Regime changes and fiscal sustainability in Kenya

Kenya's fiscal policy landscape is characterized by primary deficit spending forcing the government to rely on debt to meet its objectives. The justification often being that as a developing economy, annual growth rates and future prospects may in the short run justify the uptake of debt to finance infrastructural development. However, given potential fiscal limits, fiscal cycles usually alternates between sustainable and unsustainable regimes and this has a bearing on long run sustainability. This study therefore sought to investigate the nature of fiscal policy regime in Kenya and the extent to which fiscal policy is sustainable in the long run taking into account periodic regime shifts. Markov switching models were used to endogenously determine fiscal policy regimes. Regime switching tests were used to test whether No-Ponzi game condition and debt stabilizing condition were met. The results established that regime switching model was suitable in explaining regime sustainable and unsustainable cycles. An investigation of fiscal policy regimes established that both sustainable and unsustainable regimes were dominant, and each lasted for an average of four years. There was evidence to imply the existence of procyclical fiscal policy in Kenya. Regime switching tests for long run sustainability suggested that the No-Ponzi game condition weakly holds in the Kenyan economy. Regime-based sensitivity analysis indicated that persistence of unsustainability regime for more than 4 years could threaten long-run fiscal sustainability.     

Monetary policy shocks and exchange rates in Asian countries

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of monetary policy shocks on exchange rates in Asian countries. To do so, we use VAR models which impose sign restrictions on impulse responses to identify monetary policy shocks. We find that contractionary monetary policy shocks lead to significant exchange rate appreciation in Malaysia, the People’s Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. However, in India, Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand, we find either a significant depreciation or no significant effect. These results suggest that an interest rate increase (or decrease) may not necessarily shield Asian countries from exchange rate depreciation (or appreciation) pressure following a U.S. interest rate increase (or decrease).     

Supply chain integration and operational performance: The contingency effects of production systems

The boundary conditions of supply chain integration (SCI) have been widely studied in order to find out when SCI is applicable and effective. However, prior studies have mainly focused on external contextual factors, such as supply complexity, environmental uncertainty and country-level infrastructure. This study contributes to the SCI literature by examining the contingency effects of internal production systems on the relationship between supplier integration, customer integration and operational performance. Based on organizational information processing theory, we provide evidence to show that the impact of supplier and customer integration on operational performance varies across production systems, such as one-of-a-kind production, batch production and mass production systems. The empirical results also reveal how supplier and customer integration can be matched with different configurations of production systems in order to achieve the desired quality, flexibility, delivery or cost performance.     

团队跨边界活动对团队有效性的影响作用研究

通过文献综述,得出了团队跨边界活动对团队有效性有着倒U型的影响作用这一结论。同时,在团队学习理论和社会网络理论的基础上,对上述作用的内部机制进行研究探索,并从团队和个体两个层面分析相关的影响因素。最后,从企业管理实践的角度出发,基于研究结果提出几点思考和意见。     

产品生命周期的研究

产品生命周期是指一代产品进入市场后需求存续变化的周期,而不是指需求量、销量波动变化的周期。我们应当研究细分市场的产品生命周期,根据市场某种特性质变的界面来划分产品生命周期的阶段,才更具有营销意义。现行流行的划分产品周期阶段的四种方法。缺乏理论依据,在应用中有较大的随意性。为此,提出了综合判断法,根据多个判据的组合,定位了产品生命周期阶段之间的界面,并提出了对应的营销策略。     

CORS系统在上海市集体土地所有权调查项目中的应用

本文在详细介绍CORS系统的基本原理及分析其优势的基础上,将其应用于上海市集体土地所有权调查中,完成实测界址点和图形数据成果检查验收,充分发挥其精度高,速度快的优势,保证调查成果质量。     

Restoring balance: how consumers orchestrate family care following unplanned disruptions

ABSTRACT

How do consumers orchestrate multiple and complex practices of care when faced with unplanned disruptions to their lives, such as chronic health conditions? We conduct a qualitative study of families where a child was diagnosed with Type-1 diabetes. Inspired by a dance metaphor, we explain how families (1) gather materials for movement, (2) link movements into phrases, and (3) develop an orchestrated style of care as they sense and respond to the dynamic requirements of caregiving when faced with insufficient or unfeasible market solutions. Adding this new perspective to the managerial view used by prior consumer research on family care, we propose an extended perspective on care, which better accounts for how families search to restore life balance in challenging circumstances. This extended perspective illuminates new aspects of consumer engagement with paid and non-paid service providers, and opens avenues for future research in the domain of family care.     

Impact of an urban growth boundary across the entire house price spectrum: The two-stage quantile spatial regression approach

This study provides evidence for the impact of an urban growth boundary (UGB) on house prices. The study employs a two-stage quantile spatial regression method on a dataset that inventories sales transactions of single-family houses within two miles of either side of the eastern boundary of the primary UGB in King County, Washington. The results show that while the UGB decreases house prices across the entire house price spectrum, the impact is uneven; it is most pronounced for houses in the 5th to 8th decile of prices. These findings should encourage policy makers to adopt sub-housing-market-level policy approaches to address UGB and other urban and regional development policies’ potential impacts on house prices.     

An intelligent service matching method for mechanical equipment condition monitoring using the fibre Bragg grating sensor network

Due to the advantages of being able to function under harsh environmental conditions and serving as a distributed condition information source in a networked monitoring system, the fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensor network has attracted considerable attention for equipment online condition monitoring. To provide an overall conditional view of the mechanical equipment operation, a networked service-oriented condition monitoring framework based on FBG sensing is proposed, together with an intelligent matching method for supporting monitoring service management. In the novel framework, three classes of progressive service matching approaches, including service-chain knowledge database service matching, multi-objective constrained service matching and workflow-driven human-interactive service matching, are developed and integrated with an enhanced particle swarm optimisation (PSO) algorithm as well as a workflow-driven mechanism. Moreover, the manufacturing domain ontology, FBG sensor network structure and monitoring object are considered to facilitate the automatic matching of condition monitoring services to overcome the limitations of traditional service processing methods. The experimental results demonstrate that FBG monitoring services can be selected intelligently, and the developed condition monitoring system can be re-built rapidly as new equipment joins the framework. The effectiveness of the service matching method is also verified by implementing a prototype system together with its performance analysis.