Editorial introduction

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First demonstrated by Staw (1976), escalation of commitment is the tendency for an individual to increase their commitment to a failing course of action when they are personally responsible for the negative consequences. An attempt was made to replicate this finding and test whether individual differences in numeracy and cognitive reflection could help explain such an effect. No evidence for escalation of commitment amongst the participants was found (<italic>N</italic> = 365). Participants simply invested more in more promising projects. Also, no evidence was found that numeracy or cognitive reflection predict escalation behaviour. The validity of escalation of commitment behaviour is discussed which suggests that future work should look to explore the boundary conditions of such an effect.
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University of Waterloo Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology Building

Escalation of commitment is independent of numeracy and cognitive reflection. Failed replication and extension of Staw (1976)

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One-criterion decision making under uncertainty (1-DM/U) is related to situations in which the decision maker (DM) evaluates the alternatives on the basis of one objective, but e.g. due to numerous uncertain future factors some parameters of the problem are not deterministic. Instead of entirely known paramaters, a set of possible scenarios is available. Multi-criteria decision making under certainty (M-DM/C) concerns cases where the DM assesses particular options in terms of many objectives. The parameters are known. Therefore, scenario planning is redundant. Both issues are investigated by many researchers and practitioners, since real economic decision problems are usually at least uncertain or multi-objective. In the paper, numerous analogies between 1-DM/U and M-DM/C are revealed. Some of them have existed for many decades, but others, so far, have not been developed. A careful examination of all the similarities enables an improvement of existing methods and a formulation of new algorithms for 1-DM/U and M-DM/C. The article presents six pairs of similar procedures and contains the description of three novel approaches created by analogy to existing ones.
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On some analogies between one-criterion decision making under uncertainty and multi-criteria decision making under certainty

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Implementation of health protection requires effective quantitative methods of its evaluation. Assessment could be based on usage of synthetic indices which aggregate couple input variables into a single measure. In this paper, the exploitation of a new synthetic index (by the author called HAI—the Healthcare Aggregated Index) was proposed with the aim of the assessment and long-term interstate comparisons of healthcare systems of the EU countries. Using taxonomic methodology, HAI involves three variables: the number of hospital beds, the number of physicians and the public expenditures on healthcare. HAI utilisation includes dynamic interstate comparisons of national healthcare systems of the different exploitations of human, physical and financial resources. The HAI application to assessment of twenty European Union Member States’ healthcare systems revealed an effect of substitution between health-care resources within the slight international differentiation of the health protection level and the minor dynamic of changes in time series.
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The EU Member States’ national healthcare systems compared using the single synthetic index

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This study investigates the determinants of fiscal effort in sub-Saharan African (SSA) within the framework of fiscal reaction functions. Whereas previous studies focusing on SSA have mainly considered the economic non-debt determinants this study accounts for the role of conflict given its persistence in many SSA countries. It employs a variety of panel econometric methods that are applicable in tackling the problem of endogeneity. Specifically the study employs the instrumental variables fixed effects, the two-step generalised method of moments (GMM) and the traditional two-stage least squares techniques. Mainly the evidence shows that although SSA governments have made fiscal adjustments in response to the escalating levels of debt, conflict impacts negatively on this response in SSA. Furthermore, the results affirm the presence of fiscal fatigue in SSA’s fiscal reaction function. Recommendations based on these findings are discussed.
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Determinants of fiscal effort in sub-Saharan African countries: Does conflict matter?

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The aim of the paper is to examine the impact of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) responsibility on the short- and long-term cost of debt. Linear regression was applied to a unique dataset on CSR and cost of debt for 300 companies recognized in 2017 by Corporate Knights as the most sustainable companies in the world. The question about the link between CSR and cost of debt is important as there is still ongoing debate as to whether business should undertake activities in the field of CSR—managers and other stakeholders are still unsure of the outcomes. The findings show that the involvement in environmental issues decreases the cost of long-term debt whereas the involvement in social issues brings benefits to short- and long-term debt. Surprisingly the greater the involvement in corporate governance, the higher the cost of debt in all time horizons. Managers should expect a lower cost of debt from environmental and social activities mostly in the long run. Corporate governance expenditures may in turn be seen as a waste of company resources, cost of forgone opportunities, or—optionally—as an over-investment. The main novelty is the breakdown of CSR into three dimensions while examining various term structures of corporate debt.
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Poznań University of Economics and Business

Institute of Accounting and Finance Management, Department of Controlling, Financial Analysis and Valuation

The impact of environmental, social and corporate governance responsibility on the cost of short-and long-term debt

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In economic studies researchers are often interested in the estimation of the distribution function or certain functions of the distribution function such as quantiles. This work focuses on the estimation quantiles as inverses of the estimates of the distribution function in the presence of auxiliary information that is correlated with the study variable. In the paper a plug-in estimator of the distribution function is proposed which is used to obtain quantiles in the population and in the small areas. Performance of the proposed method is compared with other estimators of the distribution function and quantiles using the simulation study. The obtained results show that the proposed method usually has smaller relative biases and relative RMSE comparing to other methods of obtaining quantiles based on inverting the distribution function.
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Small area quantile estimation based on distribution function using linear mixed models

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Economics and Business Review

The aim of Economics and Business Review is to provide a platform for academicians from all over the world to share, discuss and integrate their research in the fields of economics and finance, including both behavioural economics and finance, with a key interest in topics that are relevant for emerging market economies. The journal welcomes submissions of articles dealing with micro, mezzo and macro issues that are well-founded in modern theories or based on empirical studies and which are valuable for an international readership.   The journal is published in English. Texts are double-blind peer-reviewed by independent specialists from Polish and foreign academic centers. The journal is open for contributions from economists and management specialists both from Poland and abroad.  Economics and Business Review is scored 70 points in the Ministerial List of Journals.  The journal is edited and published in the paper form and also presented on-line.  This journal is the open access and non-profit enterprise.  The journal have no articles processing charges (APCs) nor article submission charges.  Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 