Controllability and Persistence of Money Market Rates along the Yield Curve: Evidence from the Euro Area

Abstract. Controllability of longer‐term interest rates requires that the persistence of their deviations from the central bank's policy rate (i.e. the policy spreads) remains sufficiently low. This paper applies fractional integration techniques to assess the persistence of policy spreads of euro area money market rates along the yield curve. Independently from anticipated policy rate changes, there is strong evidence for all maturities that policy spreads exhibit long memory. We show that recent changes in the operational framework and the communication strategy of the European Central Bank (ECB) have significantly decreased the persistence of euro area policy spreads and, thus, have enhanced the ECB's influence on longer‐term money market rates.     

Innovative versus incremental new business services: Different keys for achieving success

In companies where new product development plays an important strategic role, managers necessarily contend with a portfolio of projects that range from high technology, new‐to‐the‐world, innovations to relatively simple improvements, adaptations, line extensions, or imitations of competitive offerings. Recent studies indicate that achieving successful outcomes for projects that differ radically in terms of innovativeness requires that firms adjust their NPD practices in line with the type of new product project they are developing. Based on a large‐scale survey of managers knowledgeable about new product development in their firm, this study focuses on new business‐to‐business service projects in an attempt to gain insights about the influence of product innovativeness on the factors that are linked to new service success and failure. The research results indicate that there are a small number of “global” success factors which appear to govern the outcome of new service ventures, regardless of their degree of newness. These include: ensuring an excellent customer/need fit, involving expert front line personnel in creating the new service and in helping customers appreciate its distinctiveness and benefits, and implementing a formal and planned launch program for the new service offering. Several other factors, however, were found to play a more distinctive role in the outcome of new service ventures, depending on how really new or innovative the new service was. For low innovativeness new business services, the results suggest that managers can enhance performance by: leveraging the firm's unique competencies, experiences and reputation through the introduction of new services that have a strong corporate fit; installing a formal “stage‐gate” new service development system, particularly at the front‐end and during the design stage of the development process; and ensuring that efforts to differentiate services from competitive or past offerings do not lead to high cost or unnecessarily complex service offerings. For new‐to‐the‐world business services, the primary distinguishing feature impacting performance is the corporate culture of the firm: one that encourages entrepreneurship and creativity, and that actively involves senior managers in the role of visionary and mentor for new service development. In addition, good market potential and marketing tactics that offset the intangibility of “really new” service concepts appear to have a positive performance effect.     

What is the irrigation potential for Africa? A combined biophysical and socioeconomic approach

Although irrigation in Africa has the potential to boost agricultural productivities by at least 50%, food production on the continent is almost entirely rainfed. The area equipped for irrigation, currently slightly more than 13 million hectares, makes up just 6% of the total cultivated area. More than 70% of Africa’s poor live in rural areas and mostly depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As a result, agricultural development is key to ending poverty on the continent. Many development organizations have recently proposed to significantly increase investments in irrigation in the region. However, the potential for irrigation investments in Africa is highly dependent upon geographic, hydrologic, agronomic, and economic factors that need to be taken into account when assessing the long-term viability and sustainability of planned projects. This paper analyzes the large, dam-based and small-scale irrigation investment potential in Africa based on agronomic, hydrologic, and economic factors. We find significant profitable irrigation potential for both small-scale and large-scale systems. This type of regional analysis can guide distribution of investment funds across countries and should be a first step prior to in-depth country- and local-level assessment of irrigation potential, which will be important to agricultural and economic development in Africa.     

The Fuzzy Front‐End of Discontinuous Innovation: Insights for Research and Management

In an article by Reid and de Brentani, a theoretical model of the process and structure for the fuzzy front‐end (FFE) of new product development (NPD) for discontinuous innovations was proposed. Its basic premise is that information flow in the early development of such innovations moves from the environment into the firm, facilitated by individuals playing three key roles at three decision‐making interfaces: (1) the boundary spanner at the boundary interface, (2) the gatekeeper at the gatekeeping interface, and (3) what is identified in this paper as the “project broker” at the project interface. The current paper builds on and augments the ideas presented in this theoretical model with the primary objective of formulating a set of propositions detailing factors affecting the flow of information, and thus role effectiveness at each of these interfaces for discontinuous innovations. The focus is on radically new innovations both because this type of innovation has the highest level of uncertainty during the FFE and because the development of products resulting from such innovations entails the greatest lack of understanding and the fewest strategies for effective management. To achieve this objective, individual, social system, and environmental factors, which promote and/or inhibit the effectiveness of the roles played during the three FFE phases, are examined in terms of both the speed and the quality of information flow. This is done with the goal of substantially improving NPD information as it proceeds through the FFE. In turn, it can help researchers, managers, and team players to better anticipate and meet the navigational challenges of this intrinsically complex, risky, but high potential, NPD scenario.     

English in Product Advertisements in Non-English-Speaking Countries in Western Europe: Product Image and Comprehension of the Text

ABSTRACT

Although English has been shown to be the most frequently used foreign language in product advertisements in countries where it is not the native language, little is known about its effects. This article examines the response to advertisements in English compared to the response to the same ad in the local language in Western Europe on members of the target group for which the ad was intended: 715 young, highly educated female consumers. The use of English in a product ad does not appear to have any impact on image and price of the product, but it does affect text comprehension: the meaning of almost 40% of the English phrases was not understood. These results were the same for all countries involved in the study, irrespective of whether the respondents’ (self-) reported proficiency in English is high or low.     

Asymmetric Information and the Transmission Mechanism of Monetary Policy

Abstract. This paper analyses the consequences of asymmetric information in credit markets for the monetary transmission mechanism. It shows that asymmetric information can not only reinforce but can also weaken or overcompensate the effects of the standard interest rate channel. Crucial is that informational problems lead to an external finance premium that can be positive or negative for marginal entrepreneurs. Tight money may lead to an increase in the absolute value of this premium, implying that there is a credit channel of monetary policy, but its working direction is ambiguous.     

Microfinance in Times of Crisis: The Effects of Competition, Rising Indebtedness, and Economic Crisis on Repayment Behavior

This paper analyzes repayment determinants for loans from Caja Los Andes, a Bolivian microlender. The analysis focuses on the influence of recent changes in Bolivia. In particular, we examine the effects of the rapidly growing supply of microloans, the increasing competition, a rising level of indebtedness among microentrepreneurs, and the recent economic crisis. Our results show a twofold influence structure of competition and indebtedness. First, clients with loans from multiple sources at the same time are found to be more likely to default than others. Second, clients with given characteristics have an overall better repayment behavior in areas with higher competition and a higher supply of microloans.     

„Produkt- und Communitymanagement bei der Weltmarke MINI“

Marketing LimitsInterview

„Produkt- und Communitymanagement bei der Weltmarke MINI“ Dr. Wolfgang Armbrecht leitet seit Anfang 2008 das weltweite Brandmanagement MINI. Im Interview erl?utert er zentrale Erfolgsfaktoren des MINI-Marketingkonzepts und zeigt zukünftige Entwicklungspotenziale auf     

Revealing the Nature of Contemporary Tourism Research: Extracting Common Subject Areas through Bibliographic Coupling

This study aims at identifying recent subject areas and citation patterns of tourism research by applying a bibliometric tool to analyze over 2000 publications since 2008 from 10 tourism journals. Twelve subject areas were identified, and interesting citation patterns were revealed. From this analysis, the tourism research was found to be quite dynamic but at the same time very much focused on marketing and management aspects. This article contributes to ongoing efforts to reveal the nature of tourism research and its knowledge bases by applying the methodology of bibliographic coupling. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.