This paper analyzes the drivers of carbon taxes acceptability with survey data and a randomized labeling treatment. Based on a sample of more than 300 individuals, it assesses the effect on acceptability of specific policy designs and individuals’ perceptions of carbon taxes advantages and disadvantages. We find that the lack of perception of primary and ancillary benefits is one of the main barriers to the acceptability of carbon taxes. In addition, policy design matters for acceptability and in particular earmarking fiscal revenues for environmental purposes can lead to larger support. We also find an effect of labeling, comparing the wording ‘‘climate contribution’’ with ‘‘carbon tax’’. We argue that proper policy design coupled with effective communication on the effects of carbon taxes may lead to a substantial improvement in acceptability
Inevitably, healthcare goes pervasive, yet its many potential future scenarios are still to be defined. We employ foresight techniques to define some of these scenarios, as relevant for the current and future state of healthcare in Geneva, Switzerland. We teach the methodology to undergraduate business administration students – potential e.g., managers and policymakers in the future healthcare system of Geneva. Our objective is twofold: to train students at scenario building and to develop scenarios for pervasive healthcare technologies and their social implications. Results include scenarios developed by the students as well as lessons learned with respect to the power of foresight techniques employed with novices in this field.
Publicly provided long-term care (LTC) insurance with means-tested benefits is suspected to crowd out either private LTC insurance (Brown and Finkelstein 2008. The Interaction of Public and Private Insurance: Medicaid and the Long-Term Care Insurance Market. American Economic Review 98(3):1083–102), private saving (Gruber and Yelowitz 1999. Public Health Insurance and Private Saving. Journal of Political Economy 107(6):1249–74; Sloan and Norton 1997. Adverse Selection, Bequests, Crowding Out, and Private Demand for Insurance: Evidence from the Long-term Care Insurance Market. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 15:201–19), or informal care (Pauly 1990. The Rational Non-purchase of Long-term Care Insurance. Journal of Political Economy 95:153–68; Zweifel and Strüwe 1998. Long-term Care Insurance in a Two-generation Model. Journal of Risk and Insurance 65(1):13–32). This contribution predicts crowding-out effects for both private LTC insurance and informal care on the one hand and private saving and informal care on the other. These effects result from the interaction of a parent who decides about private LTC insurance before retirement and the amount of saving in retirement and a caregiver who decides about effort devoted to informal care. Some of the predictions are tested using a recent survey from China.
Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons à l’assimilation des filles et garçons de nationalité étrangère dans le système scolaire suisse, en nous concentrant sur la transition en fin de scolarité obligatoire. Nous examinons empiriquement les effets de la vague migratoire, de l’âge d’arrivée et de la cohorte sur les différences de genre, en exploitant une base de données administrative du canton de Genève couvrant quinze cohortes d’élèves (1993-2007). Nos résultats montrent des écarts importants entre les différents sous-groupes de la population scolaire, indépendamment du statut socioéconomique des parents. En particulier, plus les enfants migrants arrivent tôt au sein du système scolaire, plus leur comportement de genre au moment de la transition dépend de leur appartenance ethnique ; un résultat compatible avec l’idée d’une assimilation caractérisée par une acculturation sélective.
Nous étudions le lien entre l’engagement durable et social des entreprises (RSE) et leur performance, tout d’abord par une analyse de la recherche dans le domaine, suivie d’une étude qualitative de ce lien sous la forme d’interview de gestionnaires de fonds en Suisse. Nous trouvons que le lien positif entre la performance des entreprises et leur engagement RSE n’est prouvé et perçu que dans certain contextes. D’autre part, il semblerait que les investisseurs n’attendent pas forcément une performance plus importante, mais une neutralité, c’est-à-dire que la RSE ne nuise pas à la performance. Ils seraient ainsi prêts à investir de préférence dans les entreprises qui créent le plus de valeur dans les objectifs non financiers. Un autre résultat important est que la RSE serait difficile à évaluer de nos jours par les investisseurs « traditionnels », principalement due au manque d’information récente et pertinente sur la RSE des entreprises. La nécessité de faire leur propre recherche crée une certaine barrière, un coût additionnel, que tous les investisseurs ne veulent pas dépasser ou assumer compte tenu de l’absence de gain attendu sur la performance de leurs portefeuilles.
Purpose. This paper aims to investigate management auditing, a thorough examination of an organization and the management in place, through an empirical research to gather data about how management audits are perceived and implemented among Geneva’s (Switzerland) business community. The board of directors is in charge of a corporation’s overall supervision. The internal auditing function works under the aegis of the board to ensure that the directors will properly execute their responsibilities as defined by corporate governance rules. Management auditing could thus be used to improve corporation performance. However, management audits are not commonly used or referred to as a tool to address corporate governance. Findings enable the authors to both explain why management audits are not commonly used or referred to as a tool to address corporate governance and generate related research hypotheses. Design/methodology/approach. In this paper, the authors rely on an ethnographic study aimed at exploring perceptions of management audits in service companies from the Geneva region. This study is based on transcripts from 85 semi-directed interviews, conducted over a three-year period, of professionals with managerial and auditing backgrounds. The economic context during these three years was consistently characterized by the Swiss and international financial crises, ensuring that the findings remain comparable over this time period. Findings This paper identified three main factors that influence the integration of management audits into corporate practices: the degree of acceptance of the tools and requirements of management audits, the national culture and values embodied in the practice and the degree of corporate governance maturity. This paper presents the findings in the form of hypotheses that can be tested on any adoption of good corporate governance practices – not on management audits alone. Research limitations/implications. Notwithstanding the limitations due to its nature and extent, this study’s main limitation is its lack of validation of the hypotheses. In further research, the authors intend to use a quantitative survey to validate the research hypotheses and make statistical inferences. Originality/value This paper contributes to the literature because it is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first study to empirically examine the significant link between management audits and corporate governance. The findings could be interesting for an international audience because they indicate possible action points that boards of directors can leverage to carry out management audits. The findings also bridge a gap between the literature on management audits and the expanding role of the internal audit function. This study also examines the way companies – in the Swiss context – understand, perceive and may be ready to apply management audits as a good corporate governance practice.
The aim of this work is to review the literature on full truck load transportation service procurement and identify the gaps from the points of view of researchers and practitioners. Full truck load procurement is particularly considered for review since it is encountered more in freight movement than others forms and also it has many challenges. A framework is developed to have a systematic review of literature and the findings are discussed in detail. Some key findings include the simplistic assumption of demand pattern, less focus on nonprice variables, a limited number of case studies, a lesser consideration of sustainability aspects and the lack of detailed studies on emerging economies.
Cet article analyse les perceptions, comportements et rapports à la forêt de la population du canton de Genève (Suisse), révélés par un sondage effectué en hiver 2014. On constate que les Genevois utilisent la forêt de façon moins intensive que la population des autres cantons suisses et valorisent moins l’aspect économique de la forêt. La majorité des répondants privilégient la conservation et la biodiversité plutôt que la construction de logements ou une augmentation de la production de bois. L’évaluation monétaire du service récréatif de la forêt grâce à la méthode du coût du trajet indique que la valeur d’usage de la forêt genevoise se monte à CHF 656.– en moyenne par personne et an (médiane à CHF 175.–), respectivement à CHF 313.– par personne et an en moyenne (médiane à CHF 60.–) sans inclure le coût d’opportunité du temps passé sur place. La disponibilité à payer pour le programme de la Politique forestière 2020 impliquant une augmentation de la surface des réserves forestières à 10% est évaluée à CHF 283.– par an grâce à la méthode d’évaluation contingente.
Social norms have been included in the theory of collective action to overcome difficulties in explaining why commons may perform better when self-regulated. The role of trust has been identified in several contexts of local social dilemmas, but only recently has been extended to global commons, based on large descriptive evidence collected by Elinor Ostrom. However, no quantitative evidence was available until now. Using a dataset of 29 European countries over the period 1990–2007, we provide empirical evidence in favour of the role of trust in global dilemmas. We find a non-negligible impact of trust on greenhouse gas emissions, which can support Ostrom's intuition on the social roots of pro-environmental behaviour.
Cette étude examine dans quelle mesure les informations ESG (Environnement, Social et Gouvernance d’entreprise), agrégées sous forme de scores, peuvent influencer les rendements mensuels des actions sur les marchés en Suisse, aux États-Unis, et au Royaume-Uni, au cours de la période 2007-2011. Nous constatons que la variation de la note globale ESG n’est significative qu’au Royaume-Uni. Nous montrons également que les changements dans les sous-catégories de notes du GRI (à savoir, la gouvernance, l’économie, l’environnement, le travail, les droits humains, la société et les produits) présentent un impact faible mais significatif sur la performance des actions, mais seulement sur des périodes restreintes ou pour des secteurs limités, qui varient contextuellement selon les pays. Enfin, notre régression non-paramétrique met en évidence la non-linéarité probable de la fonction reliant la performance d’une action à ses changements de score ESG.
