Consumer Motivation in Developed Economies With Secular Stagnation.

In recent years, the slow pace of economic growth, high indebtedness, and high unemployment registered in most developed economies since 2009 have revived the debate over the "secular stagnation hypothesis" first formulated by the Keynesian economist Alvin Hansen in 1938. This return of the secular stagnation hypothesis occurred in November 2013, when Lawrence Summers postulated that the global economy was facing a scenario of low growth, low inflation, and a reduction in GDP per capita due to a chronic insufficiency of aggregate demand. The causes should be sought not only in cyclical factors associated with a long financial cycle and excessive accumulated public and private debt, but also in structural changes in the central economies in recent decades, linked to the rapid slowdown in population growth and the gradual aging of the population. Finally, other factors also depress demand, such as the progressive exhaustion of the globalization process and the consolidation of new labor models. In light of these developments, this paper's aim is twofold: first, to perform an econometric panel-data study in order to determine the influence of each of these factors in explaining secular stagnation in recent years for the selected sample of countries; and, second, to lay out proposals for reorienting the government intervention strategies adopted since the onset of the financial crisis to promote consumption and achieve sustained growth, job creation, and poverty reduction.

Assessing the Growth of Ethical Banking: Some Evidence from Spanish Customers.

Aristotle, who, having predated Adam Smith by 2000 years, deserves to be recognized as the world's first economist (Solomon, 1995), distinguished between two different senses of what we call economics: oikonomikos, or household trading, which he approved of and considered essential to the working of any even slightly complex society, and chrematisike, or trade for profit, which he considered selfish and utterly devoid of virtue, calling those who engaged in such practices "parasites". Of course, consumers do not purchase and invest for solely economic reasons (Polanyi, 1944). Interest in ethics in economics has been the subject of continuous study. In this regard, the recent financial crisis has had not only economic, but also social, psychological, political, and ethical consequences, which have impacted the financial and banking system. Consumers are no longer drawn only by the economic return but also by ethical factors. Ethical banking is on the rise. This paper aims to explain the reasons for the growth in ethical banking and to answer the following questions: can banking consumers-investors change the characterization of the banking system? Can ethical banking gain ground on traditional banking? And is ethical banking really effective? To this end, it will examine the Spanish case, using econometric causal regression models to identify the reasons why consumers decide to invest in ethical banking and determine its role in the Spanish economy.

Emotional Effects on University Choice Behavior: The Influence of Experienced Narrators and Their Characteristics.

This study analyzes the influence that experienced users of university resources might have as narrative sources of information for other students in the process of choosing their schools. Informative videos about the benefits of studying at the university provide a reference model. In these videos, a group of young people present their views and explain their reasons for choosing the university in which they are pursuing their degrees; the various narrators detail all the resources available. This study investigates whether the individual identifiers of these narrators (e.g., gender, age, physical appearance, nonverbal gestures such as smiling, posture) influence perceptions of the credibility of the information they provide. Among a sample of 150 students in their last year of pre-university training, the results demonstrate that the students' ability to identify with the narrators provides information and arouses emotions that inform their perceptions of reliability and therefore their consumption choices. None of these predictors appear to serve as determinants that can be generalized, but if emotional attitudes in response to narratives about the topic (i.e., the university) are positive, then they prompt a change in attitude toward that reference topic too.

Spanish transcultural adaptation of the Leuven Itch Scale.

Itching is one of the most frequent symptoms, and most resistant to treatment, relating to scar formation after burns. The Leuven Itch Scale is a questionnaire which has been validated for use in burns, analysing different clinical dimensions of pruritus. However, until now there was no Spanish version available for use with Spanish-speaking patients. This article presents the process of the academic translation of the questionnaire in order to obtain a Spanish version, and the final version of the questionnaire. We followed a translation/back-translation methodology with a final pilot test on a sample of burn patients. The final result fills a major gap in the quality-of-life questionnaires available in Spanish.