Diffusion of Hospital Innovations in Different Institutional Settings

This paper purports to analyze a hospital's adoption of both product and process innovation as a quanta! choice. The impacts of this decision on physicians, while depending on institutions that differ between the US and continental Europe, are shown to feed back to the hospital, influencing the profitability of the innovation. Recent changes of hospital finance give rise to testable comparative predictions in both institutional settings     

Vertical Product Differentiation and Advertising

A duopoly model is developed in which firms' strategic variables include brand quality, the number of distinct market segments to enter and price. Informative advertising is used to overcome consumer ignorance about brands. In contrast to many existing models in which firms engage in price competition, the subgame perfect equilibria of the game are not characterised by the production of vertically differentiated products. Further, whilst the firms typically produce identical high quality products, in some circumstances the production of homogeneous low quality brands can be an equilibrium strategy.     

小微企业营销现状与对策研究——以广东省中山市为例

小微企业的营销能力低的现状,在市场竞争曰益激烈的今天,将成为小微企业发展的瓶颈,动摇小微企业生存的根基。本文针对中山市小微企业的营销现状进行研究,发现存在的问题并提出相应对策,旨在促进小微企业的发展。     

Relationship between positive psychological capital and creative performance

Despite considerable attention to the creative process and its relationship with personal characteristics, there is no published study focused directly on the relationship between the recently recognized core construct of psychological capital (PsyCap) and creative performance. Drawing from a large (N = 899) and heterogeneous sample of working adults, this study investigates PsyCap and its components (i.e., efficacy, hope, optimism, and resilience) as predictors of creative performance. Overall PsyCap predicted creative performance over and above each of the four PsyCap components. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are considered. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Housing tenure choice and the dual income household

Housing tenure choice has been the subject of a very large literature. Many treatments have sought to estimate the effect of household income on the likelihood of home ownership. To date, no study has ever disaggregated the household income of married couples into the separate labor income components to see if one partner’s income has a different effect than the other. Using a derived likelihood function to control for censoring in the wife’s income, this paper estimates the effect of separate incomes on housing tenure choice, accounting for possible endogeneity of the wife’s income. To compare the results of this estimation method, the paper also estimates the standard IV models, 2SLS and IV probit. While the results show that there is no endogeneity of the wife’s income, ignoring the censoring of the endogenous variable (when a large fraction of observations are censored) can possibly lead to biased coefficient estimates. Also, this paper confirms the importance of total household income, which has a larger effect than the total disaggregated components.     

The real puzzle of blackmail: An informational approach

The “puzzle” of blackmail is that threats to reveal private information that would be harmful to someone in exchange for money are illegal, but revelation is not. The resolution is that concealment of information about product quality impedes the efficient operation of markets, whereas revelation promotes it. The real puzzle is why possessors are not naturally inclined to sell to uninformed parties, who value the information more than would-be blackmail victims. The answer has to do with the public good qualities of information, which create an appropriability problem in transactions with uninformed parties. The paper also discusses incentives to acquire compromising information.     

Real interest parity: A note on Asian countries using panel stationarity tests

Existing panel data studies of real interest parity are either unable to identify which panel members are characterised by stationary real interest differentials, or are subject to size distortion resulting from the presence of structural breaks and cross-sectional dependencies. Using a panel stationarity testing procedure recently advocated by Hadri and Rao (2008) that allows for structural breaks and cross-sectional dependency, we are unable to reject the stationarity of Asian real interest rate differentials.     

Leverage and growth: Effect of stock options

Previous literature documents a negative relationship between leverage and firm growth. This paper finds that once the incentives provided by stock options are accounted for, leverage does not affect firm growth. The paper also finds that the sensitivity of CEOs’ wealth to stock price (i.e. option delta) instead of leverage has a negative relationship with growth. These findings suggest that incentive contracts that tie managers’ wealth to firm value prevent managers from overinvesting. Thus in presence of options the role of debt as a disciplining mechanism has become less important.     

重庆市统筹城乡发展的运行机制及经验启示

该文介绍了重庆统筹城乡发展的运行机制,即在政府和市场的共同作用下,通过资源配置机制来实现资源要素在城市和农村之间的合理流动和优化配置,同时以完善的制度体系和法律体系为保障机制,以动力机制为"推进器",通过城乡联系和相互作用,最终实现城乡统筹发展。重庆城乡统筹的主要经验概括起来是充分发挥政府的作用、加强城乡联系与互动、加强区域合作。     

1:10000比例尺土地利用景观指数的粒度效应分析

研究目的:基于鹤峰县1:10000土地利用数据,对土地利用数据的景观指数类型及景观水平的粒度效应进行分析。研究方法:GIS和景观格局分析软件应用。研究结果:在类型水平上,景观指数的粒度效应较明显,随粒度的变粗,景观指数可归为单调下降、不规则变化和基本无变化3类;粒度响应最敏感的景观指数为斑块密度;裸地和水田是对粒度响应最敏感的两种土地覆盖类型。在景观水平上,除斑块密度外,其他景观指数粒度效应不明显,斑块密度和面积加权平均分维数的粒度响应最强烈,丰富度指数则最弱。研究结论:粒度效应与所选粒度的变化范围、数据聚合方式、分析景观类型的多少、比例尺的不同都有很大的关系,更深层次的研究需要考虑更加全面。