Previous research has established that experiential purchases tend to yield greater enduring satisfaction than material purchases. The present work suggests that this difference in satisfaction is ...paralleled by a tendency for material and experiential purchases to differ in the types of regrets they elicit. In 5 studies, we find that people's material purchase decisions are more likely to generate regrets of action (buyer's remorse) and their experiential purchase decisions are more likely to lead to regrets of inaction (missed opportunities). These results were not attributable to differences in the desirability of or satisfaction provided by the two purchase types. Demonstrating the robustness of this effect, we found that focusing participants on the material versus experiential properties of the very same purchase was enough to shift its dominant type of regret. This pattern of regret is driven by the tendency for experiences to be seen as more singular--less interchangeable--than material purchases; interchangeable goods tend to yield regrets of action, whereas singular goods tend to yield regrets of inaction.
This paper examines the interaction between the propensity to corrupt (PTC) and firm performance. Using a unique data set of Moscow traffic violations, I construct the PTC of every Muscovite with a ...driver׳s license. Next, I determine the PTC for the top management of 58,157 privately held firms. I find that a 1 standard deviation increase in management PTC corresponds to a 3.6% increase in income diversion and that firms with corrupt management significantly outperform their counterparts. This study contributes to the literature that characterizes corruption using objective (instead of perception-based) measures and provides evidence regarding the positive aspects of corruption at the firm level.
I examine how transparency and interdealer trading affects prices investors pay in municipal bond offerings. Real-time trade reporting for municipal bonds started January 31, 2005. The dispersion of ...purchase prices fell sharply at that time. There was little impact on average markups for most trades, but they increased for purchases of more than $100,000. Bonds often pass through a series of dealers before being placed with a buy-and-hold investor. As the interdealer trades progress, trade sizes decline and trade prices rise. Markups on investor purchases increase with the amount of interdealer trading before the trade.
Of the many public initiatives used to promote the use of bicycles in the urban environment, the one that has achieved the most spectacular results in a short period of time is the public bicycle ...hire system. The experience of Seville is one of the most successful internationally, where 6.6 % of mechanised trips were being made by bicycle within 30 months. This paper analyses this experience in the university community, which represents one-third of system users. We conclude that the people who are most satisfied with the system are those who use it for leisure and recreation activities, non-residents of the city, more environmentally aware people and those who have no alternative mode of transportation. Their satisfaction is also closely linked to their appreciation of the bicycles’ level of comfort, the ease with which users can hire bicycles and return them and the small amount of paperwork involved required to sign up for the system. However, user appreciation has fallen over time because the system’s rapid success has caused it to become overloaded. This experience therefore provides one main lesson: the system’s success can result in eventual difficulties.
Migrant life has long required a careful balancing of responsibilities. Migrants travel to earn a wage in a capitalist economy while saving resources and honouring obligations that arise in a ...seemingly less-than-capitalist one. Various agents - rural patriarchs, traders, government authorities, appliance retailers - have used techniques to keep wages beyond migrants' control. Paradoxically, similar techniques have, on occasion, been eagerly embraced by migrants themselves, who know that these resources will need to be husbanded for the upkeep of home. This article explores these contradictions, showing that recent forms of debt build on expectations born of forms of credit that proliferated earlier, but differ in consolidating these forms of credit to produce an unimpeded flow of money into migrants' bank accounts and out of them again. It looks at the advantages and dangers of the recent expansion of credit to constituencies - like migrants - where it previously did not reach.
The control of hire purchase by specifying and altering minimum terms has been subjected to numerous objections, most of which are administrative or social in substance. Recently, however, a strictly ...economic critique of these controls has been developed which contends that hire purchase controls tend to lead to replacement cycles in the market for consumer durables. The present article tests this hypothesis by formalizing the basic model and testing it with empirical data. Based on the analysis and the statistical evidence the author argues that the conditions necessary for the generation of a hire purchase induced replacement cycle are unlikely to be realized, except in the most extreme circumstances. Therefore, the objection to the use of hire purchase controls on the grounds that they tend to lead to replacement cycles is unwarranted. JEL: D12, L68
The paper is concerned with the description, analysis and prescription of Australia’s hire purchase problem. In the first part, the author surveys the structure of the Australian hire purchase ...industry, its record of development in recent years, its sources of finance, and the main classes of transaction which it undertakes. In the second part of the paper, the impact of the growth of hire purchase upon the Australian economy is analysed within the confines of the macro-economy and the short run. The last section deals with policy and the control of hire purchase. Here the discussion is rather technical as it involves the political, constitutional and technical framework within which monetary policy in Australia is perforce conducted. JEL: E51, E52
Using German establishment data, we examine the relationship between delayed compensation, training, and hiring of older workers. Both those establishments that delay compensation and those with ...greater human capital requirements are less likely to hire older workers. We demonstrate that the routinely used control for the age of existing workers is endogenous and that instrumenting provides stronger evidence for the role of delayed compensation. Specifically, delayed compensation is simultaneously a negative determinant of hiring older workers but a positive determinant of employing older workers and, thus, more clearly associated with "employing older workers but not hiring them."
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