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on Cultural Economics |
| By: | Mojsoska-Blazevski, Nikica; Petreski, Marjan |
| Abstract: | The objective of this paper is to examine the factors influencing worker’s job satisfaction aside the conventional factors (personal background, individual labour market characteristics, organisational culture, and so on) and introduce the basic cultural values and beliefs, and then to put this into a comparative perspective for the South-East European (SEE) countries and for Macedonia, in particular. Cultural values have been grouped into traditional vs. secular-rational values and survival vs. self-expression values. The main result from the study is that cultural heritage exerts considerable effect on job satisfaction in SEE with some determinants – like the importance of work, religion and family – exerting stronger influence in SEE than in CEE and in Western Europe. The impact of cultural values on job satisfaction in Macedonia has been found to be only limited. Mainly the traditional cultural values have been found important, while only trust from the ‘survival’ group likely affects job satisfaction and likely with the effect being stronger than in the case of SEE, CEE and Western Europe. |
| Keywords: | job satisfaction; cultural values |
| JEL: | M54 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41940&r=cul |
| By: | F. Landini |
| Abstract: | Control over digital transactions has steadily risen in recent years, to an extent that puts into question the Internet’s traditional openness. In order to investigate the origins and effects of such change the paper formally model the historical evolution of digital control. In the model, the economy-wide features of the digital space emerge as a result of endogenous differences in culture (users’ preferences including motivation) and technology (platform designs). The model shows that: a) in the longrun there exist two stable cultural-technological equilibria in the digital economy: one with intrinsically motivated users and low control; and the other with purely extrinsically motivated users and high control; b) under a closed economy - i.e. before the opening of the network to commerce, the initial emergence of a low-control-intrinsic-motivation equilibrium can be explained by the specific set of norms and values that formed the early culture of the networked environment; and c) the opening of the network to commerce can indeed cause a transition to a high-control-extrinsicmotivation equilibrium, even if the latter is Pareto inferior. Although it is too early to say whether such a transition is actually taking place, these results call for a great deal of attention in evaluating policy proposals on Internet regulation. |
| Keywords: | : Internet control, Internet regulation, motivation, on-line law enforcement, technology, endogenous preferences, evolutionary games |
| JEL: | C73 D02 K00 L23 |
| Date: | 2012 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:par:dipeco:2012-ep03&r=cul |
| By: | Doh-Shin Jeon (Toulouse School of Economics); Nikrooz Nasr Esfahani (Toulouse School of Economics) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we study how the presence of a news aggregator affects competition among (horizontally differentiated) newspapers in the Internet. For this purpose, we build a model of multiple issues which allows each newspaper to choose quality on each issue. Our model provides a micro foundation for the service offered by the aggregator and captures both the "business-stealing effect" and the "readership-expansion effect" of the aggregator. We find that the presence of the aggregator leads each newspaper to specialize in terms of news coverage. In this case, its presence changes quality choices from strategic substitutes to strategic complements. In the case of symmetric newspapers, this leads to an increase in the quality of newspapers and an increase in consumer surplus, with an ambiguous effect on newspapers’ profits. In the case of asymmetric newspapers, quality can increase or decrease depending on the sensitivity of advertising revenue to quality. |
| Keywords: | Newspapers, News Aggregator, Internet, Quality, Strategic Substitutes, Strategic Complements, Advertising, Business-stealing, Readership-expansion, Opting Out. |
| JEL: | D21 D43 L13 L82 |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1220&r=cul |
| By: | Yabing Jiang (Lutgert College of Business, Florida Gulf Coast University) |
| Abstract: | The success of the Kindle e-book platform and the increased popularity of e-books among members of the reading community have attracted extensive interest in the high-tech industry. New platform providers are jumping in the market to compete for device and e-book sales. In this paper, we model the direct competition in the e-book platform market through a two-sided network externality model. We show that publishers can influence consumers’ e-book platform adoption decisions and the total e-book sales by strategically deciding the size of contents available on each platform. |
| Keywords: | analytical modeling, e-book technology, network externality, platform competition, product differentiation, two-sided market |
| JEL: | D43 D62 L11 L13 L82 M15 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1219&r=cul |
| By: | Joan Calzada (Departament de Política Econòmica, Universitat de Barcelona); Guillem Ordóñez (Departament de Política Econòmica, Universitat de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | We analyze the linking and versioning strategies of a media firm when facing competition from blogs, search engines and news aggregators. First, we show that when the publisher competes against a blog it is less likely to release a “fighting version” if this generates significant spillovers for its rival. Second, we analyze in which situations a publisher will accept to offer part of its contents to a news aggregator in exchange for financial compensation. We explain that an agreement is possible when the aggregator is not overly dependent on the firm’s contents. Finally, we show that when the firm competes against a search engine, its linking and versioning strategies depend on the amount of traffic it receives from its competitor. The firm can use the search engine as its own low quality version and as a mechanism to expand its market since it gives access to many contents. |
| Keywords: | Product segmentation, versioning, linking media market, search engines, news aggregators, Internet |
| JEL: | D83 D85 L12 L22 L86 M31 |
| Date: | 2012–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:1222&r=cul |
| By: | Ruiu, Gabriele |
| Abstract: | I maintain that fatalistic tendencies are the output of the interaction between cultural factors (and in particular of religious beliefs) and historical Institutional experience. Using WVS data this idea has been tested against two well known sociological theories on the origin of fatalism: Weberian cosmological fatalism and Durkheim’s structural fatalism. The data supports the Durkheimian idea that a more regulated society tends to be also more fatalistic. Also the direct effect of religion on fatalistic beliefs seem to be an important element determining fatalistic tendencies. However there are not large differences across the various faiths. In other terms, being religious independently from the religious affiliation implies a more fatalistic view of life. |
| Keywords: | Culture; fatalism; institutions; religion |
| JEL: | Z1 Z12 Z13 |
| Date: | 2012–07–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:41705&r=cul |