What hurts the dominant airlines at hub airports?

This paper estimates a frequency equation to explain the determinants of network airline service levels at their hub airports. Drawing on European data for 2002–2013, we find that network airlines reduce frequencies when the share of low-cost airlines increases both on the route and at the hub airport. On the contrary, frequency choices of network airlines are not affected by competition from low-cost airlines operating in nearby secondary airports. We also find some evidence that mergers in Europe may result in a re-organization of the route structure in favor of the hubs of the larger airline.     

Utilizing the access value of customers

Customers are critical resources for the success of any business, not only because they bring in sales and profits directly, but also because of their access value in a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected. However, the mechanisms by which the customer access value may be exploited and the implication for management has not been well understood. Access value can be defined as the worth of utilizing patrons for further marketing and sales of value-added or third party products. The access value, which mainly results from the aggregation of the customer base and customer data, is essentially a corporation's internalized asset. This article shows that the size of the customer base and the extent of engagement have a significant impact on the customer access value. To develop and gain the benefits of customer access value, traditional business models often need to be transformed: firms and platforms should provide free or subsidized products to attract people and then embed value-added products to make money. The success of the new business model depends on not only the right pricing and product strategies, but also an embedding strategy.     

On the fairness of airlines’ ticket pricing as a result of revenue management techniques

Pricing and availability of tickets have always been a source of confusion for customers in transportation industries. What is the best time to buy tickets? Why passengers taking the same flight might pay significantly different prices for the same seat? Why round trip tickets between two cities sometimes become cheaper than the one-way flights between them? Is it fair to buy a ticket for an itinerary cheaper than a ticket for just a part of it? These observations make customers wonder why they pay higher prices for shorter flights. In this paper, we study the airlines’ revenue management systems and explain some of these pricing schemes in travel industries. We develop a simulator to study the decision making process of network revenue management and use a numerical study to explore these questions and address some explanations for them. We relate these observations to the revenue management measurements such as the bid price or the adjustment cost and show how the dynamic of the network get influenced by these measures that eventually results in unusual pricing. We explain how a zero or small bid price of a specific leg may cause the price of an itinerary be cheaper than one segment of it and that the small bid price is caused by low demand in comparison to the available capacity. We exhibit network revenue management system and show the above issues for a small network.     

An application of network analysis on tourist attractions: The case of Xinjiang,China

This study constitutes a novel application of network analysis to explore the underlying mechanisms of tourist attraction network informed by tourist flows. Using survey data collected from a sample of 456 tourists visiting Xinjiang, China, the study applies the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP) to test the relationships between region proximity, grade proximity, and tenure proximity, and the attraction network determined by tourists' free choice movements. Results show that while region proximity and tenure proximity among major attractions in a destination were positively related to attraction network, grade proximity was negatively related to the attraction network, indicating that same grade attractions were mostly competing with one another for tourists. The study contributes to the methodological development of social network analysis in tourism and advances understanding of demand-driven network relationships among tourist attractions in a destination. Destination management implications are discussed.     

Network,knowledge and relationship impacts on innovation in tourism destinations

We combine network structure and firm-level relationship measures to explore the association between innovative behavior, firm position within the network of a destination, and the knowledge and relational trust characteristics of a firm's innovation-oriented relationships. We find current collaboration, shared knowledge and trust are associated with innovative behavior with partner firms, but that betweenness centrality indicates which partners are the most prominent innovators in a population. That is, relationship-level characteristics facilitate innovation partnerships, but network structure characteristics identify the most successful innovative partners. To theory, our findings contribute to efforts in the tourism, innovation and network literature to evaluate the differential effects of knowledge stocks and flows on innovation. For practice, our results suggest that promoters of innovation within a destination should leverage brokerage positions to improve the in-flow of ideas while encouraging the firms that share knowledge and trust to collaborate to apply those ideas.     

Efficiency,total factor productivity and returns to scale in a sustainable perspective: An analysis in the European Union at farm and regional level

For global sustainability it is imperative to find a balance across the three main components of sustainable development which are the economic, social and environmental aspects. However, it is not a simple task to make these contexts compatible, usually because of economic pressures which transform them into opposed objectives. This framework occurs across several dimensions within society and the economy, where the agricultural sector is not an exception. The objective of this study is to analyse the efficiency, total factor productivity and returns to scale in an economic, social and environmental perspective in farms of the European Union (EU) regions through Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approaches. The research concerning the returns to scale will be complemented by the Keynesian models. Data obtained from the European Union Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) was considered. The results show that in maintaining or improving the levels of production in farms, it is often possible to greatly reduce, in some cases, the consumption of fertilizers and crop protection products. On the other hand, from a social perspective, some European Union regions are more generous in the salaries paid to farming workers and absorb more labour, which in a European context of unemployment, may be an interesting way to realistically look at and be engaged in the agricultural planning in a sustainable way, founding a balanced trade-off among the economic, social and environmental dimensions.     

嵌入性创新网络与科技型小微企业创新绩效:网络能力中介效应研究

科技型小微企业嵌入于创新网络中,通过自主性发挥网络构建与管理能力,进一步分享创新网络资源,提高创新实力。基于中国软件谷(南京)及相关创业孵化园246家软件企业问卷调查结果,运用SPSS、LISREL软件进行统计分析,实证研究网络能力对嵌入性创新网络与科技型小微企业创新绩效的中介效应。结果表明:(1)嵌入性创新网络稳定性有利于科技型小微企业创新绩效的提升;(2)嵌入性创新网络强度越大,科技型小微企业网络能力越强;(3)科技型小微企业网络能力越强,创新绩效提升越明显;(4)科技型小微企网络能力有助于促进嵌入性创新网络对创新绩效的提升作用。     

Contagion risk in the interbank market: a probabilistic approach to cope with incomplete structural information

One lesson of the financial crisis erupting in 2008 has been that domino effects constitute a serious threat to the stability of the financial sector, i.e. the failure of one node in the interbank network might entail the danger of contagion to large parts of the entire system. How important this effect is, depends on the exact topology of the network on which the supervisory authorities have typically very incomplete knowledge. In order to explore the extent of contagion effects and to analyse the effectiveness of macroprudential measures to contain such effects, a reconstruction of the quantitative features of the empirical network would be needed. We propose a probabilistic approach to such a reconstruction: we propose to combine some important known quantities (like the size of the banks) with a realistic stochastic representation of the remaining structural elements. Our approach allows us to evaluate relevant measures for the contagion risk after default of one unit (i.e. the number of expected subsequent defaults, or their probabilities). For some quantities we are able to derive closed form solutions, others can be obtained via computational mean-field approximations.     

江苏网络经济发展现状及对策研究

网络经济在国民经济中正扮演着越来越重要的角色,是我国经济发展新的增长点。江苏省是我国网络经济和电子商务应用较为发达的地区之一,研究江苏网络经济的发展对于江苏乃至全国的网络经济发展都具有重要意义。通过调查江苏省网络经济的发展现状,分析存在的问题,提出了相关改进措施和优化建议,以推动江苏省网络经济更加健康、良好的发展。