Technology‐push,market‐demand and the missing safety‐pull: a case study of American Airlines Flight 587

Through a critical case study of the crash of American Airlines Flight 587, this paper draws upon ‘the Social Shaping of Technology’ (SST) approach to offer a reconceptualisation of the technology‐push and market‐demand model for High‐Reliably Organisations (HROs), providing support for a third factor, called here a ‘safety‐pull’. A safety‐pull is defined as organisationally supported reflexivity in which technology innovators and frontline operators collaborate to consider the potential implications of adopting new technologies in HROs and the complex ways this change may impact human operators' work performance, often in risky and unanticipated ways. In contrast to accidents occurring solely as the result of individual operator error, analysing the safety‐pull provides a way to tease out the wide range of factors that can contribute to HRO failures and offers a new SST perspective through which to examine high‐risk operations.     

广东省农村基础设施建设与农业经济增长的关系探究

作为提高农业生产效率、改善农民生活质量及促进农村经济增长的重要物质基础,农村基础设施建设对扩大农村地区内需增长点,解决农村剩余劳动力就业问题以及全面推进城乡统筹发展具有至关重要的意义。广东省作为我国南部地区经济发达省份,具有丰富的农业生产自然资源,但其农村基础设施发展程度相对来说却比较低,其成为农村经济发展的"瓶颈",不利于农村经济结构优化升级。为了保障农村基础设施的供给与农村经济发展水平保持协调一致,文章以广东地区农村为例,采用多元非线性回归分析的方法,在论证农村基础设施建设对农村经济增长的作用机制的基础上,从农村基础设施建设与农业生产、非农生产和农民人均纯收入3方面的内在关系进行计量分析,结果表明,首先农村基础设施对影响农业经济增长的3方面因素都发挥了显著的规模经济效益;其次农村基础设施建设中的教育变量对农业经济增长的作用最为显著;再次,农业机械设施在农业生产中的作用相对于其他影响因素而言不太显著;最后,道路、通讯设施对非农生产和农民人均收入收入的贡献率相对其他变量数值较低。并提出健全农村基础设施建设投融资机制、加大农村基础设施的资金投入力度、提高农村基础设施建设和利用水平、全面推进农村基础设施建设进程等优化策略。     

不同类型建设用地扩张的时序及空间特征——加速失效模型在静海区的应用

研究目的：分析城市扩展中交通用地、商住用地和工业用地扩张的时序特征、空间关系以及扩张时点的影响因素。研究方法：农地—建设用地转换最优时机理论；加速失效模型。研究结果：（1）不同类型建设用地在扩张过程中具有相互关联的时序和空间特征；（2）静海区交通用地引导了其他建设用地扩张的方向，而不同级别交通用地由于对建设用地和农用地影响的差异，加快或延缓了建设用地扩张的时机；（3）商住和工业用地在200— 400 m 范围内相互集聚，且商住用地产生的集聚效应强于工业用地。研究结论：细化建设用地类型以分析城市扩张的特征和机制，有助于城市扩展区的布局优化和集约发展。     

高管政治背景与民营企业综合税负——基于政治关联的非线性影响研究

民营企业通过与政府建立良好的关系获得与国有企业同等待遇,税负是其中重要的一个方面。现有研究从线性的角度分析了政治关联对民营企业税负的影响,实际上,不同政治关联度对税负的影响方向是不同的。以2009-2011年沪深两市A股主板民营上市公司为样本,探讨政治关联是否影响企业税负以及政治关联度的变化对企业综合税负率的影响。研究发现,政治关联有助于降低民营上市公司综合税负率,且政治关联度与综合税负率之间存在倒U型关系。研究还进一步确定了政治关联度的拐点,为政府规制政策的制定提供参考。     

PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY AND HOUSE OF LORDS REFORM

By revealing the propensity of elected governments to indulge in self‐interest at the expense of the people's liberty, public choice theory provides powerful arguments in favour of an appointed House of Lords rather than an elected upper chamber.     

Reformulating Environmentally Constrained Traffic Equilibrium via a Smooth Gap Function

Various government laws have recently been enacted to alleviate the environmental deterioration of transportation systems. Environmental constraint is a valid means to explicitly reflect various environmental protection requirements imposed by the government. In this paper, we examine the environmentally constrained traffic equilibrium problem (EC-TEP), which is a fundamental tool for modeling and evaluating environmental protection requirements. Specifically, we provide an equivalent reformulation for the EC-TEP. The proposed reformulation adapts the concept of gap function to simultaneously reformulate the nonlinear complementarity conditions associated with the generalized user equilibrium conditions, environmental constraints, and conservation constraints as an equivalent unconstrained optimization problem. This gap function reformulation has two desirable features: (1) it can handle a general environmental constraint structure (linear or nonlinear; link-based or area-based) and a general link and route cost structure, enhancing the modeling adaptability and flexibility; (2) it is smooth and unconstrained, permitting a number of existing efficient algorithms for its solution. A gradient-based solution algorithm with a self-regulated averaging stepsize scheme is customized to solve the reformulated unconstrained optimization problem. Numerical examples are also provided to demonstrate the modeling flexibility of the proposed EC-TEP reformulation.     

The effects of relationship quality on customer retaliation

This research examines the effects of relationship quality (RQ) on customers' desires to retaliate after service failures. We posit that the effects of RQ are contingent upon the attributions customers make about the firm’s controllability over a service failure. Two competing hypotheses are examined and reconciled. The “love is blind” hypothesis posits that when low controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a lesser desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. On the other hand, the “love becomes hate” hypothesis specifies that when high controllability is inferred, high RQ customers experience a greater desire for retaliation than low RQ customers. The hypotheses are tested with a survey-based design and a partial least squares (PLS) model that incorporates a multiplicative latent construct.     

Equity market data, bank failures and market efficiency

The paper examines the informational content of market data for long-term horizons in models, which predict bank failure. Univariate results document patterns such as declining prices, negative returns, declining dividends, and rising return volatility, up to 4 years before failure. Multivariate analysis shows that market information improves the failure predictive content of traditional models, which are based on accounting data. Out-of-sample predictions show that the use of stock market data does improve the forecast of bank failure. Furthermore, the persistence of this contribution generally increases with greater distances from the date of failure documenting the forward-looking nature of financial markets.     

论转轨时期中国政府规制体制改革及政策选择

政府规制是市场经济中市场失灵条件下,国家为实现某种公共政策目标,对微观经济主体的经济活动进行规范与制约,干预经济政策的一种重要制度安排。转轨时期的中国,在政府规制方面还存在诸多的问题:规制法规建设滞后、缺乏统一、权威、独立行使规制职能的规制机构、政府规制过程中行为主体不成熟及其相互关系定位偏差、规制方式存在缺陷,不适应市场经济的发展。因此,结合中国的实际借鉴西方国家的政府规制的经验,对推动我国政府规制改革有着重要的意义。     

Strategies to prevent economic recessions from causing business failure

An average of more than 500,000 businesses failed in the United States during each of the 10 recessions that have occurred since the end of World War II. Yet, scholar and practitioner understanding of how to prepare for and respond to the challenges of an economic downturn remains extremely limited. This article analyzes and synthesizes the information from academic theory and business experience on managing through an economic recession. To assist firms in successfully navigating economic recessions, we suggest a program that involves positioning by investing in multiple markets and geographies, planning by developing a turnaround plan for facing sharply declining sales, promoting by maintaining marketing initiatives, and preparing by acting in anticipation of economic recovery.