Labor taxation, public finance, and wage determination: evidence from OECD countries

This paper analyzes the relationship between unemployment, average effective labour tax rates and public spending in 17 OECD countries. The focus is on the degree of centralization and cooperation in wage setting. Estimation results from a dynamic time-series-cross-section model suggest that the countries where wage setting takes place at the firm level have used labour taxes less extensively in financing welfare spending, compared to countries with centralized or decentralized bargaining. This is consistent with another finding, according to which labour taxes distort the labour demand the least in the countries with firm level bargaining.     

Why do public policy-makers ignore marketing and consumer research? A case study of policy-making for alcohol advertising

Public policy-makers have been noted to sometimes ignore marketing/consumer research, even when the policy issue clearly pertains to consumption markets. We embark to identify factors that may explain policy-makers’ limited attention to marketing/consumer research, especially in cases related to consumer affairs that may have public health implications. Empirically, we focus on policy-making around the advertising of alcohol products. Having been involved in this policy-making process in Finland, we elucidate the case through an introspective narrative. We find that the factors explaining policy-makers’ limited attention to marketing/consumer research range from the decision-making characteristics of policy-makers, through inconsistent definitions for key terminology, to the fear of over-generalizing certain theories of marketing/consumer research. Regarding the latter, a key issue in the present case was that public policy-makers were unconvinced about the generic marketing theory stating that in mature markets, advertising will not increase the total consumption demand of a product category.     

Do institutional investors pay attention to customer satisfaction and why?

Extant marketing, accounting, and finance research has neglected to examine the relevance of customer satisfaction information for institutional investors, despite their potential importance. This study develops and supports a framework suggesting that firms with positive changes in customer satisfaction are more attractive to transient institutional investors than to non-transient institutional investors. We also find that the impact of customer satisfaction on transient institutional investor holdings is contingent upon firm intangible asset intensity, product-market demand uncertainty, and financial market volatility. In addition, transient institutional investor holdings at least partially mediate the effects of changes in customer satisfaction on firm abnormal return and idiosyncratic risk. Thus, transient institutional investor investments represent a mechanism through which customer satisfaction affects firm value.     

A Multidimensional Approach to Finnish Managers' Moral Decision-Making

This paper analyses managers' moral decision-making, and studies the role of ethical theories in it by following the research tradition using the multidimensional ethics scale. The research question is: what kinds of ethical dimensions do Finnish business managers reveal when they are making moral decisions, and how have these dimensions changed in the 1990s? This question is answered by examining what kinds of factors emerge when the multidimensional ethics scale is used to analyse Finnish managers' attitudes toward moral dilemmas. The results show that Finnish managers' decision-making reflects a variety of ethical theories. Teleological thinking is strongly emphasised by Finnish managers, and relativist thinking is used as well, but often combined with either deontology or justice thinking. In addition, a strong moralistic dimension emerged in Finnish managers' decision-making. The analysis was carried out in two different surveys in years 1994 and 1999, and the results show that the ways of decision-making were more complex at the end of the 1990s than almost six years earlier.     

Innovation, R&D cooperation and labor recruitment: evidence from Finland

This article investigates the role played by one type of firm interaction, namely R&D cooperation, and also the acquisition of labor, in the promotion of industrial innovations. We employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland which combines firm specific information about the innovation performance of the firms along with their individual characteristics, as well as firm specific information regarding the origins of their recent labor acquisitions. Analyzing this data allows us to identify the different roles which the knowledge spillovers and labor markets play in the innovation process. Our results suggest that small firms are generally more innovative than large firms; R&D cooperation is an essential feature of innovation, but the variety of cooperation is of little importance; and labor acquisition appears to be only of limited importance for innovation.

Naturally designed for masculinity vs. femininity? Prenatal testosterone predicts male consumers' choices of gender-imaged products

In this paper, we find that a proxy of prenatal testosterone exposure (i.e., digit ratio) is a significant predictor of preferences for products that differ in perceived masculinity vs. femininity. A more masculine (feminine) digit ratio predicts choice of products that have an increasingly masculine (feminine) image. This relationship is statistically significant for male consumers, but not for females.     

Analysis of the Colorado potato beetle protection system in Finland

Invasive species, including plants, insects and other pests, are a serious threat to agricultural production and to the environment in general. Finland has traditionally had a favourable situation concerning invasives, partly due to its isolated geographical location. The situation may now be changing and one of the currently increasing threats is the Colorado potato beetle (CPB). Finland has designed a CPB protection policy incorporating a protected zone, which is commonly used to deal with invasive plant pests in other European countries. Within this zone, the randomly occurring CPB invasions are collectively fended off, to prevent the establishment of a permanent pest population and to minimise potential damage. This paper evaluates the economics of the current protection programme, comparing this to a hypothetical situation in which the current pre-emptive policy is abandoned and control relies on producers' individual reactive protection measures. The annual random pest invasions are modelled in a static stochastic framework. To date the pest has not been able to establish a permanent population in Finland. According to our analysis, the currently exercised pre-emptive policy is the cost-efficient choice at this point. The relatively low expected invasion magnitude is one of the key factors supporting the efficiency of the current system. Another reason is the fairly small damage incurred. However, when the invasions become larger and more frequent or the pest strains more cold-resistant, the future situation may change.     

Creatine and entrepreneurship

Creatine is a nitrogenous organic acid which supplies energy to body cells and enhances physical performance. Using the Young Finns Study combined with the Finnish Linked employer-employee data we show that quantities of creatine measured in 1980 prior to labour market entry affect entrepreneurial success as measured by capital income accumulation over the period 1993–2010 (in particular for females). However, we do not find evidence that creatine affects the propensity to become an entrepreneur. Our study contributes to the emerging literature on biomarkers and entrepreneurship.     

Analysing moral issues in stakeholder relations

The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework for analysing managers' attitudes toward moral issues in stakeholder relations, and to operationalise the developed framework by defining statements to be used as empirical measures in survey research. The research question, how can moral issues in business be examined with the stakeholder approach, is answered by paying attention to both theoretical and empirical viewpoints. The paper reveals that by analysing a company's stakeholder relations, we can discover the important moral issues in business. To validate the framework developed and the empirical measures which result, the development process is described in detail. The argument is that making the development process visible is an important task in validating empirical measures in survey research. As a result of the research process, a total of 50 moral issues in eight stakeholder relations are identified, and operationalised with 58 itemised statements. The final conclusion is that the empirical measures developed in this paper are suitable for measuring moral issues in stakeholder relations, and that they can later be used in analysing real life managers' perceptions of moral issues in stakeholder relations.