保险业要么锁定客户，要么收购

贝恩公司调查发现,仅有1／10的保险公司成功地实现连年持续地创造价值。许多公司最终表现欠佳的主要原因在于,他们严重误判自己提供客户所需产品／服务的能力。当高级主管被问及是否认为本公司提供最佳客户体验时,77％的高管自认为是,但仅有6％的客户认同。那么,究竟什么才是保险业实现最佳股东回报的关键呢?     

系统动态仿真在运载火箭多项目批产计划管理中的应用分析

我国"长征"系列运载火箭在经历了单发和小批量研制生产阶段后已进入了批产阶段,"十一五"期间年均发射密度将达到10发,其科研管理方法正在从型号或项目管理向多项目管理,从单一项目的关键路径控制向多项目的资源优化统筹过渡.因此需要对过去以单发产品为主的管理模式和方法作必要的改进和完善,以适应因任务和发射密度增加所带来的新形式.     

Counting carbon: historic emissions from fossil fuels,long-run measures of sustainable development and carbon debt

This article examines how to account for the welfare effects of carbon dioxide emissions, using the historical experiences of Britain and the USA from the onset of the industrial revolution to the present. While a single country might isolate itself from the detrimental effects of global warming in the short run, in the long all countries are unable to free ride. Thus, we support the use of a single global price for carbon dioxide emissions. The calculated price should decrease as we move back in time to take into account that carbon dioxide is a stock pollutant, and that one unit added to the present large stock is likely to cause more damage than a unit emitted under the lower concentration levels in the past. We incorporate the annual costs of British and US carbon emissions into genuine savings, and calculate the accumulated costs of their carbon dioxide emissions. Enlarging the scope and calculating the cumulative cost of carbon dioxide from the four largest emitters gives new insights into the question of who is responsible for climate change.     

Managerial perceptions of service-infused IORs in China & India: A discursive view of value co-creation

This paper explores the managerial challenges facing firms seeking to build relationships with other network actors while doing business in foreign markets. By taking a critical perspective on an area of increasing importance in both manufacturing and service sectors, that of value co-creation, the paper explores how managers in different cultural contexts make sense of the notion of ‘value’ in inter-organizational B2B relationships between New Zealand service and service-infused supplier firms and buyers in China and India. From an analysis of the interview-based accounts on both sides of the buyer–seller dyad marked differences emerge regarding value-creation within managers' discourse around partnerships, collaboration and cooperation. Our findings suggest that the Indian manager's discursive use of ‘partnership’ draws on service-dominant logic in viewing this type of interaction as a means for co-creating value; they and their New Zealand suppliers are jointly involved in co-creating value within a service system, creating value-in-use. In contrast, the predominant perspective seen in the discourse of Chinese managers is the use of cooperation as a means of making transactions more cost-effective, or to fill gaps in their supply chains, resulting in the creation of transaction-based, co-production of value, which suggests a value-in-exchange orientation. In both cases, there is repeated reference to more peripheral actors whose efforts result in what we interpret as network value creation, based on their interactions with actors within the buyer–seller dyad.     

Beyond necessity versus opportunity entrepreneurship: some lessons from English deprived urban neighbourhoods

When discussing the motivations of entrepreneurs, it has become commonplace to represent them dichotomously as either necessity or opportunity driven. This paper evaluates critically this dualistic depiction of entrepreneurs’ motives through an examination of the rationales of entrepreneurs and potential entrepreneurs living in a deprived urban neighbourhood of an English city, a group of entrepreneurs who have been conventionally depicted as largely driven by necessity into entrepreneurship in the absence of alternative means of livelihood. Reporting the results of a face-to-face questionnaire conducted in 2008 with 459 respondents and a further 18 follow-up in-depth interviews, the finding is that forcing individual entrepreneurs’ motives into one or other of these categories grossly over-simplifies their rationales which in lived practice are not only a mixture of both opportunity and necessity but also temporally fluid shifting most often from more necessity- to more opportunity-oriented rationales. The outcome is to reveal that the opportunity versus necessity dichotomy, which uses the perceptions of an entrepreneur’s originating condition as the defining feature of their motivations, is a misleading way of categorising types of entrepreneurship not only because motivations change over time but also because entrepreneurs are frequently driven by both necessity as well as opportunity factors. The result is a call to move beyond the conventional either/or depiction of opportunity versus necessity entrepreneurship and towards a richer, more nuanced and dynamic appreciation of entrepreneurs’ motivations.     

Analysis of ultra-high-frequency financial data using advanced Fourier transforms

This paper presents a novel application of advanced methods from Fourier analysis to the study of ultra-high-frequency financial data. The use of Lomb–Scargle Fourier transform, provides a robust framework to take into account the irregular spacing in time, minimising the computational effort. Likewise, it avoids complex model specifications (e.g. ACD or intensity models) or resorting to traditional methods, such as (linear or cubic) interpolation and regular resampling, which not only cause artifacts in the data and loss of information, but also lead to the generation and use of spurious information.     

Mapping and analysing virtual outcrops

Laser scanning is a very efficient way to generate realistic, high-resolution digital models of 3-D geological outcrops. This paper discusses the methodologies involved in the creation and analysis of virtual outcrops, based on laser scanner data. The visualisation of the laser scanner data as a photorealistic 3-D object is described. Geological features picked out on the virtual outcrop (e.g. fractures, faults or bedding planes) can be extrapolated outward, into space, and inward, into the subsurface, using tension surfaces.     

A Nonlinear Model of the Term Structure of Interest Rates

We present an economically motivated two–factor term structure model that generalizes existing stochastic mean term structure models. By allowing a certain parameter to acquire dynamical behavior we extend the two–factor model to obtain a nonlinear three–factor model that is shown, in a deterministic version, to be equivalent to the Lorenz system of differential equations. With reasonable parameter values the model exhibits chaotic behavior. It successfully emulates certain properties of interest rates including cyclical behavior on a business cycle time scale. Estimation and pricing issues are discussed. Standard PCA techniques used to estimate HJM type models are observed to be equivalent to dimensional estimates commonly applied to 'spatial data' in nonlinear systems analysis.
It is concluded that techniques commonly used in the analysis of nonlinear systems may be directly applicable to interest rate models, offering new insights in the development of these models. Tests of nonlinearity in interest rate behavior may need to focus on long cycle times.