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The estimation of the burden of a disease is one of the tasks with the longest tradition in health economics, which allows us to know the volume of resources that a country allocates to a specific health problem, and to compare countries and diseases. Although the fundamental objective of health systems is not to reduce the cost of the disease, but to improve the health of the population, the studies of burden of disease establish the economic seriousness of the problem, orienting the priorities of action.

Government-funded medical expenditure in Uruguay for the last ten years has tripled in US dollars. The increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity has contributed to this growth. According to the World Health Organization, Uruguay has the highest growing trend in the prevalence of both overweight and obesity in South America. We have previously estimated that economic burden linked to obesity will be more than US$500 million by 2020, a figure close to 1% of the country’s GDP.

In this study, we tried to generate a measure of value to ascertain the cost of inaction in the fight against obesity and its consequences linked to several non-communicable diseases. The cost of inaction is not defined as the cost of not doing, but as the cost of not implementing the right policies (in this case health prevention policies) at the right time.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between firms’ entrepreneurial orientations (EOs) and the adoption of quality management (QM) practices. The role of environmental uncertainty as the moderator of the former relationship is considered.

Using theories and related empirical evidences, two research hypotheses were argued and proposed. These hypotheses were tested using data collected from a unique sample of 301 Uruguayan and Argentinean manufacturing companies with more than 20 workers assessed through personal interviews. The empirical methodology includes statistic treatment for scale validation, statistic descriptive techniques and regression analysis.

Firms’ EO is determinant for the adoption of QM practices. The environmental uncertainty strengthens the positive impact of EO on the adoption of QM practices, mainly human resource management practices.

The data come from a particular geographical context and refer to manufacturing plants. It would be interesting to extend the scope of this study to services. The collection of data from only one individual in each organization can generate a potential problem with using single-source information.

Innovative manufacturing companies that try to adopt advanced QM practices will benefit from hiring managers who are able to take risks, and to seek a long-term orientation toward being aggressive with their environment, especially in highly competitive contexts. Mustering these features may ensure perseverance in the adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, even in the presence of complex and uncertain environments.

The principal contribution of this paper is that it advances the study of the intersection between operations management and entrepreneurship, analyzing how firms’ EO affects the adoption of new methods and practices in manufacturing. Furthermore, it is important to highlight the fact that the authors use data from a unique survey of manufacturing companies from Argentina and Uruguay in the southern cone of Latin America. The authors also contribute to the open debate about the universality of QM practices.

This paper aims at providing new evidence on the relationship between advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) and quality management (QM) practices on manufacturing performance.

The expected relationship between both AMTs and QM practices on manufacturing performance are tested using a unique sample of 301 manufacturing companies from Argentina (151) and Uruguay (150), employing at least 20 workers, which have been assessed through personal interviews to plant managers and engineers.

Findings evidence the complementarities between QM practices and AMTs to explain enhanced manufacturing performance. Although QM practices have a direct effect on manufacturing performance, the effects of AMTs are significant only in the presence of QM practices.

First limitation of the paper is the cross-sectional character of the data analysis. Secondly, the paper cannot avoid the disadvantages inherent in research based on surveys, especially when the answers are of a subjective nature. In addition, the information used is based on the perceptions of managers.

Industry practitioners should focus on the implementation of innovation policies that promote long-term economic growth, creating more favorable and better technological and infrastructure institutional conditions to lead to substantial improvements in this economic growth.

The paper provides evidence on the interdependence between QM practices and AMTs’ adoption to improve performance of manufacturing companies in the south of Latin America, something that has received very little attention up today. Thus, the paper contributes also to the international debate on differences observed in the implementation of manufacturing innovations in different regions.

The labor theory of value (LTV) offers a lucid and forceful example of a “theory” thought to stand outside “history.” Considered as an “objective” form of theorizing, the LTV seeks transhistorical truths about the relationship between humans and nature – whereby, as everyone knows, value in the world is produced by the fundamental force of human labor power. Marx is typically taken to have subscribed to some form of the LTV, and thus to have signed on to this form of theorizing. This article refuses to treat Marx as an analytic, ahistorical theorist who would either affirm or deny the LTV. Rather, I read Marx as a genealogist who excavates the story of labor and value within the specific historical context of an emerging capitalist social formation. This genealogical approach to Marx, and particularly to his less-often-discussed, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, shows plainly that Marx never subscribed to the LTV, but more importantly that he eschewed the form of theory that the LTV presumes. Rather than seeking to make transhistorical theoretical claims about the relation between labor and value, Marx meant to demonstrate to his readers something about the way in which a definite and concrete (historically situated) capitalist social formation establishes value. A capitalist social formation establishes its own specific value relations, by first constituting, and then dissimulating, a link between labor and value.

This paper aims to outline the role of brands as relationship builders and to offer a better understanding of the recent developments and key literature in the area of consumer–brand relationships.

This paper is an editorial based mainly on a literature review on consumer–brand relationships. It uses the sentiment range and passion intensity to position various brand relationship constructs. This work follows the same bibliometric-analysis approach used by Fetscherin and Heinrich (2014) and looked for publications in the Web of Science on brand relationships, with reference to Fournier’s (1998) seminal work and data collected for the period between January 2010 and November 2018.

First, this work presents the key consumer–brand relationship terms and positions the work on brand love, brand like, brand hate, brand dislike and brand indifference. In addition, the bibliometric analysis offers a number of insights into the current state of the academic research in the area of consumer–brand relationships, including a clear indication that the research on consumer–brand relationships is increasing.

This work and the whole special issue together help in the understanding of brands as relationship builders, clearly explaining the continuum from strong positive or negative relationships with brands to no relationship with brands and the current state of research in the area.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.

This paper aims to verify how the intellectual property (IP) box affects firms’ effective tax rate, growth and innovation activity outcomes related to intellectual property rights.

Implementing the innovation box regimes into the tax system intends to encourage firms to engage in more innovative activities. In UK, Italy and Poland, the IP box tax relief was introduced in 2013, 2015 and 2019, respectively. In return, companies may reduce their tax rate to increase their investment and innovativeness. With a panel model approach – system GMM and DiD with multiple time periods – it analyses data from the Orbis database for 2011–2019 of 673 firms from the gaming industry in 11 countries and hand-collected data on intellectual property rights protection. The authors study public and private companies from the gaming sector in leading European markets and all three countries that protect intellectual property rights of software (Japan, South Korea, the USA).

Recent reforms enable gaming companies to use preferential tax treatment for IP-related income and significantly impact a firm’s revenue growth.

Nevertheless, European gaming firms require time to leap the gap to the growth and innovativeness of countries that protect software.

The authors show that the IP box stimulates gaming firms to protect IP via wordmarks, figurative marks, trademarks and software patents that bring effects in five years. Despite the critics against IP box, the authors prove its lagged efficiency, especially in profitable and larger firms.

This paper aims to explore the relationships between website quality – through consumer-generated media stimuli-, emotions and consumer-brand engagement in online environments.

Two independent studies are conducted to examine these relationships. Study 1, based on a sample of 366 respondents, uses a structural equation modelling approach to test the research hypotheses. Study 2, based on 1,454 online consumer reviews, uses text-mining technique to examine further the relationship between emotions and consumer-brand engagement.

The findings show that all the consumer-generated media stimuli are positively related to the dimensions of emotions. However, only pleasure and arousal are positively related to the three variables of consumer-brand engagement. The findings also show cognitive processing as the strongest dimension of consumer-brand engagement providing positive sentiments towards brands.

The findings provide marketers with an understanding of how valid, useful and relevant content (i.e. information/content) creates a greater emotional connection and drive consumer-brand engagement. Marketers should be aware that consumer-generated media stimuli influence consumers’ emotions and their reaction.

This study is one of the firsts to adapt and apply the S-O-R framework in explaining online consumer-brand engagement. This study also adds to the brand engagement literature as the first study that combines PLS-SEM approach with text-mining analysis to provide a better understanding of these relationships.

The rise of the regulatory state during the Gilded Age was closely associated with the development of institutionalist ideas in American academia. In their analysis of the emergent regulatory environment, institutionalists like John Commons operated with a fundamentally marginalist theory of value and distribution. This engagement is a central explanation for the ultimate ascendancy of neoclassical economics, and the limitations of the regulatory environment that emerged in the Progressive Era. The eventual rise of the Chicago School and its deregulatory ambitions did constitute a rupture, but one achieved without rejecting preceding conceptions of competition and value. The substantial compatibility of the view of markets underlying both the regulatory and deregulatory periods is stressed, casting doubt about the transformative potential of the resurgent regulatory impulse in the New Gilded Age.