Obesity of politicians and corruption in Ukraine in 2000–2020– Reply

We collected 469 frontal face images of Ukrainian cabinet ministers who were in office in 2000–2020. For each image, the minister's body mass index was estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The time series of median estimated body mass index of cabinet ministers co-moves over time with two existing measures of corruption – World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, and the discrepancy between the quantity of luxury wristwatches exported from Switzerland to Ukraine (reported by Swiss statistics) and the corresponding quantity imported by Ukraine from Switzerland (reported by Ukrainian statistics).     

Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.     

Does local government competition aggravate haze pollution? A new perspective of factor market distortion

Haze pollution has become a new threat to China's sustainable development, but it may be that local government behaviour can play an important role in the prevention and control of pollutants. A dynamic spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study the relationship between local government competition and haze pollution. To further explore the indirect impact of factor market distortion on haze pollution and control potential endogeneity problems, a newly developed intermediary effect model that incorporates the characteristics of the generalized method of moments (GMM) is utilized to explore how factor market distortion indirectly affects haze pollution. The research results show that regional haze pollution in China is characterized by significant spatial correlation, and local government competition has a positive impact on haze pollution; that is, local government competition exacerbates haze pollution. In general, local government competition not only directly leads to an increase in haze pollution but also further intensifies it by distorting the local factor market, and the intermediary role of factor market distortion is approximately 7.04%. The results of the regional inspection found that competition among local governments in the eastern region did not lead to haze pollution, and distortion of the factor market did not exist as an intermediary effect. However, both direct and intermediary effects are significant in the central and western regions. Therefore, an official performance appraisal system that includes ecological constraints should be established to guide the benign transformation of local government competition, and an environmental management mechanism must be developed for joint prevention and control to reduce haze pollution. In addition, the free flow of factors and marketization are equally important.     

Are people in the SADC region willing to pay more tax to fund public healthcare?

ABSTRACT

For Africa to develop and achieve sustainable development, African governments have to prioritise spending on public health. However, the current spending data shows that health spending is a continuing struggle for African countries. Many researchers have the view that African governments have to collect more tax to spend enough on public healthcare. The question here is what extent people are willing to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare? Employing a multilevel regression model on Afrobarometer survey data, this paper examined to what extent individual and country level factors influence people’s willingness to pay more tax to increase spending on public healthcare in 12 Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states. This study found that peoples’ trust in their government is an important determinant of willingness to pay more tax, while factors such as the country’s quality of democracy, economic condition, and current per capita health expenditure have no influence.     

MODELING SOVEREIGN RISKS: FROM A HYBRID MODEL TO THE GENERALIZED DENSITY APPROACH

Motivated by the European sovereign debt crisis, we propose a hybrid sovereign default model that combines an accessible part taking into account the evolution of the sovereign solvency and the impact of critical political events, and a totally inaccessible part for the idiosyncratic credit risk. We obtain closed‐form formulas for the probability that the default occurs at critical political dates in a Markovian setting. Moreover, we introduce a generalized density framework for the hybrid default time and deduce the compensator process of default. Finally, we apply the hybrid model and the generalized density to the valuation of sovereign bonds and explain the significant jumps in long‐term government bond yields during the sovereign crisis.     

Lobbying as a potent political marketing tool for firm performance: A closer look

This study endeavors to enhance political marketing literature about the impact of lobbying on firm performance. Our sample is composed of 140 U.S. firms and spans the years 2007–2014 to encompass the 2007–2009 recession and the subsequent recovery period. Our findings indicate that lobbying expenses positively contribute to firm performance. Also, government contracts in both ways, dollar amount and number of government contracts, act as mediators between lobbying expenses and firm performance. In addition, organizational slack moderates the relationship between lobbying expenses and government contracts. The managerial implications suggest that lobbying expenses can be leveraged as a potent tool for firm performance. Firms with larger lobbying efforts acquired both, higher dollar amounts and a greater number of government contracts.     

Using the Pack‐and‐a‐Half Rule to Eliminate Backroom Inventories in Retail Operations

In the retail industry, backroom inventories are typically associated with higher labor costs and greater operational complexity. Thus, retailers look for ways to eliminate backroom inventories. A heuristic used for this purpose is the pack‐and‐a‐half rule which suggests that the shelf space allocated for a product should be at least 50% larger than the case pack quantity in which the product is delivered. Despite its popularity among retailers, the pack‐and‐a‐half rule has been ignored in the academic literature. We introduce the pack‐and‐a‐half rule, assess its impact on a retailer's profits, identify cost, demand, and product characteristics driving this impact, and propose a modification. Based on an analysis of data obtained from a retailer on 1,986 SKUs in 20 categories, we find that the pack‐and‐a‐half rule decreases a retailer's profits, on average, by 10% when applied uniformly across all SKUs. Further, this decrease is significantly affected by product depth, product width, demand elasticity, case pack quantity, and inventory carrying cost. Finally, we develop a set of modifications based on these variables where the pack‐and‐a‐half rule is applied selectively and in a stepwise fashion. These modifications limit the decrease in a retailer's profits to a range between 6% and 7%.     

经济转型条件下的会计监管模式

目前，我国正处在经济转型过程当中，不完全改革引起了时而出现的宏观经济不稳定、就业得不到保证、越来越大的竞争压力、社会不公平的增加、难以削减的贫困以及严重的腐败问题，都与转型期的特点密切相关。而现代企业制度产生的双元控制主体的利益不一致、信息不对称，造成了现实中会计信息严重失真，影响了资本市场的有效运行。因此，引入以“政府为主导的会计监管模式”，可从源头上防范和治理腐败，保障现代企业制度的顺利实施，提高会计信息质量，维护市场经济秩序。     

略论法治政府的价值理念

法治政府作为一种理论主张和政府模式是从近代开始的，法治政府是法治国家对政府的要求，是指政府时刻受到法律约束和支配的法制建设状态，其基本特征和价值取向是有限政府、服务政府、透明政府、诚信政府、统一政府和责任政府。