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The purpose of this study is to examine the propagation of consumer and business confidence in the euro area with a particular focus on the global financial crisis (GFC), the European sovereign debt crisis (ESDC) and the COVID-19-induced Great Lockdown.

The authors apply Diebold and Yilmaz’s connectedness framework and the improved method based on the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model.

The authors find that although the evolution of business confidence marked the GFC and the ESDC the role of consumer confidence (mainly in those countries with stricter containment and closure measures) increased in the COVID-19-induced crisis.

The findings are related to the different origins of the examined crisis periods, and the analysis of their interrelationship is a very relevant topic for future research.

This paper aims at assessing the impact of a number of behavioral interventions on the willingness of informal businesses, in the Egyptian informal sector, to join the formal sector.

This paper uses an experimental methodology to examine the impact of behavioral interventions on the formalization of the Egyptian informal sector. Specifically, it conducts a survey experiment on a total of 240 informal businesses, operating in the Egyptian informal sector. The primary data collected from the survey experiment is then analyzed using a binary logistic regression to assess the impact of the behavioral primes on the probability of joining the formal market.

The empirical findings of the survey experiment indicate that the biggest obstacle facing informal businesses is finding a formal source of finance that could help them in penetrating the market. Providing informal businesses with information on funding opportunities offered by the ministry of micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) significantly increased the probability of joining the formal sector to benefit from this opportunity.

This paper is the first to apply behavioral primes, in the form of informational cues, to the Egyptian case of informal business owners. Previous research on the use of behavioral nudges and primes has focused mainly on the western economies.

This study explores the direct and indirect effects of two components of food-related consideration of future consequences (CFCs), including CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future, on sustainable food attitudes (SFA) via food-related health and environmental concerns.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used on a data set of 664 Vietnamese consumers collected in Central Vietnam to evaluate measurement and structural models.

CFC-Immediate and CFC-Future as well as health and environmental concerns have positive effects on SFA. Indirect effects of CFC-Immediate on SFA via health concerns and CFC-Future on SFA via health/environmental concerns are also discovered.

Future studies should examine the impact of environmental values on CFCs, forming a more comprehensive understanding regarding the relationship between the two variables, especially by including a wider range of sustainable food types to gain diverse knowledge about sustainable food consumption.

Communicative messages should focus on both health and environmental concerns while emphasizing both immediate and more distant outcomes of sustainable food (fish) consumption for individuals with different dominant temporal orientations.

This study sheds light on the direct and hierarchical relationships among food-related CFCs, health and environmental concerns and SFA to better understand the intricate psychological process of sustainable food consumption.

Broadly understood as repeated, intentional, and aggressive behaviors facilitated by digital technologies, cyberbullying has been identified as a significant public health concern in Australia. However, there have been critical debates about the theoretical and methodological assumptions of cyberbullying research. On the whole, this research has demonstrated an aversion to accounting for context, difference, and complexity. This insensitivity to difference is evident in the absence of nuanced accounts of Indigenous people's experiences of cyberbullying. In this chapter, we extend recent critiques of dominant approaches to cyberbullying research and argue for novel theoretical and methodological engagements with Indigenous people's experiences of cyberbullying. We review a range of literature that unpacks the many ways that social, cultural, and political life is different for Indigenous peoples. More specifically, we demonstrate there are good reasons to assume that online conflict is different for Indigenous peoples, due to diverse cultural practices and the broader political context of settler-colonialism. We argue that the standardization of scholarly approaches to cyberbullying is delimiting its ability to attend to social difference in online conflict, and we join calls for more theoretically rigorous, targeted, difference-sensitive studies into bullying.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a discrete choice experiment (DCE) on the competencies of potential information technology (IT)-retrainees. The results give insights in the monetary value and relative returns to both soft and hard skills.

The authors apply a DCE in which the authors propose seven pairs of hypothetical candidates to employers based in the municipality of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. These hypothetical candidates differ on six observable skill attributes and have different starting wages. The authors use the inference from the DCE to calculate the marginal rates of substitution (MRS). The MRS gives an indication of the monetary value of each skill attribute.

Employers prefer a candidate who possesses a degree in an exact field over a similar candidate from another discipline. Programming experience from previous jobs is the most highly valued characteristic for an IT-retrainee. Employers would pay a candidate with basic programming experience a 53 percent higher starting wage. The most high-valued soft skill is listening skills, for which employers are willing to pay a 46 percent higher wage. The results of this paper show that both hard and soft skills are important, but not all soft skills are equally important.

The results on the returns to skills provide guidelines to tailor IT training and retraining programs to the needs of the business environment. A key strength of this paper is that the authors have information on the preference orderings for different skills and kinds of experience.

This paper aims to provide an estimation of the costs of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic with a special focus on Spain. Costs include macroeconomic costs of foregone gross domestic product (GDP) attributable to the pandemic and the direct and indirect costs of prevention, treatment and lost productivity. This study also analyzes the cost-effectiveness of the test-tracking-quarantine (TTQ) strategy in Spain.

The macroeconomic costs of foregone GDP attributable to the pandemic are estimated for different countries and areas by comparing the present GDP forecasts for 2020 and 2021 with counterfactuals estimated before the COVID-19 crisis aftermath. The total cost of the COVID-19 for Spain in 2020 was obtained using the cost of illness approach with a bottom-up process. A cost-effectiveness analysis of the TTQ strategy in Spain is based on the estimation of the total costs of TTQ and the health gains and avoided health-care costs associated with the TTQ strategy. A sensitivity analysis explores the consequences of uncertainty in key parameters.

The GDP cost of the COVID-19 is by far larger than all the other components of the cost. The global cost of the Covid-19 crisis in 2020–2021 is estimated at 14% of 2019 GDP (around 12,206 mm$). In the specific case of Spain, it amounts to 24% of the 2019 GDP; which is 397.3 m €. Spain is and will be by far the European country most economically affected by the pandemic. In Spain 2020, the GDP cost accounts for 94.7% of the total cost of the COVID-19 and health-care direct costs are only 2.14%. TTQ is a dominant strategy in Spain. For each euro spent on it, 7 euros will be recovered only in terms of saved health-care resources.

Given the large degree of uncertainty and the fast-evolving nature of the epidemic, a number of assumptions are required to arrive at the estimates provided in this study. The results were found to be robust to the assumptions applied.

TTQ is a key strategy for the contention of the epidemy and it is justified from the economic perspective.

This is the first estimation of the cost of the COVID-19 and the cost-effectiveness of the TTQ strategy for Spain.

This study aims to examine the different effects that the fear and humor appeals in anti-smoking advertisements for children have on their affective reactions to the advertisements, on their beliefs about smoking and on their behavioral intentions to smoke.

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research study conducted in Italy with children aged from 8 to 11 years.

The results indicated that the humor appeal is a useful method for conveying a social theme in a pleasant way and creating a likable character that becomes an example for children to imitate; however, it is necessary to employ the fear appeal to make children reflect carefully about the negative consequences of smoking.

This study examined only children's behavioral intentions derived from anti-smoking advertisements, but future research should also examine their real behaviors after a period following repeated viewing of public service announcements about smoking prevention or other social issues.

Understanding how different types of appeals can influence children represents an important result for the prevention of youth smoking and the promotion of healthy lifestyle habits during childhood.

Understanding how different types of appeals can influence children represents an important result for the prevention of youth smoking and the promotion of healthy lifestyle habits during childhood.

Few studies have examined the impact of social advertisements on children, and particularly little is known about the effectiveness of fear appeals on this group.