Liking what others “Like”: using Facebook to identify determinants of conformity

In this paper we explore the micro-level determinants of conformity. Members of the social networking service Facebook express positive support to content on the website by clicking a Like button. We set up a natural field experiment to test whether users are more prone to support content if someone else has done so before. To find out to what extent conformity depends on group size and social ties we use three different treatment conditions: (1) one stranger has Liked the content, (2) three strangers have Liked the content, and (3) a friend has Liked the content. The results show that one Like from a single stranger had no impact. However, increasing the size of the influencing group doubled the probability that subjects expressed positive support. Friendship ties were also decisive. People were, on average, four times more likely to press the Like button if a friend, rather than a stranger, had done so before them. The existence of threshold effects in our experiment clearly shows that both group size and social proximity matters when opinions are shaped.     

Is the Retail Gasoline Market Local or National?

This paper studies the effect of station density on prices in the retail gasoline market in the Czech Republic. We estimate the impact of the number of competing stations in various driving-distance ranges around each station on prices. We find that station density has a negative effect on prices; the effect decreases with distance and is statistically significant up to six kilometers. This suggests that the retail gasoline market is local rather than national.     

ICT Statistics at the New Millennium—Developing Official Statistics—Measuring the Diffusion of ICT and its Impact

The paper gives a short and very rough overview of the ongoing work in the field of statistics relating to the development of information and communication technology (ICT) and its impacts on the economies and on the society as a whole. It introduces three slightly different approaches with different emphasis on describing the emergence and diffusion of ICT and the respective economic and social change. These are termed the indicators approach, the new economy approach and the intellectual capital approach. The paper also discusses the basic requirements for the establishment of a new statistical system, as well as the present obstacles and problems of this work. Finally, some remarks are presented regarding further statistical co-operation in this field.     

Changes in food provision in Russian households experiencing perestroika

The purpose of this article is to describe how households in Novgorod the Great, Russia, deal with food provision in everyday life. The study focuses on changes experienced in food provision and consumption in Russian society, in order to illustrate how households respond to the transformation towards a market economy. The study reflects women's perspective on food provision. Students from Novgorod the Great visited 105 households and asked the women in the household to answer a questionnaire. Results from the study show that in order to cope with changes in society related to economic reforms, Russian households had changed both their food consumption and food production patterns. There was no big difference between urban and rural households. Nearly all of the households were self‐sufficient in the provision of vegetables and potatoes. Many households had a ‘dacha’ (plot), where they produced most of what they needed. Among the changes experienced during recent years (i.e. during the end of the 1990s), a decade after perestroika was initiated, households mentioned the rise in food prices and the decrease of income. Households reported that they consumed less fruit and/or meat. Some households also mentioned that the quality of nourishment had decreased, thereby indicating lower general quality, lower nutrition value, or less healthy foodstuffs.     

Carbon tax simulations using a household demand model

The main objective of this paper is to analyse consumer response and welfare effects due to changes in energy or environmental policy. To achieve this objective we formulate and estimate an econometric model for non-durable consumer demand in Sweden that utilises micro- and macro-data. In the simulations, we consider two revenue neutral scenarios that both imply a doubling of the CO₂ tax; one that returns the revenues in the form of a lower VAT and one that subsidise public transport. One conclusion from the simulations is that the CO₂ tax has regional distribution effects, in the sense that household living in sparsely populated areas carry a larger share of the tax burden.     

Should there exist secondary markets for executive stock options?

This paper investigates the potential disadvantages of the secondary markets for executive stock options (ESOs). The benefits of such markets are evident, but they might also have negative effects for shareholders. Executives might, for example, use inside information to time their ESO selling. We investigate two personal motives of managers that can be assumed to affect their optimal selling decision, that is, managers' personal portfolio management issues and the use of inside information. We explore these motives by analyzing unique data from Finland, where there are secondary markets for ESOs. The results of the study support the traditional portfolio diversification hypothesis according to which managers tend to sell their ESOs when holding an ESO is equivalent to holding the underlying stock; that is, in such a case a manager's wealth is closely tied to the stock price of the firm. With respect to the use of inside information the results indicate that ESO selling activity is not related to future stock price behaviour, suggesting that managers do not use inside information to determine the selling time of their ESOs. These results imply that the existence of secondary markets for ESOs does not weaken the usefulness of ESOs as the management compensation, although the benefits of such markets are evident.     

Finding Pareto Optimal Insurance Contracts

This paper deals with on-line computation—or step-wise learning—of Pareto optimal insurance contracts. Our approach tolerates that the loss distribution might be unknown, intractable, or not well specified. Thus we accommodate fairly inexperienced parties. Losses are here simulated or observed, one at a time, and they cause iterated revisions of the premium. The mechanical and global nature of probability calculus thereby yields to more tentative, myopic procedures, possibly closer to how humans operate or reason in face of risk. Sequential revisions may also reduce the expense of insurers' time and money in seeking sufficient statistics. Emphasized below is the remarkable simplicity and stability of the resulting adaptive procedures. Special attention goes to catastrophic risks, and to subsidized or competitive insurance.     

Marketing program standardization: A cross-country exploration

This study explores the antecedents and consequences of marketing program standardization in subsidiaries of multinational corporations by contrasting the case of a lead market (Japan) and of an emerging market (Turkey). The findings show that: (1) marketing program standardization is positively related to performance in Japan and Turkey; (2) centralization of nonproduct decision is negatively related to performance in both markets; (3) customer similarity is positively related to marketing program standardization in both Japan and Turkey. Whereas, in Japan, marketing program standardization has a direct, positive relationship to performance, in Turkey, in addition to such a direct effect, there is also an indirect effect at work, through centralization of nonproduct decision.     

Elicitation using multiple price list formats

We examine the properties of a popular method for eliciting choices and values from experimental subjects, the multiple price list format. The main advantage of this format is that it is relatively transparent to subjects and provides simple incentives for truthful revelation. The main disadvantages are that it only elicits interval responses, and could be susceptible to framing effects. We consider extensions to address and evaluate these concerns. We conclude that although there are framing effects, they can be controlled for with a design that allows for them. We also find that the elicitation of risk attitudes is sensitive to procedures, subject pools, and the format of the multiple price list table, but that the qualitative findings that participants are generally risk averse is robust. The elicitation of discount rates appear less sensitive to details of the experimental design. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at . JEL Classification C9, D81, D91 An erratum to this article is available at .     

Organizational rejuvenation for knowledge exploitation: Exploring corporate entrepreneurship in an MNE

The purpose of this paper is to study how organizational rejuvenation is used to increase and support knowledge exploitation in multinational enterprises. Using case-study data to explore the theoretical arguments, interesting findings emerge. The main finding is that entrepreneurial activities in IT industry enable organizational rejuvenation with repercussions beyond the focal function. Other findings relate to how corporate entrepreneurship activities provide possibilities for continuous knowledge exploitation within the MNE and how entrepreneurial groups inside MNEs form the foundation from which the organizational rejuvenation originates. Finally, the form of organizational rejuvenation studied embraced both structural and behavioral changes. The authors acknowledge an equal share in the development of this article.