical data from a reference crowdfunding platform, this article compares loan-based crowdfunding with traditional investment vehicles such as investment funds, equities or pension funds.The conclusion of the study is that saving through crowdfunding allows the optimization of a portfolio comprising both institutional and retail investors.     

Determinants of time varying co-movements among international stock markets during crisis and non-crisis periods

In this paper, we use the DCC MIDAS approach to assess the validity of the wake-up call hypothesis for developed and emerging markets during the global financial crisis (GFC). We use this approach to decompose the total correlations into short- (daily) and long-run (quarterly) correlations for the period from 1999 to 2011. We then examine the transmission mechanisms by regressing the quarterly economic, financial, and behavioral variables on the quarterly DCC–MIDAS correlations. We find that country specific factors are crisis contingent transmission mechanisms for the co-movements of emerging country pairs and mixed pairs of advanced and emerging countries during the global financial crisis. However, we do not observe wake-up calls in the transmission of the crisis among advanced country pairs. The classification of the transmission mechanisms for crisis and non-crisis periods with the different country pairs has important implications for crisis management as well as for portfolio investment strategies. Thus, our findings contribute to the discussion on the role and effectiveness of the international financial architecture.     

马克思的资本批判与人学思想

资本原则作为现代社会的本质性原则,在马克思主义研究当中已经成为基本的共识,而马克思资本批判的核心就是揭示资本原则对人的统治.本文结合对历史和现实的观察和反思,回到马克思资本批判的历史境域之中,阐释马克思在资本批判中揭示的人的现代性处境、本质和人作为人全面实现和发展自己的现实条件.从根本上清理人学研究中的抽象性倾向,建立入学研究的历史唯物主义地基,并从研究范式上进行必要的转换.     

论电子银行个人结售汇业务的发展及监管

电子银行个人结售汇业务的出现满足了银行外汇业务自主化的需要,为银行外汇业务的创新和发展提供了拓展空间。本文通过深入分析当前我国电子银行个人结售汇业务对银行业及涉外经济的影响,深入剖析外汇监管方面存在的问题,并对此提出建议。     

Consideration of technological and environmental heterogeneity in cost efficiency analysis

In order to evaluate and compare the efficiency levels across banking industries, we adopt the meta-frontier model that can assess the technological difference among countries. Given the importance of country specific conditions, we include in our analysis the different specificities of each country to incorporate the technological as the environmental differences in the evaluation of banking efficiencies. Using data on the banking industries of several countries in the MENA region, over the period 1991–2011, the results of the efficiency scores corrected by the technological and environmental gap led us to conclude that Egyptian banks are the most efficient in terms of cost compared with banks in other countries. Egyptian banks enjoy a very favourable banking technology. Our results support the hypothesis that traditional techniques of efficiency analysis based on the efficiency scores of a specific and pooled frontier tend to mystify efficiency levels and may incorrectly identify efficient banks. This paper contributes to the efficiency literature by incorporating technological and environmental heterogeneities in the evaluation of efficiency. This helps to characterize the production process of a bank and provides common standards by which the efficiencies of banks in different countries can be compared in a meaningful way with each other.     

Food industry structure in Norway and Denmark since the 1990s: Path dependency and institutional trajectories in Nordic food markets

Structural changes in Norwegian and Danish food industry since the 1990s is analysed as a path dependent response to the neo-liberal turn. Norway entered the 1990s as a protected market and Denmark as case of an export oriented industry. These developmental strategies are rooted in early 20th century industrialisation and influenced by institutional transformations in the 1990s, such as EU and WTO. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are studied in the context of changing political environments. Explaining two different trajectories, we combine path dependency theories and a Polanyi inspired ‘varieties of capitalism’ framework with corporate strategy theories on food industry M&As. We identify two different types of path dependent development, a self-reinforcing in Denmark and a transformative ‘breaking point’ in Norway.     

制造业竞争力比较研究——基于浙江地区与国内外制造业的分析比较

制造业竞争力对于区域经济发展具有至关重要的支撑作用。通过建立MCI制造业竞争力指数模型量化比较发现，随着劳动力成本等要素制约加剧，浙江制造业竞争力和竞争优势近年来大幅弱化。加快实现创造驱动、人才驱动、技术驱动、改革驱动“四轮驱动”，加速提高劳动生产率，推进产业转型升级，提升产业核心竞争力，打造经济升级版，从而实现长期可持续增长，是今后很长一段时期内浙江经济的重大课题。     

劳动密集型企业研究回顾与展望

劳动密集型企业对世界经济的贡献是不容忽视的，但劳动密集型企业的优势却又会受到经济发展的冲击，因此研究劳动密集型企业意义重大。现有文献的研究多集中在对劳动密集型企业的概念、影响因素、某些具体行业、发展转型等方面，但仍存在研究不够深入、全面和与时俱进等不足，因此，未来的研究首先应有一个系统的研究思路，然后结合时代发展的特点，多行业多领域多角度的对其进行研究，以为其发展转型提供参考。