Beyond choice: investigating the sensitivity and validity of measures of strength of preference

Many experiments investigating different decision theories have relied heavily on pairwise choices between lotteries. These are easy to incentivise, but often yield only limited dichotomous information. This paper considers whether respondents’ judgments about their strength of preference (SoP) for one alternative over another can usefully supplement standard choice data. We report extensive evidence that such judgments show sensitivity to variations in question format and parameter values in the directions we should expect, not only within-subject but also between-sample. We illustrate how such judgments can usefully supplement standard pairwise choice data and enrich our understanding of observed behaviour.     

Short Sales and Price Discovery in the Hong Kong Real Estate Market

Indirect real estate (IRE) returns are often shown to lead direct real estate (DRE) returns. Apart from differences in liquidity, transaction costs, and management skills, the DRE market is also less complete than the IRE market—when negative shocks arrive, one can only short IRE (e.g., real estate stocks or REITs), but not DRE. This study investigates if short sales in the IRE market convey any information to the DRE market. Based on high‐frequency (weekly) property price data in Hong Kong from 2000 to 2012, we find that short sales in the IRE market led DRE returns, even after controlling for the lagged IRE returns in a VAR model. This supports an information spillover mechanism in which the DRE market learns private information that is not reflected in IRE returns. The spillover effect, however, weakened after the recent global financial crisis because the increased uncertainty over the credibility of individual firms made short sales more reflective of firm‐specific information than real estate market fundamentals.     

THE IMPACT OF GREEN REVOLUTION ON RICE PRODUCTION IN VIETNAM

The current paper reviewed the development of the Green Revolution in Vietnam, using long‐term regional yield and modern variety adoption statistics, as well as household data collected in 1996 and 2003. The present study indicates that the Green Revolution began in irrigated favorable areas and spread to the less favorable areas in Vietnam such as in other Asian countries. What is unique in Vietnam is that although the Green Revolution ended in the mid‐1980s in the Philippines and Indonesia, it has still been sustained as of 2003. Our analyses revealed that such growth had been supported by continuous improvements of modern varieties by regional research institutes. The varieties imported from China have contributed to the Green Revolution in northern Vietnam and those developed by the International Rice Research Institute in southern Vietnam. The national agricultural research systems have also played a critically important role in developing location‐specific and appropriate technologies.     

Art festival attendance: Who attends and why with implications on developing future festival attractiveness

Art festivals are an increasing part of a destination's event portfolio, asserted by destination marketing and management agencies to hopefully promote community engagement including attracting tourism, trade, and talent to the destination. With art festivals a common annual event feature at destinations, the competition for festival participation has increased, creating a greater need to isolate those festival attributes that are specifically appealing to targeted visitor segments. Examining participant profile and motives to attend the publically funded annually recurring Macau Arts Festival (MAF), the findings of this case study showed mostly community involvement with participants being mainly well educated, middle-aged, and female. While an aim of the festival, international participation in the festival was limited. A factor analysis on motives to attend the festival revealed that while there was common agreement with previous literature on reasons to attend, Macau's cultural background provided increased opportunity for the MAF to differentiate the event. Marketing implications also suggested investigating a communication strategy that could differ between attracting local and international audiences. With a significant cost to public finances, greater scrutiny on the appeal of the festival to specific local and international audiences was recommended to better present the cost to benefit argument for hosting.     

Managing knowledge work in Asia Pacific contexts: case studies of Hong Kong SMEs

This study explores how knowledge creation and sharing practices are fostered in a sample of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Hong Kong. Our analysis indicates that three types of managerial interventions – initiating intervention, reinforcing intervention and aligning intervention – are particularly useful to promote knowledge management activities among employees. Such findings provide insights into researchers and managers on the important role of managerial interventions in knowledge management (KM) as well as the idiosyncrasies of KM in SMEs in Chinese societies.     

Accounting for Growth Disparity: Lucas's Framework Revisited

This paper proposes a theoretical method to account for historical episodes of growth disparity. A numerical computation shows that the properties of the local dynamics of the proposed model are consistent with the facts indicated by selected episodes.     

The Evolution of Rice Price Policies over Four Decades: Thailand,Indonesia and the Philippines

Using time series data over the past four decades, the 1960s to 1990s, this paper examines rice pricing policies in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. It analyses the determinants of the paths along which these policies have moved. While it confirms the findings of previous analyses, that price stabilization has been a major policy achievement, it also reveals that stabilization was not necessarily sustained over the entire survey period. It finds that politico-economic factors—such as entry into the GATT, increase in per capita GDP and achievement of rice self-sufficiency—have been among the determinants of rice pricing policy, but the ways in which these factors have affected policy vary among these countries. Such variation, which previous cross-country studies have not analysed, is a reflection of variations in the roles of rice and in the attitudes of policy-makers in these economies. In its conclusion, this study draws policy implications for each country, taking into account differences in the impact.