Adam Hoffer, Rejeana Gvillo, William Shughart and Michael Thomas
The purpose of this paper is to identify how consumption of 12 goods – alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, items sold at vending machines, purchases of food away from home, cookies…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to identify how consumption of 12 goods – alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, items sold at vending machines, purchases of food away from home, cookies, cakes, chips, candy, donuts, bacon, and carbonated soft drinks – varies across the income distribution by calculating their income-expenditure elasticites.
Design/methodology/approach
Data on 22,681 households from 2009-2012 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Consumer Expenditure Survey were used. The data were analyzed using ordinary least squares regressions and Cragg’s double hurdle model which integrates a binary model to determine the decision to consume and a truncated normal model to estimate the effects for conditional (y>0) consumption.
Findings
Income had the greatest effect on expenditures for alcohol (0.314), food away from home (0.295), and fast food (0.284). A one percentage-point increase in income (approximately $428 at the mean) translated into a 0.314 percentage-point increase in spending on alcoholic beverages (approximately $1 annually at the mean). Income had the smallest influence on tobacco expenditures (0.007) and donut expenditures (−0.009).
Research limitations/implications
Percentage of a household’s discretionary budget spent on the studied goods falls substantially as income gets larger. Policies targeting the consumption of such goods will disproportionately impact lower income households.
Originality/value
This is the first manuscript to calculate income-expenditure elasticities for the goods studied. The results allow for a direct analysis of targeted consumption policy on household budgets across the income distribution.
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David Wille, Adam Hoffer and Stephen Matteo Miller
The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of small-business lending following the recession.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the status of small-business lending following the recession.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors survey the literature and analyze recent surveys of small-business lending.
Findings
The results reinforce the importance of owner equity as a primary source of small-business financing. In addition, the authors find that small firms have been seeking and obtaining less capital since the 2008 financial crisis.
Research limitations/implications
The findings about the main sources of small-business financing will be informative when formulating financial regulation.
Social implications
The available evidence suggests that new regulation of the financial services industry may be restricting access to products that small-business owners rely on and may adversely affect small banks.
Originality/value
The authors offer the most recent analysis of small-business financing, focusing on changes that may have been caused by the recession and major financial regulations.
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This study aims to examine individuals' tendency to strictly follow their own signal while ignoring predecessors' decisions when making decisions under varying degrees of…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine individuals' tendency to strictly follow their own signal while ignoring predecessors' decisions when making decisions under varying degrees of uncertainty.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a controlled laboratory experiment, the authors separate the follow-own-signal behavior from other types of behavior such as Bayes consistent or herd-like (i.e. follow-the-majority) behavior.
Findings
As the authors systemically increase the degree of uncertainty in the information environment, participants are increasingly more likely to act only on their own signal. This suggests that financial decisions that are made under highly uncertain market conditions may be more signal revealing, and hence, may lead to better information aggregation than previously thought. The authors also find that as uncertainty increases, participants are more likely to switch in and out of this behavior, suggesting that behavior under highly uncertain conditions may also be more random and complex.
Originality/value
The authors are the first to examine how uncertainty affects the follow-own-signal behavior. The authors also offer potential testable empirical implications, such as an increase in contrarian investing, home bias, and own-company ownership under times of increased uncertainty or in more uncertain markets.
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To expand understandings of conflict, this chapter offers a detailed assessment of how exchange is enacted within local heroin markets. Addressing drug dealing and heroin users’…
Abstract
Purpose
To expand understandings of conflict, this chapter offers a detailed assessment of how exchange is enacted within local heroin markets. Addressing drug dealing and heroin users’ buying drugs for their peers (i.e., brokering), this research expands how illegal drug markets are commonly understood. A generalized framework is presented that highlights patterns of exchange.
Approach
Findings come from a 36-month study of a demographically diverse sample of 38 heroin users in Cleveland, OH. Methods involved open-ended, semi-structured interviewing and participant observation, conducted by the author and a team of graduate students.
Findings
Instead of framing exchange as either an economic or social act, this chapter shows how trade in heroin markets is often both. Here Gudeman’s (2001) dialectic between market and community is embodied in inter-subjectivities of traders, promoting both trust and conflict. In this context, conflict is the result of perpetual ambiguity all market participants can experience.
Research implications
Applying a blended notion of exchange as both social and economic offers new insight on conflict and expands its orientation beyond narratives of political economy. Here, in addition to the economics that often promote conflict, the social elements of exchange (e.g., reciprocity) are emphasized.
Originality
Research has understood conflicts in drug market operations through trader characteristics (e.g., poverty, race, class, privilege). This chapter emphasizes opportunities for conflict irrespective of individualized characteristics by outlining structural elements of exchange.
Javed Iqbal, Jeff Brdedthauer and Christopher S. Decker
This study aims to identify the determinants of housing affordability in an effort to inform policy.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to identify the determinants of housing affordability in an effort to inform policy.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use econometric analysis to determine variables that impact housing affordability in the USA.
Findings
The authors find that affordability depends on a number of demographic factors as well as physical characteristics of properties, including average age of homeowner, family size and average dwelling square footage. The authors also find that vacancy rates, increase in house price and median family income also have a significant impact on housing affordability. Additionally, the authors find that households with high-cost burdens are more vulnerable to mortgage rates and property taxes than those with moderate-cost burdens. As a result, changes in economic or policy variables tend to have a disproportionate impact on high-cost-burdened households, and they are more vulnerable to economic and policy shocks.
Originality/value
To date, the literature has not done a systematic investigation of housing affordability using detailed census data.
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Nazife Karamullaoglu and Ozlem Sandikci
This purpose of this paper is to explore how Western design, fashion and aesthetic styles influenced advertising practice in Turkey in the post-Second World War era. Specifically…
Abstract
Purpose
This purpose of this paper is to explore how Western design, fashion and aesthetic styles influenced advertising practice in Turkey in the post-Second World War era. Specifically, the authors focus on the key targets of the consumerist ideology of the period, women and discuss the representations of females in Turkish advertisements.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were analysed using a combination of social semiotic and compositional analysis methods. Compositional analysis focused on the formal qualities and design elements of the ads; social semiotic analysis sought to uncover their meaning potentials in relation to social, cultural, political and economic dynamics of the period. The advertisements of a prominent Turkish pasta brand, Piyale, published in the local adaptation of the American Life magazine, between 1956 and 1966, constitute the data set.
Findings
The analysis reveals that Piyale followed the stylistic and thematic trends prevailing in American and European advertisements at the time and crafted ads that constructed and communicated a Westernized image of Turkish women and families. In line with the cultural currents of the 1950s and 1960s, the ads emphasize patriarchal gender roles and traditional family values and address the woman as a consumer whose priority is to please her husband and take good care of her children.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the advertising history in non-Western contexts and provides an understanding of the influence Western advertising conventions and fashion trends had on developing country markets. The findings indicate that Western-inspired representations and gender roles dominated advertisements of local brands during the post-war period.
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Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American…
Abstract
Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.
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Although many employers continue to adopt various forms of worker participation or employee involvement, expected positive gains often fail to materialize. One explanation for the…
Abstract
Although many employers continue to adopt various forms of worker participation or employee involvement, expected positive gains often fail to materialize. One explanation for the weak or altogether missing performance effects is that researchers rely on frameworks that focus almost exclusively on contingencies related to the workers themselves or to the set of tasks subject to participatory processes. This study is premised on the notion that a broader examination of the employment relationship within which a worker participation program is embedded reveals a wider array of factors impinging upon its success. I integrate labor relations theory into existing insights from the strategic human resource management literature to advance an alternative framework that additionally accounts for structures and processes above the workplace level – namely, the (potentially implicit) contract linking employees to the organization and the business strategies enacted by the latter. The resulting propositions suggest that the performance-enhancing impact of worker participation hinges on the presence of participatory or participation-supporting structures at all three levels of the employment relationship. I conclude with implications for participation research.