The effectiveness of government spending on education and health care in developing and transition economies

Recent studies show that corruption is associated with higher military spending [Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 17 (2001) 794] and lower government spending on education and health care [J. Publ. Econ. 69 (1998) 263]. This suggests that policies aimed at reducing corruption may lead to changes in the composition of government outlays toward more productive spending. However, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the claim that public spending improves education and health indicators in developing and transition countries. This paper uses cross-sectional data for 50 such countries to show that increased public expenditure on education and health care is associated with improvements in both access to and attainment in schools, and reduces mortality rates for infants and children. The education regressions are robust to different specifications, but the relationship between health care spending and mortality rates is weaker.     

Perceived usefulness,ease of use and user acceptance of blockchain technology for digital transactions – insights from user-generated content on Twitter

Although blockchain has attracted a great deal of attention from academia and industry there is a lack of studies on acceptance drivers. This study explores blockchain acceptance by mining the collective intelligence of users on Twitter. It maps blockchain user acceptance drivers to technology acceptance constructs. The analysis shows that users are attracted by security, privacy, transparency, trust and traceability aspects provided by blockchain. On Twitter more discussions on blockchain benefits than on drawbacks. Initial coin offering (ICO) is extensively discussed. The study provides guidelines for managers and concludes by presenting the limitations of the study along with future research directions.     

The contribution of start-ups and young firms to industry-level efficiency growth

This article examines the impact of start-ups (active for 1 up to 5 years) and young firms (active for 6 up to 10 years) on industry-level efficiency growth in six EU countries, covering the period 2002–2009. Using semi-parametric estimates of meta-frontier efficiency, it is found that surviving entrants gradually raise their efficiency level in all countries considered. Firm-level efficiency growth decreases with firm age, whereas reallocation towards efficient firms contributes more to industry-level growth as firms mature. The relative contribution of start-ups appears to have been important as they actually contributed positively to overall efficiency growth which, over the period under consideration, was negative in most countries, even before the ‘Great Recession’. There are indications of ‘cleansing’, due to the exit of less efficient firms, during the ‘Great Recession’.     

Decision making on pension schemes under rational expectations

In this paper the formation of expectations during decision making processes on pension schemes is the main focus. An overlapping generations model is used where politicians control the tax-transfer system and the young determine savings. No generation of decision makers is committed to previous decisions. It appears that the outcome in the stationary state depends on the efficiency of the tax-transfer system compared with savings and on the preferences of politicians relative to young individuals with respect to the division of endowments between young-age and old-age consumption. One of the main conclusions is that if the parameters of the system are constant the stationary state enters within a finite time interval. So, if the system is initially outside the stationary state, the decision makers can calculate the path of taxes and savings towards the stationary state. This feature is also used to determine the effects of a demographic change.Comments from Dieter Bös, Fons Groot, Lex Meijdam, Willem Thorbecke, and David Wildasin are gratefully acknowledged. All remaining errors are, of course, ours.     

Challenging Small‐Scale Farming: A Non‐Parametric Analysis of the (Inverse) Relationship Between Farm Productivity and Farm Size in Burundi

We use a non‐parametric approach to investigate the (inverse) relationship between farm productivity and farm size. A kernel regression is used on data of mixed cropping systems to study the determinants of production including different factors that have been identified in literature as missing variables in the testing of the inverse relationship such as soil quality, location and household heterogeneity. Household data on farm activities and crop production were gathered from 640 households in 2007 in two Northern provinces of Burundi. Our results do not reject the findings of an inverse relationship between farm size and productivity. However, we find that size returns vary substantially with farm size, that is, between 0.2 for the smallest farms and 0.8 for the largest farms. Other factors that significantly affect production include soil quality. Finally, we find a significant positive association between food security and farm size.     

The element of surprise: the diverse impact of slightly alternative specifications of context on opinion formation in multi-level modeling

The rise of multi-level modeling in social sciences brings new challenges. Multi-level modeling, although used in a great variety of ways, aims at simultaneously assessing the impact of individual-level and context-level characteristics on a dependent variable that is measured at the individual level. However, comprehending how public opinion is affected by context and how people experience contextual changes is a challenge. Little scholarly attention has been paid to the way context is incorporated in these models. The current study compares the use of the same independent variable (GNI) measured in three different ways to predict attitudes regarding EU enlargement, trust in the EU, and European Unification in 25 EU countries, using data from the European Social Survey. We introduce an alternative way to measure change, taking a larger time span into consideration, and find that this is a good way to measure contextual surprise. Our findings show that the way a variable is measured greatly influences the size and even direction of the effect. Hence, it is crucial to assess both conceptually and methodologically the best way to measure context before one simply implements a variable and interprets empty results.     

The influence of extrinsic product attributes on consumers’ food decisions: review and network analysis of the marketing literature

ABSTRACT

The paper synthesises the existing research on the influence of key product characteristics on the consumers’ food decision-making. By applying network analysis on a sample of 233 empirical studies from the last three decades, the paper demonstrates how marketing-specific variables are embedded in a network of other predictors. The paper also analyses network structure and density using well established measures. The results show that there is still a lack of research concerning the interplay between marketing-relevant extrinsic product attributes (e.g. price, brand, labelling, country of origin) and intrinsic food attributes, policy-related factors, as well as aspects of the proximal and distal environment. The paper identifies gaps in the marketing literature and derives research propositions. Additionally, implications for marketing practice are developed.     

Network brokers or hit makers? Analyzing the influence of incubation on start-up investments

Incubators are a prominent way to support technology based start-ups. Yet, it remains unclear to what extent these incubators enhance start-up performance, nor is it known through which mechanisms this would occur. In this paper we test two mechanisms to explain the relationship between incubation and the amount of investments raised by early stage start-ups as performance measure. The ‘hit maker’ mechanism refers to beneficial effects of the direct transfer of resources and organizational or business knowledge from the incubator to the start-up. The ‘network broker’ mechanism refers to the benefits that start-ups enjoy from being connected to external funding sources through the incubator’s networks. We test which of these mechanisms contribute to the performance of early stage start-ups. Our data comes from a unique survey from 935 entrepreneurs with early-stage technology based start-ups in Western Europe and North America. We find that incubators have a positive effect on (1) the amount of funding that start-ups attract and (2) the ability of start-ups to attract funding from formal investors and banks. Moreover, our results provide evidence for the network broker mechanism, but not for the hit maker mechanism.     

Perverse Effects of Other-Referenced Performance Goals in an Information Exchange Context

We argue and demonstrate that an emphasis on outperforming others may lead to perverse effects. Four studies show that assigning other-referenced performance goals, relative to self-referenced mastery goals, may lead to more interpersonally harmful behavior in an information exchange context. Results of Study 1 indicate that assigned performance goals lead to stronger thwarting behavior and less accurate information giving to an exchange partner than assigned mastery goals. Similarly, in Study 2 performance goal individuals more subtly deceived highly competent opponents relative to lowly competent opponents, who received more blatant treatment. Finally, Studies 3 and 4 show in methodologically complementary ways that tactical deception considerations may account for the interpersonally harmful behavior of performance goal individuals.