A new paper in The Economic Journal, published by by Oxford University Press, indicates that the presence of adult entertainment establishments may decrease sex crimes, significantly. The role of entertainment establishments (strip clubs, escort services, adult bookstores, and adult movie theaters) in communities is controversial. Citizens often view them as centers of vice. While some have...
Commerce
Rude Behavior at Work Not an Epidemic, New Study Shows
Rude behavior at work has come to be expected, like donuts in the breakroom. Two decades of research on employee relationships shows that 98 percent of employees experience rude behavior at work, but now a new study suggests a large majority of workplace relationships are not characterized by rudeness. Isolated incidents of rude behavior at...
Market Exit: Divestment or Redeployment?
Multi-business firms have flexibility advantages over single-business rivals because they have the option to redeploy resources across businesses. This flexibility, it has been assumed without empirical evidence, is purported to inspire quicker exits from markets. A 2017 survey revealed that 70 percent of corporate executives expected to make at least one divestment in the subsequent...
There’s a Good Reason Online Retailers Are Investing in Physical Stores
Researchers from Colorado State University, Amazon, and Dartmouth College published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the role of physical stores for selling “deep” products. The study, titled “How Physical Stores Enhance Customer Value: The Importance of Product Inspection Depth” and is authored by Jonathan Zhang, Chunwei Chang, and Scott Neslin. While some...
The Price Is Right: Modeling Economic Growth in a Zero-Emission Society
Pollution from manufacturing is now widespread, affecting all regions in the world, with serious ecological, economic, and political consequences. Heightened public concern and scrutiny have led to numerous governments considering policies that aim to lower pollution and improve environmental qualities. Inter-governmental agreements such as the Paris Agreement and the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals all...
When to Release Free and Paid Apps for Maximal Revenue
Researchers from Tulane University and University of Maryland published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines the dynamic interplay between free and paid versions of an app over its lifetime and suggests a possible remedy for the failure of apps. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled “Managing the Versioning Decision over...
COVID-19 Hit Stock Markets as It Spread from Country to Country
As Covid-19 spread around the world, stock markets in individual countries took a major hit – yet stock markets in China where the disease first struck avoided significant falls – researchers at Lero, the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Software, found. A research paper Immune or at-risk? Stock markets and the significance of the...
Having Employees Overseas Helps Companies Reap Us Tax Benefits
A recent study finds U.S. companies that have a substantial number of employees in foreign jurisdictions with lower tax rates are more likely than their peers to “artificially” locate earnings in those jurisdictions – and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is less likely to challenge these complex tax-planning activities. “Many politicians seek to encourage domestic...
Black and Hispanic Women, Less Educated Workers Among Those Hardest Hit by COVID-19 Job Losses
Unemployment fell to 6% in March, according to an April 2 U.S. Department of Labor report. The strongest gains were in leisure and hospitality and construction. The news was better than expected, but aggregated data doesn’t always tell the full story according to economists at Washington University in St. Louis. The unemployment rate in March for...
Its Curvature Foreshadows the Next Financial Bubble
An international team of interdisciplinary researchers has identified mathematical metrics to characterize the fragility of financial markets. Their paper “Network geometry and market instability” sheds light on the higher-order architecture of financial systems and allows analysts to identify systemic risks like market bubbles or crashes. With the recent rush of small investors into so-called meme...