A study on the attributes involved in the hedonic pricing of Brazilian clothing

The objective of this study is to identify the weighted importance of intrinsic and extrinsic attributes. Intrinsic attributes are defined as the specific features of products. Extrinsic attributes refer to other characteristics that are also important for price composition, such as brand, store layout and services, and purchasing experiences. In a survey with 1,923 collected responses, it was possible to identify and quantify intrinsic and extrinsic influencing factors beyond price strategy in the Brazilian fashion market for blue jeans. The statistical analysis was based on the hedonic price method. The idea of expressing the price based on a series of intrinsic and extrinsic variables avoids the problem of using the regression technique. In this research, multiple linear regression and quantile regression were applied. The results show that extrinsic attributes have greater influence than intrinsic features on explaining the final market prices using log-linear and quantile regression statistical methods.     

Managing complexity： A problem of chaos in fisheries policy

This work intends to present chaos theory （and dynamical systems such as the theories of complexity）, in terms of interpretation of ecological phenomena. The chaos theory applied in the context of ecological systems, especially in the context of fisheries has allowed the recognition of the relevance of this kind of theories to explain fishing phenomena and fisheries policies. It has permitted new advances in the study of marine systems, contributing to the preservation of fish stocks. This paper deals with the way how to manage fisheries taking chaos in account of the problem.     

Tony Atkinson and his Legacy

Tony Atkinson is universally celebrated for his outstanding contributions to the measurement and analysis of inequality, but he never saw the study of inequality as a separate branch of economics. He was an economist in the classical sense, rejecting any sub‐field labelling of his interests and expertise, and he made contributions right across economics. His death on 1 January 2017 deprived the world of both an intellectual giant and a deeply committed public servant in the broadest sense of the term. This collective tribute highlights the range, depth and importance of Tony's enormous legacy, the product of almost fifty years’ work.     

Is inflation targeting a good remedy to control inflation?

Since the 1990s inflation targeting (IT) has been adopted by several central banks as a strategy for monetary policy. It is expected that the adoption of this monetary regime can reduce inflation and inflation volatility. This article is concerned with these issues and makes use of the Propensity Score Matching methodology on a sample of 180 countries for the period from 1990 to 2007. For analysis, the sample is split into two sets of countries (advanced and developing). The findings suggest that the adoption of IT is an ideal monetary regime for developing economies and, in addition to reducing inflation volatility, can drive inflation down to internationally acceptable levels. Regarding advanced economies, the adoption of IT does not appear to represent an advantageous strategy. In brief, the empirical results indicate that the adoption of IT is useful for countries that must enhance their credibility for the management of monetary policy.     

Bank market concentration and bank efficiency in the European Union: a panel Granger causality approach

The relationships between bank market consolidation and bank efficiency are of particular relevance in the European Union (EU), but they remain controversial. Using a panel Granger causality approach, this paper contributes to the literature, testing not only the causality running from bank market concentration to bank efficiency, but also the reverse causality running from efficiency to concentration. The results obtained confirm the relative complexity of these causality relationships, although they generally point to a negative causation running both from concentration to efficiency and from efficiency to concentration. These findings are in line with the Structure Conduct Performance (SCP) paradigm and the suggestions that the increase of the banks’ market power will contribute to inefficiency, since these banks will face less competition to obtain more output results with less input costs. Our results suggest that within this panel of all 27 EU countries over a relatively long time period, from 1996 to the onset of the 2008 financial crisis, the more cost-efficient commercial and savings banks operated in less concentrated markets.     

Corporate strategy and information disclosure

We examine voluntary disclosures of information about corporate strategies. We develop a model in which managers choose whether to reveal their strategic plans only to some partners of the firm or also to the outside world. We show that managers face a tradeoff when deciding whether to disclose their private information to outsiders. On the one hand, by disclosing their intentions, managers become reluctant to change their minds in the future. This may lead them to make inefficient project implementation decisions. On the other hand, information disclosure about corporate strategy provides strong incentives for partners of the firm to undertake strategy‐specific investments.     

Networks of queues with infinite servers in each node applied to the management of a two echelons repair system

After a report of results about infinite servers queues, essentially on its busy period, a model is built, using networks of queues with infinite servers in each node, to study a two echelons repair system for example of a fleet of aircraft, shipping or trucks. The customers are the failures, and their service time is the time that goes from the instant at which they occur till they are completely repaired. The failing repairs occur in a base or in a remote station. The whole failures detected in the base are repaired there. Some of the failures detected in the station are repaired there and the others in the base. The results referred above allow the determination of a two echelons repair system performance measures. In this application, models of Carrillo （1991） and Ferreira （1996） are considered, improved and completed. The theory is illustrated with a numerical example.     

Do students’ perceptions matter? A study of the effect of students’ perceptions on academic performance

Prior accounting education literature documents that students typically associate accounting subjects with negative perceptions, but there are also recent suggestions that the stereotype of the accountant has positive associations. These perceptions of accounting are likely to affect students’ attitudes towards learning and, consequently, influence their performance. We examine the relationship between students’ perceptions and students’ performance. The present study involved undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in management accounting subjects. Our findings indicate that students’ performance is negatively affected by the negative perceptions of accounting that students bring to the subject. Our findings also suggest that positive perceptions of accounting held by students at the end of the semester have a positive impact on students’ performance.     

Democracy and the Variability of Economic Performance

Sah (1991) conjectured that more centralized societies should have more volatile economic performances than less centralized ones. We show in this paper that this is true both for cross–country and within–country variability in growth rates. It is also true for some measures of policies. Finally, we show that both the best and worst performers in terms of growth rates are more likely to be autocracies. We argue that the evidence in the paper is consistent with the theoretical implications in Sah and Stiglitz (1991) and Rodrik (1999a).     

Options can induce risk taking for arbitrary preferences

Summary. It is widely believed that call options induce risk-taking behavior. However, Ross (2004) challenges this intuition by demonstrating the impossibility of inducing managers with arbitrary preferences to always act as if they were less risk averse. If preferences and price distributions are unknown, risk-taking behavior cannot be always induced by an option contract. Here, we prove a new result showing that, with no information about preferences and some knowledge about prices, one can write a call option that makes all managers prefer riskier projects to safer ones. This points out that in order to design options that induce risk taking it is sufficient to have information about price distributions.Received: 5 November 2003, Revised: 1 November 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: D81, G00, J33, M21. Correspondence to: Luis H.B. BraidoWe thank Renée Adams, Heitor Almeida, Carlos E. da Costa, Andrew Horowitz, Paulo K. Monteiro, Walter Novaes, Sergio O. Parreiras, Rodrigo R. Soares, and especially Marcos Tsuchida for many helpful comments.