Antecedents and consequences of adaptive selling confidence and behavior: a dyadic analysis of salespeople and their customers

Personal selling is thought to be a very effective marketing vehicle. The notion of adaptive selling suggests that it should work better than any other means of communication because salespeople are able to develop a unique message for each customer. This research proposes a model of key antecedents and consequences of adaptive selling. In particular, we distinguish, measure, and model the attitudinal and behavioral aspects of adaptive selling, something that is encouraged but not thoroughly examined in the literature. Hypotheses are tested using data from 210 salesperson-customer dyads. The results indicate that a salesperson’s perception of the firm’s customer orientation has an effect on adaptive selling behavior through the salesperson’s adaptive selling confidence, role ambiguity, intrinsic motivation and customer-qualification skills. Adaptive selling behavior increases salesperson’s outcome performance, customers’ evaluations of satisfaction with the product and with the salesperson, which enhance customers’ anticipation of future interactions with the salesperson. The implications for management and theory are discussed.     

Geometric Asian options: valuation and calibration with stochastic volatility

The scaling properties of two alternative fractal models recently proposed to characterize the dynamics of stock market prices are compared. The former is the Multifractal Model of Asset Return (MMAR) introduced in 1997 by Mandelbrot, Calvet and Fisher in three companion papers. The latter is the multifractional Brownian motion (mBm), defined in 1995 by Péltier and Lévy Véhel as an extension of the very well-known fractional Brownian motion (fBm).

We argue that, when fitted on financial time series, the partition function as well as the scaling function of the mBm, i.e. of a generally non-multifractal process, behave as those of a genuine multifractal process. The analysis, which concerns the daily closing prices of eight major stock indexes, suggests to evaluate prudently the recent findings about the multifractal behaviour in finance and economics.     

Land conversion pace under uncertainty and irreversibility: too fast or too slow?

In this paper stochastic dynamic programming is used to investigate land conversion decisions taken by a multitude of landholders under uncertainty about the value of environmental services and irreversible development. We study land conversion under competition on the market for agricultural products when voluntary and mandatory measures are combined by the Government to induce habitat conservation. We show that land conversion can be delayed by paying landholders for the provision of environmental services and by limiting the individual extent of developable land. It is found, instead, that the presence of ceilings on aggregate conversion may lead to runs which rapidly exhaust the targeted amount of land. We study the impact of uncertainty on the optimal conversion policy and discuss conversion dynamics under different policy scenarios on the basis of the relative long-run expected rate of deforestation. Interestingly, we show that uncertainty, even if it induces conversion postponement in the short-run, increases the average rate of deforestation and reduces expected time for total conversion in the long run. Finally, we illustrate our findings through some numerical simulations.     

Time overruns as opportunistic behavior in public procurement

We consider the supplier’s strategic choice on delivery time in a public procurement setting as the result of the firm’s opportunistic behavior on the optimal investment timing when production costs are uncertain. We model the supplier’s trade-off between the option value to defer the contract execution and the penalty payment in the event of delays. We also take into account the issue of penalty enforcement, which in turn depends on both the discretion of the court of law in voiding contractual clauses and the “efficiency” of the judicial system (i.e. the average length of civil trials). We test our main results on Italian public procurement data showing that the supplier’s incentive to delay is greater the higher the volatility of production costs and the lower the “efficiency” of the judicial system. We then calibrate the model using parameters that mimic the Italian scenario on public works procurement and calculate the maximum amount that a supplier is “willing to pay” (per day) to postpone the delivery date and infringe the contract provisions. Our calibration results are consistent with the theoretical model’s predictions and the empirical findings.     

Technical efficiency of European railways: a distance function approach

This study has two principal objectives. The first objective is to measure and compare the performance of European railways. The second objective is to illustrate the usefulness of econometric distance functions in the analysis of production in multioutput industries, where behavioural assumptions such as cost minimization or profit maximization, are unlikely to be applicable. Using annual data on 17 railways companies during 1988–1993, multioutput distance functions are estimated using corrected ordinary least squares (COLS). The resulting technical efficiency estimates range from 0.980 for the Netherlands to 0.784 for Italy, with a mean of 0.863. The distance function results are also compared with those obtained from single-output production functions, where aggregate output measures are formed using either total revenue or a Tornqvist index. The results obtained indicate substantial differences in parameter estimates and technical efficiency rankings, casting significant doubt upon the reliability of these single-output models, particularly when a total revenue measure is used to proxy aggregate output.     

The automatic reaction of the Italian government budget to fundamentals: an econometric analysis

The paper offers a new estimate of the sensitivity of Italy's primary budget balance to macroeconomic variables. The analysis has distinguishing features: detailed itemization of public finance aggregates; close attention to the statistical properties of the time series; and joint estimation of elasticities with respect to both real GDP and inflation. First, the economic variables driving the automatic component were chosen. Second, when possible, a macroeconomic base was associated with each public finance item. Third, each tax base was regressed on the driving economic variables. Fourth, each budget item that was supposed to include an automatic component was regressed either on its own base or directly on the economic variables affecting the automatic components. The effects on public budget are simulated to investigate the consequences of a change in nominal and real GDP.     

Measuring peer effects in the Brazilian school system

Using the identification strategy proposed by Graham and Hahn (2005), we estimate the magnitude of classmate effects on math scores using Brazilian data from 2005. In addition, we provide a detailed discussion about the identification of endogenous peer effects in the linear in means models. Our results show that both peer characteristics (exogenous peer effects) – like race, socioeconomic status and gender – and peer actions (endogenous peer effects) are important determinants of students’ outcomes in the fifth grade of elementary school. Our estimates of endogenous peer effects are about 0.008 of 1 SD of math test scores, which can be interpreted as evidence of a so-called ‘conformist’ individual behaviour, under which students face large costs to exert effort levels that are distant from what is believed to be the norm in the classroom. Those estimates of endogenous peer effects imply a social multiplier of about 1.67.     

Medición de la intensidad en el uso de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación en Escandinavia

One characteristic of the processes related to technological innovation in the Scandinavian countries is the high participation level of public and private agents. The objective of this strategy is to assimilate knowledge and to spread it out in the best possible way. Thus, in this article we identify the profile of ICT users; we try to establish how important they are for these countries, their good use of these technologies and how they impact on their communication processes. The results derived from the research prove that: 1) Swedish and Danish homes are a reference when it comes to the utilization of ICTs, 2) Finnish companies lead the way in the adoption of ICTs, followed by Danish and Swedish companies; 3) When it comes to provision and implementation of public services on a technological platform, the leading countries are Denmark, Finland and Sweden; and 4) When it comes to the utilization of ICTs in infrastructures, the EU leadership is headed by Sweden and Denmark, far ahead from the other Member States.     

Pass-through timing

Trade promotions are the most important promotional tool available to a manufacturer. However trade promotions can achieve their objective of increasing short-term sales only if the retailer passes through these promotions. Empirical research has documented that there is a wide variation in retail pass-through across products. However little is known about the variations in pass-through over time. This is particularly important for products with distinct seasonal patterns. We argue that extant methods of measuring pass-through are inadequate for seasonal products. We therefore introduce a measurement approach and illustrate it using two product categories. We find interesting differences in pass-through for loss-leader products versus regular products during high demand and regular demand periods. We find that retailers use a deep and narrow pass-through strategy (high pass-through on loss-leader products, but small pass-through on regular products) during periods of regular demand and broad and shallow pass-through strategy (smaller, but similar pass-through on both loss-leader and regular products) during periods of high demand. Loss leader products continue to obtain higher pass-through in high demand periods, if the category's high demand period is also a high demand period for other product categories as well.