The effect of product variety on purchase probability

Regarding the effect of product variety on purchase probability, there exist findings which demonstrate a positive effect of variety for small assortments and a negative effect of variety for large assortments. Despite these results, little evidence exists about the causal mechanism of this effect. We conduct a field study among German consumer electronics customers to investigate the previously proposed constructs of anticipated product utility, anticipated regret and evaluation costs. The results suggest that anticipated regret and evaluation costs play a powerful role in explaining the negative link between variety and purchase probability for high variety assortments. Anticipated product utility on the other hand serves to explain part of the positive causality for low variety assortments. The results obtained give rise to recommendations for the planning of assortments.

Do Donors Care About the Price of Giving? A Review of the Evidence,with Some Theory to Organise It

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - We study how donors decide about which charity to give to. To this end, we construct a theoretical model that clarifies...     

Sad and Lonely? Sad Mood Suppresses Facial Mimicry

The aim of the current study was to investigate the influence of happy and sad mood on facial muscular reactions to emotional facial expressions. Following film clips intended to induce happy and sad mood states, participants observed faces with happy, sad, angry, and neutral expressions while their facial muscular reactions were recorded electromyografically. Results revealed that after watching the happy clip participants showed congruent facial reactions to all emotional expressions, whereas watching the sad clip led to a general reduction of facial muscular reactions. Results are discussed with respect to the information processing style underlying the lack of mimicry in a sad mood state and also with respect to the consequences for social interactions and for embodiment theories.     

Allocation of seminar applicants

The allocation of seminar applicants is an important issue in educational planning, and each semester a university administration has to deal with this kind of problem. The task here is to reconcile the preferences and priorities of the students, professorships and the university administration itself. This paper shows that if the planning procedure is based on a simple selection strategy, the capacity utilization can be suboptimal; this result is evidenced by a simulation study. To remedy this deficit—and to justify the respective interests—we propose a mixed-integer goal programming approach for assigning students to seminar courses. In addition, we show that this problem can be reformulated into a linear one. All investigations in this paper are illustrated by a real-world application for the University of Hagen, Germany.     

The effects of coauthorship on the quality of financial research papers

This paper analyzes whether formal collaboration in terms of coauthorship enhances paper quality in financial research. Analyzing all papers presented at DGF annual meetings in the period from 1996 to 2005, we report the following major findings: First, we find superior paper quality of coauthored papers compared to single-authored papers. This holds true for two quality proxies, publication probability and publication quality (as measured by the original and the updated Jourqual rating). Second, the capability of scholars, measured by a citation measure derived from citations in Google Scholar, shows to be an additional important factor for explaining paper quality. Third, the employed methodology of a paper (e.g., empirical analysis, theoretical analysis) does not systematically affect paper quality. However, it is important to differentiate between empirical and theoretical papers. Whereas coauthorship shows to be a quality enhancing factor for empirical papers, this does not hold true for theoretical papers. Fourth, the origin of data is a crucial determinant of the publication success for empirical papers. In particular, papers which exclusively analyze data from Germany are published in less reputable journals.     

Incentives for students: effects of certificates and deadlines on student performance

This study examines the effects of certificates and deadlines on student performance. It exploits time lags in reforms of two similar degree programs at a business school, which create quasi-experimental settings. Students’ performance is found to increase if certificates are awarded to them early in their program. Deadlines to pass exams prevent them from submitting blank sheets to fail and resit exams. Both effects are stronger among average students compared to high-ability or low-ability students. These findings show that the policies that govern degree programs can create incentives for students to improve performance. It is important for universities to understand the behavioral implications of such policies when designing degree programs.     

The value of education among immigrants and non-immigrants and how this translates into educational aspirations: a comparison of four European countries

Starting out from the frequent empirical finding that immigrants exhibit higher educational aspirations than non-immigrants, we analyse the role of immigrants’ value of education, i.e. the subjective belief that education is beneficial for one’s life, in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations in four distinct institutional settings, comparing Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and England. While the first part of the analyses relates to how immigrants differ from non-immigrants in the value they assign to education, the second part centres on country differences considering immigrant integration policies and education systems as crucial factors. A third part relates to the links between the value of education and educational aspirations to gain some insight into how the value of education may contribute to educational decisions. Analyses are based on longitudinal data of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Survey in Four European Countries (CILS4EU). While results show that immigrants assign a higher value to education, the value of education does play a minor role in idealistic and realistic educational aspirations. The results of the country comparison are rather ambivalent, including very weak support for the argument that immigrants strive for education to a higher extent in countries with less favourable conditions.     

Apprenticeships in homelessness: a quantitative study

Training and education are acknowledged routes into employment, but they also entail risks of contemporaneous financial loss, and economic and social insecurity. This paper explores the specific risk of homelessness among apprentices and trainees, drawing on a survey conducted in South Australia in 2013. Housing has been largely overlooked by studies of the wellbeing of apprentices and trainees, and by explorations of the drivers of attrition rates that continue to plague Australia's training schemes. The data examined here reveal the high proportion of income that trainees spent on their housing; home moves motivated by the desire to reduce rental or mortgage payments; and a small proportion of learners who experienced periods of homelessness. Closer statistical analysis reveals that apprentices and trainees with past experiences of homelessness were disproportionately likely to be pursuing courses in retail and personal services, or in transport. They were also likely to be receiving Youth Allowance or AUSTUDY payments. We recommend better recording of apprentices' and trainees' housing situations and greater use of administrative data to improve our understanding and reduce the incidence of homelessness among this population.     

Kunuk took it to the streets of Greenland: single-issue protests in a young online democracy

Single-issue protests and online mobilization have proliferated in the wake of social media. While significant ground has been covered regarding the changing possibilities for mobilization, the question of how specific circumstances condition the political impact of online mobilization and public protests has received much less attention. During the last couple of years, Greenlanders have increasingly employed Facebook to mobilize the populace and arrange public demonstrations with noteworthy results. Arguing that single-issue protests cannot be separated from the issues they are concerned with, the paper explores how a single and potential trivial political issue – a new parliament building – developed from a prestige project supported by a nearly unanimous Parliament into a public-contested issue and a failed political project. The paper invokes Actor-Network Theory to account for the trajectory of the issue and how it was translated along the way as actors built and broke alliances. The concepts of mobilizing structures, opportunity structures and framing processes are employed to shed light on the conditions of possibilities for the emergence, development and impact of the protest against the parliament building. Finally, the paper discusses social media’s impact on the image of politically engaged Inuit and on the power relations between citizens and parliament in Greenland. This discussion is of paramount importance as Greenlanders are struggling with their colonial heritage while they are constructing Greenlandic democracy.