The Role of Gender in Pay-What-You-Want Contexts

This research highlights how gender shapes consumer payments in pay-what-you-want contexts. Four studies involving hypothetical and real payments show that men typically pay less than women in pay-what-you-want settings, due to gender differences in agentic versus communal orientation. Men approach the payment decision with an agentic orientation, and women approach it with a communal orientation. These orientations then shape payment motives and ultimately affect payment behavior. Because agentic men are more self-focused, their payment decisions are motivated by economic factors, resulting in lower payments. Conversely, communal women are more other-focused, and their payment decisions are motivated by both social and economic factors, resulting in higher payments. The findings additionally highlight how sellers can use marketing communications to increase the salience of social payment motives and demonstrate that by doing so, marketers can increase how much men pay without altering how much women pay in pay-what-you-want settings.

Piecework forms of hiring workers in the landowner’s household of the Tambov Governorate at the late 19th century

We describe the working conditions of piecework workers of landowner’s household of Tambov Governorate at the late 19th century. We analyze the specifics of early forms of employment, the amount of wages, and the relationship between the employee and the employer. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to fill the historiographical gap in the study of working conditions of piecework workers, its significance for the development of the landowner’s household after the abolition of serfdom. The novelty of the work is determined by a comprehen-sive study of agricultural hiring in landowner’s economies, consideration of both collective and individual forms of employment of piecework workers. The source for this work was the materials describing large Tambov estates, collections of statistical data on the Tambov Governorate. It is shown that piecework workers received money for performing a strictly defined task by mutual agreement with the landowner. Such workers could be employed in different areas of the lan-downer’s household. At the same time, it is established that the economic format of the absolute majority of piecework workers in Tambov economies was associated with the procedure of returning the debt to the landowner. This allowed to reduce the amount of real payments to piecework workers. Based on the study of workers’ labor, it is revealed that in addition to the monetary form of advance hiring for field work, the region also widely practiced the in-kind form of payment, secured by lease agreements for the sublease of land. It was found that the winter hiring of workers and the reduction of wages created the ground for abuse of hired workers.

Interest and tax burden on corporations in the Czech industrial and banking sector after 2008

The present paper deals with the interest and tax burden of corporations in the Czech industrial and banking sector as well as with the identification of the differences between the two sectors, including the evaluation of their developmental trends in the period after the economic and financial crisis of 2008. The interest and tax burden on business entities is determined by negative cash flows that reduce the value of their assets and equity. The basis of the research is the analysis of both components of the financial burden on corporations in these sectors over the past eight years and the identification of factors influencing their capital structure and performance. According to DuPont's equation, the burden is expressed by interest and the tax reduction of corporation's earnings before interest and taxes. The amount of the financial burden depends on the macroeconomic environment where the corporations operate. Our analysis identified an asynchronous dependence between the real payments and changes in the interest and tax rates. The reduction of both rates has had a positive effect on the performance of Czech corporations and increased their capital resources. They became more attractive to foreign investors, and the return on invested capital improved. Based on the results of the analysis, we evaluated the differences in the performance of the average corporation in the banking and industrial sectors.

Valuing Water Quality Monitoring: A Contingent Valuation Experiment Involving Hypothetical and Real Payments

This paper studies the preferences and willingness-to-pay of individuals for volunteer water quality monitoring programs. The study involves supporting water quality monitoring at two ponds in the state of Rhode Island. The paper uses both a hypothetical and a real-payment contingent valuation survey to directly measure individual preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP) for volunteer water quality monitoring at the two ponds. The overall results of the study suggest that hypothetical WTP is not statistically greater than real WTP, and that the average survey respondent is willing to support water quality monitoring on one of the two ponds. The study also finds that the specified purpose of water quality monitoring and certain socioeconomic characteristics of a respondent significantly affect the respondent's decision to support volunteer water quality monitoring.