Effects of institutions on ecological attitudes and behaviour of consumers in a developing Asian country: the case of the Philippines

This study examines the effects of institutions emanating from the social environment on ecologically sustainable consumer behaviour in a developing country context. Drawing on the behavioural perspective model of consumer choice and institutional theory, this study argues that the regulative, normative and cognitive dimensions of the institutional environment play critical roles in shaping the pro‐environmental attitudes called eco‐attitudes of consumers. In turn, eco‐attitudes positively influence the eco‐behaviour of consumers. The structural equation modelling of data from a survey of 1045 consumers from the Philippines shows the significant and positive effects of the regulatory, normative and cognitive dimensions of the institutional environment on the eco‐attitudes of consumers, which in turn have strong positive influence on eco‐behaviour. The findings about the partial mediating role of eco‐attitudes offer a more nuanced explanation on how institutions explain the eco‐behaviour of consumers which is a topic that is less understood especially in a developing country context. The study highlights the theoretical, methodological, policy and future research implications of the findings.     

Quasi‐experimental Estimates of the Effect of Class Size on Achievement in Norway*

Using a comprehensive Norwegian administrative database, we exploit independent quasi‐experimental methods to estimate the effect of class size on student achievement at the end of lower‐secondary school. Identification based on maximum class‐size rules and population variation (and variations on these methods) give very similar estimates. We cannot reject that the class‐size effect is equal to zero, and can rule out effects as small as 1.5 percent of a standard deviation for a one‐student change in class size during three consecutive years.     

Early Retirement and Economic Incentives

In Norway, early retirement programmes have gradually reduced the retirement age from 67 to 62 for a majority of the labour force. Based on micro data for 1990 and 1992, we estimate a competing-risk model with three states: full retirement, partial retirement/part-time work and full-time work. We then use the estimated model in simulations to study how financial incentives can be strengthened to extend working life. Financial incentives, educational background and industry affiliation are found to influence retirement behaviour. For low and medium incomes, the tax system shifts the incentives heavily towards early retirement and, in particular, towards partial retirement combined with part-time work.     

Local adaption and central confusion: decentralized strategies for public service Lean implementation

There are a number of arguments for implementing public service Lean in a decentralized fashion, characterized by employee participation and local adaptions of the concept. This paper reports on a longitudinal case study of decentralized Lean implementation in a large Norwegian public service provider. The analysis points to unintended consequence of communication and co-ordination difficulties. The authors suggest ways of striking a reasonable balance between centralized and decentralized strategies of Lean implementation.     

Interrelated labor decisions of farm couples: a censored response analysis of off‐farm work

Farm couples' labor market responses are partly the discrete choice of entering the off‐farm labor market and partly the continuous choice of off‐farm working hours, given entry. Such a setting is interesting when examining the increasing occurrence of multiple job‐holdings among farmers in Western economies. Most existing analyses of off‐farm labor supply only model the decisions of the farmer, not the joint decisions of the farm couple. This article presents a framework for handling such interrelated discrete/continuous choices, involving also farm production and household consumption. The derived two‐equation sub‐model for husband/wife's censored labor responses is estimated from a 10‐year Norwegian panel data for 342 farms. The results agree to some extent with earlier studies, but are more informative because of the longer panels—which allows a more extensive examination of latent heterogeneity and behavioral persistence—because it provides cross‐effects in the spouses' labor supplies. The results show some interesting differences between how the independent variables influence the labor supply of operator and spouse. This is most evident for the cross‐effects of education, children, and wage rate. Overall, the results strongly support applying a panel‐censoring model that accounts for latent heterogeneity in this context.