Betting Big On Consumer Gadgets

Venture Capitalists even work closely with the retailer of Best Buy Co.. They try to understand consumer trends and sometimes even get the retailer＇s advice about investing in promising young companies.     

A comparison of Ad valorem and per unit taxes in regulated monopolies

This paper compares the output and revenue effects in the rate-of-return regulated monopoly model. Both the ad valorem and the unit tax generally decrease the use of capital, and as such, reduce the output and raise the price. In addition, it is shown that Suits and Musgrave's conclusion of higher revenue of an ad valorem tax at a given output can apply to a regulated monopolist if the marginal product of labor under the ad valorem tax is greater than or equal to that under the unit tax. Similarly, their second conclusion, that for a given tax revenue an ad valorem tax has a larger output than a unit tax rate before the revenue-maximizing tax rate, can also apply to the regulated monopolist.     

Hedonic models and air pollution: Twenty-five years and counting

This paper reports a meta analysis of how effectively hedonic property models have detected the influence of air pollution on housing prices. Probit estimates are reported describing how data, model specification, and local property market conditions in cities represented in thirty-seven studies influence the ability of hedonic models to uncover negative, statistically significant relationships between housing prices and air pollution measures.Partial support for this research was provided by the Russell Sage Foundation. Thanks are due David Cordray, Heidi Hartman, and Larry Hedges of the Foundation's Meta-Analysis Panel for constructive comments, to Ray Palmquist for suggestions and assistance in assembling the results from his studies, to Rick Freeman and Tom Tietenberg and two anonymous referees for comments on the research, and to Barbara Scott for constructive editing of earlier drafts of this paper.     

Negligent hiring: Reducing the risk

In recent years, the responsibility of employers to hire people who are not dangerous or violent has been heightened by the tort, negligent hiring. The courts have ruled that certain employers owe a special duty to employees and third parties (e.g., customers or clients) to protect them from the harmful or criminal acts of other employees. This article contrasts negligent hiring to respondent superior and negligent entrustment, describes the components of negligent hiring, and reviews important legal cases. The article also discusses how employers can minimize the risk of negligent hiring through prudent human resource practices.     

The Delphi method, impeachment and terrorism: Accuracies of short-range forecasts for volatile world events

Two experiments examined the effects of iterated polling and feedback on prediction accuracy for volatile world events using the Delphi paradigm. In both experiments, participants predicted rapidly changing geopolitical events. The first experiment occurred during the litigation surrounding the Clinton/Lewinsky affair in 1998. Results indicated that feedback improved individual and group accuracy for predictions of whether an event would occur. These types of predictions derived from group consensus were approximately 90% accurate, which was significantly higher than the average individual participant's accuracy. Neither polling nor feedback had much effect on time course predictions. The second experiment occurred during the American military action against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001. In Experiment 2, participants were polled three times to determine if increasing the number of iterated polls would improve Delphi accuracy. The results showed that accuracy improved from the first to the second poll but not from the second to the third. The groups predicted whether these scenarios would occur with approximately 75% accuracy, which was significantly higher than the accuracy of any individual participant. Once again, the Delphi procedure did not enhance time course predictions in Experiment 2.     

Obeying the rules: Accounting for regulatory compliance costs in the United Kingdom

The U.K. Government has embarked on a deregulatory programme aimed at ‘liberating’ business from, inter alia, onerous regulatory compliance costs. In doing so it has developed and utilized an accounting-based technique known as Compliance Cost Assessment (CCA). This paper describes and analyses this technique, and demonstrates that CCA has been used as a perceived rational tool to counter regulatory growth and to privilege certain interests in society.     

IPO anomalies and innovation capital

Innovation capital are typically expensed and/or unrecognized as assets under current generally accepted accounting principles. This results in accounting-related information asymmetry. This paper examines the association of innovation capital (as measured here by the proxies of R&D expenditures and granted patents) and initial public offerings (IPO) anomalies. These anomalies include initial IPO underpricing, duration of honeymoon (a distinct feature of the Taiwanese IPO environment), and long-term performance. The theoretical model underlying this research is a signaling model. The results indicate that more innovative firms are more likely to be underpriced, and have longer honeymoon periods than less innovative firms. Further, the more innovative firms have positive and growing long-term market-adjusted returns. This stands in contrast to the declining long-term stock performance of initial public offering firms that is evidenced in the literature. We conclude that pre-IPO research and development expenditures disclosed in the IPO prospectus, official monthly reports of newly developed patents released to the public, and the frequency of patent citations significantly signal both underpricing and future market performance of IPO firms in Taiwan.     

Impact of sales force automation on technology-related stress, effort, and technology usage among salespeople

This study unveils factors affecting sales force automation (SFA) technology usage by salespeople. It differs from previous research by: (1) proposing a model that examines the consequences of task complexity on role perceptions and technology usage, and (2) understanding the negative repercussions of SFA technology on the user. The proposed model was tested using data from 150 salespeople employed by a national organization. The results suggest that integration of SFA technology induces adverse role perceptions in salespeople. However, controlling for extraneous variables, effort is significantly related to salespeople's usage of technology. Key managerial implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Empowering the new traveller: storytelling as a co-creative behaviour in tourism

The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a powerful co-creative behaviour in tourism. The contribution takes a step forward from the classical theories on co-creation and develops the case where consumers act almost independently from traditional brands. The empirical study adopts an interpretive approach to analyse online travel reviews. Data are interpreted through Yi and Gong's model on consumer value co-creation behaviour [(2013). Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 127], the Phase dynamics theory of travel epiphany behaviour [Woodside, A. G., & Megehee, C. M. (2010). Advancing consumer behaviour theory in tourism via visual narrative art. International Journal of Tourism Research, 12(5), 418–431], and the Archetype theory [Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008). When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research. Psychology & Marketing, 25(2), 97–145]. The study indicates that storytelling behaviours in value co-creation activate a ‘customer delight' response, which is an affect-based construct.