Using recent data on the unvaccinated population across US states, this paper focuses on the determinants of vaccine hesitancy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings show that more prosperous states and states with more elderly residents and more physicians have lower vaccine hesitancy. There was some evidence of the significance of race, but internet access and history of other contagious diseases failed to make a difference. States with centralized health systems and those with mask mandates generally had a lower percentage of unvaccinated populations. Finally, the presence of Democrats in state legislatures tended to lower vaccination hesitancies, ceteris paribus.

We study what profiles of individuals were the most likely to give up their entrepreneurial project at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. To do so, we run an experiment during the first lockdown in the United Kingdom. Our results show that the first months of the crisis have a sharp screening effect: 63% of prospective entrepreneurs postpone or cancel their project in May 2020. Taste for risk or competition does not characterize those who stick to their project. Instead, low opportunity costs to continue and concern for one's own interest instead of cooperation are common among entrepreneurs who persist.

The most commonly used test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 is a PCR test that is able to detect very low viral loads and inform on treatment decisions. Medical research has confirmed that many individuals might be infected with SARS-CoV-2 but not infectious. Knowing whether an individual is infectious is the critical piece of information for a decision to isolate an individual or not. This paper examines the value of different tests from an information-theoretic approach and shows that applying treatment-based approval standards for tests for infection will lower the value of those tests and likely causes decisions based on them to have too many false positives (i.e., individuals isolated who are not infectious). The conclusion is that test scoring be tailored to the decision being made.

The increasing use of vaccine passports (VPs) to certify immunity from the prevailing coronavirus has created positive and negative aspects that have shaken the workings of markets. The VPs are, however, not universally used and not required by all businesses and governments at this point. Given the newness associated with VPs and the ongoing uncertainty of the pandemic, full implications of VPs have not been considered. This paper provides some formal insights into the implications of the use of VPs, borrowing from the established economic theory. Recommendations for public policy are provided.

The contributions of this paper are as follows: (a) proposing a two-stage model to study whether an event has temporary or permanent effects on the probability of choosing a good within a market basket that traditional decision theory cannot explain and (b) studying the effects of COVID-19 on consumers' decisions in Colombia. Findings suggest that the pandemic has transitory effects on preferences in the short run. If it lasts longer, it could induce to permanent changes. Thus, this model can be used to analyze the temporary or permanent effects of any event, regardless of its nature or geographical region, on consumer's decision.

We use the unique data set of 16,300 firms' responses for the large-scale census survey in an urban area at Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam) to study how firms perceived their problems and responded to during the COVID-19 pandemic. We provide estimates of 65 cross-associations between a firm's challenges during the pandemic and their responses. We find several firm characteristics that suggest increased likelihood of pandemic response, including some, such as state ownership, which are typically associated with being slow to respond to market conditions. A theoretical model is posited that matches with the rapidly declared survey response.

Novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and resulting lockdowns have contributed to major retail operational disturbances around the globe, forcing retail organizations to manage their operations effectively. The impact can be measured as a black swan event (BSE). Therefore, to understand its impact on retail operations and enhance operational performance, the study attempts to evaluate retail operations and develop a decision-making model for disruptive events in Morocco. The study develops a three-phase evaluation approach. The approach involves fuzzy logic (), graph theory (), and ANN and random forest-based prediction model with K-cross validation (). This methodology is preferred to develop a unique decision-making model for BSE. From the analysis, the current retail performance index has been computed as "Average" level and the graph-theoretic approach highlighted the critical attributes of retail operations. Further, the study identified triggering attributes for customer retention using machine learning-based prediction models (MLBPM) and develops a contactless payment system for customers' safety and hygiene. The framework can be used on a periodic basis to help retail managers to improve their operational performance level for disruptive events.

This study uses a difference-in-differences estimation method to address potential endogeneity between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and firm performance using a natural experiment of COVID-19, with a cross-country sample of 80,454 firm-quarter observations across 51 countries. We find that high-CSR firms show better performance, raise more debt, and invest more during COVID-19. The positive effect of CSR on firm performance is more pronounced in countries with better governance and among non- International Financial Reporting Standards adopters. Our findings suggest that when trust in firms and markets falls during an economic crisis, the trust established between a firm and its stakeholders via socially responsible behavior pays off.

The community is crucial in preventing COVID-19 pandemic. By employing 313 online surveys, it is found that the community safety support enhances risk perception, disruption recognition, and criticality recognition but it negatively impacts on novelty recognition. Additionally, risk communication could moderate the relationship between risk perception and health tourism intention. These findings reveal that people would pay more attention to the risk information and they could join health tourism in the post-pandemic period to enhance their personal physical and mental health. Therefore, health tourism enterprises should appropriately strengthen risk communication and improve people's health awareness to further promote healthy tourism consumption.

We investigate the effects of lending relationships between banks and borrowers on loan supply during the economic shock caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Using bank-firm matched data for Japan to control for several firm- and bank-specific unobserved effects, we show that banks with close relationships with borrowing firms offer more bank loans to these firms during the COVID-19 shock. This effect is larger if the borrowing firms' cash flows decrease substantially during the shock. These results imply that banks acted as liquidity providers for borrowers during sudden and unpredictable shocks if their relationships with firms were close.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected life expectancy and disturbed economic growth. In pursuance of a better understanding of the probable economic consequences, the present research evaluates seven diverse scenarios/situations to anticipate the possible progression of COVID-19 using a global hybrid dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE)-computable general equilibrium (CGE) general equilibrium model and also investigates the macroeconomic outcomes.

The present paper examines COVID-19 impediments and business start-ups in Pakistan when the country entered the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study selected entrepreneurs in Pakistan to explore the effects of the second wave. The study findings highlight the significant negative impacts of fear of COVID-19 (), COVID-19 stress and anxiety (), and perceptions of the arrival of COVID-19's second wave () on business start-ups (). The findings may support policy makers in diminishing the fear, anxiety, and negative perceptions of the arrival of COVID-19 waves.

We infer market expectations regarding the relationship between firm internationalization and the long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic by using a novel approach to decompose global stock prices into their short- and long-term value components. In general, firms with a greater proportion of foreign assets show greater losses in the long-term value component, suggesting investor expectations of higher supply-chain restructuring costs for such firms. Also, investors appear to have priced in the likely permanent benefits of such restructuring for firms from emerging Asian economies, as these economies may be well-placed as alternative sourcing bases to China.

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has raised consumer concerns about health. By employing 306 online questionnaires, we identify COVID-19's effect on online organic agriculture product consumption and rural health tourism intention based on stimulus-organism-response theory and event system theory by incorporating risk information disclosure of COVID-19 as the moderating variable and health consciousness and risk perception as the mediating variables. These findings suggest that considering the impact of COVID-19 can help focus the production and online sales of organic agricultural products, the establishment and improvement of rural health facilities, and the marketing of rural health tourism.

Previous literature has not examined the dual role of trust in franchise relationships. We extend the franchise and relational governance literature by showing that trust has both a "bright side" and a "dark side" in franchisor-franchisee relationships. Based on transaction cost and knowledge-based reasoning, we argue that intangible knowledge assets and environmental uncertainty have an indirect effect on performance via trust, due to its relational risk and knowledge exchange effect. Using data from the franchise sector in Germany, we show that trust positively mediates the impact of intangible knowledge assets and negatively mediates the impact of environmental uncertainty on franchisor performance. The first effect refers to the "bright side" of trust showing that intangible brand name assets increase trust which, in turn, has a positive effect on performance. Conversely, the second effect refers to the "dark side" of trust highlighting that environmental uncertainty diminishes trust resulting in a negative effect on performance.

Principal-agent models with multiple agents typically assume that the principal wishes to maximize the sum of the agents' achievements (net of the rewards paid to them). But in many settings, like R&D, all that the principal "needs" is that at least one agent will be "successful." We identify settings where the principal actually wants agents to refrain from exerting high effort in order to save expected compensation. We show that the number of agents can decrease in the project's value for the principal. We also consider sequential efforts and investigate settings where the principal can provide support to agents.

Although an efficient design of franchise contracts requires from the franchisor to choose a bundle of contractual restraints as safeguarding and control mechanism, previous research has not explored the antecedents of contractual restraints as a bundle of contractual clauses. To address this gap, the aim of this study is to explain the determinants of the most important contractual restraints (i.e., exclusive dealing, exclusive territory, tying, resale price maintenance, call option, leasing, alienation, and noncompetition clauses), using transaction cost and relational governance reasoning. The regression results based on primary data from German and Swiss franchise systems provide support of hypotheses.

Organizations are composed of stable, predominantly cooperative interactions or -person exchanges. Humans have been engaging in -person exchanges for a great enough period of evolutionary time that we appear to have evolved a distinct constellation of species-typical mechanisms specialized to solve the adaptive problems posed by this form of social interaction. These mechanisms appear to have been evolutionarily elaborated out of the cognitive infrastructure that initially evolved for dyadic exchange. Key adaptive problems that these mechanisms are designed to solve include coordination among individuals, and defense against exploitation by free riders. Multi-individual cooperation could not have been maintained over evolutionary time if free riders reliably benefited more than contributors to collective enterprises, and so outcompeted them. As a result, humans evolved mechanisms that implement an aversion to exploitation by free riding, and a strategy of conditional cooperation, supplemented by punitive sentiment towards free riders. Because of the design of these mechanisms, how free riding is treated is a central determinant of the survival and health of cooperative organizations. The mapping of the evolved psychology of -party exchange cooperation may contribute to the construction of a principled theoretical foundation for the understanding of human behavior in organizations.