User preference mining based on fine-grained sentiment analysis

User preference mining is an application of data mining that attracts increasing attention. Although most of the existing user preference mining methods achieved significant performance improvement, the sentiment tendencies of users were seldom considered. This paper proposes fine-grained sentiment analysis for preference mining. The powerful feature representation capabilities of deep neural networks have significantly improved the performance of fine-grained sentiment analysis. But two main challenges remain when using deep neural network models: incomplete user feature extraction and insufficient interaction. In response, a pre-training language model is employed to encode user features to fully explore potential interests of users, a linguistic knowledge model is introduced to assist the encoding, a multi-scale convolution neural network is adopted to capture text features at different scales and fully utilize the text information, and the fine-grained sentiment analysis task is modeled as a sequence labeling problem to explore the sentiment polarity of user evaluation. Experiments on a user review data set are used to verify the new approach. Experimental results of precision, recall rate and F1-value show that the proposed approach performs better, and is more effective than baseline models. For example, the F1-value is increased by 4.27% compared to the best performing baseline model. Findings have important implications for research and practice.     

Don't miss the boat when consumers are in-store! Exploring the use of point-of-purchase displays to promote green and non-green products

This paper presents two empirical studies that investigate various combinations of different products and types of Point-of-Purchase displays (PoPs) from self-regulation and operant conditioning theoretical perspectives. The results reveal that PoPs’ effectiveness depends on the congruence between, on the one hand, the type and the content of the PoP and, on the other hand, the perceived product attributes. After discussing how to engage consumers with product-related signals that help perceive an adequate control over the in-store purchasing experience, the paper contributes to the literature by offering theoretical and managerial implications on designing effective green products display strategies.     

The invoicing currency choice model of export enterprises assuming joint utility maximization and analysis of the factors influencing selection

Based on the assumption of joint utility maximization, an exporting currency unit pricing model was established, which consists of the local currency, producer's currency, and vehicle currency. Furthermore, Monte Carlo simulation and partial least squares (PLS) regression were used to analyze currency weights. Results suggest that when a producer's currency is devalued relative to a local currency, if the demand elasticity of the importer is large, the local currency will primarily be used; if the bargaining power of the importer is strong, the producer's currency will primarily be used. Among these factors, the bargaining power of the exporter has the greatest influence, followed by the demand elasticity of the importer and the exporting country's exchange rate.     

Downside and upside risk spillovers between exchange rates and stock prices

We examined downside and upside risk spillovers from exchange rates to stock prices and vice versa for a set of emerging economies. We characterized the dependence structure between currency and stock returns using copulas and computed downside and upside value-at-risk and conditional value-at-risk. We documented a positive relationship between stock prices and currency values in emerging economies with respect to the US dollar and the euro, with downside and upside spillover risk effects transmitted both ways. Finally, we also documented asymmetries in upside and downside risk spillovers and asymmetric differences in the size of risk spillovers when the domestic currency values against the US dollar and the euro. Our results, consistent with flight-to-quality phenomena, have implications for downside and upside risk management of international investor portfolios in emerging markets.     

Forecasting the oil futures price volatility: A new approach

This study provides a new perspective of modelling and forecasting realized range-based volatility (RRV) for crude oil futures. We are the first to improve the Heterogeneous Autoregressive model of Realized Range-based Volatility (HAR-RRV) model by considering the significant jump components, signed returns and volatility of realized range-based volatility. The empirical results show that the volatility of volatility significantly exists in the oil futures market. Moreover, our new proposed models with significant jump components, signed returns and volatility of volatility can gain higher forecast accuracy than HAR-RRV-type models. The results are robust to different forecasting windows and forecasting horizons. Our new findings are strategically important for investors making better decisions.     

Doing good or choosing well? Corporate reputation,CEO reputation,and corporate financial performance

Using data from Taiwan’s top 150 listed companies over the period 2003 to 2014, our study explores the influence of CEO reputation and corporate reputation on the financial performance of companies. The analysis focuses especially on the interaction between CEO reputation and corporate reputation to identify which dimension of reputation is more relevant to firm performance. We show that, though both corporate reputation and CEO reputation have an individual impact that benefits the financial performance of the company, the impact of CEO reputation is more persistent across different time periods and more comprehensive across different industries. Furthermore, we find that CEO reputation still has a positive impact on firm performance when corporate reputation is poor, indicating that CEO reputation is more important to firm performance. To pursue better financial performance, should a company make greater effort to build a good corporate reputation, or merely recruit a CEO with a good reputation? Our suggestion here is simple: “choosing well” is better than “doing good.”     

A fast airplane boarding strategy using online seat assignment based on passenger classification

The minimization of the turnaround time, the duration which an aircraft must remain parked at the gate, is an important goal of airlines to increase their profitability. This work introduces a procedure to minimize of the turnaround time by speeding up the boarding time in passenger aircrafts. This is realized by allocating the seat numbers adaptively to passengers when they pass the boarding gate and not before. Using optical sensors, an agility measure is assigned to each person and also a measure to characterize the size of her/his hand-luggage. Based on these two values per passenger and taking into account additional constraints, like reserved seats and the belonging to a group, a novel seat allocation algorithm is introduced to minimize the boarding time. Extensive simulations show that a mean reduction of the boarding time with approximately 15% is achieved compared to existing boarding strategies. The costs of introducing the proposed procedure are negligible, while the savings of reducing the turnaround time are enormous, considering that the costs generated by inactive planes on an airport are estimated to be about 30 $ per minute.     

Measurement of airlines’ capacity utilization and cost gap: Evidence from low-cost carriers

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the capacity utilization and cost gap between actual and global long-run minimum costs. Based on the data for thirteen low-cost carriers around the world for the year 2010, an input-oriented data envelopment analysis model is used to estimate the physical capacity utilization and cost gap between actual and global long-run minimum costs. The empirical results show that more than half of low-cost carriers should improve their capacity utilization, and all low-cost carriers should enhance their market efficiency and reduce their excess costs. Of the thirteen low-cost carriers, three should improve their technical efficiency, four should re-distribute the mix of variable inputs, all thirteen should pay lower prices for all variable inputs, and ten should enhance the utilization rate of their fixed factors.     

众筹:技术资本化新机制

技术资本化是技术创新的重要内容,是技术转化为现实生产力的关键环节。众筹作为互联网时代新兴的融资方式,具有参与主体多元化、运营方式多样化、实现方式网络化及支持方式便捷化等优势,在当今双创事业如火如荼的环境下,已成为实现技术资本化的有力手段,为国家构建创新系统提供了新思路。     

Optimal growth theory: Challenging problems and suggested answers

We argue that optimal economic growth is confronting serious applicability problems, having nothing to offer in these days of high public deficits accompanied by high unemployment rates. In particular, the theory is not capable of indicating optimal savings rates; those are systematically in ranges that can be considered as unacceptable, or are accompanied by unrealistically high real growth rates. Faulty is the systematic use of arbitrary utility functions, which turn out to be contradictory to competitive equilibrium. We then show how relying on the hypothesis of competitive equilibrium yields reasonable, perfectly acceptable numbers for the optimal savings rate.