Die Auswirkungen von Neid auf individuelle Leistungen: Ergebnisse einer Panelanalyse

Relative income differences are likely to lead to envy within a reference group. Envy in turn influences social behavior and individual performance. While positional concerns are apparent in daily life, empirical evidence is rare in the economic literature. This paper investigates the impact of the relative income position on individuals’ performance or productivity. As ?performance“ is difficult to measure we turn to soccer players whose performance has been well documented. The broad sample covers eight seasons of the German premier soccer league (Bundesliga) between 1995 and 2004, and includes 1040 players, a salary proxy and several performance variables. The results show that player performance is strongly affected by relative income position. A disadvantage in the relative income position reduces productivity. The larger the income differences within a team, the stronger are the effects of positional concern. Team composition also significantly affects behaviour.     

Reducing integrins improves the quality of fly life

Integrins are cell surface receptors that mediate adhesion to the extracellular matrix. In this Perspective, we focus on the recent finding that a decrease in the levels of integrins yields fruit flies that retain youthful mobility as they age and display an increased mean life span. We discuss how the reduction of integrin activity might lead to the observed changes.     

What Shapes Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes? Evidence from Multicultural European Countries*

Objectives. Considerable evidence suggests that enforcement efforts cannot fully explain the high degree of tax compliance. To resolve this puzzle of tax compliance, several researchers have argued that citizens' attitudes toward paying taxes, defined as tax morale, helps to explain the high degree of tax compliance. However, most studies have treated tax morale as a black box, without discussing which factors shape it. Additionally, the tax compliance literature provides little empirical research that investigates attitudes toward paying taxes in Europe. Methods. Thus, this article is unique in its examination of citizen tax morale within three multicultural European countries, Switzerland, Belgium, and Spain, a choice that allows far more detailed examination of the impact of culture and institutions using data sets from the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey. Results. The results indicate the tendency that cultural and regional differences affect tax morale. Conclusion. The findings suggest that higher legitimacy for political institutions leads to higher tax morale.     

Auswirkungen von Macht auf das ��berleben in Extremsituationen: Ein Vergleich der Titanic und Lusitania Schiffskatastrophen

Comparing the Titanic and Lusitania disaster the impact of financial and physical power as well as the emergence of social norms on survival during life-and-death situations is analyzed. Despite the fact that some maritime disasters have become famous, a quantitative understanding of survival in life-and-death situations is still lacking. In a quasi-natural experiment multivariate probit estimations are conducted based on publicly available data. The paper suggests that in life-and-death situations differences in time restrictions are crucial. When time is scarce individual self-interested fight-or-flight behavior will predominate and result in a stronger competition for survival. In contrast, altruism and adherence to social norms emerge when there is sufficient time to reflect on the event and circumstances: Social norms require time to evolve, and they loose against physical strength in a shorter window of opportunity.     

The importance of key celebrity characteristics for customer segmentation by age and gender: Does beauty matter in professional football?

This paper examines through the lens of sport whether male and female customers as well as differently aged customers focus on different celebrity characteristics and whether they are influenced by celebrities’ facial attractiveness. Drawing on psychological and sociological theories like attachment theory, social role theory of gender, or social norm theory as well as on the academic literature on celebrity endorsement in general, we develop several hypotheses regarding how a fan’s age and gender affect the importance of key characteristics of football stars—namely experience, personality, exemplary behavior, and skills. Using a proprietary dataset that combines archival data concerning professional football players and clubs with survey data of more than 2100 football fans, we find evidence that female fans attach more importance to a player’s personality and behavior while male fans seem to focus on experience and skills. We further find that when fans get older, the importance of a player’s behavior and experience increases. Moreover, our results show that the facial attractiveness of players clearly influences fan perceptions. Our results contribute to existing research on customer segmentation by providing a more differentiated picture of the effects of key celebrity characteristics on different customers.     

Volunteering,pro-environmental attitudes and norms

In the spirit of previous work in the compliance literature (e.g., tax, littering), we investigate whether environmental social norms affect volunteering in environmental organizations. Using two ‘environmental morale’ variables as indirect measures, we analyze the impact of social norms on the incidence of unpaid work in environmental organizations. In addition, we test whether violation of a specific environmental norm initiates a conditional cooperation response. We explore a large individual data set covering 32 countries from both Western and Eastern Europe, and extend the number of countries investigated to test the robustness of the relationship at the macro level. Our results indicate a strong positive relationship between the proxies for environmental social norms and volunteering in environmental organizations. The relationship persists despite our various robustness checks.     

ASN-minimax double sampling plans for variables

X be a continuous quality characteristic, with one-sided lower specification limit, having either normal distribution with known σ or exponential distribution. We report on an algorithm allowing the calculation of the so-called ASN-Minimax plan. This plan has minimal maximal average sample size among all double sampling plans for variables that obey the classical two-points-condition on the operating characteristic. We give examples and tables of the ASN-Minimax plans in the normal as well as in the exponential case. Received: March 20, 2000; revised version: January 22, 2001     

Financial Hardship and Emergency Relief in Victoria

Abstract

The existence and provision of emergency relief remains one of the more contentious aspects of poverty relief in Australia. This is largely due to a fundamental difference of opinion within government and the welfare sector about how to best tackle the financial hardship being experienced by people in need. Some contend that emergency relief should be expanded and better funded by the Commonwealth, whereas others believe it should be discontinued altogether and replaced by more generous social welfare payments. This debate continues unresolved for a number of reasons, including a lack of reliable and comprehensive data on who uses emergency relief in Australia and why. This paper reports on a State-wide investigation undertaken of emergency relief use in Victoria between 2007 and 2008. It has found that existing social welfare recipients—especially those on the disability support pension, parenting payment, and Newstart allowance—are the main users of emergency relief, who are living in households headed by a single adult, and forced to rent housing in the private sector. A disaggregation of the findings over both time and spatial regions of Victoria suggests that the level of need is not uniform. Several recommendations are offered to address the financial hardship that some people living in differing parts of Victoria face on an ongoing basis.