Suchergebnisse

We construct a general axiomatic approach to measuring spatial concentration around a center or capital point of interest, a concept with wide applicability from urban economics, economic geography and trade, to political economy and industrial organization. By analogy with expected utility theory, we propose a basic axiom of independence (sub-group consistency) and continuity for a concentration order that ranks any two distributions relative to the capital point. We show that this axiom implies an expected influence representation of that order, conceptualizing concentration as an aggregation of the expected influence exerted by the capital on all points in the relevant space (or vice-versa). We then propose two axioms (monotonicity and rank invariance) and prove that they imply that the associated influence function must be a decreasing isoelastic function of the distance to the capital. We apply our index to measure the concentration of population around capital cities across countries and US states, and also in US metropolitan areas. We show its advantages over alternative measures, and explore its correlations with many economic and political variables of interest.

We construct a general axiomatic approach to measuring spatial concentration around a center or capital point of interest, a concept with wide applicability from urban economics, economic geography and trade, to political economy and industrial organization. By analogy with expected utility theory, we propose a basic axiom of independence (sub-group consistency) and continuity for a concentration order that ranks any two distributions relative to the capital point. We show that this axiom implies an expected influence representation of that order, conceptualizing concentration as an aggregation of the expected influence exerted by the capital on all points in the relevant space (or vice-versa). We then propose two axioms (monotonicity and rank invariance) and prove that they imply that the associated influence function must be a decreasing isoelastic function of the distance to the capital. We apply our index to measure the concentration of population around capital cities across countries and US states, and also in US metropolitan areas. We show its advantages over alternative measures, and explore its correlations with many economic and political variables of interest.

We examined how expected or unexpected costs affect restaurant customers' attitudes toward the dissemination of negative word-of-mouth (WOM) when service failure occurs. A 2 (customer punishment: expected and unexpected) × 3 (relationship type: encounter, pseudo, and intimate)
mixed factorial experimental design was adopted to examine the dissemination of negative WOM. The results indicated that service failure exerted significant and nonsignificant primary effects on expected punishment and relationship type, respectively. A significant interaction was observed
between expected punishment and both encounter and intimate relationship types, but not between expected punishment and the pseudo relationship type. In sum, expected punishment and relationship type influenced negative WOM.

A variety of statistical graphical models have been defined to represent the conditional independences underlying a random vector of interest. Similarly, many different graphs embedding various types of preferential independences, such as, for example, conditional utility independence and generalized additive independence, have more recently started to appear. In this paper, we define a new graphical model, called a directed expected utility network, whose edges depict both probabilistic and utility conditional independences. These embed a very flexible class of utility models, much larger than those usually conceived in standard influence diagrams. Our graphical representation and various transformations of the original graph into a tree structure are then used to guide fast routines for the computation of a decision problem's expected utilities. We show that our routines generalize those usually utilized in standard influence diagrams' evaluations under much more restrictive conditions. We then proceed with the construction of a directed expected utility network to support decision makers in the domain of household food security.

This paper has attempted to analyse certain influence aspects the global crisis has had on the Western Balkans countries, above all on Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and Montenegro. Our analysis focuses on events on stock exchanges, for which we have applied comparative analysis method and noticed that indexes at Western Balkans countries stock exchanges have significantly more fallen (from -46,09% to -73,86%) for the same period of time from 1 January 2008 until 20 August 2009 than indexes at leading world stock exchanges, which have fallen in the ratio of -25,00% to -35,59%. In addition, we have discovered that reinforcement of the global crisis has led to a notable capital withdraw in Western Balkans countries; investors have lost trust in banking and financial system, as well as to a number of other negative occurrences. The world crisis has proven to have had a rather strong influence on countries in this part of Europe, which is an additional issue for governments of certain countries in finalising transition process and quicker accession to the European Union (EU). Different countries have reacted in different ways and this paper aims at underlining some of the most important undertaken measures, as well as at assessing their potential effects. The paper consists of five parts. The introduction reviews global crisis phenomenon, emphasizing a great number of issues open to debate and dilemmas it has brought about, trying to discover answers to some of them within this paper. The second part has been devoted to the crisis cause influence and its development phases, not only in developed countries, but in Western Balkans countries as well. The third part analyses empiric data on indexes fluctuation at stock exchanges of developed and Western Balkans countries. Following the review of negative effects of the global crisis, the forth part deals with a short analysis of measures that governments of the respective Western Balkans countries have undertaken in fighting the crisis, so that we are able to sum up in the fifth part and try to draw the most important conclusions.

Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, some historical legacies of the communist system still influence individual political attitudes. This article explores how historical legacies influence individual political and geopolitical preferences in three Ukrainian cities. We focus on the effects of parental and individual CPSU membership over individual support for EU/NATO membership, on perceptions of the Soviet period for Ukraine, and on the perceived legitimacy of the 11 May 2014 "Donetsk People's Republic" independence referendum. Using survey data collected in Dnipro and Kharkiv in 2018, and in Mariupol in 2020, we show that (individual or parental) CPSU affiliation is positively correlated with pro-Western attitudes, indicating that many former members of the CPSU and their descendants have reoriented their geopolitical allegiances from East to West. Or, alternatively, that they are relatively politically adaptive and that their allegiance to communism wasn't fully solid in the first place.

AbstractWhat explains natives' attitudes towards immigrants in host countries? This paper argues that not only economic and cultural but also political threat perceptions influence attitude formation. Natives consider the political balance of power and calculate the potential political benefits of admitting immigrants. This is because expected in‐party members will affect the balance of power in their favour. Leveraging a conjoint experiment in the United States, this study explores whether an immigrant's expected party affiliation shapes native attitudes. The findings indicate that immigrants with defined party affiliations are favoured compared to non‐affiliated ones. Moreover, respondents favoured immigrants perceived as political allies and penalized those seen as rivals. Expected party affiliation is even a strong predictor of attitudes for natives with existing anti‐immigrant attitudes as they curbed their negativities and favoured certain party identities. Overall, results suggest the pivotal role of political considerations as well as the importance of studying unexplored factors in attitude formation on immigration.

The theory on the evolution of preferences deals with the endogenous formation of preference relations in strategic situations. It is related to the field of evolutionary game theory. In this book we analyze the role and the influence of general, possibly non-expected utility preferences in such an evolutionary setup. In particular, we demonstrate that preferences which diverge from von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility may potentially prove to be successful under evolutionary pressures.

AbstractThis study conducted two experiments to assess consumers' willingness to pay or the expected quality in response to different levels of contradictory contextual information (regarding price and quality) and the presence of anchors in the form of past price paid. First, the results show that the contextual information was decisive in the formation of reference prices that affect the willingness to pay. Second, the anchors did not influence the evaluation of the willingness to pay and the expected quality. And third, it was observed that the coherence of the contextual information (price–quality correlation) performs a moderating role in the relation between reference prices and expected quality. These results suggest that anchors are less important than contextual information in the evaluation process of the willingness to pay and the expected quality, and that therefore neither an adjustment nor a priming mechanism is activated. We found that the coherence of the contextual information influences how individuals evaluate a service. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.