Unrealistic optimism is all around us, and it is a well-documented psychological phenomenon. The purpose of this study is to take a critical approach of the main research done in the area and to analyze the important impact that it has in many economic and managerial contexts. We also analyze...

This study defines an aspect of consultant knowledge that provides credibility without claiming unrealistic status for a field like consulting. Our focus is the "sector knowledge" that consultants accumulate which derives from repeated assignments in the industrial sector in which the client...

Despite a pervasive belief that the world's largest firms compete globally, the vast majority have most of their sales in their home regions. Of the top 500 firms for which regional sales data are available, 118 are from Europe, and they compete predominantly within the European region. On...

We present a Hotelling model of price and advertising competition between prescription drugs that differ in quality/side effects. Advertising results in the endogenous formation of two consumer groups: brand loyal and non-brand loyal ones. We show that advertising strategies are strategic...

Consumers are often confronted with choices between options that vary in their short and long term benefit, or what we call immediate and delayed utility. This paper describes the marketing implications of what economists and psychologists have learned about how consumers make these choices. The...

The paper was written for the 1st international workshop on complexity and real world applications focusing on using the tools and concepts from the complexity sciences to support real world decision-making activities, Held at Southampton, Uk,in july 2010. what the paper wished to demonstrate...

Despite an apparently thorough ‘due diligence’ process, many mergers and acquisitions (M&A) still fail to meet pre-merger objectives. One of the main contributing factors is insufficient emphasis on post-merger relationships, and the development of an emergent culture to support the new...

This paper examines the consistency of risk preferences across three decision domains important in most people’s lives: work, health and personal finance. We consider the degree to which the five factor model of personality and a range of factors that influence risk-related decision-making...

Both life history theory and demographic transition theory predict that fertility responds to changes in mortality, but there have been relatively few tests which identify links between mortality perceptions and fertility preferences at the individual level. This paper provides an...

The paper investigates the minimum level of individual rationality that is needed for market prices to converge toward their equilibrium level. It does so by examining the theoretical and methodological foundations of the ‘zerointelligence’ (ZI) agent trading approach, with which Gode and...