Best Paper Award to KCG Research on Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption

26th November 2019
KCG Secretary
News
News
A recent KCG paper titled “Global Standards and Philosophy of Consumption: Towards Consumer-driven Governance of Global Value Chains", co-authored by Guli-Sanam Karimova (KCG Fellow), Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (KCG Co-Head), and Prof. Dr. Johannes Brinkmann (BI Norwegian Business School & KCG External Research Fellow) received the Patrick Primeux Best Paper Award 2019 at the 26th International Vincentian Business Ethics Conference (IVBEC) on October 24-26, 2019 in Dublin[...]

Introducing Dominant Currency Pricing in the ECB’s Global Macroeconomic Model

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Georgios Georgiadis and Saskia Mösle (International Finance, 2020, 23(2): 234–256)

A large share of global trade being priced and invoiced primarily in U.S. dollar rather than the exporter's or the importer's currency has important implications for the transmission of shocks. We introduce this “dominant‐currency pricing” (DCP) into ECB‐Global, the ECB's macroeconomic model for the global economy. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to incorporate DCP into a major global macroeconomic model used at central banks or international organisations. In ECB‐Global, DCP affects in particular the role of expenditure‐switching and the U.S. dollar exchange rate for spillovers: In case of a shock in a non‐U.S. economy that alters the value of its currency multilaterally[…]

Rules of Origin and the Profitability of Trade Deflection

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr, Feodora Teti and Erdal Yalcin (Journal of International Economics, Vol. 121, Nov. 2019, 103248)

When a country grants preferential tariffs to another, either reciprocally in a free trade agreement (FTA) or unilaterally, rules of origin (RoOs) are defined to determine whether a product is eligible for preferential treatment. RoOs exist to avoid that exports from third countries enter through the member with the lowest tariff (trade deflection)[…]

Revisiting the Euro’s trade cost and welfare effects

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Gabriel Felbermayr and Marina Steininger (Forthcoming, Journal of Economics and Statistics)

When, about twenty years ago, the Euro was created, one objective was to facilitate intra-European trade by reducing transaction costs. Has the Euro delivered? Using sectoral trade data from 1995 to 2014 and applying structural gravity modeling, we conduct an ex post evaluation of the European Monetary Union (EMU). In aggregate data, we find a significant average trade effect for goods of almost 8 percent, but a much smaller effect for services trade[…]

Under Which Conditions Are Consumers Ready to Boycott or Buycott? The Roles of Hedonism and Simplicity

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Stefan Hoffmann, Ingo Balderjahn, Barbara Seegebarth, Robert Mai and Mathias Peyer (Ecological Economics, 2018, Vol. 147, 167-178)

There are two fundamental ways in which consumers can express their concerns and obligations for society through their consumption decisions: They can boycott companies that they deem to be irresponsible or they may deliberately buy from companies that they perceive to act responsibly[…]

Drivers of Renewable Technology Adoption in the Household Sector

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Anke Jacksohn, Peter Grösche, Katrin Rehdanz and Carsten Schröder (Energy Economics, 2019, Vol. 81, 216-226)

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we undertake a simultaneous assessment of the importance of factors that are individually found to be significant for the adoption of renewable energy systems by households but are not yet tested jointly[…]

Virtue Ethics Between East and West in Consumer Research: Review, Synthesis and Directions for Future Research

14th November 2019
KCG Secretary
Authors: Guli-Sanam Karimova, Nils Christian Hoffmann, Ludger Heidbrink and Stefan Hoffmann (Journal of Business Ethics, 2019)

This literature review systematically synthesizes studies that link consumer research to differences and similarities in virtue ethics between the East and the West, with a focus on early Chinese and ancient Greek virtue ethics. These two major traditions provide principles that guide consumer behavior and thus serve as a background to comparatively explain and evaluate the ethical nature of consumer behavior in the East and the West. The paper first covers Eastern and Western[…]