Assessing customer passion,commitment, and word-of-mouth intentions in digital assistant usage: The moderating role of technology anxiety

Consumers develop a passion for the use of innovations, which is a critical determinant of their success. Research has largely examined drivers of initial acceptance of digital assistants (DAs) and has yet to fully understand the factors driving or deterring consumers’ passion towards DAs and the behavioural outcomes. Drawing on the stimulus-organism-response framework, this study examines a unique set of factors (usefulness, ease of use, privacy concern, and localisation) that act as stimuli to drive an organismic state of passion for DAs, and how this produces behavioural responses of word-of-mouth (WOM) intention and commitment to DA use. The study also examines how technology anxiety moderates passion’s impact on WOM intentions and commitment. The findings show that usefulness, ease of use, privacy concern, and localisation are significant explanatory variables of consumers’ passion towards DAs. Furthermore, passion towards DAs results in WOM intentions and commitment to its use. The findings further show that passion’s effect on DAs in explaining WOM intentions and commitment is weakened by technology anxiety. Lastly, passion is the mediating mechanism through which usefulness, ease of use, privacy concern, and localisation impact WOM intentions and commitment. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are highlighted.     

Economic Impacts of the Possible China–US Trade War

This article uses a multi-country global general equilibrium (GE) model to numerically simulate the effects of possible China–US trade wars. We introduce an endogenous trade imbalance structure with trade cost into the model which helps to explore both tariff and non-tariff trade war effects. Our simulation results show that China will be significantly hurt by the China–US trade war, but negative impacts are affordable. The US can gain under unilateral sanction measures to China, but will lose if China takes retaliation measures. Comparing the effects under mutual trade war, China will lose more than the US. Introducing non-tariff barrier trade wars will intensify the negative effects, and comparatively negative effects to China are larger than to the US. Mexico’s involvement in trade war with the US will strengthen the negative effects and comparatively hurt the US more. Under non-cooperative and cooperative Nash bargaining equilibrium, the US can gain more than China in trade war negotiation, which means the US has stronger bargaining power than China. Additionally, trade wars between China and the US will hurt most countries and the world especially in GDP and manufacturing employment, but benefit their welfare and trade.     

Impact of state-dependent oil price on US stock returns using local projections

In this paper, we investigate the impact of oil prices on both aggregate and industry US real stock returns over the period 1973–2017. The empirical analysis contributes to the related literature introducing a state-dependent oil price (high and low) and the local projections approach. Our main finding is that, depending on the nature of the shock and industry, the negative effects of oil price shocks become exacerbated -and the positive effects get moderated- if oil prices are already high.     

R&D based knowledge capital and future firm growth: Evidence from China’s Growth Enterprise Market firms

Building upon a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model, this paper examines the role of knowledge-based capital (KC) in improving firms’ future growth in productivity. Based on the analysis of Chinese listed firms from 2006 to 2017 in the Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), we find KC often generates endogenous movements in productivity and earnings over the business cycles, suggesting that the nature of KC is pro-cyclical. Moreover, investment in KC is often classified as a corporate expense and is thus deducted from the current year’s profits. Therefore, firms with high R&D investments have significantly higher future productivity growth but lower current profitability than do those with lower R&D investments. Given these characteristics, KC’s benefits to productivity and future earnings are thus not immediate. For faster growth in the long term, firms should continue investing in KC even if they may face a short-term fall in corporate earnings as a result of internal knowledge investment, especially for fast-growing GEM firms.     

U.S. food aid and American exports to recipient countries during the Cold War

In this article, we test to what extent the food aid granted by the U.S. during the Cold War was strategically motivated and used to promote U.S. interests. Using the data for the period 1971–1990, we investigate whether U.S. wheat aid had an effect on recipient countries’ total import of American products. The evidence we provide suggests a positive and robust relationship and thus it is consistent with the argument that U.S. food aid helped to create larger markets for U.S. producers.     

Modeling the time varying volatility of housing returns: Further evidence from the U.S. metropolitan condominium markets

This study extends the literature on modeling the volatility of housing returns to the case of condominium returns for five major U.S. metropolitan areas (Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco). Through the estimation of ARMA models for the respective condominium returns, we find volatility clustering of the residuals. The results from an ARMA‐TGARCH‐M model reveal the absence of asymmetry in the conditional variance. Dummy variables associated with the housing market collapse unique to each metropolitan area were statistically insignificant in the conditional variance equation, but negative and statistically significant in the mean equation. Condominium markets in Los Angeles and San Francisco exhibit the greatest persistence to volatility shocks.     

基于CLUE-S和GMOP模型的青龙满族自治县土地利用情景模拟

[目的]对青龙满族自治县未来土地利用格局进行多情景预测模拟,并探索土地经济和生态综合效益双提升目标下的土地利用发展格局,以期为区域土地资源优化配置和国土空间规划的编制提供参考。[方法]基于土地利用现状数据和社会经济统计资料,分别利用CLUE-S单模型、灰色多目标优化(GMOP)+CLUE-S模型对研究区进行了土地利用情景模拟。[结果](1)所选驱动因子对土地利用类型的解释能力较好,ROC值均大于0.7,满足Auto-Logistic回归要求,模拟检验的Kappa系数为91.03%,模拟效果比较理想;(2)到2020年,基于CLUE-S单模型的自然发展情景,研究区建设用地扩张占用耕地和林地现象突出,土地经济效益提升较大,但生态效益却呈现负增长;基于GMOP+CLUE-S模型的多目标优化情景,研究区建设用地扩张趋势得到控制,耕地、林地面积有所增加,未利用地得到较大程度开发,实现了土地经济和生态效益双提升,分别比2015年提升了3.12%和1.96%。[结论]GMOP+CLUE-S模型能够发挥两个模型各自在结构优化和空间分配方面的优点,有利于实现区域土地利用数量结构、空间布局和综合效益的协同优化。     

美国联邦宪法基本人权保障的发展路径

从中世纪英格兰开始，再延续至北美殖民时代，对普通法体系建立和权力法案的形成沿革进行详细的阐述，以美国独立宣言、宪法前言及人权典章所构筑的宪法优先原则，透过美国联邦最高法院的审查，形成限制国家权力的框架，具体落实宪法规范之最高性及权力分立，借此保障基本人权。     

Twenty years of Hong Kong and Macao under Chinese rule: being absorbed under ‘one country,two systems’

This paper examines the implementation of ‘one country, two systems’ (1C2S) in the two former Western colonies, Hong Kong and Macao, as a policy innovation in managing inter-governmental relations of a large, diverse country like China. 1C2S embodies internal tensions because the Hong Kong and Chinese governments have multiple and often incompatible goals. After 20 years, these two special administrative regions (SARs) of China are gradually being absorbed.     

Valuing Initial Public Offerings Using Article 11 Pro Forma Financial Information in the Prospectus*

We investigate whether Article 11 pro forma financial information assists investors in valuing IPOs. While the SEC expects it to be helpful in assisting investment decisions, Article 11 pro forma financial information is based on registrants' understanding and assumptions, and registrants can exercise their own judgment when preparing pro forma financial statements. It is therefore an empirical question whether the information contained in pro forma financial statements is useful to investors. We examine the association between pro forma adjustments of earnings and book value of equity and the IPO offer value and find asymmetric results. While positive pro forma adjustments of earnings and book value of equity are positively associated with the IPO offer value, negative pro forma adjustments of earnings and book value of equity are negatively associated with the IPO offer value, suggesting that negative pro forma adjustments are priced as growth opportunities. Additional analyses reveal that the association between pro forma adjustments of book value of equity and the IPO offer value varies across different time periods and industries and that pro forma adjustments of book value of equity are initially mispriced by investors. In contrast, we do not find similar results for pro forma adjustments of earnings. Further empirical tests show that the asymmetric results of mispricing of pro forma adjustments of earnings and book value of equity may be explained by the requirements of Article 11 of Regulation S‐X for pro forma adjustments dictating that adjustments to earnings reflect only recurring items while adjustments to book value reflect both recurring and nonrecurring items.