Twenty-Five Years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall: An Empirical Revisit of West German Consumers' Attitudes Toward Products and Brands from Former East Germany

More than 25 years after the German reunification, data show that products/brands from the eastern regions of Germany (“Neue Länder”) still do not have significant shares in the country's western part (“Alte Länder”). To analyze potential reasons for this phenomenon, our current study replicates a previous study that investigated selected attitudes of Alte Länder consumers toward products/brands from the Neue Länder. It is shown that factors such as consumer ethnocentrism, product judgment, willingness to buy, and economic animosity continue to influence consumer behavior and as such our study offers potential explanation for the failure of Neue Länder products/brands in the western regions of Germany.     

The role of health,experience, and educational attainment in agricultural production: Evidence from smallholders in Burkina Faso

We apply parametric and nonparametric methods to data from smallholders in Burkina Faso and assess the role that human capital characteristics play in the agricultural production process. Our results point to the technology‐changing nature of health, education, and experience. However, effects are rather heterogeneous. The productivity elasticity of health is much larger for households in the lowest landholding quintiles, while returns to experience are larger for households in the upper quintile. In terms of policy implications, our results suggest that productivity can be stimulated through the allocation of expenditure to social services that enhance certain types of human capital. Interventions aimed at improving the health status of households with smaller landholdings could have particularly strong welfare effects.     

The power of positivity? The influence of positive psychological capital language on crowdfunding performance

We extend the entrepreneurship literature to include positive psychological capital — an individual or organization's level of psychological resources consisting of hope, optimism, resilience, and confidence — as a salient signal in crowdfunding. We draw from the costless signaling literature to argue that positive psychological capital language usage enhances crowdfunding performance. We examine 1726 crowdfunding campaigns from Kickstarter, finding that entrepreneurs conveying positive psychological capital experience superior fundraising performance. Human capital moderates this relationship while social capital does not, suggesting that costly signals may, at times, enhance the influence of costless signals. Post hoc analyses suggest findings generalize across crowdfunding types, but not to IPOs.     

成都新繁东湖旅游开发研究

当今世界,全球经济一体化势不可挡,旅游业发展如火如荼。随着我国加入世界贸易组织以来,旅游业日显重要并不可替代。在中国,特别是西部大开发步伐的加剧,旅游业的发展将有一个大跃进,旅游业的发展潜力巨大,扩展空间广阔。而旅游开发是一项综合性的社会和技术经济活动。近年来,随着旅游业的迅猛发展,各地兴起了旅游开发的热潮。     

种植业保险需求调查分析

我国是世界上自然灾害最为频繁的国家之一。灾害种类多、频度高、分布广、损失大。2003、2004、2005年农业成灾面积占播种面积的比重分别为21.33%、10.61%、12.84%。近几年灾害造成的粮食损失每年都在400亿公斤以上,经济损失每年都在600亿元以上。种植业保险是降低种植业风险的有效手段,伴随灾害而来的巨大损失使越来越多的农民保险意愿日益强烈。在这种情势下,种植业保险却出现了日益萎缩的怪现象,陷入了"供给不足,需求有限"的困境。笔者对鄱阳湖湖区进行了实地调查分析,以求解决种植业保险的供给与需求矛盾。     

Seeing history: a visual assessment of the historic-grounding of Old Western tourist towns

Despite the significant role that the visual plays in the experience of tourism, few studies have specifically examined the visual appearances of heritage tourist destinations. This study sought to analyze how historically grounded the visual appearances were of two heritage tourist towns in the state of Arizona: Tombstone and Jerome. These towns were both mining towns that experienced historic booms during the days of the American Old West and survive today as tourist destinations. This study utilized a detailed visual comparison of historic and contemporary town photographs in order to assess the relative historic-grounding of building exteriors and streets. It also incorporated the findings of interviews with tourists and town residents regarding their perceptions of visual historic-grounding. Study findings offered a means to assess and compare visual historic-grounding. Additionally, they suggested that while visual historic-grounding was important to visitors, it was one of several factors influencing their perceptions of the town's historic appearance: visual appeal, personal reflections, engaging activities, and previous visitor expectations of the American Old West (often grounded in filmic-representations) worked together to visually communicate a general impression of history within each town.     

Does ethnic diversity decrease economic interactions? Evidence from exchange networks in rural Gambia

Using a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labour, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village‐level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with network structure. At a more disaggregated level, household heads belonging to ethnic minorities are not less central than those from the predominant ethnicity in any of the networks and, at the dyadic level, the fact that two households share ethnicity is not an economically significant predictor of link formation. Our results indicate that, in the particular setting of our study, the structure of the exchange networks is better defined by other variables than ethnicity and that ethnic heterogeneity is unlikely to be a driver for sub‐optimal economic exchanges.     

天目湖景区旅游服务质量满意度调查研究

景区旅游服务质量满意度是景区长远发展的软实力和竞争的关键因素。本文通过天目湖景区服务质量满意度调查分析,找出满意度存在的问题,提出提升天目湖旅游景区服务质量满意度的对策和建议,以促进天目湖景区的深度发展。