Is it one break or ongoing permanent shocks that explains U.S. real GDP?

The relative importance of permanent versus cyclical shocks to GDP has been found to depend on the presence or absence of a single break in mean growth. We estimate unobserved components models conditional on a trend break having occurred in any specified quarter and use the Bayesian model averaging to combine the conditional estimates. We estimate a break occurred around 2006:1. Allowing for a break significantly reduces estimates of trend variance. However, enough spread remains in the posterior distribution to indicate that available data does not definitively settle the question of the relative importance of trend versus cycle.     

An empirical investigation of psychological capital among flight attendants

Our paper develops and tests a research model that examines whether psychological capital (PsyCap) mediates the relationship between servant leadership and work engagement (WE) and whether WE mediates the effect of PsyCap on service recovery performance and life satisfaction. Data were collected from flight attendants with a two-week time lag in three waves and their pursers in the private airline companies in Iran. The results suggest that servant leadership influences WE indirectly only through PsyCap. The results also suggest that WE is a partial mediator between PsyCap and the aforesaid attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. Our study discusses theoretical implications and provides recommendations for managers in the airline industry.     

Leading national brands facing store brands competition: Is price competitiveness the only thing that matters?

Store Brands (SBs) have experienced a strong increase in both value and unit sales internationally during the last decades; thus their market share has been constantly growing. Starting from these considerations, the present work aims at deepening the topic of inter-brand competition within the FMCG market and, in particular, the market share trade-off between Leading National Brands (LNBs) and Store Brands. Our empirical analysis is based on panel data about 322 product categories sold within the Modern Grocery Distribution stores in the 2010–2013 period. Results obtained show: (i) the existence of a relationship between the increase in the LNB-SB price gap and the switching of market share from the former towards the latter; (ii) the consolidation of a change in consumers' purchasing preference in favor of SBs; (iii) the existence of an inverse relationship between the inter-brand competition intensity and the retail branding life cycle evolutionary stage, which is different for each product category.     

Lifestyle entrepreneurs and their identity construction: A study of the tourism industry

The present study takes issue with the uniform conceptualization of lifestyle entrepreneurs in previous research by drawing on identity theory and life-story interviews with lifestyle entrepreneurs in Norway. This article aims to show how lifestyle entrepreneurs create their entrepreneurial identity and how this identity informs both their entrepreneurial actions in different ways and how they manage the enterprise. On the basis of a narrative understanding of identity this article differentiates between two dimensions of identity construction: (1) socially and culturally embedded versus independent, and (2) flexible versus stable. The main contribution of this study is that embedded or independent and also flexible or stable identity constructions dominate the identity-construction process for individual lifestyle entrepreneurs. On the basis of the latter this article reports four narrative types of lifestyle-entrepreneur identity construction: (1) the modern, (2) the loyal, (3) the freedom-seeking, (4) and the post-modern lifestyle entrepreneur.     

Entry,trade costs,and international business cycles

Are firm entry and fixed exporting costs relevant for understanding the international transmission of business cycles? We revisit this question using a model that includes entry, selection to exporting activity, physical capital accumulation and endogenous labor supply. We determine that once the stochastic process for exogenous productivity is calibrated to consider the endogenous dynamics in TFP created by the number of firms and the time series volatility of entry is calibrated to the data, our model yields minimal departures from the Backus et al. (1992) benchmark. The richer model shares all of the successes of the previous model in terms of the volatilities of aggregate quantities, as well as its failures, in terms of replicating patterns of international co-movement and the volatility of international relative prices.     

企业生命周期阶段与其社会责任战略研究

随着世界经济的高速发展,深层次的环境问题和社会问题日益凸显。企业社会责任问题已成为国内外理论和实践研究关注的焦点。本文在肯定可以从企业战略的视角下考虑企业社会责任的承担和其对社会责任体系的建立有积极作用的同时,运用生命周期理论,分析企业在不同发展时期的发展战略和相应的企业的社会责任的承担,希望促进企业的综合竞争力的提高和推动社会责任体系的完善。     

Dynamic Interactions Among Macroeconomic Variables and Stock Indexes in Taiwan,Hong Kong,and China

This study analyzes dynamic interactions among macroeconomic variables and the stock markets of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China by incorporating the long-term and short-term comovements, which can shed some light on the long-term and short-term market efficiency/inefficiency in the region. The number of common cycles is investigated in these markets and each stock index series is decomposed into its trend and cyclical components. The authors observe that foreign stock markets have greater influence on the domestic market than domestic macroeconomic variables do. This implies that policymakers need to consider not only macroeconomic variables but also the effects of markets on one another when markets are integrated.     

OUTPUT FLUCTUATIONS PERSISTENCE: DO CYCLICAL SHOCKS MATTER?

The aim of this paper is to identify the different sources of persistence of output fluctuations. We propose an unobserved components model that allows us to decompose GDP series into a trend component and a cyclical component. We let the drift of the trend component switch between different regimes according to a first‐order Markov process. To calculate an appropriate p‐value for a test of linearity we propose a bootstrap procedure, which allows for general forms of heteroscedasticity. The performance of the bootstrap is checked by means of a Monte Carlo simulation. Our study concerns the USA. We find that cyclical shocks appear to play an important role on the observed persistence of output.     

产品生命周期的研究

产品生命周期是指一代产品进入市场后需求存续变化的周期,而不是指需求量、销量波动变化的周期。我们应当研究细分市场的产品生命周期,根据市场某种特性质变的界面来划分产品生命周期的阶段,才更具有营销意义。现行流行的划分产品周期阶段的四种方法。缺乏理论依据,在应用中有较大的随意性。为此,提出了综合判断法,根据多个判据的组合,定位了产品生命周期阶段之间的界面,并提出了对应的营销策略。     

商业周期与区际经济一体化——自然壁垒、经济结构与政策

文章着重从商业周期角度来对我国区际一体化状况进行实证研究,即主要从"市场自然分割"与"政策与经济结构"两方面因素来探索商业周期的区域差异.总体来看,我国所有地区在两个时间样本期间(1992～1997年与1998～2004年)的就业和产出周期同步性均有所增加,说明商业周期的演进与我国经济体制改革基本同步;文章还分析了影响商业周期的不同解释变量,结果显示:控制变量的距离、规模与周期存在显著的相关性,而体现"东西边界"的外生变量则在绝大部分回归中则显著为负,说明在我国东西部之间可能存在一道明显的"区域分界线",阻碍了大区域间的经济联系;此外,樊刚指数对区域周期的解释具有两面性,经济结构差异越合理,商业周期越走向同步性,而财政政策差异和贸易密度差异是我国商业周期的波动因素.