To Launch or Not to Launch: An Empirical Estimate of New Food Product Success Rate

New product introduction is one of the most important activities for a company’s growth. It is generally accepted that new product introductions are essential to the health of food companies. Yet, many believe that most new products fail, therefore discouraging companies to introduce some new products. However, most of the estimates suggesting high failure rates are either anecdotal or qualitative. This article provides a quantitative approach to measuring new product success rates for food products and to show the relationship between the success of new product and entry strategies. This article uses a quantitative approach to measuring product success/failure exclusively for food products. The authors contend that failure rates for food products are not nearly as low, and success rates much higher than it was previously established in the literature and perceived by the industry professionals. There was a significant variability of success rates between various food groups ranging from 58% for both fruit and vegetables and desserts and ice-cream categories to 88% for baby food. Success rates also varied among the different introductory strategies of the new food products, ranging from 50% for new packaging to 75% for re-launch strategies.

Academics and practitioners usually quote very low success rates for new products based on subjective and/or strictly qualitative information. This empirical quantitative research shows that success rates for food products are much higher than previously reported. This should encourage greater use of new products to grow sales and profits. The previously reported low success rate may have led to the reluctance to introduce new products and therefore set many of the legacy food companies in their current poor financial condition.     

Objectives,Techniques and valuation of state-owned companies in privatization processes

This article aims to analyse the objectives and the techniques of privatization and the valuation methods applied in the state-owned company privatization processes in order to determine the coherence between the formal privatization objectives stated by governments and the techniques and the valuation methods chosen to carry out the sale of state-owned companies. From the results of an international survey carried out by the International Organization of Supreme Audit Institutions (INTOSAI), we study the privatization practices in three groups of countries: the most developed OECD countries, Eastern European countries and developing countries. While the reasons that have motivated state-owned company privatizations all over the world are quite similar, the techniques of privatization used by these three groups are different with regard to the purpose of the privatization, the ways of carrying it out and the methods of fixing the sale price.     

Advertising and Children

Abstract

This article reviews the debate regarding the issue of growing obesity in society in terms of issues and possible policy options. The issue is most focused on children though having obvious ramifications for adults in many economies around the world. Policy solutions such as advertising bans or taxes that have been proposed in several countries seem to be based on insufficient evidence—i.e., there is no empirical evidence to substantiate the claimed causal effect between marketing communication practices directed at children and nutrition. These solutions, if enacted in policy, could be both inequitable and ineffective. While the study is couched and framed from a New Zealand context, nonetheless it serves to illuminate issues and policies of wider relevance.     

目前金融和经济危机:新自由主义的资本主义的体制危机

2008年从美国开始的金融和经济危机表明了资本主义新自由主义模式的体制危机开始出现。新自由主义模式在过去几十年促进了一系列长期的经济扩张,但在发展过程中也为这次体制危机埋下了根源。历史表明,未来的经济结构中,政府在经济中所起的作用将会扩大。     

煤炭城市转型发展的土地利用战略思考——以太原市西山地区为例

由于粗放的经济发展方式和长期高强度的煤炭开采及诸多的历史原因,煤炭城市虽然拥有资源优势,但区域的发展依然呈现诸多瓶颈.煤炭城市的转型发展问题,是中国现代化建设中一个重大而又特殊的问题.山西省是国务院批准的资源型经济转型综合配套改革试验区.西山地区是太原市乃至山西省的重要经济区、工矿区,也是传统产业集中、经济粗放型发展的典型地区,构建科学的、前瞻性的、可持续的土地资源利用战略,正是完成西山地区转型发展的前提和基础保证.本文通过评述西山地区土地资源利用的特点和存在的问题,提出了西山地区转型发展的土地利用对策.     

Inflation and Unit Labor Cost

We study two decompositions of inflation, π, motivated by the standard New Keynesian pricing equation of Gali, Gertler, and Sbordone. The first uses four components: lagged π, expected future π, real unit labor cost (ψ), and a residual. The second uses two components: fundamental inflation (discounted expected future ψ) and a residual. We find large low‐frequency differences between actual and fundamental inflation. From 1999 to 2011 fundamental inflation fell by more than 15 percentage points, while actual inflation changed little. We discuss this discrepancy in terms of the data (a large drop in labor's share of income) and through the lens of a canonical structural model.     

新社会组织发展与地方政府职能转变探微

有效整合社会管理资源，不断提高社会管理科学化水平，是各级地方政府面l临的重大现实课题。由于地方政府在社会建设和社会管理中处于主导地位，加快政府职能转变是推进社会管理创新的关键环节；而新社会组织在公共服务：预域的独特作用，能够作为政府从事社会管理的得力助手，与地方政府优势互补、相辅相成。培育发展新社会组织，积极推进地方政府职能转变，形成地方政府与新社会组织之间良性互动的合作伙伴关系，是加强和创新社会管理的应有之义。     

Legislation facing high-market-share U.S. industrial manufacturers

The concept of “no-fault antirust” calls for a legislated limit on a firm's market share. The concept's attraction is its implied simplicity. However, the concept suffers from a number of intrinsic faults and its implementation would adversely effect the competitiveness of U.S. industrial firms in both domestic and international markets.     

Price elasticity and bid-ask price spreads in the treasury bond market

Typical analyses of transactions costs in the bond markets explain these costs in terms of yield, term to maturity, coupons, and issue size. However, these analyses do not recognize the price elasticity of bonds to interest rate movements, which provides better measures of market risk and bid-ask price spreads. Elasticity or duration and issue size together display stronger associations with bid-ask price spreads than do the traditional variables. The association is also less subject to multicollinearity of the independent variables. Finally, stepwise regressions show that coupon and yield data add no information about bid-ask price spreads not already impounded in the duration statistic. This casts doubt on the nonduration arguments often used to support these variables as separately meaningful in transactions cost analyses.     

传统文化中的现代主义——谈苏州博物馆新馆设计

中国古代建筑作为中国传统文化的一种载体,主要通过建筑布局、建筑环境、建筑材料、建筑艺术等来展示丰富而深邃的文化内涵。苏州博物馆新馆设计中的轴线、院落布局以及贴合环境的设计手法使中国传统文化得以体现。新馆成功的将现代社会功能溶于古建筑群之中,其古而新的建筑形式蕴含着本土化与现代性融合下的创新。