Forecasting Real Inventories and the Anomaly of Money Illusion

While the transmission mechanism of inventory behavior in the business cycle has been studied, less effort has been devoted to applied forecasting of inventory change. Inventory fluctuations have accounted for a sizable portion of the changes in U.S. GDP during recessions over the past fifty years. In this paper, we report on out-of-sample forecasts of manufacturing and trade inventories generated by regression and neural network methodology. Our forecasting model is Metzlerian in approach, in that the divergence between actual and targeted sales is hypothesized as the primary cause of inventory imbalance. Our forecasts also rely on the slow adjustment of inventory investment to sales surprises. However, the likely presence of money illusion is a caveat to users, and we address several distortions it introduces to inventory management measures.     

货币幻觉与我国城市住宅估值

我国城市住宅租金收益率随着名义无风险利率和主观风险溢价的提高而提高,与货币幻觉假设相吻合,说明在高通货膨胀时期,投资者降低估值倍数,低估市场;低通货膨胀时期,提高估值倍数,高估市场。近年来在长期低通胀环境下,尽管我国几大城市实际租金指数保持稳定,但是投资者受到货币幻觉的影响,提高住宅市场的市盈率,从而高估房价。     

A Qualitative Exploration into Voters' Ethical Perceptions of Political Advertising: Discourse, Disinformation, and Moral Boundaries

Political campaign advertising continues to be a controversial policy topic in advertising and marketing research. It is also a prime subject for investigating the ethical evaluations of consumers (or voters). The following study draws from postmodern communication theory and employs a qualitative research methodology in order to explore voters' intimate and subjective views about politics, candidates, and political advertising. The findings include emergent themes relating to significant media rituals in voters' lives, the cynical perspective of politics as a game, and the widespread disapproval and suspicion with which voters regard negative political advertising. Additionally, the a priori theme of political information as disinformation was proposed and expanded upon. Findings are discussed in light of a greater understanding of the appropriateness of the traditional versus the postmodern perspective of political communication, informants' construction of moral boundaries which help them determine right from wrong, acceptable vs. unacceptable political behaviours in this particular context.     

Moral Repair in the Workplace: A Qualitative Investigation and Inductive Model

The topic of moral repair in the aftermath of breaches of trust and harmdoing has grown in importance within the past few years. In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study that offers insight into a series of key issues related to offender efforts to repair interpersonal harm in the workplace: (1) What factors motivate offenders to make amends with those they have harmed? (2) In what ways do offenders attempt to make amends? (3) What outcomes emerge from attempts to make amends? Drawing from the findings, we build an inductive model intended to guide future business ethics and management inquiry and research in this area.     

Plane Truth: A Qualitative Study of Employee Dishonesty in the Airline Industry

Interviews with flight attendants are analyzed to refine a person-situation model of organizational dishonesty. The refined model suggests that organizational characteristics have direct and indirect (through flight characteristics) effects on likelihood of dishonesty, type of dishonesty, and motivation for dishonesty. The interviews confirm the existence of three motivations for dishonesty in customer service interactions. In addition to the three motivations originally modeled (enrichment, altruism, and revenge), flight attendants demonstrated a fourth: enforce personal moral codes, and a fifth: habituation. The article discusses the implications of the habituation motivation for organizations which encourage benevolent dishonesty, because they accustom employees to saying things they know not to be true.     

Compliance and the Illusion of Ethical Progress

It has become common for business practitioners and management scholars to distinguish between compliance and ethics. According to the conventional distinction as expressed in Paine’s formulation of Integrity Strategy, compliance is ordinarily a necessary but insufficient condition for ethics. Now that this distinction has been institutionalized in the most significant judicial, legislative, and regulatory developments in American business conduct management since the Enron failure, it is worth asking whether the current emphasis on ethics represents progress. Does it make logical and practical sense to impose ethics as a compliance requirement, or have we come full circle? I argue that assertions of organizational ethical progress, usually involving an increase in the number and or severity of compliance restrictions, do not get the conventional distinction quite right. Moreover, under the consensus distinction, there can be no such thing as organizational ethical progress. However, our ordinary ways of talking about business conduct management often betray logical confusions about the ethics–compliance relationship. While the metaphors we employ – “higher standards,” “raising the bar,” “gray areas,” and “crossing the line,” etc. – perform a worthwhile function as standards for external evaluation of business conduct, they also have a tendency to limit and impoverish our conception of what it is to be ethical. The idea that ethics matters is fundamental to Integrity Strategy’s implicit claim, consistent with conventional wisdom and moral theory, that the objective of responsible conduct cannot be achieved solely by imposing from outside what is required but must also appeal to what is desired.     

Winning Hearts and Minds: Business-to-Business Branding and the Role of the Salesperson

Many business-to-business firms recognise that strong brands can be a valuable resource in today's competitive business environment. To realise the potential of B2B brands, effective communication of brand values is essential. In most B2B markets, the primary form of brand communication is through the sales force and their ability to adapt sales strategies and messages to accommodate customer interactions. There are gaps in the literature regarding the brand value communication process in the customer-salesperson dyad. We argue that successful B2B brand communication requires sales strategies that incorporate brand values appealing to the emotional and the rational concerns of organisational buyers. This paper examines the brand communication process in the salesperson-customer dyad and the extent to which adaptive selling based on a brand platform of rational and emotional brand values could better respond to buying centre members.     

The Love of Money, Satisfaction, and the Protestant Work Ethic: Money Profiles Among Univesity Professors in the U.S.A. and Spain

This study tests the hypothesis that university professors (lecturers) (in the U.S. and Spain) with different money profiles (based on Factors Success, Budget, Motivator, Equity, and Evil of the Love of Money Scale) will differ in work-related attitudes and satisfaction. Results suggested that Achieving Money Worshipers (with high scores on Factors Success, Motivator, Equity, and Budget) had high income, Work Ethic, and high satisfaction with pay level, pay administration, and internal equity comparison but low satisfaction with external equity comparison. Careless Money Admirers (high Success but low Budget) had low intrinsic job satisfaction and low satisfaction with pay level and life. Apathetic Money Managers (low Evil and low Motivator) had the highest intrinsic job satisfaction and life satisfaction. Money Repellent Individuals (high Evil and low Success) had low income, work experience, Work Ethic, and low satisfaction with pay administration. Money does not provide the same motivation for people in all four money profiles. Results are discussed in light of the effectiveness of using money to reward people with different money profiles, intrinsic motivation, and unethical behavior.     

Entrepreneurship and innovation in Ghana: enterprising Africa

This study adopts a multi-level theoretical framework to examine data from 496 entrepreneurs in Ghana. Seven types of innovation activity are analysed against three categories of variables: the characteristics of the entrepreneur, the internal competencies of the firm, and firm location. Across all respondents, the incidence of incremental innovation was far greater than novel innovation. The extent of innovation was related to the education level of the entrepreneur. Firm size and involvement in exporting were positively related to innovation, but firm growth is less systematically so. Innovation was greater in firms located in conurbations compared to firms located in large and small towns. We conclude with suggestions for policy to promote entrepreneurship and innovation in Ghana.      

互联网时代电子货币与纸币共生状况调查分析

21世纪,互联网科技飞速发展,由电子产品与互联网金融所产生的移动支付方式改变了人们的传统支付习惯。人们对以纸币为主的传统支付方式的需求有所减小。电子货币是否会取代纸币,对此进行相关的分析。通过对调查420名不同年龄段人群的社会调查,及电子货币和纸币的对比分析,对于未来社会中电子货币能否取代纸币这一问题展开一系列的思考与研究,得出在未来的很长一段时间内,纸币不会被电子货币所取代,电子货币也不会消失,二者将并立共存的结论。     

In-Store Shopping Strategies: Time and Money Costs in the Supermarket

Consumers may adopt in-store shopping strategies to reduce time and/or money expenditures. Seven shopping strategies were identified and used to simulate the purchase of 19 specified products at three supermarkets at which price and size data were collected. Expenditures ranged from $13.88 to $23.70 for the various strategies, requiring up to 272 price comparisons. The monetary savings (from the average) resulting from use of the strategies were used to determine the break-even times for three hypothetical wage rates. Break-even time was defined as the amount of time one could spend such that the value of the time expended equals the monetary savings realized. The efficiency of a strategy was found to vary by store and by the value placed on shopping time. The implications of the findings for consumer educators are noted and discussed.     

Aiding Car Producers in the EU: Money in Search of a Strategy

This article investigates how the general principles of the Treaty have been applied to the car sector in the EU, where the soft law provisions are of particular interest. A detailed quantitative analysis from 1990 to 2008 highlights a reduction of aid over time. A shift from sectoral to “regional development” motives in granting aid to the sector is also observed in the last 10 years. However, sector specific aid is now less explicit but it remains important. Large amounts of public money are spent without a consistent strategy, reducing capacity in some cases, expanding it in others. The scarcity of public funds calls for a more focussed European policy for this industry.     

Sustainable Supply Chain Management Integration: A Qualitative Analysis of the German Manufacturing Industry

Firms are increasingly integrating sustainability into their supply chain management (SCM) practices. The goal is to achieve sustainable flows of products, services, information and capital to provide maximum value to all corporate stakeholders. Prior research on SCM integration has insufficiently addressed sustainability. The objective of this research is to provide for a coherent and testable model of sustainable supply chain management integration (SSCMI). By drawing on four cases from the German manufacturing industry, we seek to identify the most important factors that enable or impede the integration of sustainability into SCM.     

James Hudnut-Beumler. In Pursuit of the Almighty's Dollar: A History of Money and American Protestantism

James Hudnut-Beumler has pointed the study of American religioushistory in an important direction, one that has seen very littletravel by scholars in this field. This book takes one familiardefining moment in American history—the disestablishmentof Christianity in the era of the early republic and the ensuingvoluntarist religious culture that replaced it—and followsits effects in an unfamiliar but fruitful way. The book is structuredalong thematic chapters that are also basically sequenced chronologically.His research     

Participation in Philanthropic Activities: Donating Money and Time

The 1994 Independent Sector Survey of Giving and Volunteering conducted by the Gallup Organization was used to study the propensities with which people are solicited for money or time as well as the probabilities that people will volunteer time or donate money or property, given they have been solicited or not solicited, utilizing a two-stage probit analysis. Forty-five percent of respondents were asked by philanthropic organizations to volunteer time in 1994. Of those, 80% did volunteer. Some 78% of respondents were asked to donate money or property in 1994. Of those, 85% donated some money or property. Human, social, and cultural capital explained those who were solicited to volunteer. The same variables plus income variables determined whom to be solicited for donating money or property. Human, social, and cultural capital and income variables accounted for more variation in the probabilities to volunteer or donate, given respondents were not asked to contribute, than the probabilities to volunteer or donate, given respondents were asked to contribute.     

区块链技术下法定数字货币对货币供给的影响研究

互联网技术驱动下的数字货币革命揭开了货币史上的新篇章,私人数字货币迅猛发展的同时,世界各国中央银行为了维护主权法定货币的地位纷纷投入到了法定数字货币运动的浪潮中。而法定数字货币有利于克服数字货币天然的缺点,并能给市场带来更透明化更加安全的环境。基于分析法定数字货币的内涵与发展现状,对比私人数字货币的突出特点,提出发行法定数字货币的必要性,为法定数字货币的发行与流通提出建议。     

无国籍公司的幻觉 国家无能论的神话

跨国公司当前的趋势是巨型化,其在发达国家和发展中国家的发展是不平衡的。跨国公司在推动经济全球化的同时也从全球化中受益,但是跨国公司的“无国籍”幻觉可能使我们忽视了其国家性,全球化和巨型化的跨国公司与其母国政府利益是高度一致的,但是跨国公司在对宿主国带来经济利益的同时可能也带来了巨大的挑战,并使后者的国家监管效能趋于弱化。     

Strengthening care for injured persons in less developed countries: A case study of Ghana and Mexico

In all countries, the priority for reducing road traffic injuries should be prevention. Nonetheless, there are low-cost ways to strengthen the care of injured persons, that will help to lower the toll from road traffic. The purpose of this review was to elucidate ways to accomplish this goal in the context of less developed countries. Studies selected for this review were obtained by Medline review, selecting on key words such as trauma, injury, trauma care, essential health services, and developing country. Articles pertaining to any country and all available years were considered. In addition, the authors utilized articles from the gray literature and journals from Mexico and Ghana that are not Medline referenced. Studies surveyed point to road safety and other forms of injury prevention, as well as prehospital care, as likely priorities for developing countries. Nonetheless, hospital-based improvements can contribute to decreases in mortality and, especially, decreases in disability. For both prehospital and hospital based care, studies revealed several critical weak points to address in: (1) human resources (staffing and training); (2) physical resources (equipment, supplies, and infrastructure); and (3) administration and organization. The ‘essential services’ approach, which has contributed to progress in a variety of fields of international health, needs to be developed for the care of the injured. This would define the trauma treatment services that could realistically be made available to virtually every injured person. It would then address the inputs of human resources, physical resources, and administration necessary to assure these services optimally in the different geographic and socioeconomic environments worldwide. Finally, it would identify and target deficiencies in these inputs that need to be strengthened.