Monetary policy rules in Central and Eastern European Countries: Does the exchange rate matter?

We estimate monetary policy rules for six Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) during the period when they prepared for membership to the EU and monetary union. By taking changes in the policy settings explicitly into account and by splitting up the exchange rate impact into two different components we significantly improve estimation results for monetary policy rules in CEEC. We uncover that the focus of the interest rate setting behaviour in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland explicitly switched from defending the peg to targeting inflation. For Slovakia, however, there still seemed to be on ongoing focus on the exchange rate. Finally, Slovenia and, after a policy switch, Romania exhibit a solid relation with inflation as well.     

What is not beautiful should match: how attractiveness similarity affects consumer responses to advertising

This study introduces the concept of attractiveness similarity, empirically examines its main effect and whether it moderates the effect of endorser attractiveness on consumer responses to advertising. The results show a positive main effect of attractiveness similarity over and above the mere effect of endorser attractiveness. In addition, a consistent moderating effect of attractiveness similarity on the effect of endorser attractiveness emerges: attractiveness similarity buffers against the less positive effects of lower levels of endorser attractiveness (i.e., it compensates for lower levels of endorser attractiveness). Overall, these findings reveal attractiveness similarity as a new variable in endorser advertising, which has important managerial implications. Advertising campaigns employing averagely attractive endorsers should pay special attention to attractiveness similarity.     

Rural-urban gradient analysis of ecosystem services supply and demand dynamics

Urban regions are important places of ecosystem service demands and, at the same time, are the primary source of global environmental impacts. Although there is broad agreement on the importance of incorporating the concept of ecosystem services into policy strategies and decision-making, the lack of a standardized approach to quantifying ecosystem services at the landscape scale has hindered progress in this direction. Moreover, tradeoffs between ecosystem services and the supply/demand ratio of ecosystem services in urban landscapes have rarely been investigated. In our paper, we present a method to quantify and map the supply and demand of three essential provisioning services - energy, food, and water - along the rural-urban gradient of the eastern German region Leipzig-Halle. This urban region has experienced significant socio-economic dynamics and land use changes since the German reunification in 1990. The results show that both the demand and the supply of ecosystem services changed considerably during the time span under consideration (1990-2007). We identified an increasing supply/demand ratio of food and water but a decreasing supply/demand ratio of energy. In addition, the pattern of ecosystem demands shows a levelling of rural-urban gradients, reflecting profound modifications of traditional rural-urban relationships. The changes of ecosystem service supply gradients are determined more by land use intensity, such as the intensification of agricultural production, than by land cover changes such as urban sprawl. The comparison of supply/demand ratios and rural-urban patterns of ecosystem services can help decision-makers in landscape management in striving for a sustainable balance between resource supply and demand.     

Time heals many wounds – explaining the immediate and delayed effects of message sidedness

This study investigates the immediate and delayed effects of advertising messages including both positive and negative information. A two-sided message has a negative effect on message attitudes due to two mediating variables with trade-off effects: valence and balance. These two variables are also responsible for the alignment of the effect of sidedness on message attitudes and purchase intentions over time: the negative effects of two-sided messages are neutralized over time because negative information is reevaluated, improving the valence of the message. The results explain the negative effects of message sidedness that have been found in prior research and they show that a two-sided message in advertising is not necessarily inferior to a one-sided message despite unfavorable short-term effects.     

Predator or prey? Effects of farm growth on neighbouring farms

We provide explorative insights on how farms which manage strong and successful growth affect farms in their neighbourhoods through spatial competition for land. The study is based on an exploratory analysis of repeated framed experiments within the business game FarmAgriPoliS (Appel & Balmann, Ecological Complexity, 40, 2019). In particular, we analyse the spatial influences of different behavioural clusters of farm managers. Our analysis finds that farms which manage strong growth substantially affect the development of farms in a spatial neighbourhood of some 10 km. Although the influence on the neighbourhood decreases with distance, the functional correlations of farm growth as well as exits are neither linear nor exponential, but eventually rather wave-like. We further discuss the spatial interdependence of farms and the related overlaps of the predator–prey phenomenon with the phenomena of farms' path dependency and agricultural structural change. We conclude that along with farmers' strategies and their abilities, the characteristics of their neighbours and the distances between neighbouring farms also determine who is ‘predator’ and who is ‘prey’.     

The European Green Deal — More Than Climate Neutrality

Intereconomics - The European Green Deal aims at climate neutrality for Europe by 2050, implying a significant acceleration of emission reductions. To gain the necessary support, it needs to reduce...     

Antecedents and effects of emotions in strategic decision-making: a literature review and conceptual model

Individual emotions are essential driving forces in strategic decision-making. Nevertheless, the current state of research on emotions and their effects on strategic decision-making is fragmented and inconsistent. Therefore, this paper presents a narrative literature review that aims to bring some structure into current research and to advance an agenda for a future research on emotions in the strategic decision-making context. Based on cognitive appraisal theory and affective events theory this review focuses on organizational and individual antecedents for the development of emotions in the strategic decision-making context as well as on the effects of emotions on the strategic decision-making process. The paper concludes with a conceptual framework that summarizes the findings of this review and indicates possible directions for future research.