Shopping Context and Consumers' Mental Representation of Complex Shopping Trip Decision Problems

Depending on the shopping context, consumers may develop different mental representations of complex shopping trip decision problems to help them interpret the decision situation that they face and evaluate alternative courses of action. To investigate these mental representations and how they vary across contexts, the authors propose a causal network structure that allows for a formal representation of how context-specific benefits requirements affect consumers’ evaluation of decision alternative attributes. They empirically test hypotheses derived from the framework, using data on consumers’ mental representations of a complex shopping trip decision problem across four shopping contexts that differ in terms of opening hour restrictions and shopping purpose, and find support for the proposed structure and hypotheses.retailing;consumer decision-making;context effects;mental representations;shopping trip decisions

Leaving teaching in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium: a duration analysis

This paper aims at a better understanding of the factors influencing the decision of young graduates who entered teaching to stay in that profession. The field of research covers secondary education teachers in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium. The data analysed comes from an administrative database containing historical records of 50,000 individuals who started teaching between 1973 and 1996. The analysis is carried out assuming a proportional hazard model and using the discrete- time method initiated by Prentice and Gloecker (1978). One of the main results is that the risk of exit is dramatically more important during the first periods of employment. That this risk tends also to increase over time suggesting that drop-out among young recruits is higher now than it was in the past. Location and labour market conditions seem to be of little impact. The risk of exit is the same in rural and urban areas and across provinces wherein unemployment rates vary dramatically. Finally, the significant deterioration of pay conditions (in relative terms) since the mid-80's has had no significant impact on the risk of exit. Of greater importance are supply-side (organisational) elements like the level of centralisation of recruitment decisions or the level of asymmetry between tenure and non-tenure personnel regarding job protection, access to full-time positionsubliminal extant Smith economagic gmm

Leaving teaching in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium: a duration analysis

This paper aims at a better understanding of the factors influencing the decision of young graduates who entered teaching to stay in that profession. The field of research covers secondary education teachers in the French-Speaking Community of Belgium. The data analysed comes from an administrative database containing historical records of 50,000 individuals who started teaching between 1973 and 1996. The analysis is carried out assuming a proportional hazard model and using the discrete- time method initiated by Prentice and Gloecker (1978). One of the main results is that the risk of exit is dramatically more important during the first periods of employment. That this risk tends also to increase over time suggesting that drop-out among young recruits is higher now than it was in the past. Location and labour market conditions seem to be of little impact. The risk of exit is the same in rural and urban areas and across provinces wherein unemployment rates vary dramatically. Finally, the significant deterioration of pay conditions (in relative terms) since the mid-80's has had no significant impact on the risk of exit. Of greater importance are supply-side (organisational) elements like the level of centralisation of recruitment decisions or the level of asymmetry between tenure and non-tenure personnel regarding job protection, access to full-time positionLeaving Teaching, Duration Analysis, Analysis of Education

SWEtaxben: A Swedish Tax/Benefit Micro Simulation Model and an Evaluation of a Swedish Tax Reform

The purpose of SWEtaxben is to evaluate the impact of changes in the tax/benefit systems on households as well as the central governmental budget. Relating to the micro simulation literature this model can be labeled a static micro simulation model with behavioral changes. This behavioral change takes two different forms and use two different types of models; first binary models that describe mobility in/out from non-work states such as old age pension, disability, unemployment, long term sickness and second models that describe change in working hours and welfare participation. Thus, apart from the choice to work or not to work, working hours conditional on working as well as welfare participation are treated as endogenous variables. As an application the model is used to evaluate the recent Swedish "make work pay" reform, effective from 2007 and further reinforced in 2008 and 2009. The key characteristic of this reform is an in-work tax credit and decreased state tax rate. Simulations performed by SWEtaxben show increased working hours at both the intensive as well as extensive margin. The tax decrease together with dynamic changes results in a strong increase in household's incomes but also a reduction in income inequality. However, even considering the increase in hours of work, the reform is far from being self-financed.micro simulation, tax-benefit system, in-work tax credit reform

Shopping Context and Consumers' Mental Representation of Complex Shopping Trip Decision Problems

Depending on the shopping context, consumers may develop different mental representations of complex shopping trip decision problems to help them interpret the decision situation that they face and evaluate alternative courses of action. To investigate these mental representations and how they vary across contexts, the authors propose a causal network structure that allows for a formal representation of how context-specific benefits requirements affect consumers’ evaluation of decision alternative attributes. They empirically test hypotheses derived from the framework, using data on consumers’ mental representations of a complex shopping trip decision problem across four shopping contexts that differ in terms of opening hour restrictions and shopping purpose, and find support for the proposed structure and hypotheses

Opposing effects of reward and punishment on human vigor

The vigor with which humans and animals engage in a task is often a determinant of the likelihood of the task’s success. An influential theoretical model suggests that the speed and rate at which responses are made should depend on the availability of rewards and punishments. While vigor facilitates the gathering of rewards in a bountiful environment, there is an incentive to slow down when punishments are forthcoming so as to decrease the rate of punishments, in conflict with the urge to perform fast to escape punishment. Previous experiments confirmed the former, leaving the latter unanswered. We tested the influence of punishment in an experiment involving economic incentives and contrasted this with reward related behavior on the same task. We found that behavior corresponded with the theoretical model; while instantaneous threat of punishment caused subjects to increase the vigor of their response, subjects’ response times would slow as the overall rate of punishment increased. We quantitatively show that this is in direct contrast to increases in vigor in the face of increased overall reward rates. These results highlight the opposed effects of rewards and punishments and provide further evidence for their roles in the variety of types of human decisions

Moroccan tax potential: Econometric analysis through the tax effort

Abstract. This paper aims to analyse the Moroccan tax potential compared to a sample of countries (panel), relying on the tax effort concept, wich allows isolating the part of the government public levying. It is an international study, using a panel data (25 countries-26 years). The result of econometrics estimations shows the positive effect of the GDP per capita, the openness degree of the economy, the monetization degree and the part of industrial Added Value on the public potential while the part of agricultural Added Value had a negative impact. Analyzing the tax effort, we find that Morocco had a negative effort between 1990 and 2004. But, since 2005, the policies pursued after the reform helped reverse the trend to achieve a positive effort. It means that Morocco exploits all his fiscal resources from the standard of the sample.Keywords. Tax burden, Tax potential, Tax effort, Structural factors, Panel.JEL. E62, G28, H21, C50

New Insights into Conditional Cooperation and Punishment from a Strategy Method Experiment

This paper introduces new experimental designs to enrich understanding of conditional cooperation and punishment in public good games. The key to these methods is to elicit complete contribution or punishment profiles using the strategy method. It is found that the selfish bias in conditional cooperation is made significantly worse when other players contribute more unequally. Contingent punishment strategies are found to increase with decreasing contributions by the target player and also increasing contributions by a third player. "Antisocial" punishments are not directed specifically toward high contributors, but may be motivated by pre-emptive retaliation against punishment a player expects to incur.conditional cooperation, selfish bias, punishment, public good experiment, strategy method

Where Has The Currency Gone? And Why? The Underground Economy And Personal Income Tax Evasion In The U.S., 1970-2008

Unaccounted for currency in the U.S. is argued to reflect the presence of widespread income tax evasion. This empirical study seeks to identify determinants of the underground economy in the U.S. in the form of federal personal income tax evasion over the period 1970-2008. In this study, we use the most recent data available on personal income tax evasion, data that are derived from the General Currency Ratio Model and measured in the form of the ratio of unreported AGI (adjusted gross income) to reported AGI. Other studies of federal income tax evasion for the U.S. are dated and do not use data this current. It is found that personal income tax evasion was an increasing function of the maximum marginal federal personal income tax rate, the percentage of federal personal income tax returns characterized by itemized deductions, and unpopular military engagements, in this case, the War in Iraq, and a decreasing function of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (during its first two years of being implemented), the ratio of the tax free interest rate yield on high grade municipals to the interest rate yield on ten year Treasury notes (as a measure of the incentive effect of a better return to tax avoidance, which is legal), and higher audit rates of filed federal income tax returns (as a measure of risk from tax evasion) by IRS personnel