Star rating and corporate affiliation: their influence on room price and performance of hotels in Israel

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain whether and how star rating and corporate affiliation, as signals of quality, influence pricing decisions of hotels in Israel in various geographical locations, each with its specific market characteristics and during two different periods in which the business environment suffers from a crisis due to the political circumstances in the Middle East. The data suggests that the star-rating system, which is traditionally used to rate hotels’ quality, is a still stable and consistent predictor of room prices. However, in light of the increased usage of brand names in the Israeli industry, it was found that the ability to charge and receive a premium for the hotel corporate affiliation or brand name is not consistent. The analysis presents the case in which a premium for brand name is eroded by the influence of the crisis, by the level of corporate intensity in the region, and also by the relative strength of consumers in the different geographical locations.     

Liberal parentalism

What normative constraints should bind parents (or policy makers) if they intervene in the choices of children (or constituencies) whose preferences evolve over time? For a sophisticated child who anticipates correctly his preference change, we prove that generically there exist parental interventions that are Pareto improving over the backward induction path that the child will follow on his own. If, in contrast, the child misperceives his future preferences, Pareto improving interventions might not exist, and even nudges might be painfully sobering. The parent may then choose to minimize the maximal disappointment along time that her benevolent intervention would cause.     

Are all startups affected similarly by clusters? Agglomeration,competition, firm heterogeneity,and survival

Are all startups similarly affected by the survival benefits and drawbacks of locating in geographic clusters? In this paper, we argue that prior theorizing may have missed important contingencies that affect whether a startup experiences the benefits and costs of locating in a cluster. In particular, while the local levels of skilled labor, suppliers, and purchasers have a beneficial influence and local competition has a detrimental influence on startup survival, these relationships are moderated by heterogeneity in firms' resources and capabilities. We find support for these arguments using a dataset covering the early life of all independent startups in the Canadian manufacturing sector from 1984 to 1998.     

The true effect of students’ employment on the duration of studies

We examine the effect of the first-degree students’ employment on the prolongation of their studies. When employing a popular instrumental variable, the regional unemployment rate, we find a negative impact of students’ employment on duration of studies. Then, adding a predetermined IV – the individual’s employment prior to the beginning of academic studies – turns the estimate positive. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between the extent of students’ employment and duration of their studies depends on their age: among the younger students (aged 22–26), the extent of employment has no effect on the duration of studies, while among the older students, the effect is positive and statistically significant.     

Crisis-management practices in the restaurant industry

This study examines crisis-management practices in the Israeli restaurant industry. The study uses a questionnaire for evaluating the importance and usage of different practices for crisis management. The findings show that managers are generally consistent in crisis management and that they generally use the most important practices. The findings illustrate the significance of government support in external crises and suggest that improved competitiveness and cost-cutting activities are significant for combating business hardships. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.     

Hospitality crisis management practices: The case of Indian luxury hotels

This study examines hospitality crisis management practices within the context of the Indian hospitality industry. The study is a replication of a study previously conducted in Israel. The study employs a questionnaire that evaluates the importance and usage of four themes of practices: marketing, hotel maintenance, human resources and governmental assistance. The findings illustrate which practices managers consider important and which practices managers actually use during a crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.     

Hospitality managers' importance perceptions of human resource practices related to employment of foreign workers in the United States

ABSTRACT

Cross-border labor mobility of hospitality employees has resulted in an increase in illegal immigrants in the workforce. The purpose of this study was to generate a list of top legal issues associated with the employment of foreign workers in the U.S. hospitality industry and to identify factors defined by the importance ratings of these issues. Snowball sampling was used to collect data from hospitality managers. Findings reveal that respondents perceive document verification to be important but may not perceive knowledge of various visa types and employment termination reporting procedures associated with employing foreign workers to be important. Managerial implications are discussed.     

Testing servers' roles as experts and managers of tipping behaviour

This article studies the ability of servers to predict their own tips. A distinction is made between the two roles of servers with regard to tipping behaviour: the role of expert and the role of manager. As experts, servers understand the relations between several predictors and tip size, and are able to predict the tip they are about to receive. As managers, servers designate certain tip amounts, and then manage the service encounter so that their predictions are realised. This study maps the necessary conditions for an expert position and outlines the process for managing a service encounter. Empirical testing suggests that servers have an impressive predictive ability. The findings also offer some support to the view of the role of the server as manager.     

The Dynamic Evolution of Preferences

This paper develops a general methodology for characterizing the dynamic evolution of preferences in a wide class of strategic interactions. We give simple conditions characterizing the limiting distribution of preferences in general games, and apply our results to study the evolutionary emergence of overconfidence and interdependent preferences. We also show that this methodology can be adapted to cases where preferences are only imperfectly observed. Earlier drafts of this paper were circulated under the title: “The Evolution of Perception Biases” and some of these results appeared in the earlier working paper Heifetz, Shannon and Spiegel (2003). We thank three anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Shannon thanks the NSF for research support under grant SES-0351346.