Recent Advances in Structural Econometric Modeling: Dynamics, Product Positioning and Entry

In the empirical analysis of consumer markets, recent literature has begun to explore the dynamics in both consumer decisions as well as in firms' marketing policies. Other research has begun to explore the strategic aspects of product line design in a competitive environment. In both cases, structural models have given us new insights into consumer and firm behavior. For example, incorporating consumer and firm dynamics may help explain patterns in our data that are not well-captured by static models. Similarly, the strategic aspects of firm entry and product-positioning may be intrinsically linked to firm conduct and the intensity of competition in a market. Structural analysis of these consumer and firm decisions raise a number of substantial computational challenges. We discuss the computational challenges as well as specific empirical applications. The discussions are based on the session “Structural Models of Strategic Choice” from the 2004 Choice Symposium.     

实施电子商务的目标

引子 AlliedSignal是一家销售航空、汽车、化学、纤维和塑料产品的综合制造技术公司,其员工超过7万人,年销售额150亿美元.虽然Allied Signal公司的某些产品采用了新技术,也帮助其他公司研究新技术,但是自己的生产和销售主流还是几十年一贯制的产品.1999年,AlliedSignal公司的总裁拉里·鲍斯狄(Larry Bossidy)把公司各业务部门的负责人召集到一起,开一个为期一天的会议,并请戴尔(Dell)计算机公司总裁迈克戴尔(Michael Dell)和思科(Cisco)系统公司的总裁约翰钱伯斯(John Chambers)介绍各自公司实施电子商务的成功经验.     

Global Labour‐Standards Advocacy by European Civil Society Organizations: Trends and Developments

In recent years, developments in intergovernmental organizations and transnational private governance organizations have created new opportunities and constraints for the promotion of global labour‐standards governance by civil society organizations (CSOs). This article describes how European CSOs (including trade union organizations and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs)) respond to these developments. It argues that European civil society is witnessing a threefold shift in priorities of labour‐standards advocacy: from pushing regulatory approaches to organizational capacity building; from corporate responsibility strategies focused on compliance to strategies focused on transparency; and from fair labour standards within the sustainable development agenda to a host of other issues. The overall result is that labour‐standards advocacy in general and private labour governance in particular are receiving less attention from European CSOs.     

The Effect of Using a Lattice Model to Estimate Reported Option Values

Statement of Financial Accounting Standards 123R suggests that lattice valuation models may improve the estimates of reported employee stock option values relative to the more commonly used Black–Scholes (BS) model. However, lattice model critics have expressed concerns that managers may use lattice models' flexibility to opportunistically understate option values. In this study, we investigate a sample of firms that recently adopted a lattice model to value employee stock options to provide evidence on this issue by identifying the determinants of lattice model adoption and examining the effect of lattice model use on reported option values. We report three main results. First, we find that firms are more likely to adopt a lattice model when it is more likely to produce lower values than the BS model and when managers have incentives to lower stock option expense. Second, we find that firms adopting a lattice model increase understatement of reported option values more than firms that continue to use the BS model and that the incremental understatement is due to use of the lattice model. Third, we conduct several tests to examine whether the valuation effect of lattice model use is consistent with efforts to correct for documented shortcomings in the BS model and find no evidence that this is the case. Taken together, the evidence in this study suggests that firms adopt and implement lattice models primarily to lower reported option values.     

ITU Plenipotentiary Conference and beyond : A case for serious foreign policy

The ITU Plenipotentiary Conference held in Nairobi in the Fall of 1982 was a significant international instrument for the conduct of telecommunication foreign policy. Growing demand for telecommunication services and products coupled with the economic and sociocultural impact of new technologies have resulted in greater global interest in the problems, issues and technical complexities of maintaining order in global telecommunication. A major theme of this article is that ITU deliberations and decisions are all part of the growing telecommunication foreign policy agenda and that the benefits of successful diplomancy are usually worth the costs of effective and coordinated domestic and international policy development.     

Do Workplace Contracts Harm Labour Productivity Growth? A Reconsideration of the Macroeconomic Evidence from New Zealand

This article reconsiders the argument advanced or endorsed by a large number of leading Australian academics and others that labour productivity growth in New Zealand fell markedly during the period in which New Zealand's Employment Contracts Act 1991 (ECA) was operative—that is, for most of the 1990s. On the one hand, based on total economy estimates developed by The Conference Board and the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, labour productivity growth was unexceptional though a little higher than the New Zealand average of the last three decades or so. On the other hand, based on newly released official estimates of New Zealand's ‘measured sector’ (which accounts for about two‐thirds of the total economy), labour productivity growth was almost identical to that of Australia during the EC A period. This in turn suggests that New Zealand's labour productivity growth rose markedly for the measured sector during the EC A years. All in all, the evidence presented in this article is inconsistent with claims that the period of the EC A was associated with relatively weak New Zealand productivity growth. Selected issues arising from these findings are briefly canvassed.     

Treating employees fairly and organizational citizenship behavior: Sorting the effects of job satisfaction,organizational commitment,and procedural justice

A study was conducted to measure the relative contribution of perceptions of procedural justice toward predicting organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) controlling for the effects of job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Employees in a national cable television company completed a survey containing measures of work satisfaction, affective and continuance commitment, and perceptions of fairness, while their managers completed an OCB survey. Results using LISREL 7 indicated support fpr relationships between procedural justice and commitment, satisfaction, and OCB. However, no individual relationships between commitment and OCB nor between satisfaction and OCB were found once the relationships between justice and citizenship were controlled. These findings are discussed using the group value model of procedural justice.