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.     

Do capital flows drive credit growth and consumption in Central and Eastern Europe?

Domestic credit expansion in CEE economies, fuelled in part by foreign capital inflows, helped increase household welfare before the 2008 financial crisis caused a contraction across the region. How strong are the linkages between the current account, domestic credit and consumer spending? This study compiles a quarterly dataset of domestic credit as a share of GDP for 11 CEE European Union members and isolates structural breaks in the series’ growth rates that often align with the 2008 crisis. Vector autoregressive methods, particularly impulse response functions, show that increased current-account deficits lead to increased consumption in six of the 11 countries and increased credit growth in three, and that shocks to credit growth increase consumption in six countries. Capital inflows significantly increase consumption through domestic credit in Slovenia, while the Baltics show a large share of significant effects.     

The Importance of Tax Adjustments When Evaluating Wage Expectations*

Using elicited expectations of future gross salaries, we evaluate characteristics causing German students to make larger or smaller estimation errors. While students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent, we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax. Developing a suitable adjustment procedure, we correct students’ estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points. Conducting regression analyses, we reveal strong connections with students’ age, gender, work experience, secondary school track, and knowledge about student loans. These results change notably if not controlling for students’ misconceptions of the tax system.     

The Effect of Corporate Governance on Firm Stock Volatility in Asia

The authors examine whether firm corporate governance (CG) contributes to lower stock-return volatility. Using the panel data of 1,252 public listed firms in Asia across 11 countries for 15 years, the authors document international evidence that CG has a stabilizing effect on firm stock-return volatility. The authors further examine whether increasing information efficiency, reducing foreign exposure, and a lower cost of capital contribute to the stabilizing effect of firm CG on stock-return volatility. The result implies that better CG will only reduce stock-return volatility for firms that have less foreign exposure.     

Airports’ managerial human capital,ownership, and efficiency

Airport performance differences require a better understanding of the sources of efficiency and competitive advantages. Globalization drives the air transport industry into a more market-orientated business questioning the relationship between managerial decisions and airport performance. Aviation management studies do not consider managerial capabilities and skills since they are intangible exogenous factors that are difficult to assess. In this study, a stochastic frontier analysis is performed accounting for top managers' theoretical knowledge and experience enclosed as exogenous drivers of airports' efficiency. The model analyses 12 Polish airports from 2009 to 2017. The results show a diversity of airports with a different number of passengers as efficient. The top managers' experience, when gained in the same airport, has a positive impact on airports' technical efficiency. Airports having unstable management are more technically inefficient. Independently of the efficiency level, some airports change their management after the national elections, suggesting that managers are chosen by political interest rather than by their specialised knowledge or their prior experience in aviation management. The results suggest that more practical knowledge improve airports’ performance. Airports with a majority of government ownership that are the largest ones increase their efficiency significantly, suggesting that political decisions may be discriminatory in detriment of airports managed by regional and city authorities.     

北部湾城市群自然资本利用状况、空间分析与驱动因素

以北部湾城市群为例用三维生态足迹模型、偏最小二乘法、空间计量模型分析了其自然资本利用状况、空间相关性、驱动因素。结论:(1)城市群自然资本利用处于不可持续状态;(2)自然资本利用程度划分为低、中、高三类,城市也相应分成三类;(3)自然资本利用的主要驱动因素是人口因素、社会经济;(4)空间分析显示全局莫兰指数为正,空间集聚显著,表明自然资本利用存在空间正相关;空间误差模型拟合度最好,并证明自然资本存量占用与人口总量正相关,与GDP总额负相关。     

陕北黄陵县农户生计资本评价及其生计策略研究

[目的]选取受退耕还林、封山禁牧等生态政策影响较大的陕北农户为研究对象,分析农户生计资本与生计策略之间的作用关系。[方法]基于可持续生计分析框架,采用Logistic回归模型,对17个行政村335户样本农户数据进行分析。[结果](1)研究区农户的人力资本整体得分最高,社会资本居次,物质资本中等偏下,自然资本和金融资本处于低水平;(2)农户生计分化明显,典型的纯农户很少,农户生计策略主要为兼农型和低水平非农型;(3)回归分析表明,人力资本指数高的农户倾向于外地兼农,物质资本和社会资本指数高的农户倾向于当地兼农,家庭年收入、人均教育投入和人情往来3项指标是促进农户向非农型生计策略转变的关键因子。[结论]农户生计策略的选择和转变是建立在自身资本结构上的,其往往向着发挥生计资本优势、规避生计资本短板的方向调整生计策略,进而达到提高整体生计资本水平的目的。人力资本优势主导下的黄陵县,加之沟壑区农地资源空间配置的破碎性与复杂性,外地兼农型生计策略将仍是该地区农户近期内的主要生计抉择。     

家族企业代际传承影响企业经营绩效的路径*——基于跨代转型创业与继承人社会资本的视角

本文研究了家族企业代际传承对企业经营绩效的影响路径。基于2004—2015年间已完成代际传承的中国上市家族企业，本文从跨代转型创业视角考察代际传承对企业经营绩效的影响路径，并考察继承人社会资本的调节作用。研究发现：代际传承会导致企业经营绩效下降，跨代转型创业在上述过程中发挥中介作用。同时，继承人的社会资本会加强上述消极影响。跨代转型创业对企业经营绩效的消极影响会逐年减弱，且继承人的社会资本对此消极影响有削弱作用。     

Optimal investment with vintage capital: Equilibrium distributions

The paper concerns the study of equilibrium points, or steady states, of economic systems arising in modeling optimal investment with vintage capital, namely, systems where all key variables (capitals, investments, prices) are indexed not only by time but also by age. Capital accumulation is hence described as a partial differential equation (briefly, PDE), and equilibrium points are in fact equilibrium distributions in the variable of ages. A general method is developed to compute and study equilibrium points of a wide range of infinite dimensional, infinite horizon, optimal control problems. We apply the method to optimal investment with vintage capital, for a variety of data, deriving existence and uniqueness of equilibrium distribution, as well as analytic formulas for optimal controls and trajectories in the long run. The examples suggest that the same method can be applied to other economic problems displaying heterogeneity. This shows how effective the theoretical machinery of optimal control in infinite dimension is in computing explicitly equilibrium distributions. To this extent, the results of this work constitute a first crucial step towards a thorough understanding of the behavior of optimal paths in the long run.