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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between accuracy and conscientiousness among people working in a tidy/messy work environment. Design/methodology/approach -A laboratory experiment was conducted, where participants performing a simple task in a highly controlled environment were sorted into two different treatments, a tidy or a messy work environment. Findings -The results of this study suggest that conscientious people commit more errors in a messy environment than in a tidy environment. Therefore, one of the most significant findings to emerge from this study is that a messy environment could be detrimental to the accuracy of conscientious people. Research limitations/implications -This study is limited in several respects. First of all, the sample is not large, with 80 participants; some variables, such us IQ levels, fatigue levels, caffeine consumption, etc. were not controlled for. Third, the task was restricted to inputting data into a computer. Practical implications -Taken together, these findings suggest the need to promote excellence in work environment tidiness, because highly conscientious employees will work with greater accuracy, while the less conscientious will not be affected. Therefore, overall, accuracy will be better. Consequently, the managers of the organization should be committed to defining policies about high standards of tidiness in the workplace environment. Originality/value -This is the first study to provide evidence of the moderation of the tidy/messy work environment in the relationship between conscientiousness and human accuracy. The present study sheds light on the impact of messy work environment on accuracy of high conscientious people, inducing them to work in a defective way.

This article reports empirical findings on the convergence of the government debt to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio of seven Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states of the European Union (EU) to the European Monetary Union (EMU) over the period 2000 to 2010. This study tests stochastic and b convergence in a time series framework allowing for two structural breaks identified endogenously. The results help to evaluate the distortions in the fiscal convergence process of the CEE countries after the 2008 global financial crisis and the future accession possibilities of each CEE state conditional on the current levels and trends of the debt/GDP ratios.

During the past two decades, innovations protected by patents have played a key role in business strategies. This fact enhanced studies of the determinants of patents and the impact of patents on innovation and competitive advantage. Sustaining competitive advantages is as important as creating them. Patents help sustaining competivite advantages by increasing the production cost of competitors, by signaling a better quality of products and by serving as barriers to entry. If patents are rewards for innovation, more R&D should be reflected in more patents applications but this is not the end of the story. There is empirical evidence showing that patents through time are becoming easier to get and more valuable to the firm due to increasing damage awards from infringers. These facts question the constant and static nature of the relationship between R&D and patents. Furthermore, innovation creates important knowledge spillovers due to its imperfect appropriability. Our paper investigates these dynamic effects using U.S. patent data from 1979 to 2000 with alternative model specifications for patent counts. We introduce a general dynamic count panel data model with dynamic observable and unobservable spillovers, which encompasses previous models, is able to control for the endogeneity of R&D and therefore can be consistently estimated by maximum likelihood. Apart from allowing for firm specific fixed and random effects, we introduce a common unobserved component, or secret stock of knowledge, that affects differently the propensity to patent of each firm across sectors due to their different absorptive capacity.JEL classification: C15; C31; C32; C33; C41

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