Reference points for measuring social performance: Case study of a social business venture

We present a longitudinal qualitative case study to elaborate on how a social venture forms reference points for social performance. Although organizations increasingly use various social performance targets to direct their operations, the scholarly knowledge on social performance reference points remains limited. We make use of the prior accounting literature and draw on the idea of compromising accounts to discuss how provisional and performative metrics can have a significant role in how organizations develop new ways to evaluate their social performance. Given that the social performance reference point criteria are ambiguous and the corresponding referents malleable, performative accounts are helpful as they can intervene in the organizational life by making particular things visible, providing space for interpretations, and facilitating discussion, thus creating temporary settlements and enabling opportunities for productive compromises between different organizational groups and evaluative principles. The recursive feedback loops between reference point referents, criteria and accounting artefacts help the organization to make sense of its own social performance and interpret the associated performance feedback, and thereby provide ground for organizational decisions on further action. Moreover, we discuss how imperfect accounts can be useful for social businesses in their pursuit of developing their activities and achieving social impact.     

The Euro Illusion in Consumers’ Price Estimation: An Italian–Irish Comparison in the Third Year of the Euro

The euro illusion is a transient phenomenon that consists of currency-related asymmetries in the intuitive judgment of product prices made by consumers. The results of a cross-country study in the third year after the introduction of the euro show a strong price estimation asymmetry in a country with an extreme exchange rate (Italy) and a weaker effect in a country in which the nominal values of the new and the old currency are much closer (Ireland). These results rule out proposed explanations of the euro illusion in price estimation that assume the sole influence of plausible anchors (reference prices stored in memory within the plausible price range), supporting instead accounts also endorsing the role of implausible anchors (reference prices outside the plausible price range). Beyond contributing to our theoretical understanding of the euro illusion, this research starts to unveil the interplay between structural factors (i.e., the currency exchange rate) and psychological mechanisms that produce long-lasting difficulties for consumers after a monetary changeover.

How do institutional market players matter in farmland pricing?

In this paper we analyse how institutional sellers within the privatisation process shape price formation in agricultural land markets by taking the German reunification as an example. These institutions sell the formerly state owned land within first-price sealed bid auctions, publish calls and obtained prices, and are hypothesised to exploit their market power. Based on the conceptual framework of hedonic pricing models, we use a spatio-temporal modelling approach to empirically quantify these impacts. We thereby control for land productivity characteristics, potential buyers and whether farmers purchase the land. We find that privatisation agencies sell at significantly higher prices, while one agency sells at lower prices to farmers.     

If you,tourist, behave irrationally,I’ll find you!

When departures from rational behavior can potentially be expected, modeling should allow for their identification and their quantification. In this regard, prices in tourism might have effects that may not be as apparent as economic theory predicts. This article incorporates the sticker shock formulation into the mixed logit model without imposing consistency with consumer theory to accommodate any possible positive or negative price effects. By allowing the parameters of “price” and “sticker shock term” to take any value – negative or positive – we detect abnormal behaviors in the tourist demand: not only is the negative relationship between price and demand inverted for some people but also some tourists might be willing to accept higher-than-expected prices. The “non-well-behaved” groups' shares are estimated.     

Price promotion with reference price effects in supply chain

We consider the price promotion in a supply chain comprising one manufacturer and one retailer, who take into account the reference price effects of consumers. The problem is analyzed as a manufacturer-lead Stackelberg game. The results indicate that reference price effects could mitigate “double marginalization” effects, and improve the channel efficiency. We also show that the optimal price promotion benefits the manufacturer, retailer and consumers in consumer promotion model. Furthermore, we provide the conditions under which the retailer has an interest in offering price promotion to consumers. Finally, we employ numerical analysis to demonstrate more managerial insights.     

A reference-dependent representation with subjective tastes

Experimental and empirical evidence documents instances where the presence of an inferior option in a menu increases the attractiveness of the better options from that menu and thus distorts the normative ranking across menus. We analyze the case when in addition to this so called context-effects bias there is also a concern for flexibility, in the spirit of the literature initiated by Kreps (1979) and Dekel et al. (2001). Since the context-effects bias and the desire for flexibility both increase the inclination of a decision maker to choose larger menus, our analysis allows the disentangling of the effect of the behavioral bias from the effect of the rational desire from flexibility. We find a weak condition on the set of ex post preferences under which the two effects are identifiable. We show that our representation is essentially unique. From a methodological viewpoint, our paper provides a novel technique of identifying probabilities on the state space of subjective uncertainty introduced by Dekel et al. (2001) when this state space is infinite. This method renders the infinite state space essentially finite with respect to a certain salient property.     

日本优衣库（UNIQLO）服装经营之道

优衣库（UNIQLO）是日本著名的服装品牌,它向各个年龄层的消费者提供时尚、优质的休闲服装,是日本服装零售业的龙头老大。公司的创始人柳井正在2008年登上日本首富宝座,成为日本历史上凭借服装产业位居《福布斯》榜首的第一人。2009年的销售额达到6600多亿日元。优衣库（UNIQLO）的成功经营之道,独特的经营理念,成本领先战略的应用,良好的营销运作模式以及在中国发展的实践,对我国服装业的生产经营有着许多可以借鉴的宝贵经验。     

A preference foundation for constant loss aversion

Following prospect theory and in particular the concept of loss aversion, introduced by Kahneman and Tversky (1979), we consider decision making under risk in which the decision maker’s preferences depend on a reference outcome. An outcome below this reference outcome is regarded as resulting from a loss: a loss decreases the decision maker’s basic utility more than a comparable gain increases this utility. An elegant and simple way to model this phenomenon was proposed by Shalev (2002): the utility of an outcome below the reference outcome is obtained from the basic utility by subtracting a multiple of the loss in basic utility: this multiple, the loss aversion coefficient, is constant across different reference outcomes. We provide a preference foundation for this loss aversion model.     

国外"农民工"社会保障经验及其借鉴

社会保障是一个国家社会经济活动中不可缺少的重要组成部分.本文重点介绍了德国、英国、美国、印度等国家在农村劳动力转移过程中医疗、养老、失业等方面的相关保障措施,进而对我国“农民工“社会保障制度的改革与完善提出了几点建议,如加强社会保障立法建设、降低进入门槛、扩大保障面、社保基金由私营机构而非政府机构经营管理等.     

The reference model of competitiveness factors for SME medical sector

The paper presents the issue of SME competitiveness in terms of determining their competitive position on the market. The proposed reference model, focused on the evaluation of the competitiveness of a selected group of SMEs on the market of medical services, was developed to support strategic decision-making. The usefulness of the model is verified in the process of determining the competitive position of a selected group of participants, applying research methods of strategic analysis. Relationships, observed during the study, occurring between the competitiveness factors and the competitive position taken by a company, provide knowledge, whose utilization directs the company's business to improving its market performance, organizational and economic conditions.