The power of the pen: Handwritten fonts promote haptic engagement

Consumers are increasingly bombarded with merchandise and offers, making clear the need for visually distinctive and sensorially engaging product packaging design. The current research demonstrates that the use of handwritten fonts on product packaging elicits an approach tendency and enhances haptic engagement, which influences product evaluation and choice likelihood. A pilot study quantifies the use of handwritten fonts in four grocery product categories to establish that the study of handwritten fonts as a packaging design element is a worthy one with managerial significance. Four experiments are then presented. Studies 1 and 2 use real products to show that a product label with a handwritten (vs. typewritten) font elicits haptic engagement and, enhanced product evaluations (Study 2). Study 3 identifies a boundary condition such that the focal effect is observed only for benign (safe and enjoyable) product categories, but not for risky (unsafe and dangerous) ones. Study 4 relies on a simulated store setup with actual products to illustrate the differential preference for products with a handwritten (vs. typewritten) font when choosing between brands in a benign (vs. risky) product category.     

The burden of road traffic injuries in Kermanshah Province,Iran, in 2010–2011: GBD 2010 method

Deaths, injuries and disabilities resulting from road traffic injuries (RTIs) are a public health major concern. This study aims to calculate the burden of RTIs in Kermanshah Province in Iran. In this study to determine the years of life lost (YLL) related to RTIs, the National Death Registration and Forensics Medicine census data were employed. We use forensic medicine data to calculate the incidence of non-fatal injuries and years lost due to disability (YLD). The cause of death and non-fatal injuries was classified using ICD-10 codes and 23 groupes of global burden of diseases (GBD) 2010. The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) estimated on the guidelines of the GBD 2010 and age and sex structure was taken from the National Statistic Center for the year 2010. Overall, 70.8% of the subjects were males. The fatal and non-fatal injury rates of RTI were 51.3 and 283.6 per 100,000 persons, respectively. YLLs and YLDs were 46613 (24.5 per 1000) and 3405 (1.8 per 1000) in both sexes, respectively. The disability adjusted life years were 40711 in males, 9306 in females and 50018 in both sexes (42.5, 9.8 and 26.3 per 1000, respectively). More than 93% of DALY was from YLL (24.5 per 1000), with a small proportion for YLD (1.8 per 1000). Accounting for more than 50,000 DALY attributed to RTIs, traffic injuries is a major public health and socioeconomic problem in Kermanshah. Designing cost-effective interventions based on comprehensive and multi-sectoral programmes at the national and provincial levels can save many lives and resources that are lost every year. Undoubtedly, establishing a surveillance system at the sub-national level and measuring the burden of injuries, as in this study, can help policy-makers and planners in lessening the burden of RTIs.     

A comparative study of range‐based stock return volatility estimators for the German market

This study investigates the relative performance of various volatility estimators based on daily and intraday price ranges of 25 German equities, with the two‐scales realized volatility used as a benchmark. The empirical results show that all estimators based on daily ranges are by far superior to the classical estimator but are severely negatively biased due to discrete trading. The realized range obtained from intraday ranges performs better in terms of both bias and efficiency, although its performance still suffers from discrete trading. In these settings, the bias correcting procedure developed by Christensen and Podolskij (2007) appears to consistently outperform all other alternatives, including the scaled version of Martens and van Dijk (2007), and provides evidence of the relative advantages of the realized range. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 32:560–586, 2012     

Drivers of productivity in Vietnamese SMEs: the role of management standards and innovation

Using a rich panel dataset of small and medium scale manufacturing enterprises (SMEs) active in the manufacturing sector in Viet Nam, this paper investigates the drivers of firm productivity, focusing on the role played by international management standards certification. We test the hypothesis that, accounting for technological innovation (product and process) and other variables related to technological capabilities, international standards are conducive to higher productivity, through improved management practices and business organization. In line with the requirement of continuous improvement implied by most international standards, the main findings show that the possession of an internationally recognized standard certificate leads to significant productivity premium. We further find that the effect of certification on productivity is particularly strong for firms with technological innovation, located in southern provinces, and operating in more scale-intensive industries.     

Realized volatility transmission: The role of jumps and leverage effects

This paper is the first to employ a multivariate extension of the LHAR–CJ model for realized volatility of Corsi and Renó (2012) considering continuous and jump volatility components and leverage effects. The model is applied to financial (S&P 500), commodity (WTI crude oil) and forex (US$/EUR) intraday futures data and allows new insights in the transmission mechanisms among these markets. Besides significant leverage effects, we find that the jump components of all considered assets do not contain incremental information for the one-step ahead realized volatility. The volatility of S&P 500 and US$/EUR exchange rate futures exhibits significant spillovers to the realized volatility of WTI. Moreover, decreasing equity prices appear to increase volatility in other markets, while strengthening of the US$ seems to calm down the crude oil market.     

Dynamics of volatility transmission between the U.S. and the Chinese agricultural futures markets

The U.S. and China are two of the biggest players in the world agricultural market. The literature documents that volatility in the U.S. agricultural futures market spills over significantly to that of China. This article provides further insights into the spillovers from China to the U.S. as well as the time horizon and dynamics of the bidirectional spillovers through the application of a multivariate extension of the heterogeneous autoregressive model, in relation to four commodities – soybean, wheat, corn and sugar. The results confirm the existence of significant spillovers from the U.S. to China for four commodities, which are primarily generated by the shorter-term volatility components in the U.S., and provide evidence for the increasing pricing power of the Chinese market. The findings are robust against various specifications and have important investment and policy implications.     

The Coastal Community Perception on the Socio-Economic Impacts of Agro-Tourism Activities in Coastal Villages in Malaysia

This paper is concerned with the socio-economic impacts of agro-tourism activities in coastal villages listed as Desa Wawasan Nelayan (DWN) in Malaysia. The paper discussed the impacts of the two major components of socio-economics dynamics, namely social and economic activities. This account highlights a number of discussions with specific reference to DWN in Malaysia. It identifies the similarities and differences with regard to socio-economic impact, and it is expected that these points will be of practical use for other agro-tourism areas around the globe, and help to increase interest in agro-tourism activities.     

Food heritage and promoting herbal medicine-based niche tourism in Isfahan,Iran

The dynamic and competitive nature of tourism means that surviving commercially may require the emergence of niche tourism. This paper presents a niche tourism sector that emphasizes medicinal plants: herbal medicine-based tourism. This research has two major purposes: to investigate innovation and strategies for promoting herbal-medicine-based tourism and to demonstrate strategies for integrating tourism and medicinal plants for the purpose of education and knowledge transfer. This study was conducted in Isfahan, Iran. The results show that strategies (such as outdoor activities and tourist workshops in herbal medicine parks/farms or in the plants’ natural habitats; training tour guides who are familiar with botany and medicinal plants; and the integration of traditional medicine and tourism to emphasize the therapeutic properties of medical plants) can play a central role in tourism based upon learning about and consuming traditional medicinal herbs. The innovative strategies for promoting this specialized form of tourism are classified into five main categories.