Tilburg University

About: Tilburg University is a education organization based out in Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Netherlands. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Anxiety. The organization has 5550 authors who have published 22330 publications receiving 791335 citations.

Competitive Reactions to Advertising and Promotion Attacks

Abstract: How do competitors react to each other’s price-promotion and advertising attacks? What are the reasons for the observed reaction behavior? We answer these questions by performing a large-scale empirical study on the short-run and long-run reactions to promotion and advertising shocks in over 400 consumer product categories over a four-year time span.Our results clearly show that the most predominant form of competitive response is passive in nature. When a reaction does occur, it is usually retaliatory in the same instrument, i.e., promotion attacks are countered with promotions, and advertising attacks are countered with advertising. There are very few long-run consequences of any type of reaction behavior. By linking reaction behavior to both cross- and own-effectiveness, we further demonstrate that passive behavior is often a sound strategy, while firms that do opt to retaliate often use ineffective instruments, resulting in “spoiled arms.” Accommodating behavior is observed in only a minority of cases, and often results in a missed sales opportunity when promotional support is reduced. The ultimate impact of most promotion and advertising campaigns depends primarily on the nature of consumer response, not the vigilance of competitors.

Chapter 23 – Environmental Taxation and Regulation*

Abstract: This chapter examines government policy alternatives for protecting the environment. We compare environmentally motivated taxes and various non-tax environmental policy instruments in terms of their efficiency and distributional impacts. Much of the analysis is performed in a second-best setting where the government relies on distortionary taxes to finance some of its budget. The chapter indicates that in this setting, general-equilibrium considerations have first-order importance in the evaluation of environmental policies. Indeed, some of the most important impacts of environmental policies take place outside of the market that is targeted for regulation. Section 2 examines the optimal level of environmental taxes, both in the absence of other taxes and in the second-best setting. Section 3 analyzes the impacts of environmental tax reforms, concentrating on revenue-neutral policies in which revenues from environmental taxes are used to finance cuts in ordinary, distortionary taxes. Here we explore in particular the circumstances under which the “recycling” of revenues from environmental taxes through cuts in distortionary taxes can eliminate the non-environmental costs of such reforms – an issue that has sparked considerable interest in recent years. Section 4 compares environmental taxes with other policy instruments – including emissions quotas, performance standards, and subsidies to abatement – in economies with pre-existing distortionary taxes. We first compare these instruments assuming that policymakers face no uncertainties as to firms’ abatement costs or the benefits of environmental improvement, and then expand the analysis to explore how uncertainty on the part of regulators and the associated monitoring and enforcement costs affect the choice among alternative policy instruments. Section 5 concentrates on the trade-offs between efficiency and distribution in a second-best setting. Section 6 offers conclusions.

Content validity, construct validity, and reliability of the WHOQOL-Bref in a population of Dutch adult psychiatric outpatients

Abstract: In this study, the psychometric properties of a quality of life scale, the WHOQOL-Bref, were examined in a population of 533 Dutch adult psychiatric outpatients. Participants underwent two semistructured interviews in order to obtain Axis-I and II diagnoses, according to DSM-IV. Besides the WHOQOL-Bref they also completed questionnaires for measuring psychopathological symptoms (SCL-90) and perceived social support (PSSS). Scores on 25 of the 26 questions of the WHOQOL-Bref had a good distribution. Similar to previous findings, exploratory factor analysis revealed a four-factor structure. A priori expected associations were found between the domains of the WHOQOL-Bref, on the one hand, and dimensions of the SCL-90 and the PSSS-score, on the other hand, indicating good construct validity. The internal consistency of the four domains of the WHOQOL-Bref ranged from 0.66 to 0.80. Domain scores of the WHOQOL-Bref correlated around 0.92 with the WHOQOL-100 domain scores. Relatively low correlations were found between demographic characteristics (age and sex) and WHOQOL-Bref domain scores. It is concluded that the content validity, construct validity, and the reliability of the WHOQOL-Bref in a population of adult Dutch psychiatric outpatients are good. The WHOQOL-Bref, therefore, is an adequate measure for assessing quality of life at the domain level in a population of adult psychiatric outpatients.