The influence of website quality dimensions on e-purchasing behaviour and e-loyalty: a comparative study of Egyptian travel agents and hotels

Websites have become a channel for tourism enterprises to market and sell their services online. These enterprises are committed to improving their online services to retain customers and improving their competitiveness. This study aims to measure the effect of website quality dimensions on customer purchasing behaviour, and how this behaviour affects customer electronic (e)-loyalty. It compares the perceptions of 275 customers of travel agencies and 355 hotels using structural equation modelling. Findings revealed that website quality dimensions significantly affect the customer purchasing behaviour. The study highlighted the dimensions with a negative effect to help managers improve their website quality.     

Endogenous Efficiency Gains from Mergers

This article analyzes endogenous efficiency gains from mergers. It considers oligopolistic homogeneous good markets and duopolistic and triopolistic markets under product differentiation (PD) (quantity and price competition). In a two‐stage game, firms invest in cost‐reducing innovation (with and without mergers) and then compete in output/prices. It is found that in homogeneous good markets, all possible mergers generate efficiency gains, and that these are most significant when R&D spillovers are very low or very high. Efficiency gains increase with the number of insiders and generally decrease with the number of outsiders. With PD, in most cases, the merger generates efficiency gains when spillovers and/or PD are sufficiently high. With PD, efficiency gains increase with spillovers, but may increase or decrease with the level of PD. The implications of the results for the relationship between competition and innovation outputs and for merger policy are discussed.     

Inefficiency and heterogeneity in Turkish banking: 1990–2000

Recent studies have stressed the importance of privatization and openness to foreign competition for bank efficiency and economic growth. We study bank efficiency in Turkey, an emerging economy with great heterogeneity in bank types and ownership structures. Earlier studies of Turkish banking had three limitations: (i) excessive reliance on cost‐function frontier analyses, wherein volume of loans is a measure of banking output; (ii) pooling all banks or imposing ad hoc heterogeneity assumptions; and (iii) lack of a comprehensive panel data set for proper analysis of productivity and heterogeneity. We use an estimation–classification procedure to find likelihood‐driven classification of bank technologies in an 11‐year panel. In addition, we augment traditional cost‐frontier analysis with a labour‐efficiency analysis. We conclude that state banks are not particularly inefficient overall, but that they do utilize labour inefficiently. This partially supports recent calls for privatization. We also conclude that special finance houses (or Islamic banks) utilize the same technology as conventional domestic banks, and do so relatively efficiently. This suggests that they do not cause harm to the financial system. Finally, we conclude that foreign banks utilize a different technology from domestic ones. This suggests that one should not overstate their value to the financial sector. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Nonstationarity and Stochastic Stability of Relative Income Clubs

The recent literature on “convergence” of cross‐country per capita incomes has been dominated by the two hypotheses of “global convergence” and “club‐convergence,” pertaining to limits of estimated income distribution dynamics. Utilizing a new measure of “stochastic stability,” we establish two stylized facts regarding short‐ and medium‐term distribution dynamics. The first is non‐stationarity of transition dynamics, in the sense of changing transition kernels, and the second is emergence, disappearance, and re‐emergence of a “stochastically stable” middle income group. This middle income group emerges as the gap between rich and poor clubs gets larger, and it changes the dynamics of transition to and from the rich and poor clubs, eventually narrowing the gap between the poor and rich as the middle club vanishes. Analyzing the stochastic stability of middle‐income groups is thus a first step toward understanding higher‐order dynamics of narrowing or widening of the gap between rich and poor countries.     

Technological Progress and Sectoral Shares

This paper studies the effect of differences in the rate of technological progress between sectors on their relative sizes. There are two sectors: a stagnant sector, where productivity does not change over time, and a progressive sector, where costs decrease over time. We consider a conjectural variation approach which encompasses perfect competition, oligopoly and monopoly. The evolution of the relative shares of the stagnant and progressive sectors over time depends on the type of competition, cost levels and the price elasticity of demand. The relationship with the cost disease literature is discussed.     

Research Joint Ventures with Asymmetric Spillovers and Symmetric Contributions

The paper proposes a new type of R&D cooperation between firms endowed with asymmetric spillovers, which we call symmetric Research Joint Venture (RJV) cartelization, based on reciprocity in information exchange. In this setting, firms coordinate their R&D expenditures and also share information, but such that the asymmetric spillover rates are increased through cooperation by equal amounts. It is found that this type of cooperation reduces R&D investment by the low spillover firm when its spillover is sufficiently low and the spillover of its competitor is sufficiently high. But it always increases the R&D of the high spillover firm, as well as total R&D (and hence effective cost reduction and welfare). A firm prefers no cooperation to symmetric RJV cartelization if its spillover rate is very high and the spillover rate of its competitor is intermediate. The profitability of symmetric RJV cartelization relative to other modes of cooperation is analyzed. It is found that symmetric RJV cartelization constitutes an equilibrium for a very wide range of spillovers, namely, when asymmetries between spillovers are not too large. As these asymmetries increase, the equilibrium goes from symmetric RJV cartelization, to RJV cartelization, to R&D competition, to R&D cartelization.     

Opportunity Costs,Competition, and Firm Selection

Abstract

The paper questions the standard economic assumptions that competing economic agents have identical reservation utility levels, and that when differences in opportunity costs exist, they can be conveniently represented by fixed costs. Asymmetries in opportunity costs are considered in relation to current efficiency. The effect of this interchangeability of skills is studied in the context of the effect of entry on firm selection in a Cournot setting. It is found that inefficient firms are more likely to crowd out efficient ones when the relationship between current efficiency and opportunity costs is strong, and when the fixed costs of changing markets are high. Moreover, in the long-run, firms with intermediate cost levels are likely to induce the exit of low and high cost firms. The model sheds light on the benefits of diversification by multiproduct and multinational firms, and their relationship to skill transferability.     

Cluster Dynamics: Corporate Strategy, Industry Evolution and Technology Trajectories - A Case Study of the East Midlands Aerospace Cluster

High-technology clusters have attracted the attention of researchers and policy-makers but studies have focused primarily on the computer, electronics and biotechnology industries; aerospace has attracted less attention. An example of a high-technology cluster based on aerospace is to be found in the East Midlands region of the UK. This paper analyses this cluster. The analysis focuses on the structure of the cluster and the implications of this structure for cluster dynamics. The impact of factors such as corporate strategy, industry evolution and technological trajectories on cluster development are analysed. Finally, the implications of cluster structure for economic development policy in the region are evaluated.