A Comparison of Long-Haul and Short-Haul Business Tourists of Hong Kong

A number of studies have demonstrated the impact of distance on the volume, profile and behavior of pleasure tourists. To date, none has examined the effect of distance on business tourists, even though they represent a significant share of all travel. Distance exerts two inter-related effects on travel. The decaying effect on demand with increased distance is well established. Distance also acts as a “filter”, advantaging some groups for short-haul travel and effectively excluding others from long-haul travel. This filtering effect results in substantially different observed behavior between short and long-haul pleasure markets. This study examines the filtering effect of distance on tourist profile and subsequent behavior of business travelers who visited Hong Kong. The sample includes eight short-haul and six long-haul markets. Substantial differences are observed in the profile and resultant behaviors of the two cohorts, although the differences are more subtle among business tourists than pleasure tourists.     

Communication and knowledge as motivators: understanding Singaporean women’s perceived risks of breast cancer and intentions to engage in preventive measures

As breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among women in Singapore, encouraging them to engage in preventive measures becomes increasingly important. This study aims to take a closer look at the influence of attention to media, interpersonal communication, news elaboration, and knowledge on women’s (aged between 30 and 70) perceived risks of breast cancer and their intentions to engage in preventive measures in Singapore. Attention to media, frequency of interpersonal communication, fatalistic belief, and knowledge structure density were found to be associated with risk perception of breast cancer among Singaporean women. Findings also showed that frequency of interpersonal communication, risk perception, elaboration, and factual knowledge were positively associated with women’s intentions to take up preventive measures such as breast self-examination, clinical breast examination, and mammography. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.     

Legal Institutions,Ownership Concentration,and Stock Repurchases Around the World: Signal Mimicking?

One of the central puzzles of signaling theory is how to assess signal quality, in particular the potential for signal mimicking. Our study provides evidence of signal mimicking in the context of stock repurchases. Employing an ex-ante proxy for the likelihood of mimicking stock repurchases and data on open market stock repurchases from 30 countries, we find that long-term operating and market performance following stock repurchases improve less for suspected mimicking firms. This finding contradicts the conventional characterization that managers use stock repurchases to signal undervaluation and enhanced future performance. We find that mimicking firms have smaller capital investments, need greater external financing, buy back fewer shares, and issue more new shares (and/or resell more treasury shares) in the year of the repurchase. Our analysis further shows that mimicking is more likely in countries with weak investor protections and in firms with higher ownership concentration. Further, mimicking associated with concentrated ownership is mitigated in countries with stronger investor protections and by the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Altogether, our findings provide evidence of signal mimicking in stock repurchases in international data that is influenced by market, ownership, legal, and financial reporting characteristics of countries.     

Organizational Structure,Board Composition,and Risk Taking in the U.S. Property Casualty Insurance Industry

This study examines the impact of organizational structure and board composition on risk taking in the U.S. property casualty insurance industry, addressing different risk‐taking behaviors from different perspectives. The risk‐taking measures include total risk, underwriting risk, investment risk, and leverage risk. The evidence shows that mutual insurers have lower total risk, underwriting risk, and investment risk than stock insurers. In terms of board composition variables, we find that some board composition variables not only have impact on risk‐taking behaviors but also affect different risk measures differently. Thus, using different risk measures is better than using one risk measure to assess risk‐taking behavior. Finally, we conclude that an insurer can control its total risk through management of underwriting, investment, and leverage risks that determine an insurer's risk profile.     

Do economies stall?

A ‘stalling’ economy has been defined as one that experiences a discrete deterioration in economic performance following a decline in its growth rate to below some threshold level. We examine the international evidence for stalling in a panel of 51 economies using two different definitions of a stall threshold (time-invariant and related to lagged average growth rates). We find that the evidence for stalling is limited: only 7–12 of the economies in our sample experience statistically significant stalls at the 5% level based on any one definition.     

Public trust and corruption perception: disaster relief

Public trust in government and nongovernment organizations is essential to the public’s willingness to donate and to support those organizations. We measure public trust in disaster aid using people’s perception of these organizations’ effectiveness in delivering aid relief to the victims of two recent major earthquakes in China. Based on the survey data collected in 2013 from about 2100 residents in Hong Kong, we document the vulnerability of these residents’ trust perceptions in aid delivery. We find that the sharp decline in trust perception is highly negatively correlated with their perception of corruption of local governments in China.     

Rethinking Trade and Development: A Developmentalist Perspective

Abstract

In one of the longest lasting debates in economics, mainstream economists still basically rest their position regarding trade and development policies on the static principle of comparative advantage, while relying on fancier econometric techniques to find empirical support. This paper draws attention to dynamic considerations, first emphasizing Smith's observation that there was more scope for division of labor in manufactures than in primary production. Prebisch noted that primary products generally have lower income elasticity of demand than manufactures. In a global context where some countries undertook industrial development ahead of others, these would generate the trade patterns that Ricardo predicted. Investment would flow from the industrial center to the periphery to augment primary production as Mill anticipated. Through the dominance of backwash over spread effects, international inequalities would widen à la Mrydal. International dualism, especially in a technological sense, would be aggravated à la Singer. To counter such uneven development, developmentalists such as Hamilton, List, Prebisch, Myrdal, and Singer advocated technological acquisitions and industrial development on the part of the less-developed countries or regions. Contrary to mainstream portrayal they did not simply advocate protectionism. Instead, their policy suggestions were nuanced and sophisticated, and included both non-trade and trade instruments, means of building technological capabilities, and (for those writing after World War II) considerations of how to sensibly direct and regulate the activities of multinational corporations. These policy ideas appear to neatly link up with those drawn from case studies of East Asian development undertaken by some researchers that are outside of the economics mainstream.     

Forecasting VoWLAN technology for the Taiwan mobile telecommunication industry

Disruptive innovation is always a great challenge to the management of incumbent firms, especially in fast-changing industries. In this study, scenarios were developed to facilitate strategic decision-making by incumbent mobile telecommunications firms that confront the threats of disruptive technology of voice over wireless local area network (VoWLAN). Combining various possible outcomes of uncertain conditions and strategic alternatives available to the incumbent firms, six scenarios were developed: incremental evolution, disruptive evolution, cost deterrence, fierce competition, market pre-emption and market convergence. The results show that a passive ‘do-nothing’ strategy by incumbent firms leads to failure if the disruptive technology is inevitable. However, firms can slow the pace of disruptive technology by applying a price-cut strategy and enjoy several years of profits in the process. Industrial insights and strategic implications obtained from all the scenarios are discussed.     

Does Mill's case for infant industry protection capture Hamilton's and List's arguments for promoting industrial development?

Abstract

Mill's case for infant-industry protection is widely regarded as capturing the arguments by Hamilton and List. This paper argues that they are actually analytically different. While all three were influenced by Smith's Wealth of Nations, Mill took from it something different than the other two. His endorsement passage for protection refers to a standalone industry. Hamilton and List attached significance to the pin-making type of division of labor at the economy-level but they emphasized the development of that division as the activation of backward and forward production linkages, à la Hirschman, with increasing diversification and differentiation of occupations and industries. Mill only considered employing customs duties in his passage, although in some personal correspondence in the 1860s he mentioned a subsidy. Contrary to mainstream misrepresentations, Hamilton and List did not restrict themselves to proposing customs duties, but suggested both trade and non-trade interventions to activate linkages. Mill's formulation focuses attention on very simple learning by doing to establish the standalone industry. Thanks to their conception of the development process, Hamilton and List appreciated the complexity of technology acquisitions and devoted far more attention to that subject. The implications of these differences for future research and policy considerations are briefly discussed.