Vienna University of Economics and Business
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A future social-ecological economics
Get PDFThis paper describes the need for and content of an emerging paradigm termed Social Ecological Economics (SEE). In this paper we argue that SEE is the essential future direction for the economics profession, not least because of the social-ecological crises facing humanity and the need for transformation of capital accumulating economic systems. Economics as a discipline is a failure because of a long running inability to address, and tendency to marginalise, such things as power relations, social inequities and injustice (across gender, class and race), ethical social provisioning, the role of care and reproductive processes, the social implications of advancing technology, treatment of others with silent voices (e.g. future generations, children, the non-human world)
Valuing informal carers’ quality of life using best-worst scaling—Finnish preference weights for the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for carers (ASCOT-Carer)
Get PDFThis study developed Finnish preference weights for the seven-attribute Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit for carers (ASCOT-Carer) and investigated survey fatigue and learning in best-worst scaling (BWS) experiments. An online survey that included a BWS experiment using the ASCOT-Carer was completed by a sample from the general population in Finland. A block of eight BWS profiles describing different states from the ASCOT-Carer were randomly assigned to each respond-ent, who consecutively made four choices (best, worst, second best and second worst) per profile. The analysis panel data had 32,160 choices made by 1005 respondents. A scale multinomial logit (S-MNL) model was used to estimate preference weights for 28 ASCOT-Carer attribute levels. Fatigue and learning effects were examined as scale heterogeneity. Several specifications of the generalised MNL model were employed to ensure the stability of the preference estimates. The most and least-valued states were the top and bottom levels of the control over daily life attribute. The preference weights were not on a cardinal scale. We observed the position effect of the attributes on preferences associated with the best or second-best choices. A learning effect was found. The established preference weights can be used in evaluations of the effects of long-term care services and interventions on the quality of life of service users and caregivers. The learning effect implies a need to develop study designs that ensure equal consideration to all profiles (choice tasks) in a sequential choice experiment
Seven Paradoxes of Business Process Management in a Hyper-Connected World
Get PDFBusiness Process Management is a boundary-spanning discipline that aligns operational capabilities and technology to design and manage business processes. The Digital Transformation has enabled human actors, information systems, and smart products to interact with each other via multiple digital channels. The emergence of this hyper-connected world greatly leverages the prospects of business processes – but also boosts their complexity to a new level. We need to discuss how the BPM discipline can find new ways for identifying, analyzing, designing, implementing, executing, and monitoring business processes. In this research note, selected transformative trends are explored and their impact on current theories and IT artifacts in the BPM discipline is discussed to stimulate transformative thinking and prospective research in this field
Differentiation vs. standardisation in supply chain segmentation: a quantitative study
Get PDFThe key value proposition of supply chain segmentation is to differentiate supply chains through a reasonable number of segments in order to gain a level of standardisation and avoid managerial complexity incurred in fully customised supplychains. The decision on how products are grouped into segments is at the core of a successful implementation. A fundamental trade-off in this decision-making process is between higher differentiation by having small group sizes and higher standardisation from a smaller number of groups. In this manuscript, we implement segmentation on supply chain configurations and investigate the trade-off by analysing several network scenarios. We use optimisation models for each scenarioto align decisions of segment formation and supply chain configurations. We show that divergences in demand characteristics, geographic difference, and cost synergy such as pooling effect have impacts on the balance of standardisation and differentiation
The (changing) consideration of social investment in the design of welfare benefits: The case of poverty relief in Austria
Get PDFThe social investment perspective has become a prominent topic in both social policy discussions and theoretical considerations regarding welfare state change. Empirical evidence on how this perspective has affected welfare state provision is much scarcer—and sometimes contradictory. This article aims to assess whether welfare state benefits increasingly have incorporated elements of social investment, and what has triggered the reforms made to the benefits. To achieve these aims, we examined two poverty relief benefits in Austria, namely, unemployment assistance and social assistance. We scrutinized changes made to
these benefits from 2000 onwards. To identify their (potentially changing) contributions towards social investment, we applied a framework that considers the economic aims of the paradigm (while neglecting other aims). According to this framework, a social investment benefit intends to improve the human capital of its recipients, enhance their employability, and/or enhance their employment integration. The findings suggest that the three elements of social investment were particularly relevant in reforming social assistance. However, the changes implemented were incoherent and do not support the hypothesis of an ever-increasing significance of social investment. The main triggers for reform were the political ideologies of (changing) governments. These ideologies determined the direction of changes made to both social assistance and unemployment assistance. If social investment thus ought to be more than just a theoretical concept or a nonbinding policy recommen dation, modifications made to welfare state benefits would need to follow a more coherent path. Regarding poor relief benefits, Austria has not pursued such a track (yet)
The carrot and the stick in online reviews: determinants of un-/helpfulness voting choices
Get PDFWith increasing volumes of customer reviews, ‘helpfulness’ features have been
established by many online platforms as decision-aids for consumers to cope with
potential information overload. In this study, we offer a diferentiated perspective
on the drivers of review helpfulness. Using a hurdle regression setup for both helpfulness and unhelpfulness voting behavior, we aim to disentangle the differential
effects of what drives reviews to receive any votes, how many votes they receive and
whether these effects differ for helpful against unhelpful review voting behavior. As
potential driving factors we include reviews’ star rating deviations from the average
rating (as a proxy for confrmation bias), the level of controversy among reviews and
review sentiment (consistency of review content), as well as pricing information in
our analysis. Albeit with opposite effect signs, we find that revealed review un-/helpfulness is consistently guided by the tonality (i.e., the sentiment of review texts) and
that reviewers tend to be less critical for lower priced products. However, we find
only partial support for a confirmation bias with differential effects for the level of
controversy on helpfulness versus unhelpfulness review votings. We conclude that
the effects of voting disagreement are more complex than previous literature suggests and discuss implications for research and management practice
Asset Bias in Household Needs Measurement
Get PDFIncreasingly, the estimation of household equivalence scales relies on subjective data. This approach challenges not only traditional methodology, but also provides systematically lower estimates of household needs compared to other methods. I offer a novel take on this puzzle and argue that the failure to account for private wealth in subjective measurement is part of the explanation of why household financial needs appear to be low. Wealthy survey respondents claim to be satisfied with less income, as they can draw on their asset buffer to maintain a given living standard. Capitalising on SOEP survey data, I find that the financial needs of a household comprising five members relative to a reference household might be underestimated by up to 20% if wealth is not accounted for. Equivalence scales are central to poverty and inequality measurement, the design of social transfer systems and many other applications. Therefore, it is crucial to account for asset ownership when drawing on estimates that rely on the subjective methodology.Series: INEQ Working Paper Serie
A propos Brexit: on the breaking up of integration areas – an NEG analysis
Get PDFInspired by Brexit, the paper explores the effects of splitting an integration area or "Union" on trade Patterns and the spatial distribution of industry. A linear three-region New Economic Geography (NEG) model is developed and two possible situations before separation are considered: agglomeration and dispersion. By analogy with the Brexit options, soft and hard separation scenarios are considered. Firms in the leaving region may move to the larger Union market, even on the periphery, relocation substituting trade; or firms in the Union may move in the more isolated leaving region, escaping from competition. The paper also analyses deeper Union integration following separation. Instances of multistability and complex Dynamics are found
Politicisation beyond post-politics: new social activism and the reconfiguration of political discourse
Get PDFIn the wake of the financial crisis of 2008/9 social movements reminis-cent of ecoemancipatory movements of the 1980s powerfully repoliticised the post-political order of neoliberalism. Additionally, and more recently, right-wing populist movements, Fridays for Future or political mobilisations related to the COVID-19 pandemic have substantially refashioned both the understanding of post-politics and the patterns of its repoliticisation. This article introduces a special issue on Movements and Activism beyond Post-politics. In light of these recent shifts we revisit the notion of post-politics, identify key characteristics of contemporary forms of repoliticisation, zoom in on academic debates about prefigurative and transformative politics and – following a preview of the contributions collated in the special issue – explore what the ongoing reconfiguration of public discourse may imply for further research into social movement activism beyond post-politics
The development of nations conditions the disease space
Get PDFUsing the economic complexity methodology on data for disease prevalence in 195 countries during the period of 1990-2016, we propose two new metrics for quantifying the disease space of countries. With these metrics, we analyze the geography of diseases and empirically investigate the effect of economic development on the health complexity of countries. We show that a higher income per capita increases the complexity of countries’ diseases. We also show that complex diseases tend to be non-ubiquitous diseases that are prevalent in disease-diversified (complex) countries, while non-complex diseases tend to be non-ubiquitous diseases that are prevalent in non-diversified (non-complex) countries. Furthermore, we build a disease-level index that links a disease to the average level of GDP per capita of the countries in which the disease is prevalent. With this index, we highlight the link between economic development and the complexity of diseases and illustrate how increases in income per capita are associated with more complex diseases