Innovation in R&D service firms: evidence from the UK

Research and Development (R&D) service firms make significant contributions to innovation in other businesses. The extant literature considers these firms a homogenous sub-group of Knowledge Intensive Business Service firms (KIBS). The objective of this study is to investigate how R&D service firms innovate and the variety of innovation practices within these firms. Employing data from semi-structured interviews with senior managers from 32 UK-based R&D service firms, we suggest that there are two different modes of innovation: in the first mode, R&D service firms innovate similarly to KIBS whose innovation is ad-hoc in nature and driven by customers’ requests; another group of R&D service firms innovate like New Technology-based Firms (NTBFs) relying more on structured in-house R&D activities.     

Review of Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World by Adam Tooze. London: Penguin UK, 2018

Business Economics -     

I'll Have Fries with That: Increasing Choice Complexity Promotes Indulgent Food Choices

Three studies showed that the way that options are presented in a choice set—as combinations of intersecting attributes or in a more sequential “a la carte” choice format—affects the degree to which consumers adhere to their goals in the consumption setting. Specifically, using the context of food consumption and healthy eating, results showed that consumers were more likely to make double indulgent choices, the choice of both an indulgent entrée and an indulgent side item, when choosing from a menu consisting of predetermined “combination meals” than when selecting among the same entrée and side options in an a la carte fashion. Studies 2 and 3 implicated a goal distraction mechanism in driving the effect; the combination format, with its cross‐cutting of product choices into various combinations, reduces the salience of goal‐related constructs on implicit measures. In showing that different product presentation formats can affect the degree to which consumers make goal‐consistent choices, the current work adds to work on the effects of environmental influences on goal progress and goal achievement. Implications for encouraging goal‐consistent behavior in the context of healthy eating as well as other important consumer goal contexts are discussed.     

Sell‐Side Analyst Bias When Investment Banks Have Privileged Access to the Board

Research on analyst bias typically identifies affiliation with reference to a subset of the mandates that could give rise to incentives for bias in a multifunction investment bank. This paper develops a new measure of affiliation based upon the UK practice of corporate broking. An advantage of this approach is that affiliation is no longer restricted to isolated equity issuance events as it is an ongoing activity. This research shows that prior US evidence regarding the “Global Settlement” is robust to this new measure and application in the United Kingdom rather than solely the United States. The paper uses a hazard rate methodology focusing on the timeliness of revisions to address selection bias concerns.     

郭俊的书画

郭俊，中国书画研究会副会长，中国工艺美术家协会会员，北京民族画院理事，重庆市美术家协会渝中区美协副主席。自幼酷爱书画。广求名师，师从四川美术学院杨富明教授，并得到著名画家苏葆桢、黄纯尧、水华、周北溪等先生的指教。作品继承传统，师法自然，风格别具，     

Organic,incremental and induced paths to sustainable mass tourism convergence

This paper positions sustainable mass tourism (SMT) as the desired and impending outcome for most destinations. Natural resource scarcity, development of green technology, climate change awareness, the global financial crisis, institutionalised environmentalism and Internet technology all facilitate the emergence of sustainability as a societal norm that is combining with the longer established norm of growth desirability. SMT convergence is occurring along three distinctive paths in an evolutionary manner that reflects environmental pragmatism. The market-driven ‘organic’ path describes the conventional tourism area life cycle model of Butler, whilst the regulation-driven ‘incremental’ path entails deliberate alternative tourism (DAT) in which carrying capacities are gradually increased to accommodate higher visitation levels. The hybrid ‘induced’ path describes planned mega-resorts conceived as growth poles. Each model is invested with its own specific planning and management implications.     

Globalization with a human face

This paper has six parts. The first part defines globalization. The second discusses globalization eras. The third discusses the irreversibility and inevitability of globalization. The fourth section discusses the benefits and costs of globalization. The fifth section asks what is to be done. The sixth section contains my conclusions.     

The Foreclosure–House Price Nexus: A Panel VAR Model for U.S. States, 1981–2009

Despite housing's economic importance, little has been written on how foreclosures and home prices interact in a framework that includes macroeconomic and housing variables such as employment, permits or sales. Panel VAR results for quarterly state‐level data indicate that price–foreclosure linkages run both ways. Foreclosures negatively impact home prices. The negative impact of prices on foreclosures, however, is much larger. These results suggest the low‐frequency association observed between foreclosures and prices is mostly driven by the endogenous adjustment of foreclosures to prices via the strategic choices of homeowners and lenders, rather than through the effects of foreclosures on home prices.     

Public perception of scientific uncertainty in relation to food hazards

The research reported here aims to understand how people react to statements expressing risk uncertainty information in the context of a commonly experienced potential hazard, food related risks. Public perception of seriousness of risk for themselves, and for other people was examined for different types of uncertainty, for each of five different food hazards. The results indicated that participants responded to the different types of uncertainty in a uniform way, suggesting that perception of risk associated with uncertainty is not affected by the 'type' of uncertainty. The results further indicated that the seriousness of risk, in the presence of statements of uncertainty, was perceived to be greater for pesticides and genetic modification compared to BSE, high fat diets and Salmonella . It was argued that this could be due to the perceptions of low personal control, and high societal responsibility to protect people and societal control over exposure to the potential risks of pesticides and genetic modification. Under circumstances where people feel they have little personal control over their exposure to a particular hazard, and those social institutions that are perceived to be in control of protecting the public indicate that there is uncertainty associated with risk estimates, the hazard may appear to be 'out of control', which is associated with a perception of serious risk.     

Modelling the Impact of Demographic Change Upon the Economy

Over the next few decades there will be significant changes in the demographic structure of nearly all developed countries. Such dramatic demographic change could have a powerful impact upon saving behaviour, but estimates of how great the effects will be differ depending on what evidence is used. This paper argues that simulations based on calibrated general equilibrium models are likely to provide the most reliable evidence. A model is developed and is used to assess the impact of reforms to pension systems.