A regime-switching analysis of pass-through

We empirically investigate how various economic factors affect the changes in the pricing policies of exporters, in particular changes in the exchange rate pass-through. Assuming exporters set prices following either a high or a low pass-through pricing policy, and assuming that the transition probabilities between these pricing policies depend on market concentration, exporting country??s market share and monetary stability, we estimate a Markov regime-switching model, using data we have collected on imported cars to the United States. Our findings show that the ??low pass-through?? regime is characterized by: lower exchange rate pass-through, low response to misalignments in the firm??s relative price, low volatility of exogenous shocks, and higher duration. When we decompose the changes in the pass-through in our sample, we find that monetary stability has been the most important factor behind the decline in the pass-through. Monetary stability explains more than 50% of the decline in the exchange rate pass-through, while country market share and market concentration explain about 25 and 10%, respectively.     

Work Values of Turkish and American University Students

The first aim of this paper was to investigate how the traditional Protestant work ethic (PWE) and more contemporary work values (i.e., masculine, feminine, and entrepreneurship values) were related to one another, and differed across genders and two cultural contexts, namely Turkey and the U.S. The second aim was to elucidate the role of religiosity in PWE among the two cultural groups. Two hundred and sixty six American and 211 Turkish university students participated in this questionnaire study. The analyses examining cross-cultural differences revealed that Turkish university students reported greater scores in the PWE and all contemporary work values as compared to their American counterparts. For the Turkish sample, there were no gender-related differences in the PWE, whereas in the U.S. sample, men reported greater PWE scores than did women. With regard to gender differences in contemporary work values, our results showed that gender groups differed in feminine and entrepreneurship values in both cultural contexts; men emphasized femininity and entrepreneurship more than women in Turkey but the reverse was true in the U.S. Correlations between contemporary work values and the PWE illustrated that the PWE is associated with entrepreneurship and masculine values in both cultural contexts and with feminine values in the Turkish context. Finally, our results regarding the role of religiosity in PWE indicated that highly religious participants reported greater PWE scores than the less religious ones regardless of culture. Findings are discussed with reference both to differences in the two socio-cultural contexts and to recent change in the social structure of Turkish society. Zahide Karakitapoğlu Aygu¨n received her Ph.D. in social psychology from Middle East Technical University Turkey. She is currently an assistant professor at Bilkent University, Faculty of Business Administration. Her research interests concern values, commitment and justice. Mahmut Arslan (BSc, MA, PhD) is an Associate Professor received his graduate degree from Hacettepe University Department of Public Finance. He completed a masters degree in Business Administration at Hacettepe University Department of Business Administration and his PhD in Business at University of Leeds (UK). He has worked as a financial analyst and a research assistant. Dr. Arslan has also worked for the several reorganization projects as analyst and coordinator. He became Assistant Professor in 2000 and Associate Professor in 2003 at Hacettepe University Department of Business Administration. He teaches management and business ethics, organizational behaviour. He is also the director of Hacettepe University Centre for Business and Professional Ethics. Dr. Col. Salih Gu¨ney is an Associate Professor graduated from Hacettepe University Department of Sociology in Ankara in 1980. He received master's degree in behavioral sciences from the University of Istanbul, Faculty of Management in 1987. He finished his doctoral studies in behavioral sciences at the same university and received his PhD in 1988. He became an associated professor in 1997. He is currently the head of the behavioral sciences branch in the Turkish Military Academy. He teaches behavioral sciences, communication theory, introduction to sociology, and public relations at the Military Academy.     

The moderating role of nationality on destination experience

ABSTRACT

Differences in tourists’ cultural values are significant factors in their product and service choices, yet they have generally been neglected in the literature. Therefore, this study examined how tourists’ nationalities influence their perceptions of service quality, affective image perceptions, and revisiting intentions. Activities were found to be more determinant on a destination’s affective image for Russian tourists, whereas accommodation, hospitality, and language communication services had a larger effect on German tourists.     

Business Performance and Strategic New Product Development Activities: An Empirical Investigation

Despite the ongoing search for the so-called silver bullet that provides the ultimate competitive advantage, there is no roadmap showing the “right” way to perform new product development (NPD). What's more, it is highly unlikely that such a formula could be developed. Given the diversity of firms and industries as well as the complexity of the NPD process, no single set of NPD activities or steps can be defined that will be appropriate for all firms. However, Roger J. Calantone, Shawnee K. Vickery, and Cornelia Droge propose that it is possible to develop such a framework within the confines of a specific industry. They suggest that successful companies within an industry are likely to focus on certain essential NPD activities that allow them to achieve the best possible results within the constraints of their market. Their research is directed toward identifying the relationship between the performance of specific innovation-related activities and overall business performance in the furniture industry. This study also assesses the relationship between a firm's performance on an NPD activity and the importance assigned to that activity by the firm's chief executive officer (CEO). With the current emphasis on cross-functional teams, the study also seeks to determine whether performance on a given NPD activity is related to the assignment of responsibility for that activity. The following NPD activities were evaluated for their effect on corporate performance: customization, new product introduction, design innovation, product development cycle time, product technological innovation, product improvement, new product development, and original product development. Compared to their competitors, top performers consistently put more strategic emphasis on each of these activities. All of these activities have a strong positive influence on return on investment (ROI) and ROI growth. What's more, most of the activities also clearly relate to stronger market share, market share growth, return on sales (ROS), and ROS growth. The vision and focus on these essential NPD activities must begin with CEOs who recognize their strategic value. Such leaders will direct appropriate staff and technical resources toward performance of the necessary activities. They will also ensure that the organization is sufficiently flexible to accept the changes in responsibilities for coordination and leadership that are necessary during different stages in the NPD process. To gain the product flexibility necessary for competing in numerous market segments, top performers require greater input and leadership from design, engineering, and manufacturing.     

The Decarbonisation Challenge of Southeast Europe: A Case Study of Romania

Intereconomics - Not only is Romania facing some crucial energy system problems, but the proposed solutions have often been improvised and incoherent. This also raises doubts about the...     

Revenue management for make-to-order manufacturing systems with a real-life application

Abstract

Due to successful applications of revenue management in the airline industry, in recent years, there has been a growing interest to adopt revenue management in make-to-order (MTO) manufacturing systems. Several interrelated decision problems such as order acceptance/rejection, short-term capacity planning, due date assignment, and order scheduling need to be studied simultaneously in order to manage revenues effectively in MTO manufacturing systems. Both the producer’s and customer’s requirements need to be taken into account through some negotiation mechanisms that are sensitive to the service-level reputation of the manufacturing companies. In this article, we propose a new dynamic bid price–based revenue management model that considers all of the aforementioned decision problems simultaneously. A simulation optimization approach is utilized in order to determine the best possible values of control parameters for bid price, due date assignment, and price increment/reduction mechanisms. The performance of the proposed integrated revenue management model is tested on both a hypothetical example and a real problem of a bridal gown company. The computational results show that the proposed model provides significant improvements in total revenue compared to other static and dynamic bid price policies.     

Career success schemas and their contextual embeddedness: A comparative configurational perspective

We introduce career success schemas as critical for understanding how people in different contexts perceive and understand career success. Using a comparative configurational approach, we show, in a study of 13 countries, that two structural characteristics of career success schemas—complexity and convergence—differ across country contexts and are embedded in specific configurations of institutional factors. Adopting complexity and convergence as primary dimensions, we propose a taxonomy of career success schemas at the country level. Based on this taxonomy, we contribute to the understanding of subjective career success across countries, discuss the importance of schemas for organisational career systems in multinational enterprises, and propose specific guidelines for future comparative careers research.     

基业常青的关键:创新力与控制力的统一

现有理论对基业常青的贡献与缺陷，传统管理学中控制职能对创新的不适应性剖析，借用力学原理提出的创新力有效控制的三要素和控制系统创新五要素模型架构。结论：创新力与控制力的均衡统一是基业常青的关键。     

Strategies and boundaries: Subcontracting in construction

A central concern in studying organization environment relationships has been the issue of how boundaries of organizational activity are defined and altered. A specific organizational response that pertains to the issue of boundaries is subcontracting. Construction is one industry where subcontracting is used extensively. Eccles' (1981a) study shows, however, that there is great variation in the subcontracting practices of contractors. This paper reports an exploratory study on the possible determinants of the extent of subcontracting by the construction firm.     

International Evidence on Risk Taking by Banks Around the Global Financial Crisis

This study models the risks of commercial banks from the United States and developed, emerging, and frontier countries while controlling for bank- and country-specific variables within a panel framework. Bank risk is measured by both the traditional Z-score and a composite bank risk index proposed by the authors. The findings suggest that even though the riskiness of all banks from different country groups increased following the financial crisis, the magnitude of the change is not the same across groups. During the post-crisis period, banks in developed, emerging, and frontier countries experienced a smaller increase in their risk compared to their counterparts in the United States. This article provides support for the claim that banks in emerging and frontier countries have experienced the effects of the financial crisis to a lesser extent compared to those in the United States.