Information and adjustment in a local housing market

Existing studies on bubbles have been mainly concerned with investigating the stationarity properties of stock prices and market fundamentals. We develop a new method of testing for bubbles that relates the bubble component of stock prices to the probability of bursting in the context of the Weibull distribution. There were several eruptions and subsequent collapses of seeming bubbles over the past three decades: 1987 (Black Monday), 2000 (information technology (IT) boom) and 2007 (housing market boom). Using US monthly data for the S&P 500 and NASDAQ series, we have found that the S&P 500 series contained an explosive bubble only during the boom of the housing market that occurred before the 2007 global economic crisis, and the NASDAQ market contained an explosive bubble during the surge of stock prices peaking in 1987 and 2007, although our stationarity tests fail to detect the bubbles. No bubble was found in both the S&P and NASDAQ series during the 2000 IT boom. Our evidence corroborates the criticism that the traditional unit root and cointegration tests may not be able to detect some important class of bubbles.     

New product pricing strategy under customer asymmetric anchoring

Potential customers' willingness to pay (WTP) for a new product can be affected by their observing a posted price and this can be modeled in terms of an anchoring mechanism. A theoretical argument and mathematical proof are developed, showing that if customers use an asymmetric WTP anchoring mechanism, it will normally be optimal for firms to price higher than otherwise. Experimental evidence is provided supporting the notion that an asymmetric anchoring mechanism can be involved in purchase decisions.     

Effective employment brand equity through sustainable competitive advantage, marketing strategy, and corporate image

Traditional human resource management does not consider adopting a marketing approach in creating a positive company image to enable the recruitment of better employees. Recently, however, many scholars have attempted to apply marketing principles to recruitment management. Marketing can help create an effective image for a firm and position the firm as a good place to work. The study here examine ways marketing management relates to recruitment marketing in the hospital industry and finds that a hospital's sustainable competitive advantage, marketing strategy, and employment brand equity can influence the intention of medical doctors to pursue job opportunities.     

Do dividend changes predict the future profitability of firms?

Many previous studies have been conducted to test whether corporate dividend changes predict the future profitability of firms. While the debate continues, we assess the information content of dividends (ICD) hypothesis in the Korean market as it provides an interesting experimental setting for testing the hypothesis in the context of corporate governance. We find that it is difficult to support the ICD hypothesis if one accepts nonlinear patterns in earnings. However, when we divide the sample in terms of Chaebol vs. non‐Chaebol and high‐growth vs. low‐growth firms, we find that the ICD hypothesis becomes valid, especially for non‐Chaebol firms and for low‐growth firms. Therefore, we suggest that the validity of the ICD hypothesis may be dependent on firm characteristics such as the corporate governance structure and growth stage.     

Using economic impact analysis for arts management: an empirical application to a music institute in the USA

Economic impact analysis can be used strategically by arts managers to provide information pertaining to making and justifying effective managerial and marketing decisions. The three aspects of economic impact analysis—direct, indirect and induced—reveal information such as arts participants' expenditure patterns, rationale for expenditure, relationships between participant demographics and expenditure, and amount of expenditure outside arts institutions. Arts managers can use the information and data to match product offerings of the institution with those of its participants; increase the participants' participation in, satisfaction with and loyalty to the institution; increase the stature and validity of the arts institution within the community; price the products of the arts institute; and increase community and financial support for arts institutions. This synergistic use of economic impact analysis information with marketing information is illustrated using a music institute in the USA. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications     

Using performance management to win the talent war

The talent war is a 21^st-century reality whereby organizations of all sizes, across all industries, compete to hire and retain scarce human capital. The talent war is fierce because there are few individuals within each industry who are considered top human capital such that there is not enough to go around, and these top performers generate a great deal of revenues, profit, and overall success for their organizations. In this installment of Human Performance, we describe the nature of the talent war and reasons why winning it is crucial for organizational competitiveness, sustainability, and survival. We discuss how implementing a performance management system can help organizations win the talent war by retaining these coveted top performers. Specifically, we offer the following research-based recommendations for using performance management to (1) create and maintain individualized developmental plans; (2) ensure that work is challenging, interesting, and meaningful; (3) provide clear advancement opportunities, and (4) implement contingent rewards. Implementing these recommendations can turn performance management into an effective tool to retain top talent and prevent competitors from stealing a firm's crucial source of competitive advantage.     

Multigeneration diffusion model for economic assessment of new technology

In the era of 21st century, development of emerging information technology is the essence of the advancement. This kind of new technology, however, often requires a great deal of amount of initial investment for both procedures of R&D and commercialization. As cost invested in developing the specified technology is increasing, investors are paying more attention to cost to benefit analysis (CBA). One of the basic elements of CBA for new technological development is the diffusion pattern of demand of such technology. Typically, it would be hard to presume the diffusion pattern of demand when the new product or the technology is under development. In this case, a simulation study is necessary. Many studies of technology evaluation have adopted a single generation model to simulate the diffusion pattern of demand. This approach, however, considers the diffusion of the new technology itself, not taking into account newer generation, which can replace the one just invented. In the real market situation, one must consider the competition and substitution phenomena between old and new technologies. In this paper, we show how multigeneration technology diffusion model can be applied for more accurate CBA for information technology. Additionally, Monte Carlo simulation is performed to find influential factors on the CBA of a cybernetic building system (CBS).     

The complementary effect of intellectual property protection mechanisms on product innovation performance

This study assessed the effect of simultaneous implementations of different intellectual property (IP) protection mechanisms on a firm's product innovation performance (PIP). The study categorized seven widely-used IP protection mechanisms (IPPMs) into two groups: formal and informal. Complementarity was then tested within and between the formal and informal groups of IPPMs. The result showed that there existed complementarity when multiple IPPMs were implemented from the same groups. Throughout an additional analysis on the moderating effect of the industrial complexity in technology, it was found that the ‘between groups' combination effect was also existed but varied from even negative to positive concluding that industrial complexity of technology moderates the effects of combinations of IPPMs on a firm's PIP. These results imply that the use of multiple IPPMs is effective but the effect varies by the technological complexity of industry.     

Multi-period heterogeneous vehicle routing considering carbon emission trading

This study considers the problem of determining heterogeneous vehicle routes in each period of a given planning horizon while satisfying service combinations, customer demands and vehicle capacities. The objective is to minimize the sum of vehicle operation costs and carbon emission trading cost/benefit, where the trading cost is incurred to purchase the carbon emission right if the total emission exceeds an upper limit in each period, while the trading benefit can be obtained by selling the right in each period, otherwise. A mixed integer programming model is developed to formulate the problem mathematically. Then, a tabu search algorithm is proposed that incorporates the characteristics of the heterogeneous and the period vehicle routing problems while considering the amount of carbon emission in each period. Computational experiments were done on modified benchmark instances and additional random instances, and the results show that the multi-period approach outperforms the existing single-period one in overall average. In particular, the test results show that the multi-period approach can reduce carbon emission more significantly than the single-period one without sacrificing the total cost.