The role of public space in constructing experience capital: A longitudinal analysis in the hotel context

Public space plays a primary role in shaping customers' hospitality experiences. Yet how public space conditions customers' experiential outcomes in accumulating capital for hospitality organizations remains underexplored. Inspired by the theory of psychological ownership, this research presents an in-depth analysis of the impacts of customers' public space experiences on their experiential outcomes using a longitudinal hotel industry dataset merging information from customer surveys, property performance, and surrounding accessibility insights. Findings revealed the positive effects of customers’ public space experiences on their overall service experiences, the perceived value of the experience, revisit intentions, and recommendation intentions. Moreover, hotel class, other customers, and surrounding accessibility were empirically verified as moderators conditioning the positive impact of public space. These findings offer valuable implications for theory and practice that are worthy of further exploration.     

Capital flows and growth dynamics in Central and Eastern Europe

This article assesses the importance of capital flows as measured by the current account balance for the growth dynamics of the EU countries from Central and Eastern Europe. Economic growth in these countries was on average relatively high before the global financial crisis but markedly lower after the crisis. Panel data econometrics using annual data for 1997–2015 point to the contemporaneous current account balance having a sizeable negative effect on annual GDP growth. Estimations using many control variables and instrumental variables suggest that the negative effect is mainly demand driven. Counterfactual simulations show that growth rates in all CEE countries would have been lower in the absence of capital flows, and this applies particularly to the countries with the most disadvantageous starting points.     

Human capital in the Dubai hotel industry: A study of four- and five-star hotels and the HR challenges they face

Dubai brands itself as an international leisure and business center and home to the luxury hotel market. While hotel growth has been, and continues to be rapid, little is known about hotel employees, their demographics or how they feel about working in this industry. This article reports the findings of what is the first review of Dubai hotel human capital, noting there are significant difference in workforce demographics to other countries, for example, it is male dominated, highly educated, and employees note positive levels of organizational social capital. It also highlights potential challenges going forward.     

Dynamics of capital account and current account in Sri Lanka

This paper enquires the dynamics of current account and capital account in Sri Lanka for the period 2001:Q1 to 2016:Q1 and also examines the role of some policy variables such as exchange rate and interest rate in this dynamics. Estimated autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound testing approach to cointegration followed by error correction representation of the ARDL model have found that current account is caused by capital account and exchange rate, where capital account causes to produce a deficit in current account. In the dynamic adjustment of current account due to exchange rate, an evidence of J-curve phenomenon is noticed. Capital account is neither caused by current account nor by exchange rate but interest rate has a positive impact on it. Robustness of these findings is testified by the vector autoregression model, Wald test of Granger causality followed by an impulse response analysis and a variance decomposition analysis. These analyses, in addition, establish a negative impact of interest rate on current account. With the best of knowledge this is the first study that reveals the dynamics of current and capital account of Sri Lanka. Such a dynamics is critical from the policy perspective. Policy makers should caution before capital account liberalization.     

FREE VERSUS SECOND‐BEST ENTRY IN COURNOT OLIGOPOLIES WITH FIRM‐SPECIFIC NETWORKS

This paper endogenizes the number of firms in an industry with positive network effects, complete incompatibility, and firms that compete in quantity. To this end, we compare two possibilities: free entry and second‐best number of firms (the one that maximizes social welfare). We show that with business‐stealing competition, free entry yields, in general, more firms than the socially optimal solution. In addition, we find that by the nature of the industry with firm‐specific networks, total production may be greater or lower under free entry than with a regulator; moreover, some industries attain their maximum social welfare with a monopoly.     

美国需求端产业结构的变化及对中国的启示

对产业结构演化的研究都是从供给端计算的产业结构，本文构造了从需求端计算的产业结构并依此对美国需求端产业结构的演化进行了实证分析。研究表明，当年价所计算的美国需求端三次产业结构的变化小于供给端产业结构的变化；1970年以来美国第二产业的变化差异中近40%可以用外贸因素来解释。进而本文采取不变价计算了美国产业结构的变化，研究表明，自1970年以来按不变价计算的美国需求端的产业结构变化很小，且美国第三产业比例提升中有31%可以用不同产业价格因素变化来解释，44%可以用国际贸易来解释，仅有25%可以用第三产业收入弹性的变化来解释，因而收入弹性不是美国第三产业比例提升的重要原因。美国能够维持经常账户的逆差，将第三产业作为动力产业的根本原因在于美元的霸权地位。相比较而言，中国一直以来处于国际收支“双顺差”的状态，中国的具体国情和国家实力均无法满足大规模输出人民币使之成为其他国家储备货币的条件。     

Does studying abroad enhance employability?

Over 200,000 European students study abroad under the Erasmus programme. It appears that studying abroad may impart skills which are helpful for professional careers after graduation. Approximately, 54% of European students report that participation in the Erasmus exchange programme helped them to obtain a first job; however, interestingly, those from Central and Eastern European countries report it much more often—in 73% of cases. The aim of this paper is to find out whether studying abroad enhances the employability of higher education graduates in Poland. Using the propensity score matching method and data from a nationwide tracer survey of Polish graduates, we find that Polish students who completed at least one semester of their studies abroad do not benefit in terms of a higher employment rate after graduation.     

Entry in contests with incomplete information: Theory and experiments

This paper studies entry decisions in contests with private values. Potential contestants observe their value and the common opportunity cost of entry, and make entry decisions simultaneously. Theory predicts that whether or not contestants are informed of the number of entrants prior to choosing their expenditures has no effect on entry or aggregate expenditures. We test these assertions in our experiments. We find substantial over-entry in both information structures. However, entry is higher when contestants are informed. Since expenditures do not, on average, differ across information structures, aggregate expenditure is also higher when contestants are informed. Contestants earn on average less than the opportunity cost of entry.     

Tax competition,imperfect capital mobility and the gain from non-preferential agreements

The gain to competing governments from entering into binding non-preferential tax agreements (that prevents discriminatory taxation in favor of mobile capital) depends on the extent of capital mobility between jurisdictions. In particular the gain is increasing in the cost of relocation of capital and the fraction of the domestic tax base which is relatively immobile. We show this in a symmetric model of tax competition between two governments where all capital is imperfectly mobile and differ only in their cost of relocation.     

Determinants of the Performance of Investment Promotion Agencies: Evidence from a Mix of Emerging Economies

This article argues whether and how investment promotion agencies (IPAs) efficiently influence investment promotion in the cases of the following selected variables: resources (experience, total staff, and overseas staff), service functions (combined promotion service of inward investment and trade, and inward and outward investment), and organizational structure (autonomous status of private/upper ministry-level IPAs). The results reveal a positive relationship between IPA’s performance and longer experience, larger staff, larger overseas IPA staff members, autonomous private agency types, and upper ministry-level IPAs. However, an IPA’s performance was negatively associated with the combined promotional service of inward investment and trade, and inward and outward investment. The results suggest that an IPA’s performance can be enhanced by adjusting the service functions and restructuring the governance and structure in addition to improving the IPA’s resources and the country’s investment climate.