The price effect of allowing non-pharmacy outlets to sell OTC drugs in Korea

By the amendment of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act in 2012, non-pharmacy outlets (confined to 24-hour convenience stores) in Korea were permitted to sell 13 over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. This article empirically examines the effect of the regulatory reform on OTC drug prices. To do so, we use county-level price data of 7 OTC drugs for the years of 2012 and 2013. Among them, 2 OTC drugs are available at non-pharmacy outlets due to the deregulation, and the remaining 5 are still only available at pharmacies. Employing a difference-in-differences estimation strategy, we find that after the regulatory reform, prices of the 2 OTC drugs increased by only 1.1% while those of the rest 5 increased by 6.5%. This result has implications for the government’s policy of designating non-pharmacy outlets that can sell OTC drugs from the viewpoint of consumer welfare.     

The Effects of Four Dimensions of Strategic Orientation on Firm Innovativeness and Performance in Emerging Market Small- and Medium-Size Enterprises

We investigate the effects of technology, entrepreneurial, market, and learning orientations on firm innovativeness, and the mediating effect of firm innovativeness on these relationships, using a survey of 374 small- and medium-size enterprises in Korea. The results reveal that, while technology, entrepreneurial, and learning orientations significantly influence firm innovativeness, firm innovativeness has a significant effect on firm performance. We also find that firm innovativeness has a statistically significant mediating role in the relationships of technology, entrepreneurial, and learning orientations to firm performance. Our study contributes to strategic management and emerging market literature by identifying the pivotal role of innovativeness for firms that seek to benefit from various types of strategic orientations.     

Social exclusion influences on the effectiveness of altruistic versus egoistic appeals in charitable advertising

Marketing Letters - In three experiments, the authors study charitable behaviors and demonstrate that consumers who feel socially excluded react more positively to altruistic, other appeals rather...     

Assessment of the environmental sustainability of restaurants in the U.S.: The effects of restaurant characteristics on environmental sustainability performance

ABSTRACT

This paper investigated the current levels of environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. to determine whether a restaurant’s proclivity for environmental sustainability depended on its characteristics such as chain affiliation or restaurant type.

A web-based survey was administered to 2,500 top-level restaurant managers, from which a total of 218 responses were judged as usable. The data were analyzed using independent

sample t-tests and ANOVA. This study presents an in-depth account of the environmental sustainability in restaurants across the U.S. based on an evaluation of top-level managers. This study also highlights the differences in restaurant environmental sustainability across different restaurant segments.     

Can commodity futures risk factors predict economic growth?

This paper examines whether commodity futures risk factors can predict future economic growth. We test risk factors capturing various spot or term premia and find that only three factors capturing term premia on the basis-momentum, basis, and change in slope are robust predictors for future economic growth, especially for long horizons. Our findings highlight the importance of the term premia, rather than the spot premia on which the literature has mainly focused. Moreover, we find that possible explanations for predictability of commodity factors—the intertemporal asset pricing model and information diffusion explanation—are all inconsistent with our empirical results.     

Does an Audit Judgment Rule Increase or Decrease Auditors' Use of Innovative Audit Procedures?

The current audit environment encourages auditors to conduct defensive auditing procedures in lieu of using new, innovative, and potentially more effective audit procedures, due to concerns these procedures may be second-guessed in litigation or by audit inspectors such as the PCAOB. As a result, auditors may prefer traditional “generally accepted” procedures over innovative procedures that are potentially more effective. We test recent proposals that an Audit Judgment Rule (AJR) encourages the use of innovative, and potentially more effective, audit procedures analogous to the similar Business Judgment Rule that affords legal protections to corporate directors. Under an AJR, litigators or audit inspectors could not second-guess auditor judgments, even if they perceive that alternate judgments would have ordinarily been reached, provided the auditor's judgment was made in good faith and in a rigorous manner. However, the AJR's requirements that auditors must defend the rigor of their innovative judgments could potentially backfire and lead auditors to select more traditional procedures. Under the framework of goal activation theory, we conduct an experiment with audit managers and seniors and find that an AJR makes auditors less likely to select innovative audit procedures, particularly when audit risk is high. They do so despite believing the innovative procedures to be more effective than the traditional procedures. Findings from a supplementary experiment with experienced auditors further suggest that national office affirmation of the reasonableness of the procedures does not help overcome this effect. Overall, our findings suggest that an AJR may have the unintended consequence of further increasing auditors' focus on more traditional, and potentially less effective, audit procedures.     

中美技术密集型产品双边贸易研究——显性比较优势、产业内贸易与贸易平衡研究

资本技术密集型的机械及运输设备产品已经成为中美贸易的主体,且中国对美出口不断扩大。本文以该类产品为研究对象,借助于显性比较优势指数,揭示中美的优势;运用产业内贸易调整指数,说明两国间产业内贸易状况;运用产业内贸易失衡指数,指出该大类下对两国间贸易失衡起到推动和缓解作用的产品;借助于动态产业内贸易指数,分析中美间该大类贸易平衡状况的未来走势。     

Determinants of organizational performance: some implications for top executive leadership in Korean firms

ABSTRACT

Leadership, although commonly assumed to be greatly significant, is not typically studied in terms of structural characteristics accounted for in organizational performance. The effect of top executive leadership is explored here as a key factor that reflects organizational characteristics by offering a new framework and presenting an empirical test of Korean business firms. This research can be possibly made by focusing on the size of the leadership which explicates the difference between structural, resource and contextual variables in organizations. The multivariate regression analysis shows that firm size, leadership, debt and export significantly affect organizational performance, as measured by net income. The mechanism of Korean business firms needs to readjust to the new environment for organizational performance.     

Detections of changes in return by a wavelet smoother with conditional heteroscedastic volatility

In this paper, we propose two estimators, an integral estimator and a discretized estimator, for the wavelet coefficient of regression functions in nonparametric regression models with heteroscedastic variance. These estimators can be used to test the jumps of the regression function. The model allows for lagged-dependent variables and other mixing regressors. The asymptotic distributions of the statistics are established, and the asymptotic critical values are analytically obtained from the asymptotic distribution. We also use the test to determine consistent estimators for the locations of change points. The jump sizes and locations of change points can be consistently estimated using wavelet coefficients, and the convergency rates of these estimators are derived. We perform some Monte Carlo simulations to check the powers and sizes of the test statistics. Finally, we give practical examples in finance and economics to detect changes in stock returns and short-term interest rates using the empirical wavelet method.