Abstract

Fairness is a powerful motivator of human behaviour, yet responses to unfairness are far from consistent. In this talk, I will discuss how fairness perception and the reactions it triggers - punishment, compensation, cooperation - are context-dependent and shaped by cognitive heuristics, perspective, and attentional processes. Moving from individual to broader social factors that shape prosocial behaviour, I will then explore how resource scarcity influences cooperation and norm compliance, presenting both empirical evidence and a theoretical framework for their complex interaction. Finally, I will propose a novel idea whereby human contact itself is considered as a new scarce resource in an increasingly digital world, with potentially significant consequences for social inequality.

• Speaker: Claudia Civai, University of London

Location: Seminar room (first floor - DEM)

Abstract
We propose the first formal statistical inference framework for the Kaplan–Schoar Public Market Equivalent (KS-PME), the standard benchmark for evaluating private equity (PE) fund performance. By holding fund cash flows fixed and resampling the public market return path via the stationary block bootstrap, we construct counterfactual ranges and hypothesis tests for individual fund Public Market Equivalents (PMEs).
Of the 1,536 funds in our sample, 832 exhibit positive PME, but only 344 can reject the null of no outperformance at the 5% level. Excluding top performers, only 92 achieve statistical significance. We introduce a market path sensitivity score (MPSS) that quantifies, for each fund, how much its observed performance reflects the specific market conditions it operated in. Cross-sectional regressions show that nearly two-thirds of the variation in MPSS is explained by market environment variables and capital deployment speed, indicating that many funds benefited from, or were penalized by, concurrent market conditions. Our results are robust to alternative benchmarks, alternative performance metrics, cash flow timing perturbations, and a cash flow–adjusted bootstrap that accounts for the endogenous covariance between fund cash flows and market returns.
Keywords: Private equity, Public market equivalent, Direct Alpha, Risk-adjusted Alpha, Bootstrap, Statistical inference, Performance

• Speaker: Corrado Botta, Scuola IMT Alti Studi Lucca and SDA Bocconi

Location: Seminar room (first floor - DEM)

Maintaining the environmental and cultural assets that underpin tourism is no longer considered sufficient, given accelerating ecological change and increasing pressures on communities by tourism. It is now commonly thought that tourism must not simply maintain, but rather contribute to the regeneration and protection of the places it depends upon. This requires a shift from minimising harm to creating net positive outcomes, where visitors are not simply managed and the industry is not simply maintained. Rather they are meaningfully engaged in giving back to destinations.
Within this context, stewards are understood as visitors who develop a sense of responsibility and care for a place, demonstrated through informed, pro-environmental behaviours during and beyond their visit. Ambassadors extend this role by actively advocating for that place, such as shaping attitudes, influencing others, and amplifying messages across their networks. Using the case study of Antarctica, this presentation will first examine how tourists can be transformed into stewards and ambassadors. The challenges of this will also be discussed. The presentation will then explore how destination management organisations can play a role in stewardship, to ensure that the industry contributes to both environmental and community flourishing.
The presentation argues that stewardship and ambassadorship is not an incidental outcome of tourism experiences and industry management, but rather it can be designed as a deliberate intervention. By aligning operator practices, destination management, and visitor engagement with stewardship and ambassador frameworks, the presentation will explore how destinations can leverage tourism as a force for environmental and socio-cultural advocacy, beyond the point of visitation.

Speaker: Anne Hardy, Southern Cross University

Location: Room 2E, Department of Economics and Management

Abstract

The extent to which different countries adopted measures of control and containment in response to the first wave of COVID depended on their history of paternalism. Countries that, prior to 2020, had a more intensive tradition of paternalism responded faster and with more stringent measures. This also translated into better health outcomes by the end of the first wave (Carmignani, 2022). A few years later, most of the parties that led governments at that time find themselves in opposition, with a significantly smaller share of electoral support. Is there a link between post-COVID electoral misfortunes and the decisions taken by governments during the pandemic? Using a sample of 104 parliamentary and presidential elections over the period 2022–2025, this paper provides evidence that the more stringent the measures adopted in 2020, the lower the chances of the ruling party remaining in office in subsequent elections and the smaller its electoral share. While the magnitude of the effect is not quantitatively large—suggesting that other factors likely carry greater weight in the electoral misfortunes of parties in government in 2020—it is statistically significant and robust to the inclusion of public health outcomes (as well as other controls) in the regression model. There are, however, several conditioning and moderating effects. In particular, the negative effect of COVID responses is evident in legislative elections but not in presidential elections, and it is stronger the more democratic the country is. The effect also strengthens over time. While several explanations for this time profile are possible, one that may deserve further attention concerns voters’ memory loss or, less dramatically, their evolving perception of the COVID pandemic.

Speaker: Fabrizio Carmignani, University of Southern Queensland

Location: Seminar room (first floor - DEM)

The diffusion of AI has recently led to the emergence of the concept of algorithmic management as a new managerial approach. In this presentation, I revisit what AI or more precisely LLMs can currently do and how their use relates to Taylor’s scientific management. I derive some recommendations for universities’ role in both (management) research and education as well as for scholarly associations.

• Speaker: Xavier Castaner,  Faculty of Business & Economics (HEC), University of Lausanne

Location: Seminar room (second floor - DEM)

Following Brexit and the war in Ukraine, the source of migrants working on UK farms shifted dramatically away from Eastern Europe and further east into Central Asia, particularly Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. My research investigates the legal, institutional, and economic contexts surrounding this shifting labour frontier in seasonal agricultural work. It determines the extent and conditions under which Central Asian labour migrants enter segmented labour markets in the UK agricultural sector. It emphasises the role of public and private recruitment agencies, as well as the law, in shaping labour market segmentation, and vice versa, and how recruitment agencies at both origin and destination shift labour flows in response to regulatory constraints and changing labour demand and supply. In my presentation, I will present findings from my research based on fieldwork conducted in the United Kingdom, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan.

• Speaker: Dovelyn Rannveig Mendoza, University of Cambridge

Location: Seminar room (first floor - DEM)

In this study, we analyze the patterns of relocation of start-ups’ headquarters across different administrative areas in European countries. We examine how Venture Capital (VC) affiliation and local resource endowments — including private finance, public financial support, talents, and innovative knowledge — jointly shape the decision to relocate and the destination choices of migrating start-ups. 
We rely on a longitudinal dataset of 23,216 European VC-backed and comparable non-VC-backed start-ups. We find that about 25% of sample startups relocated their headquarters at least once in the first ten years of their existence. 
VC affiliation critically influences start-ups' migration patterns: start-ups that secure VC financing are more likely to relocate both before and after receiving their first round of funding than their non-VC-backed peers. Moreover, factors influencing start-ups’ probability of relocation and the destinations of migrating start-ups differ depending on whether start-ups are VC-bac

• Speaker: Massimo Colombo, School of Management, Politecnico Milano

Location: Conference room (ground floor - DEM)