THE IMPACT OF DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN COMPETITION ON SECTORAL GROWTH: A CROSS‐COUNTRY ANALYSIS

This paper examines the impact of competition on the total factor productivity (TFP) of 21 manufacturing sectors in eighteen OECD countries over the period of time 1990–2006. We assume that the source of TFP growth can be either domestic or foreign innovation or technology transfer from the technological frontier. Trade openness, R&D, and human capital can have two effects: a direct effect on TFP (e.g., through innovation) and an indirect effect depending on the productivity gap between a given country and the technological frontier. We find that tougher domestic competition is always associated with higher sectoral productivity. Both import and export penetrations are positively associated with an increase of TFP. However, the channels through which higher TFP is materialized are different: export penetration works through level effect, while import penetration acts mainly when conditional on the level of technological development. The economical magnitude of the effect is not trivial.     

英国市场的品牌术——一个专业公关人士的视角

我不打算借本文分析品牌及其价值，因为业界已经有许多权威人士就此论题发表了成千上万的文章。我希望能从另一角度透视品牌化——从我自身出发。这，源于我把职业生涯的每一天都投入了品牌的建立和推广。     

Adolescent injuries in relation to economic status: An international perspective

The primary objective of the study was to examine the relationship between patterns in car-to-car crashes involving young drivers and car and driver characteristics and the research design was a national register-based prospective cohort study. Individual records in a cohort born 1970 – 1972 are linked to road-traffic-crash data (1988 – 2000). Subjects' first police-registered two-car crash leading to severe or fatal injury (n = 4875) are identified. Typical crash patterns are highlighted and associations between pattern and both car and individual socio-demographic characteristics are tested. Four crash patterns are highlighted. Male drivers and those with lower educational attainment are over-represented in all patterns. Pattern-based risk levels vary considerably according to car safety level and driver's age at time of injury and socio-economic status. Crash patterns might be considered in young adult driver education systems, bearing in mind the consistent higher risks of male drivers and of drivers with lower educational attainment.     

The effect of legislation on corporate disclosure practices

This article investigates the effect of the Financial Reporting Act of 1993 (FRA) on mandatory disclosure practices of companies listed on the New Zealand Exchange Limited. The FRA gave statutory backing to financial reporting standards in New Zealand and made non-compliance illegal. Using both univariate and multivariate analyses, we examine the association between (a) the levels of compliance with mandatory disclosure by the companies in our sample, and (b) disclosure regulatory regimes that prevailed in New Zealand before and after the implementation of the FRA. We find that mean corporate disclosure compliance levels in the periods after the enactment of the FRA are significantly higher than those in the periods before the enactment of the legislation. After controlling for the effects of other mandatory disclosure-related variables documented in prior studies, we also find that the improvement in corporate disclosure compliance behaviour is the result of the implementation of the FRA. Alternative specifications of the primary regression model indicate that those findings are robust.     

The NOW account experiment and the demand for money

The authors use the NOW account experience in New England from 1972 to 1978 to estimate the responsiveness of the demand for money to interest payments on checkable accounts. Such an estimate is important in considering the effects on the demand for money of nationwide NOW's and of variations in interest rates on transactions balances in the future. With New England as the experimental region and the rest of the United States as a control group, the authors develop a cross-section, time-series framework to isolate and to estimate the interest rate responsiveness of money demand while accounting for effects of income, interest rates, and gradual adjustment.     

State lottery in the lab: an experiment in external validity

Experimental Economics - In this study, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which the subjects make choices between real-world lottery tickets typically purchased by lottery customers. In this...     

Consumer relationship fading

This paper explores the phenomenon of consumer relationship fading with a series of three adjacent studies. Analyzing two longitudinal behavioral datasets, Study 1 shows that about one-third of the relationships could be described as fading. Drawing on prior work in the marriage disaffection literature, Study 2 defines relationship fading for the consumer marketing context as a process of gradual decline in consumers' intention to continue their relationship with a brand, generally manifested in negative feelings toward the brand, diminishing frequency and/or volume of transactions with it, and initiation of switching intentions. It further identifies disillusion, disaffection, and crossroads as three distinct fading stages, and outlines boundary conditions. Study 3 observes relationship fading through a diary study approach and finds attitude movement in both positive and negative directions between the stages. Further, while positive attitudes generally decline over the course of the fading trajectory, negative emotions peak at the penultimate fading stage and then level off at the final, crossroads stage. By defining and analyzing consumer relationship fading, we improve understanding of an under-researched, large segment of consumers.     

Cost efficiency and endogenous regulatory choices: evidence from the transport industry in France

Journal of Regulatory Economics - We study the impact of different regulatory designs on the cost efficiency of operators providing a public service, exploiting data from the French transport...     

The Effect of Pricing on Demand and Revenue in Federal Reserve ACH Payment Processing

Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper, we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a measure of the responsiveness of ACH demand to price changes. Various methods are employed to estimate the demand elasticities to determine how robust the estimates are. During the period 1985–1996, the Federal Reserve lowered the per-item price of interregional ACH, while the per-item price of intraregional ACH stayed constant. We take advantage of this unique pattern of historical price changes implemented by the Federal Reserve to estimate the effect of price changes on demand for ACH.We find that the volume of ACH processed by the Federal Reserve responds to changes in per-item fees, but the increase in volume that results from a price decline is very small and not statistically significantly different from 0, except in the case of debit origination. The results suggest that the Federal Reserve cannot expect to generate substantial additional volume by lowering its prices further. However, commercial banks may be able to increase the volume demanded by lowering their own ACH fees. We also examine how volume growth initiated by a price cut affects unit costs. Given the relatively large-scale economies found for ACH, volume growth leads to lower unit costs. However, to outweigh the revenues lost as a result of a price decline, ACH volume would have to increase by an amount much greater than our estimates indicate is likely. Consequently, a decline in per-item ACH fees likely would lead to lower net revenues.     

Developing a sustainability ethic in leaders

The triple bottom line of fiscal, social, and environmental success considerably alters how organizations (and stakeholders) measure sustainable success. More important, however, is the conceptual shift required to understand and successfully lead organizations within this increasingly accepted paradigm. This article uses a mixed‐methods approach to explore the conceptual development of a sustainability ethic in aspiring leaders. More specifically, the authors report research examining the curriculum and pedagogy of a leadership education effort, in this case a college‐level course, aimed at effecting change in both individual aspiring leaders and their immediate community. The article describes the philosophical and research base for the curriculum and specific activities with their pedagogical approach. Results show evidence of increased awareness, importance, and commitment to sustainability as well as changes in how students conceptualize sustainability leadership. Findings offer insights for further developing leadership education for sustainability.