Geographic location or experience: Using PRISM to understand how people seek flood risk information

Flooding is increasing worldwide, and with climate change, people need help understanding these changing conditions and that their flood risk may also change. This study extends the planned risk information seeking model (PRISM) into the flood risk domain and examines the antecedents that explain flood risk information seeking behavior. Using a survey reflective of the population in the state of Texas (N = 1079), this study includes an operationalization of risk perception specific to the complexity of floods and explores two key moderators in the PRISM model. Findings suggest that using PRISM to elaborate flood risk information seeking behaviors explains 48% of the variance in information seeking intent and 37% of the variance in affective risk perception. Using multigroup modeling, the findings also reveal that simply living in an area at high risk for floods does not significantly impact any relationships in the model. However, having experience with flooding increases the strength of risk perception paths—in particular, perceived probability of flood risk—and better explains flood risk information seeking. Suggestions for how to use communication to influence risk perceptions and information seeking, as well as future directions for research, are also discussed.     

Demography and COVID-19: risks,responses and impacts

Journal of Population Research -     

ON THE COST OF NEW ISSUES OF COMMON STOCK: AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTANT GROWTH MODEL

Expansion decisions by corporate managements are importantly influenced by their perceptions of the firm's cost of capital and especially the cost of common equity. Their decision making is then influenced by the common perception that new issues of common stock are more costly than retained earnings because of the flotation costs inherent in new issues. Thus a rate of expansion that requires new issues is downgraded in decision making. In this paper the authors show that in actuality new issues of common equity may be less costly than retained earnings. Thus different decision-making implications are clearly involved.     

REVEALED PERFORMANCES: WORLDWIDE RANKINGS OF ECONOMISTS AND ECONOMICS DEPARTMENTS, 1990–2000

In this paper, I study the production of academic research by economics departments and economists. Worldwide rankings are provided based on both citations and publications. These rankings reveal a dominant position of the United States in the production of economics literature. Over time, however, the extent of this dominance is decreasing. (JEL: A10, A14)