Search results

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the minimum wage law is deleterious to the unskilled, to the young and to members of minority groups.

The main method used in this paper is the logical application of basic supply and demand economic analysis.

The authors found that when a minimum wage of any given level is imposed, those with productivities below that level are at great risk of unemployment. For example, with a minimum wage of $10 per hour, those who can only produce at the rate of $1‐$7, $8, or $9 per hour are likely to become unemployed. Similarly, if the level is raised to, say, $100, then even people with productivity levels of $8 or $90 per hour will lose their jobs.

More effort should be made to ascertain who it is that gains from this law, if it is not the poor and unskilled. Attention should be focused on labor unions in this regard.

The practical implication of this research is that the minimum wage should be repealed.

Present public attitudes, however, overwhelmingly support this legislative enactment. But this is based on economic illiteracy. The public needs to be educated in basic economics.

This paper, if its implications are implemented, will have great value for all those who wish the unemployment rate to be radically reduced.

It is not surprising that the dominant cognitive frame through which most audiences view climate change is that of an environmental problem. However, this messaging strategy has proven susceptible to counter-attacks, defensing processing, and other cognitive biases. As such, many environmental advocates are switching gears. From Barack Obama to Pope Francis, the environment-as-public-health-concern narrative is increasingly found in climate change messages. This strategy involves making the abstract issue of climate change more concrete by tying it to negative health impacts, like asthma, heat-related illness, and the spread of disease. Understanding why and for whom this strategy is persuasive, particularly in a social media context where users often encounter persuasive climate change messages, can help advance theory and practice.

The purpose of this chapter is two-fold: 1.) Test the effects of climate message frame (damage to nature or damage to public health), message source (liberal or conservative organization), and the use of visual human exemplars (present or absent) in social media messages; and, 2.) Assess the predictive utility of different conceptual frameworks (personification, construal level theory, and moral foundations theory) as explanatory mechanisms for persuasive social media climate message effects. The results of a nation-wide experiment reveal that the use of visual exemplars matters when climate change is framed as an environmental problem, but otherwise message frame, source, and visual exemplar use have little impact on policy attitudes. Further analyses demonstrated that multiple conceptual mechanisms related to the aforementioned theories help explain social media effects on climate change attitudes.

The purpose of this study is to examine the association between revenue-based earnings management in the periods immediately before and after firms’ initial public offerings (IPOs) and regulatory scrutiny by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) during review of IPO firms’ registration statements.

This paper uses conditional discretionary revenues (Stubben, 2010) as its measure of earnings management, and revenue recognition comments delivered by the SEC as its measure of regulatory scrutiny. The authors use ordinary least squares regression (OLS) models, as well as a supplemental count model, to assess the association between conditional discretionary revenues and revenue recognition comments delivered by the SEC.

This study finds evidence of a positive association between earnings management measures in the pre-IPO period and the number of revenue recognition comments received by those firms during the SEC’s review. Furthermore, this study provides evidence that greater numbers of comments are associated with declining earnings management measures in the post-IPO period. However, the evidence suggests that these associations apply only to income-decreasing earnings management.

This paper extends the IPO earnings management literature by using conditional discretionary revenues as the measure of earnings management, and contributes to a nascent research stream in the accounting literature by investigating the SEC’s comment letter process and its association with, and impact upon, earnings management in the IPO process.

Academic entrepreneurship is extremely relevant in knowledge and technology transfer (KTT). The purpose of this study is to provide insights into phase-specific constraints and needs impacting scientists’ engagement in entrepreneurial activities at public research institutions.

In an exploratory case study, 40 qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with German academic entrepreneurs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Based on the data analysis, an ideal-typical founding process with phase-specific barriers and needs was identified. Many constraints and associated needs occur in more than one phase, including the lack of knowledge, the demand for exchange formats, the lack of time and financial resources, institutionalized return options, the lack of human resources and the lack of incentives.

Given its exploratory approach, this study has limitations regarding its generalization; however, the presented findings may induce further research and in-depth analysis on this matter.

Several recommendations for action are provided for each phase of the founding process to strengthen the (entrepreneurial) transfer in research organizations. Generally, a pioneering indicator of excellence in the science system should be developed to promote transfer next to publications.

The study contributes to existing literature on determinants of academic entrepreneurship by indicating the phase-specific constraints and needs throughout the founding process and discussing those needs in the theoretical context of current societal and technological mega-trends.

This paper offers an approach for outlining the main dimensions surrounding clusters in three areas of knowledge: economic geography, strategic management and operations management, the first being considered its natural field of knowledge.

The work was developed using the citation analysis technique as applied to a database of 627 articles and 22,980 citations, taken from 15 important journals in the areas selected.

The results proved that the theoretical and conceptual bases are unique to each of the areas studied and that they have few topics in common between them. They are complementary, however, and this facilitates their reconciliation.

The sample base, despite considering fairly influential periodicals in the areas of knowledge selected, can be considered to be a limitation.

Common themes and different areas of knowledge surrounding the cluster concept were identified; despite being considered “common”, a more detailed examination of their content reveals very different, but certainly complementary emphases, which makes it possible to reconcile the areas of knowledge.

This paper aims to address the ethical and social issues raised by economic development in a globalized world. It argues that development has not delivered economic wellbeing to all nations and peoples and questions the view of development as the main achievement by economics. It attempts to define what a just economy is and examines how economic justice can be achieved when the economic system is structurally unjust.

Purpose – Harnessing the advantage of mobile information technology (IT) solutions at the point of care and contributing to patients' safety by involving them.

Design/methodology/approach – International collaboration between specialists in health communication processes and information management and systems.

Methods used – Case studies, design science.

Findings – User-friendly portable IT applications going beyond documentation of patient records and administration require an understanding of complex communication processes between patients and the different caregivers. Home care increasingly faces structural deficits to be mitigated by integration of IT solutions. Platforms chosen in combination with services should be well established. How to implement this must be scrutinized by comprehensive research as initiated here. Preliminary results indicate potentials for novel mobile applications.

Practical implications – Contribution to increasing patients' safety by developing mobile solutions to support health care. Those may also contribute to cost savings in health care.

Social implications – Health care experiences an increasing significance for Western industrialized countries because of demographic developments. Care generally shifts from inpatient to outpatient settings; the global shortage of qualified nurses becomes even more prevailing. More support, among others by IT and enhanced interprofessional communication, is demanded for an improved quality and efficiency of care processes.

Originality/value – Mutual approach benefits from the partner's understanding of complex interactions among clinicians, health services, and patients: the ability to design, monitor, and evaluate research strategies integrating care (information) needs is invaluable when applying creative technology solutions within health care domain.

The research was undertaken to explore the role of the UK public library as a public sphere and the ways in which this role relates to the epistemic, community and political functions of public libraries.

A longitudinal, multi-location focus group approach was developed and deployed in three phases. Data were collected from 53 active public library users in a total of 24 focus groups conducted in eight different public library services in England and Scotland in 2015–2016 (Phase 1), 2016–17 (Phase 2) and 2017–18 (Phase 3). Data collected were transcribed and coded using NVivo 10- for thematic analysis.

The public library's role as public sphere aligns closely with its epistemic functions, adding a dimension to information services provision beyond access to “traditional” print and online sources. New information and knowledge emerge through the person-to-person interactions in public library space. Through such exchanges, the community function of public libraries is made evident, notably as a platform for citizens to participate actively in society, including its democratic processes.

Unlike much extant prior work on public library value dominated with accounts of societal and/or economic impact, w hich is frequently based on the analysis of quantitative data, here the fundamental epistemic value of public library services is demonstrated. This research also adds an important perspective to the domain of Information Society Studies where, to date, the place of the public library as public sphere has been treated as peripheral.

This study aims to develop two sentiment indices sourced from news stories and corporate disclosures of the firms in the National Stock Exchange NIFTY 50 Index by extracting sentiment polarity. Subsequently, the two indices would be compared for the predictive accuracy of the stock market and stock returns during the post-digitization period 2011–2018. Based on the findings this paper suggests various options for financial strategy.

The news- and disclosure-based sentiment indices are developed using sentiment polarity extracted from qualitative content from news and corporate disclosures, respectively, using qualitative analysis tool “N-Vivo.” The indices developed are compared for stock market predictability using quantitative regression techniques. Thus, the study is conducted using both qualitative data and tools and quantitative techniques.

This study shows that the investor is more magnetized to news than towards corporate disclosures though disclosures contain both qualitative as well as quantitative information on the fundamentals of a firm. This study is extended to sectoral indices, and the results show that specific sectoral news impacts sectoral indices intensely over market news. It is found that the market discounts information in disclosures prior to its release. As disclosures in quarterly statements are delayed information input, firms can use voluntary disclosures to reduce the communication gap with investors by using the internet. Managers would do so only when the stock price is undervalued and tend to ignore the market and the shareholder in other cases. Otherwise, disclosure sentiment attracts only long horizon traders.

Finance managers need to improve disclosure dependence on investors by innovative disclosure methodologies irrespective of the ruling market price. In this context, future studies on investor sentiment would be interesting as they need to capture man–machine interactions reflected in market sentiment showing the interplay of human biases with machine-driven decisions. The findings would be useful in developing the financial strategy for protecting firm value.

This study is unique in providing a comparative analysis of sentiment extracted from news and corporate disclosures for explaining the stock market direction and stock returns and contributes to the behavioral finance literature.

The purpose of this research is to comprehensively describe the legitimacy of the public library in the 21st century.

The research involved a comprehensive literature review using the Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database with keywords “Library” and “Legitimacy”, combined with citation searches and additional collections. In total, we analysed 159 research articles primarily from the 21st century, with some comparative analysis of pre-2,000 works. The final phase of the research investigated libraries’ legitimisation efforts across various dimensions, examining how they employ rhetoric and theories to maintain legitimacy amidst challenging circumstances.

Through this research process, five dimensions of public library legitimacy emerged; (1) Democracy, (2) Culture and History, (3) Communication and Education, (4) Economy and (5) Librarianship, with the most diverse literature being related to democracy, and its subsections intellectual freedom, neutrality, the public sphere, social justice and social capital.

The outcome of our results indicates that the evolving legitimacy of the public library in the 21st century has become multifaceted, compared to the elements of legitimacy in the 20th century. Contemporary public libraries can continue to utilise the dimensions of legitimacy identified in this study and can reconstruct their legitimacy accordingly.