How Relative Performance Information Affects Exploration-exploitation Decisions

Employees often make recurring decisions that entail deciding whether to continue using a “status quo” strategy that yields reliable results or try an alternative strategy of unknown efficacy. Via an experiment, we study how relative performance information (RPI) influences this choice and its expected outcome. We theorize and find that RPI has both a social motivational effect that increases employees’ propensity to explore alternative strategies and an informational effect that helps them determine whether exploring alternative strategies will likely help or harm their performance (i.e., it conveys decision-facilitating benefits). Likewise, as predicted, we also find that RPI’s decision-facilitating benefit occurs more strongly among low- versus high-performing employees. Our study helps inform employers about the decision-facilitating implications of incorporating RPI into their performance feedback systems.

Gender quotas and public demand for increasing women’s representation in politics: an analysis of 28 European countries

Female representation in political decision-making positions is now a salient issue in public discussions throughout Europe. Understanding public attitudes towards a more balanced gender distribution in politics remains limited, however. Using a 2017 Eurobarometer, we focus on cross-national differences in public support for increased female participation in politics to address this limitation. Building on the policy feedbacks literature, we stress the role of gender quotas. We argue that quotas – as legislative devices usually adopted through elite-driven initiatives – stimulate support for stronger female representation. Ensuing debates on quotas raise individual awareness about the underrepresentation of women – informational effect – and, once adopted, give a clear signal that persistent gender imbalance is a social problem to be redressed – normative effect. Our empirical analysis supports this argument. Citizens in countries with gender quotas display stronger support for increased female participation in politics.

Russian Media as Actor of Informational Counter-Terrorism Who Forms Antiterrorist Consciousness

The article deals with the problems of terrorist acts coverage by the Russian media, informational counter-terrorism and formation of anti-terrorist consciousness. The relevance of the study is explained by the fact that terrorism, being a socially dangerous phenomenon that openly demonstrates violence and intimidation towards the public, aims at producing a certain informational effect, which terrorists consider necessary. Therefore, improving the mechanisms of counter-terrorism, including informing the public, is of vital importance. In this relation, mass media should be viewed as both a means of influencing collective consciousness and a tool of information transfer via verbal communication. The article describes the role of mass media in the tragical events of the early XX century in Russia, as well as their missteps and mistakes. The author also analyzes social realia of the present and notes that the contemporary terrorists thrive on publicity. Therefore, those terrorists who do not have access to broadcasting will not get coverage of their actions, which will lead to a considerable decrease in the number of attacks. The author states the necessity of coordinated actions of the authorities, the public and the media aimed at developing a single policy to prevent terrorists from using mass media. Meanwhile, the constitutional principle of freedom of speech should be a priority. The article proposes recommendations on how to increase the efficiency of the media in the sphere of counter-terrorism, and emphasizes their role in forming anti-terrorist consciousness.

Biding time versus timely retreat: Asymmetric dependence, issue salience, and conflict duration

Trade-conflict studies focus on whether and how economic interdependence suppresses interstate conflict initiation. Meanwhile, formal theories of war show that conflict initiation is inherently tied to its termination. In this article, I seek to bridge the two literature by utilizing a war of attrition model to formalize the relationship between economic dependence and conflict duration. I theorize that the strategic calculation ultimately comes down to a trade-off between biding one’s time and retreating in a timely manner. In the context of economic attrition, states weigh the relative costs of suffering an additional round of economic disruption against the potential benefits of winning the disputed good. As such, economic dependence can have both coercive and informational effects and these effects are contingent upon issue salience. When the issue salience is low, the coercive effect dominates; states are more likely to quit conflicts as they suffer proportionally larger economic costs. When the issue salience is high enough, the informational effect can kick in; states are less likely to quit conflicts with increasing economic costs. I test these implications on the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) and the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data, finding strong support for the informational effect and suggestive evidence for the coercive one.

Helping Friends or Influencing Foes: Electoral and Policy Effects of Campaign Finance Contributions

Campaign finance contributions may influence policy by affecting elections or influencing the choices of politicians once in office. To study the trade-offs between these two paths to influence, we use a game in which contributions may affect electoral outcomes and signal policy-relevant information to politicians. In the model, a campaign donor and two politicians each possess private information correlated with a policy-relevant state of the world. The donor may allocate his budget to either an ally candidate who has relatively similar preferences or a moderate candidate whose preferences are relatively divergent from the donor's preferred policy. Contributions that increase the likelihood of the moderate being elected can signal good news about the donor's preferred policy and influence the moderate's policy choice. However, when the electoral effect of contributions is too small to demand sufficiently high costs to deter imitation by groups with negative information, this informational effect breaks down.