The legacy of state socialism on attitudes toward immigration

Does the politico–economic system affect preferences for immigration? In this study, I show that individuals exposed to life under state socialism have formed and persistently hold different attitudes toward immigration. By exploiting the division and reunification of Germany, I estimate the influence of state socialism on attitudes toward immigration. Drawing on rich individual panel data, I find that East Germans who lived under state socialism, are 15 percent more likely to oppose immigration than West Germans who spent their entire life in a democratic, capitalist country. This difference in attitudes toward immigration is persistent over time and across space, and largest for cohorts born and raised under state socialism. This gap in attitudes can be traced back to a longer-term deterioration in trust. Evidence from members of a group that opposed the authoritarian system highlights the importance of state socialist ideology for attitude formation.     

城市家庭住房不平等:户籍、禀赋还是城市特征？——基于广义有序模型与Oaxaca-Blinder分解

基于中国劳动力动态调查（CLDS）数据，运用广义有序Logit模型实证分析户籍、家庭禀赋和城市特征三类因素对城市家庭住房不平等的影响；运用夏普利值分解、Oaxaca-Blinder分解区分"努力"和"环境"因素、户籍歧视和禀赋效应的贡献。研究发现：户籍可解释住房等级不平等的54.2%；"努力"因素对住房水平起正向作用；在户籍间住房等级不平等中户籍歧视效应占主导，在住房面积不平等中禀赋效应占主导，外地户口居民住房水平低源于"环境"因素趋弱，农业户口居民则源于"努力"和"环境"因素叠加趋弱；由于生活成本效应占主导，城市规模和流动人口占比越大，居民住房等级趋低，而城市土地供给增长有助于提升住房水平。     

Duration of price promotion and product profit: An in-depth study based on point-of-sale data

Anecdotal evidence has shown that retail price promotions can help small and medium-sized retailers enhance their sales, and thus profits. However, most marketing managers usually stop a promotion after a certain duration. This study aims to explain why these retailers discontinue their price promotion. Our approach posits that overall contributions of a price promotion to the product profit progressively diminish with time. In this study, we present a theoretical framework to explain the relationship between duration and profit effects of price promotion and propose statistical models to empirically examine this framework using point-of-sale (POS) data. Our findings provide empirical support that the effect of price promotion on the product profit has a downward trend with elapsed time. The results are helpful for marketers to understand how price promotions dynamically influence product profit and when the promotion should be terminated.     

External pressure or internal culture? An innovation diffusion theory account of small retail businesses’ social media use

COVID-19 put unprecedented external pressure on small businesses to adopt or increase use of social media while not all small businesses are internally ready for this rapid change. This study investigated the roles of external pressures and organizational culture of openness and learning in driving small retail business owners'/managers' social media use decisions by impacting their perceived usefulness and barriers, based on the innovation-decision process model from the diffusion of innovations theory and the theory of reasoned action. An online survey with structured measurements was administered to 411 U.S. small retail business owners/managers. Results from structural equation modeling revealed that external pressures positively influenced small business owners'/managers’ perceived usefulness and barriers and social media use intention. In addition, the culture of openness and learning positively influenced the perceived usefulness while mitigating the perceived barriers, thereby directly and indirectly influencing the social media use intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

海岛生态经济系统可持续发展评价指标体系研究

随着海洋经济的快速发展,海岛的开发利用速度加快,海岛经济发展与生态环境之间的矛盾日趋突出。海岛经济构成单一、生态环境脆弱,如不合理开发利用,片面追求社会经济效益,极易造成海岛资源质量下降及生态环境恶化等问题,阻碍海岛的可持续发展。通过设计有关海岛生态经济系统评价指标的调查问卷,采用专家调查法和层次分析法,构建海岛资源、经济、社会、环境四个方面评价指标体系,并对各指标的权重进行了定量分析,以期实现海岛生态环境和经济的可持续发展。     

释放正定片区红利,助推河北医药行业新发展

医药产业作为河北省重点发展的支柱产业之一,近年来发展形势不容乐观,正位于产业发展拐点之上。正定片区的建立释放了大量的红利,对于河北省医药产业的转型升级具有重要意义。本文在客观分析河北省医药行业发展现状的基础上提出了其存在的问题,并结合正定片区在医药方面的优势做出了有针对性的对策建议,助推河北省医药行业新发展。     

乡村旅游消费者市场研究及未来展望

乡村旅游作为一种新型农业经营状态将农业与旅游业有机结合起来,为工作生活中压力大、渴望享受田园生活的消费者提供了"新精神消费品".乡村旅游利用乡村振兴等优惠性政策快速发展,为产业融合、农业经济以及农村扶贫等发展做出了一份贡献.然而随着疫情短期的冲击,游客量的减少使得乡村旅游业陷入谷底.通过对乡村旅游消费者群体进行调查,运用二元Logistics回归进行市场分析,对乡村旅游业抓住精准的目标群体消费者作出总结,并对乡村旅游业迎接高质量的中长期经济发展提出一些建议和方法.     

Transboundary pollution externalities: Think globally,act locally?

We analyze the implications of transboundary pollution externalities on environmental policymaking in a spatial setting, in which pollution diffuses across the global spatial economy independently of the specific location in which it is originally generated. This framework gives rise to a simple regional optimal pollution control problem allowing us to compare the global and local solutions in which, respectively, the transboundary externality is and is not taken into account in the determination of the optimal policy by individual local policymakers. We show that it is not obvious that transboundary externalities are a source of inefficiency per se since this is strictly related to the spatial features of the initial distribution of pollution. If the initial pollution distribution is spatially homogeneous then the local and global solutions will coincide and thus no efficiency loss will arise from transboundary externalities, but if it is spatially heterogeneous the local solution will be suboptimal and thus a global approach to environmental problems will be needed to achieve efficiency. From a normative perspective, in this latter (and most realistic) case we also quantify the amount of policy intervention needed at local level in order to achieve the globally desirable goal of pollution eradication in the long run. Our conclusions hold true in a number of different settings, including situations in which the spatial domain is either bounded or unbounded, and situations in which macroeconomic–environmental feedback effects are taken into account.     

Is there a diversification “cost” of Shari’ah compliance? Empirical evidence from Malaysian equities

Islamic equity portfolios work with a smaller investment universe given the filtering of non-Shari’ah compliant stocks. It has been theoretically argued that this culminates in suboptimal portfolio diversification, which in turn adversely affects risk-adjusted returns. We offer empirical evidence that such a conceived portfolio diversification “penalty” is far from a foregone conclusion, at least empirically. Our results tend to indicate that Islamic portfolios are not invariably handicapped in terms of portfolio diversification. We also explored dimensions that may account for differences in the relative investment performance between Islamic and conventional portfolios, such as portfolio constraints, short selling and market conditions. We believe this paper is among the first to apply substantial empirical analysis specifically with respect to the portfolio diversification perspective on Islamic equity investments.     

Banks' environmental policy and business outcomes: The role of competition

By integrating the two areas of competition–performance and environment–performance, this research explores if competition matters in the relationship between environmental practices and interest margins in the market. A panel of 458 banks from 74 countries for the period of 2006–2016 is used, and the sample is further divided into developed and developing countries. This paper uses the system Generalized Method of Moments estimator to tackle potential omitted variable bias, endogeneity, and simultaneity issues. Without competition, environmental practices only affect banks in developing countries; however, the results show a significant impact for the full sample, including developed countries, when the competition is taken into consideration, suggesting that competition might play a role in the relationship of environmental practices and interest margins. In the full sample, competition impacts the relationship negatively after a moderate level of competition is reached in the market. The environmental practices in developing countries are prone to competition in the market. In developed countries, the competition is found to be lightly positively moderating the impact of environmental practices on interest margins. Based on these findings, it is recommended that developing countries should have a low or moderate level of competition to encourage environmental practices. For developed countries, however, high competition should be preferred to encourage banks to consider environmental practices as one of their core business strategies. These findings are found robust to different statistical estimators.