Base consumption levels and fixed costs

Conditioning variables on consumer choices are conventionally included in demand functions additively. We identify the underlying utility maximisation problem. There must be base consumption levels efficiently set which vary with the conditioning variables. A special case is quasi-homothetic preferences.     

Social Protection in a Crisis: Argentina's Plan Jefes y Jefas

The article assesses the impact of Argentina’s main socialpolicy response to the severe economic crisis of 2002. The programwas intended to provide direct income support for families withdependents and whose head had become unemployed because of thecrisis. Counterfactual comparisons are based on a matched subsetof applicants not yet receiving program assistance. Panel dataspanning the crisis are also used. The program reduced aggregateunemployment, though it attracted as many people into the workforcefrom inactivity as it did people who otherwise would have beenunemployed. Although there was substantial leakage to formallyineligible families and incomplete coverage of those who wereeligible, the program did partially compensate many losers fromthe crisis and reduced extreme poverty.     

Riding the waves of family firm internationalization: A systematic literature review,integrative framework,and research agenda

Despite the proliferation in research efforts, family firm (FF) internationalization scholarship suffers from fragmentation, theoretical limitations, and empirical indeterminacy, leaving important facets unexplored. This article’s purpose is to unpack how this body of research has evolved over time and interfaces international business (IB) theory. We conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering the last 30 years of research and comprising 134 articles. Our study contributes to this corpus of knowledge by identifying and discussing four evolutionary waves of FF internationalization research. We further advance an integrative framework that offers a comprehensive understanding of the state-of-the-art as well as promising avenues for future research at the intersection of IB and FFs.     

A Note on Capital IQ's Credit Line Data

Empirical work in finance is increasingly using Capital IQ's detailed data on capital structure. We compare the Capital IQ credit line data to hand‐collected data for a random sample of firms. Missing values in Capital IQ are prevalent, so the data set underreports the importance of corporate credit lines. When data are reported, Capital IQ often differs from hand‐collected credit line activity. We suggest methods for correcting the errors in the Capital IQ data, note which portions of the data are most reliable, and quantify the effects of Capital IQ's underreporting by examining the tradeoff between cash and lines of credit.     

Representation of the penalty term of dynamic concave utilities

In the context of a Brownian filtration and with a fixed finite time horizon, we provide a representation of the penalty term of general dynamic concave utilities (hence of dynamic convex risk measures) by applying the theory of g-expectations.     

Belief heterogeneity and survival in incomplete markets

In complete markets economies (Sandroni in Econometrica 68:1303–1341, 2000), or in economies with Pareto optimal outcomes (Blume and Easley in Econometrica 74:926–966, 2006), the market selection hypothesis holds, as long as traders have identical discount factors. Traders who survive must have beliefs that merge with the truth. We show that in incomplete markets, regardless of traders’ discount factors, the market selects for a range of beliefs, at least some of which do not merge with the truth. We also show that impatient traders with incorrect beliefs can survive and that these incorrect beliefs impact prices. These beliefs may be chosen so that they are far from the truth.     

Development and validation of the Remote Working Benefits & Disadvantages scale

The changes that are constantly occurring in the labour sector have led organisations and companies to move towards digital transformation. This process was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and  conducted to a massive recourse to the practice of remote working, which in this study is understood as the term for the way of performing work outside the usual workplace and with the support of ICT. Currently, there are no flexible scales in the literature that allow measuring the benefits and disadvantages of remote working with a single instrument. Thus, the distinction between the positive and negative consequences of working remotely, substantiated by a solid literature, provides a framework for a systematical understanding of the issue. The aim of the present study is to develop and validate a scale on remote working benefits and disadvantages (RW-B&D scale). For this end, a preliminary Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) with 304 participants, a tailored EFA with a sample of 301 workers and a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) with 677 workers were conducted. Participants were all Italian employees who worked remotely during the period of the COVID-19 health emergency. Data were collected between October 2020 and April 2021. The psychometric robustness of the model was assessed through bootstrap validation (5000 resamples), fit indices testing and measurement of factorial invariance. The statistical analyses demonstrated the bifactorial nature of the scale, supporting the research hypothesis. The model showed good fit indices, bootstrap validation reported statistically significant saturations, good reliability indices, and convergent and discriminant validity. Measurement invariance was tested for gender and organisational sector. The results suggested that the novel scale facilitates the quantitative measurement of the benefits and disadvantages associated with remote working in empirical terms. For this reason, it could be a streamlined and psychometrically valid instrument to identify the potential difficulties arising from remote working and, at the same time, the positive aspects that can be implemented to improve organisational well-being.

     

International business cycles: What are the facts?

Modern business cycle theory involves developing models that explain stylized facts. For this strategy to be successful, these facts should be well established. In this paper, we focus on the stylized facts of international business cycles. We use the generalized method of moments and quarterly data from twenty industrialized countries to estimate and test hypotheses concerning pairwise cross-country correlations of macroeconomic aggregates. A remarkable common feature emerges: these correlations are mostly positive, not very high and of a similar order of magnitude. The most important discrepancy with the theory is the low cross-country correlation of consumption.