Cross-border restaurant price and exchange rate interactions

Purchasing power parity suggests that international price ratios for identical goods should approximate nominal exchange rates for the currencies in which the prices are denominated. Deviations of the price ratios from exchange rates can occur for a number of reasons and mixed evidence has been recorded for how long those deviations last. Empirical evidence for international restaurant prices in El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Mexico confirms that menu item price ratios are strongly correlated with the peso/dollar exchange rate. An earlier exploratory study of eight individual products also indicated that half-life deviations in this market are very short. This study utilizes additional data from a larger and more extensive sample to examine if the prior results are confirmed.     

Cultural and Ethical Effects in Budgeting Systems: A Comparison of U.S. and Chinese Managers

This study developed and tested a model of culture’s effect on budgeting systems, and hypothesized that system variables and reactions to them are influenced by culture-specific work-related and ethical values. Most organizational and behavioral views of budgeting fail to acknowledge the ethical components of the problem, and have largely ignored the role of culture in shaping organizational and individual values. Cross-cultural differences in reactions to system design variables, and in the behaviors motivated or mitigated by those variables, has implications for the design and effectiveness of budgeting systems. The data largely support our research model, demonstrating the hypothesized national cultural differences in system design variables (e.g., participation, standards tightness, budget emphasis, etc. which we characterized as the opportunity and incentives to create budgetary slack), and the expected relationship between incentives (but not opportunity) to create slack and slack creation behavior. The data demonstrate hypothesized cultural differences in ethical ideology but show ethical ideology related to slack creation behavior only for U.S. managers. A discussion of the results and their implications is included.     

Political consequences of ethical investing: The case of South Africa

This paper discusses the economic impact and political consequences of ethical investing, with particular attention to the case of South Africa. The origins of ethical investing are examined, along with the institutions and strategies by which ethical investing operates today. Of immediate relevance to managers is a recent judicial decision upholding Baltimore's divestment ordinance. The discussion concludes with an assessment of the likely consequences of ethical investing for U.S. multinationals in Southern Africa. Dr. Paul is an Associate Professor of Management at the Rochester Institute of Technology. She took her Ph.D. from Emory University in 1974. She has published and presented widely on the subject of Business Ethics and Business and Public Policy. Her current research interest in business and South Africa has taken her to South Africa on a Fulbright Fellowship. Dr. Paul has also been named a Radcliffe Peace Fellow for 1987–88. She has just edited Business Environment and Business Ethics: The Social, Moral, and Political Dimensions of Management (1987) for Ballinger Press.Mr. Aquila has been a full time Lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology since 1984. He took his M.B.A. degree from New York University in 1980 and is just finishing his Ph.D. at the University of Rochester in American History. Mr. Aquila was awarded the David Parker Memorial Prize in History from the University of Rochester in 1986.     

Perceptions of Power Within a Membership-based Seniors' Community Center

As opportunities for citizenship diminish in everyday life amid increasing consumption and privatization, there is a growing realization of the importance of participation and citizen power, particularly for older adults. Gaventa's (1980) Gaventa, J. (1980). Power and powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. [Google Scholar] concepts of visible, invisible, and hidden power and Arnstein's ladder of citizen power (1969) framed this study, which used participatory methods, including creation and facilitation of a members' group at a small seniors' center, to address the question: What are the factors that undermine or cultivate citizen power at a small community center for seniors? The data were organized under three power-related themes: powerlessness, reluctance to claim power, and claiming power. Findings suggest that negative social constructions associated with aging act as instruments of invisible power. Further, community center membership, to be considered meaningful, should be imbued with visible power, so that seniors can be involved in decision making and leadership.     

Understanding Active Loyalty Behavior in Hotel Reward Programs Through Customers’ Switching Costs and Perceived Program Value

Whether loyalty programs have become part of the lexicon of buzzwords or not, the hotel industry continues to adopt loyalty/rewards programs as a major channel to nurture customers’ active loyalty as well as to reap return business. This study examins the structural relationships among perceived program value, switching costs, and active loyalty. The proposed model is supported by an online survey dataset collected from United States (US) tourists. The findings show that perceived program value is less effective in driving active loyalty compared with switching costs. This implies a need for strategic thinking on the part of hoteliers and the industry. Rather than aggressively spending money or copying schemes used by competitors to gear up program value, the value of a defensive tactic of increasing switching costs should be considered.     

“You Can't Make a Good Wine without a Few Beers”: Gatekeepers and knowledge flow in industrial districts

Knowledge sharing sometimes plays a key role in the performance of clustered organizations, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), however, SMEs also face significant knowledge-related disadvantages due to their lack of absorptive capacity and functional expertise. This study investigates the influence of technical specialists on knowledge flow in a wine cluster in Australia. The main contribution of this paper is a finding that the technical specialist's gatekeeping role both links clustered SMEs to the global wine “systemworld” by transferring knowledge of technical developments and innovation, and simultaneously develops and refines regional winemaking styles by sharing locally specific, experientially derived knowledge. Technical specialists drew on bridging and bonding social capital to identify and retrieve specialist knowledge, and were capable of assimilating complex technical knowledge into the cluster. These findings are particularly significant because recipients were typically small and micro-firms, which are frequently located outside cluster knowledge-network.     

How much to give? — The effect of donation size on tactical and strategic success in cause-related marketing

In cause-related marketing (CM), companies promise a donation to a cause every time a consumer makes a purchase. We analyze the impact of the size of this donation on brand choice (tactical success) and brand image (strategic success). Our results reveal different effects of donation size on these success measures. For brand choice, the effect of donation size is moderated by a financial trade-off for consumers, whereas the effect on brand image is moderated by donation framing. Specifically, we show that donation size has a positive effect on brand choice if consumers face no financial trade-off; i.e., if they do not have to choose between triggering a donation or saving money. The effect is negative if a trade-off exists such that higher donations come at higher costs. Brand image is enhanced by larger donations if the framing is nonmonetary (e.g., the campaign promises the provision of vaccinations), whereas donation size has a negative effect if donation framing is monetary (e.g., the campaign states the Euro amount). If campaigns use a combination of both frames, the effect of donation size on brand image has an inverted U shape. Our results suggest that CM enhances tactical and strategic success only if firms select the right donation size, taking into account donation framing and financial trade-offs.     

Historic District Influence on House Prices and Marketing Duration

Historic property designations have been lauded for spurring renovation beyond the historic structures themselves through positive externalities in surrounding neighborhoods. Previous historic district research focuses on whether historic designation results in a price premium. This paper takes a more comprehensive look at the buying process, which must consider marketing duration within the historic district as well as influences on the sale of properties adjacent to the historic district. We examine how historic district designation in Baton Rogue, Louisiana is capitalized either through a price premium or marketing duration and how that mechanism differs between neighborhoods inside and outside the historic district boundaries. We employ a three stage least square, 3SLS, model to account for the effects of endogenous marketing duration on price capitalization estimates. The estimates are consistent with search-market theory in that marketing duration absorbs part of the capitalization of historic designation. We find that the more certain benefits from historic designation within the district are reflected in a price premium while the reduced regulation coupled with the cachet of being located near but not inside the district result in shorter marketing duration.     

Is property crime caused by drug use or by drug enforcement policy?

The relationships among drug offenses, prorperty crime, and the allocation of police resources are investigated in a structural model using data from Florida countries. Law enforcement resources are scarce, and as efforts to combat drug crime increase the amount of these resources allocated to property crime is reduced. This reallocation of police resources results in reduced deterrence for property crime and, as a result, an increase in these crimes. The evidence presented suggests that rising property crimes in Florida are at least partially the result of drug enforcement policy.     

HOUSEHOLD SAVING IN THE '90s: EVIDENCE FROM CROSS-SECTION WEALTH SURVEYS

This paper uses a series of cross-section surveys to measure how wealth accumulation and active saving rates varied across cohort-groups during the early and mid 1990s. Our estimated rates of saving and wealth change across cohorts show a somewhat more dramatic life-cycle pattern than found in previous studies, in part because we use a new technique, and in part because the cross-section wealth surveys we use oversample the wealthiest families whose behavior dominates aggregate changes. Adjusting the wealth-change rates for bequests and subtracting out the capital gains component of wealth change move the estimates in the direction of results from previous studies, but the biggest changes in that direction result from excluding the top of the wealth distribution in each year.