Modelling international tourism and country risk spillovers for Cyprus and Malta

Small Island Tourism Economies (SITEs) are developing sovereign countries that rely on tourism as a source of exports, and need a consistent inflow of foreign investment in order to facilitate economic growth. Access to international capital markets helps SITEs smooth out their consumption over time, while absorbing adverse domestic production shocks. This paper provides a comparison of tourism growth, country risk returns and their associated volatilities (or uncertainty) for 2 SITEs, namely Cyprus and Malta. Monthly data are available for both international tourist arrivals and composite country risk ratings compiled by the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG) for the period May 1986 to May 2002. The time-varying conditional variances of tourism growth and country risk returns for the 2 SITEs are analysed using multivariate models of conditional volatility. Empirical results show that Cyprus and Malta are complementary destinations for international tourists. Changes to tourism patterns in Cyprus lead to changes to tourism patterns in Malta. Hence, tour operators and national tourism promotion authorities in Cyprus and Malta should collaborate closely in marketing and promoting joint tourism products. Moreover, foreign entities interested in investing in the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta should consider investment projects that span a long period of time. The performance of the tourism sector and the associated composite risk are independent of each other for the two countries. However, there is a direct relationship between the tourism sectors of Cyprus and Malta and their respective country risk settings.     

Accounting for the role of habit in behavioural strategies for injury prevention

The limited success of behavioural strategies in injury prevention has been attributed to failure to properly apply behaviour change models to intervention design and the explanation of safety behaviours. However, this paper contends that many health behaviour change interventions do not succeed because they fail to take into account the habitual quality of most health and safety-related behaviour; a more complete model of behaviour change needs to be based on a better understanding of the role of habit. The overall aim is to contribute to better understanding of behavioural strategies for injury prevention. When habits are weak, attitudes and intentions predict behaviours, but as behaviours turn into habits, they become better predictors of future behaviour than attitudes or intentions. Furthermore, where habits are strong, individuals are less likely to act on new information, evaluating counter-habitual information negatively. Integrating the concepts of strong and weak habits with upstream and downstream strategies, a framework is presented for tailoring strategies to the habit strength of the target behaviour.     

A Review of The Empirical Ethical Decision-Making Literature: 1996–2003

This review summarizes and critiques the empirical ethical decision-making literature from 1996–2003. One hundred and seventy-four articles were published in top business journals during this period. Tables are included that summarize the findings by dependent variable – awareness, judgment, intent, and behavior. We compare this review with past reviews in order to draw conclusions regarding trends in the ethical decision-making literature and to surface directions for future research.Michael J. O’Fallon is a graduate student in the Department of Management and Operations at Washington State University. His primary research interest is individual ethical decision-making and behavior in organizations. Recently, he has explored issues in organizational behavior, human resource management, and consumer behavior toward genetically modified foods.Kenneth D. Butterfield is an associate professor of management at Washington State University. He received his Ph.D. in Business Administration from The Pennsylvania State University. His research has been published in a variety of academic journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Business and Society, Business Ethics Quarterly, Human Relations, Journal of Higher Education, Journal of Managerial Issues, and Research in Higher Education. His current research interests involve organizational behavior issues such as managing ethical decision-making and behavior in organizations, examining why people fail to recognize moral issues, understanding academic dishonesty and promoting academic integrity, and examining organizational punishment from the manager’s perspective.     

Mittelstand und EU-Osterweiterung

Viele Umfragen deuten auf eine massive Abwanderung des deutschen Mittelstands in die neuen EU-Beitrittsl?nder hin. Inwieweit kann dieser Exodus empirisch untermauert werden? In welchen Aktivit?ten engagieren sich die deutschen mittelst?ndischen Unternehmen in den Beitrittsl?ndern? Welche Chancen und Risiken erwarten sie von der Osterweiterung?     

Removing the contextual lens: A multinational, multi-setting comparison of service evaluation models

Four service evaluation models are identified from the literature that are commonly offered to depict the relationships amongst the primary service evaluation constructs of sacrifice, service quality, service value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. We comparatively test the models using samples of service consumers in Australia, Hong Kong, Morocco, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as across varied temporal and service settings. The results of the comparative analyses reveal that one conceptualization, the “comprehensive” model, best captures the identified relationships. This model is the best fitting across all countries and settings, which indicates it has the greatest external validity. These findings are discussed relative to the limitations associated with the use of less generalizable models.     

DIFFUSION MODELS FOR EXCHANGE RATES IN A TARGET ZONE

We present two analytically tractable diffusion models for an exchange rate in a target zone. One model generalizes a model proposed by De Jong, Drost, and Werker (2001) to allow asymmetry between the currencies which is often an important feature of data. Estimation of the model parameters by the method of Kessler and Sørensen (1999) using eigenfunctions of the generator is investigated and shown to give well-behaved estimators that are easy to calculate. The method is well suited to the models because the eigenfunctions are known so that explicit estimating functions are obtained, and because the state space is a finite interval, for which it is known that the method can be made arbitrarily efficient by including sufficiently many eigenfunctions. The model fits data on exchange rates in the European Monetary System well. In particular, the asymmetry parameter is significantly different from zero for three out of four currencies. An alternative diffusion model is presented with similarly nice properties, but with different dynamics that allow constant volatility near the boundaries of the target zone. No-arbitrage pricing of derivative assets is considered, and the effect of realignments is briefly discussed.     

The strategic evolution of large US law firms

In recent years, large US law firms have been undergoing significant changes. Most have switched from a professional model (P2 form) to a corporate business model, employing competitive strategies and a profit orientation. As the market for corporate legal services became more competitive, many large US law firms began to diversify the services they offer and expand their operations into new geographic regions of the country and into international markets. They even engaged in acquisitions and learned to manage and leverage their critical resources, human capital and relational capital. As a result, most of these law firms have added more professional management. All in all, the services law firms offer and the rivals with which they must contend have changed substantially over the last 15 years.     

Can economic bonus programs jeopardize service relationships?

Research findings on the impact of economic bonus programs on service relationships are contradictory. While some studies find positive effects of economic bonus programs on customer’s relational behavior, other studies demonstrate negative effects. Building on self-determination theory, Dholakia (J Market Res 43(2):109–120, 2006) points at a possible explanation for these conflicting results, arguing that economic marketing programs have negative effects on self-determined customers when the program is perceived as controlling by them. By testing the effect of four different kinds of economic bonus programs on loyalty in an experimental setting using a nationwide representative sample of 768 participants, this research is the first that provides empirical evidence that economic bonus programs can indeed endanger service relationships by reducing customer’s self-determination. Implications of our findings for the abundance of economic bonus programs offered to service customers these days are highlighted.