The present paper examines the microfoundations of how households form subjective expectations about the macroeconomy. In particular, we are interested in the role of perceived news. The paper outlines a theoretical model where households may give unequal importance (or weights) to „good‟ and „bad‟ news. We also consider whether the relationship is state-varying and has any structural changes. ...

Communicating bad news, otherwise known as difficult conversations, is a complex communication skill that requires didactic learning and practical application. Students learn that what may be interpreted as bad news is determined by the recipient and not by the person who is delivering the news. Learning a systematic approach, such as the SPIKES (Setting, Perception, Invitation, Knowledge, Empa...

In every medical specialty bad, sad, and difficult information must be given to patients and their families. An insensitive approach increases the distress of recipients of bad news, may exert a lasting impact on their ability to adapt and adjust, and can lead to anger and an increased risk of litigation. Many doctors also find these interactions stressful, and in the absence of much effective ...

The literature on endogenous leverage until now shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain procyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility. This paper explains for the first time why bad news are associated with high volatility. We show that, in a model with endogenous leverage and heterogenous beliefs, most agents have the incentive to...

Introduction The subject for this opinion paper is breaking bad news, a complex and integral part in the area of infertility. From the couple’s point of view, involuntary childlessness is not a question of once receiving bad news but repeatedly receiving bad news during the infertility investigation and treatment. Already before seeking medical attention, the couple will have had monthly bad ne...

Reed and Seymour [1998] asked whether every graph has a partition into induced connected subgraphs such that each part is bipartite and the quotient graph is chordal. If true, this would have significant ramifications for Hadwiger’s Conjecture. We prove that the answer is ‘no’. In fact, we show that the answer is still ‘no’ for several relaxations of the question.

Almost everybody has heard horror tales of someone who was shocked after a doctor told him or her bad news in a rude manner. Breaking bad news represents a communication challenge. It is taught as a situation, where things can go utterly wrong. It has been viewed as the culmination point of difficult conversations, where the quality of a health care provider’s communication skills will be expos...

We explore the effects of individualand network-level negative word-of-mouth on the firm’s profits using an agent-based model and specifically, an extended small world analysis. We include both permanent strong ties within the social network, and changing, often random, weak ties with other networks. The effect of negative word-of-mouth on the Net Present Value (NPV) of the firm was found to be...

We find that on average an announcement of rising unemployment is “good news” for stocks during economic expansions and “bad news” during economic contractions. Thus stock prices usually increase on news of rising unemployment, since the economy is usually in an expansion phase. We provide an explanation for this phenomenon. Unemployment news bundles two primitive types of information relevant ...