“I live with terror inside me”: Exploring customers’ instinctive reactions to terror

Terrorist attacks occur mostly at public service-oriented sites. Consequently, their victims are likely to be customers. The present study explores how customers instinctively react toward the reality of terror in a matrix of 2 × 2 aspects concerning terror circumstances: temporal proximity (brief or long) and physical proximity (close or remote) from the terror event. In qualitative in-depth interviews, customers from France and Israel were requested to share their instinctive reactions and coping strategies when approaching hospitality (hedonistic) and transportation (utilitarian) services. Participants (N = 47) comprised customers having a protracted acquaintance with persistent terror threats. The analysis identified differences in reactions, subject to temporal and physical proximities. When terror attacks are physically close, customers’ emotions, cognitions, and behaviors undergo modification with time. However, when terror attacks occur at a location remote from the customer, customers’ emotions and cognitions, but not their behavior, change with time. These reactions were comparable for the two service contexts. Practical implications were elaborated to enable service establishments (i.e., hospitality and transportation) to design and manage their operations for the short and long term to assist customers in the difficult era of terror.     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

Is the system reliability profitable for retailing and consumer service of a dynamical system under cross-price elasticity of demand?

Retailing strategy is one of the most crucial factors for industries. A proper retailing strategy can help to enhance consumer service and increase the industry's profit. An improved approach to retailing is suggested in this research to deliver superior customer service while maximizing profits in a dynamic system. The study analyzes a retailing strategy for a demand with cross-price elasticity upon the retail price. A product's cross-price elasticity and the system reliability are critical factors in retailing. Understanding the cross-price elasticity of demand between products helps retailers to make pricing decisions that maximize profits by maintaining demand. Imperfect products are produced due to an imperfect production system. The imperfect ones must be adjusted with some costs to make them perfect for better retailing. The system failure rate is crucial for retailing under cross-price elasticity of demand patterns. Production system reliability, cross-price elasticity of demand, and consumer service are all essential factors that can impact a company's success in the market. The production rate is considered time- and system failure rate-dependent. Contradictory to the literature, a dynamical system is proposed for improved retail management, which is solved using the Euler-Lagrange theory. Finally, one can achieve the expected maximum profit for this retail system with optimum selling prices for different products by reducing the system failure rate. Some numerical illustrations with graphical representations are provided to validate the current study. Numerical examples show that applying cross-price elasticity of demand for more than two identical products provides 35% more profit for the retail industry than a single type of product.     

Predictive regressions under asymmetric loss: Factor augmentation and model selection

This paper discusses the specifics of forecasting using factor-augmented predictive regressions under general loss functions. In line with the literature, we employ principal component analysis to extract factors from the set of predictors. In addition, we also extract information on the volatility of the series to be predicted, since the volatility is forecast-relevant under non-quadratic loss functions. We ensure asymptotic unbiasedness of the forecasts under the relevant loss by estimating the predictive regression through the minimization of the in-sample average loss. Finally, we select the most promising predictors for the series to be forecast by employing an information criterion that is tailored to the relevant loss. Using a large monthly data set for the US economy, we assess the proposed adjustments in a pseudo out-of-sample forecasting exercise for various variables. As expected, the use of estimation under the relevant loss is found to be effective. Using an additional volatility proxy as the predictor and conducting model selection that is tailored to the relevant loss function enhances the forecast performance significantly.     

PITFALLS IN CROSS‐SECTION STUDIES WITH INTEGRATED REGRESSORS: A SURVEY AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS

In cross‐section studies, if the dependent variable is I(0) but the regressor is I(1), the true slope must be zero in the resulting “unbalanced regression.” A spuriously significant relationship may be found in large cross‐sections, however, if the integrated regressor is related to a stationary variable that enters the DGP but is omitted from the regression. The solution is to search for the related stationary variable, in some cases the first difference of the integrated regressor, in other cases, a categorical variable that can take on limited number of values which depend on the integrated variable. We present an extensive survey, new developments, and applications particularly in finance.     

家族控制与企业创新投入

家族企业对社会情感财富目标的追求是其区别于非家族企业的重要特性，社会情感财富目标与企业经济利益间冲突对企业R&D投入的影响不容忽视。以社会情感财富为理论基础，基于573家上市家族企业2011-2015年的面板数据，分析受市场化程度影响时，家族涉入情境下信息透明度对企业R&D投入的影响。结果显示：信息透明度可以有效缓解信息不对称和代理冲突，促进企业R&D投入；家族控制对R&D投入有消极影响；当企业信息透明度较高时，会抑制家族所有者为个人谋取私利的动机，进而增强其对企业R&D投资的积极作用。在市场化程度更高、产权保护力度较大的地区，信息透明度会缓解家族控制权对R&D投入的消极作用。     

Returns to women’s education using optimal IV selection

This paper investigates returns to women’s education by applying an optimal IV selection approach, post-Lasso IV estimation, which improves the first-stage predictive relationship between an endogenous regressor and instruments. Using the 2010 American Community Survey, we find that an extra year of education increases married women’s own income by $4,480 and spouse income by $8,822. Our findings indicate that 53% of the increase in women’s consumption by education is attributed to the marriage market, and thus, we conclude that the marriage market is the primary channel through which education improves women’s well-being. The results demonstrate the advantages of the post-Lasso approach: The resulting two-stage least squares estimator maintains efficiency without increasing finite sample bias and is less subject to the inconsistency problem when some instruments are invalid; This differs from the results using the instrument of birth quarters only, which is mostly applied in studies on returns to education.     

环境政策工具对生态创新的影响: 研究回顾及实践意义

各种环境政策工具用来推进生态创新的开发、传播与应用，但不同政策工具对生态创新的作用效果还有待进一步挖掘。系统梳理了环境政策工具对生态创新影响的相关研究，探究不同政策工具的作用及其本质，以理解在推动生态创新开发、传播与应用情景下环境政策工具的作用及其实践意义。     

Airports’ managerial human capital,ownership, and efficiency

Airport performance differences require a better understanding of the sources of efficiency and competitive advantages. Globalization drives the air transport industry into a more market-orientated business questioning the relationship between managerial decisions and airport performance. Aviation management studies do not consider managerial capabilities and skills since they are intangible exogenous factors that are difficult to assess. In this study, a stochastic frontier analysis is performed accounting for top managers' theoretical knowledge and experience enclosed as exogenous drivers of airports' efficiency. The model analyses 12 Polish airports from 2009 to 2017. The results show a diversity of airports with a different number of passengers as efficient. The top managers' experience, when gained in the same airport, has a positive impact on airports' technical efficiency. Airports having unstable management are more technically inefficient. Independently of the efficiency level, some airports change their management after the national elections, suggesting that managers are chosen by political interest rather than by their specialised knowledge or their prior experience in aviation management. The results suggest that more practical knowledge improve airports’ performance. Airports with a majority of government ownership that are the largest ones increase their efficiency significantly, suggesting that political decisions may be discriminatory in detriment of airports managed by regional and city authorities.     

Does computer penetration increase farmers’ income? An empirical study from China

The diffusion and adoption of modern information technology provide new chance for China to close urban-rural income gap. This paper uses China's provincial panel data from 2002 to 2013 to investigate the effect of computer penetration on rural residents' income. A public program aiming to connect every village with broadband Internet and other rural facilities provides plausibly exogenous variation in rural residents' availability and adoption of the broadband Internet, which is used to explore the instrument variable for rural computer penetration. The results show that rural computer penetration tends to increase rural residents' income over time, but the average effect remains limited. The dynamic panel threshold effects model, which allows for both the threshold variable and other covariates to be endogenous, is further used to explore the constraints of the income-increase effect of rural computer penetration. It shows that the effect is at least doubled over the average effect estimated from instrument variables method, once the digital divide causes are removed. Our findings have important implications for the government to increase rural residents' income and reduce urban-rural income gap by encouraging rural computer usage and removing the digital divide.