Consumption and real exchange rates in professional forecasts

Standard models of international risk sharing with complete asset markets predict a positive association between relative consumption growth and real exchange-rate depreciations across countries. The striking lack of evidence for this link — the consumption/real-exchange-rate anomaly or Backus–Smith puzzle — has prompted research on risk-sharing indicators with incomplete asset markets. That research generally implies that the association holds in forecasts, rather than realizations. Using professional forecasts for 28 countries for 1990–2010 we find no such association, whether for floating nominal exchange rate regimes, fixed exchange rates, or common currencies, thus deepening the puzzle.     

Relationship Quality of an Establishment and Perceived Value of a Purchase

Relationship quality is an emerging concept that attempts to measure the lifetime value of a customer. A review of the literature reveals that the indicators that determine the construct are satisfaction with the relationship, the customer's trust and the customer's level of commitment. The paper also considers how the perceived value of a purchase influences the quality of the relationship with an establishment, i.e. how a single transaction influences the valuation of a whole relationship. Gummeson [1987] considers that the quality of the relationship is the value accumulated during/throughout the relationship. This posits the existence of a causal link between perceived value and relationship quality. On the basis of an Expectancy–Value Model [Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975], and the model of Berkowitz [1993], we consider the relationships among the variables of the model. The results show that affect plays a fundamental role in long term valuation, while cognition is more influential in the short term. Another important conclusion is that the affective valuations made during the first moments have decisive consequences in the long term.     

Ansatzpunkte und probleme einer erfolgsbeurteilung beim neutralen gütertest

Independent test reports represent an important element in the sphere of consumer information. Evaluation of the impact of previous information and the search for better policies in future would certainly be useful. What is needed at this point is a scientific analysis oftest-report efficiency. Data concerning the dissemination and use of test reports exist but do not provide sufficient information to describe the further and more substantial benefits of testing institutions. It is the purpose of this paper to set out an approach to such an analysis of test efficiency by suggesting a set of evaluative criteria and a conceptualisation of some of the major problems involved in the empirical analysis of test efficiency. First of all, the actual and potential goals of testing institutions are formulated, since it is out of this set of goals that one can draw a list of appropriate test efficiency criteria. Such criteria include: (a) the consumer's knowledge of relevant products, prices, and services; (b) improvement of the consumer's purchasing decisions in terms of his own needs and scarce resources as well as of environmental protection; (c) improvement and stabilisation of regulative mechanisms, particularly the consumer's influence on the marketing system. Secondly, the various areas of test-report effects are analysed. In this context most authors concentrate solely upon the consumer and his purchasing behavior. The question presents itself, however, whether test effects upon the marketing system can be neglected. Considering the direct and the indirect impact of test reports on product marketing (both for merchants and for producers) and on the “consumer interest,” the answer is clearly in the negative. If test reports lead to changes, for example, in product quality and price, benefits to consumers can be said to exist even if consumers themselves do not use test reports in their actual purchasing decisions (“non-use benefits"). Such impact of test reports can be of great value especially to the poor. The body of this paper then deals with various efficiency indicators both in the consumer and in the marketing system. The indicators presented in the consumer section include: (i) perception of needs; (2) perception of relevant products (quality, price, etc.); (3) simplification in the purchase decision; (4) articulation of needs; (5) results in the context of bargaining over price and service; (6) product quality and satisfaction with the product and service; (7) post-decisional articulation of dissatisfaction and complaining behaviour; (8) external effects of consumption on scarce resources and environment. Efficiency indicators concerningmarketing effects are those of the following factors: (1) products; (2) prices; (3) channelling and distribution; (4) communication and information. In addition, such structural variables as competition effects and quality consciousness are treated. Where available, empirical data related to these various effects of test reports are also reported. The final section of this paper deals with the question of whether and to what extent certain effects can be seen as a result of consumer test reports. The problem of causality endemic to such analyses of efficiency in complex social systems cannot be resolved, of course, as it can in controlled experimental situations. Some other approaches to the establishment of causal indicators are therefore considered. Generally speaking, the chief concern of this paper lies in the development of a social-scientific basis for future consumer information policies, although a substantial part of the approach presented here can clearly be of value in many other areas of consumer policy. Er möchte Herrn Prof. Dr. Hans Raffée für wertvolle Anregungen herzlich danken.     

Target‐Setting,Pay for Performance,and Quality Improvement: A Case Study of Ontario Hospitals’ Quality‐Improvement Plans

This study examines whether difficult targets and quality indicators in executives' pay‐for‐performance (P4P) plans affect performance. The impact of target‐setting and P4P plans on quality improvement in the public sector is unclear. The Ontario government initiated the Quality Improvement Plan (QIP), which requires hospitals to set targets for quality indicators annually and link executive pay to target achievement since 2011. Analyzing Health Quality Ontario's database and hospitals' 2012–2013 QIPs, this study shows greater quality improvement in hospitals with difficult targets than hospitals with easy targets or without assigned targets; however, the positive impact disappears for high‐performance hospitals relative to their peers. We find no significant effect of the use of quality indicators in executives' P4P plans on quality improvement. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

现代物流配送中心评价体系研究

配送中心一般包括进出货、储存、流通加工、盘点、订单处理、拣货、配送及采购等八项基本作业,而各项作业又关系着人员、设备、设施空间、货品订单、作业规划、效率、成本和品质等八个因素。由此相关性,把八项基本作业作为第二层的作业指标,而影响基本作业的八个因素就构成第三层的评价指标。评价的过程以层次分析法为基础,把第三层的评价指标作为基准,采用由上层至下层的推导方式,即可得到各层指标的计算值。     

Trends in fatal motorcycle injuries in the Americas, 1998–2010

Injuries, disabilities and deaths among motorcyclists have been rising worldwide but what is happening in the American Continent is not completely known. Deaths from motorcycle crashes of the Pan American Health Organization database (PAHO/WHO, 1998–2010) were included in an ecologic multi-national study to quantify the temporal trends and to estimate the association between motorcycle riders’ deaths and selected socio-economic indicators. Mortality rates increased in all sub-regions. The highest increase was reported in the countries of the Andean sub-region (Ecuador, 78.3%) and Mesoamerica (Costa Rica, 60.0%). Poorer countries fared worse in terms of motorcycle mortality relative to richer countries, as did more unequal ones. Recent economic changes, rapid increment of motorisation rates, affordability of motorcycles over public transportation, lack of adequate public transportation policies and other insufficient measures aimed at improving safety can explain these trends.     

Does Payday Lending Hurt Food Security in Low‐Income Households?

During the study period of 2005–2011, household food insecurity rates as well as regulations over payday lending industry increased in the United States. This study evaluates the association between access to payday lending and the risk of food insecurity using cross‐sectional samples of low‐income households from the 2005 to 2011 Food Security Supplements of the Current Population Survey. The study uses county‐level payday lender density, state‐level legislative status, and county border indicators of cross‐state payday access to examine how payday lender availability affects household food insecurity. The findings suggest that access to payday lending, which may be presumed to provide convenient short‐term credit to underserved consumers, increases the likelihood of household food insecurity by 2.8–6.0 percentage points in absolute terms. Furthermore, the county border effect of payday access has become insignificant later in the sample period, the potential reasons for which are discussed.     

Financial deregulation and profit efficiency: A nonparametric analysis of Indian banks

The paper examines the impact of financial deregulation on cost and profit efficiency of Indian commercial banks during the post-reform period 1992–2004 using the nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA). The results indicate high levels of cost efficiency and lower levels of profit efficiency, reflecting the importance of inefficiencies on the revenue side of banking activity. The decomposition of profit efficiency suggests that a large portion of outlay lost is due to allocative inefficiency. A multivariate regression of the proximate causes of profit efficiencies highlights the importance of bank size, ownership, product diversity and prudential indicators as important variables driving these efficiency differences.     

Can leading indicators assess country vulnerability? Evidence from the 2008–09 global financial crisis

We investigate whether leading indicators can help explain the cross-country incidence of the 2008–09 financial crisis. Rather than looking for indicators with specific relevance to the recent crisis, the selection of variables is driven by an extensive review of more than eighty papers from the previous literature on early warning indicators. Our motivation is to address suspicions that indicators found to be useful predictors in one round of crises are typically not useful to predict the next round. The review suggests that central bank reserves and past movements in the real exchange rate were the two leading indicators that had proven the most useful in explaining crisis incidence across different countries and episodes in the past. For the 2008–09 crisis, we use six different variables to measure crisis incidence: drops in GDP and industrial production, currency depreciation, stock market performance, reserve losses, and participation in an IMF program. We find that the level of reserves in 2007 appears as a consistent and statistically significant leading indicator of who got hit by the 2008–09 crisis, in line with the conclusions of the pre-2008 literature. In addition to reserves, recent real appreciation is a statistically significant predictor of devaluation and of a measure of exchange market pressure during the current crisis. We define the period of the global financial shock as running from late 2008 to early 2009, which probably explains why we find stronger results than earlier papers such as Obstfeld et al. (2009, 2010) and Rose and Spiegel (2009a,b, 2010, 2011) which use annual data.     

An Integrative Framework of Buyer–Supplier Negative Relationship Quality and Dysfunctional Interfirm Conflict

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Problems of relationship quality and interfirm conflict in business-to-business settings are serious concerns that need to be addressed. Thus, the authors have engaged in an extensive review to promote an understanding of these complex issues. This article develops an integrated framework for analyzing wide-ranging relations between individual representatives and patterns of interfirm incompatibility for managerial control.

Methodology/approach: The review involves numerous sources that include articles and monographs. A theoretical framework is constructed to integrate fragmented empirical data. In particular, social identity and commitment-trust theories are mobilized for this framework.

Findings: The review of studies has a substantial consistency with the theoretical framework. The article outlines a causal chain from interpersonal agent dissimilarities to dysfunctional buyer–supplier relations, culminating in interfirm pathological conflict. Moderating factors in the causal chain are: agent identity differentiation (for interpersonal dissimilarity), supplier relations mismanagement (for buyer–supplier relationship quality), and interfirm opportunism (for interfirm pathological conflict). Buyer–supplier interfirm incompatibility mediates the causal link between interpersonal dissimilarity and buyer–supplier relationship quality. Identity differentiation, the validation of one’s self-image, is introduced as a process that determines buyer–supplier agent interpersonal dissimilarity judgments. This framework uses a contextual perspective. It describes interactions between observations of micro-level phenomena of interpersonal dissimilarities and macro-level models of interfirm fit. From a managerial perspective, interpersonal relations between individual buyer and supplier agents may be further strengthened by such strategies as expanding the scope of the interpersonal relationship, relaxation of role responsibilities, and volunteering business-related contact referrals.

Originality/value: A new theoretical framework has been devised to predict and explain relationship quality and interfirm pathological conflict in the business-to-business context. The framework contributes to the value of the knowledge base by serving as a means for building new diagnostic tools for assessment of interfirm behavioral issues affecting exchanges. New concepts are introduced to enhance current literature on business-to-business marketing. The framework provides concrete

indicators that operationally define ideas and enable or improve measurement for empirical modeling.     

The Financial Performance of Socially Responsible Investments: Insights from the Intertemporal CAPM

This study examines the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and management forecast accuracy. Using data from 1995 to 2009, we find that firms provide more accurate earnings forecasts in the face of CSR activities. We also find that the positive association between CSR and management forecast accuracy is only present for the post-regulation period of 2001–2009, after the introduction of disclosure regulations intended to mitigate managers’ opportunistic behavior. These findings are consistent with the notion that managers strive to improve the quality of financial disclosure following superior CSR performance in the recent period.     

Evaluating and Comparing Leading and Coincident Economic Indicators

This article evaluates which economic indicators are the most useful for signaling recessions. The article uses a modified Markov switching method to compare the timing of recession signals across many indicators. In its present form, it is difficult to use the Markov switching methods for comparing recession signals across indicators. First, the regimes in the Markov switching method do not necessarily align with recession periods. Second, the definitions of the two regimes are likely to be different across indicators. However, if some modifications are made to the Markov switching method, the method can be helpful for comparing recession signals across indicators. This article shows that by converting Markov switching probabilities into percentiles, the Markov switching method can be useful in comparing the quality of recession signals across indicators. Using the method, hundreds of indicators are ranked based on their leading ability during different sample periods. Finally, the performance of the indicators during the current recession is evaluated.     

Productivity,efficiency and its determinant factors in hotels

This study assesses the total factor productivity, efficiency and its determinants in the hotel sector in the period 1999–2007, with the objective to analyze the management implications of these outcomes. The results show improvements in productivity due to innovation, with significant differences due to the geographic location, and a decrease in efficiency explained in terms of adaptation to supply. There are several factors determining the efficient leading hotels. First, the concentration market share to achieve efficiency gains. Second, a curvilinear (U) shape between efficiency and size of the hotel. Third, a higher degree of organizational autonomy is positively related to efficiency, but negatively related to the commitment to quality.     

Institutional investors' corporate site visits and corporate investment efficiency

This study examines the association between institutional investors' corporate site visits (CSVs) and the visited firms' investment efficiency. Using unique CSVs' data from China, this study provides empirical evidence that institutional investors' CSVs lessen the visited firms' corporate investment inefficiency, including both over- and underinvestment. The negative relationship between CSVs and investment inefficiency is less pronounced for firms with higher quality financial reporting and better corporate governance. In addition, CSVs show a decrease in corporate overinvestment by monitoring the risk-taking activities of younger CEOs and expansionary firms, and supervising the use of excess free cash flows. Meanwhile, CSVs could mitigate underinvestment by reducing managerial shirking from entrenched CEOs, such as dual or longer-tenured CEOs. The possible economic mechanism behind this association is that CSVs increase institutional shareholding percentages. All the main findings are robust to a battery of endogeneity and robustness tests.     

Feeling hungry? let's order through mobile! examining the fast food mobile commerce in China

This study proposes a unique framework that aids to enrich online shopping experience (psychological and monetary gains) and accelerates fast food mobile commerce (m-commerce). The extended technology acceptance model (TAM) is applied while the stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) paradigm served as the predominant framework combined with the acquisition-transaction utility theory. This study investigates the mobile website quality, website brand equity (stimulus) influence on (PEOU) and (PU) (organism) to predict Chinese consumer intention to use fast food mobile commerce (response). A total of 936 respondents were participated while data were collected using a convenience sampling technique in China. Results reveal that all dimensions of mobile WQ (i.e., service quality, system quality, and information quality) and Website BE (i.e., brand image, perceived quality, brand association, and brand loyalty) (stimulus) significantly substantially influence PEOU and PU (organism) toward the acceptance of online fast food shopping (response). Digital Coupon Proneness (an accelerator) substantially moderates the relationship between PEOU, PU, and intention to use fast food m-commerce. Based on the assumptions of acquisition-transaction utility theory, category-specific (fast food) digital coupon proneness increase m-commerce for online fast food buying– a novel contribution of the study. Furthermore, research provides unique managerial insights for the industry to utilize the maximum potential of m-commerce in the fast-food industry.     

Does gender influence managers’ ethics? A cross‐cultural analysis

The relationship between gender and ethics has been extensively researched. However, previous studies have assumed that the gender–ethics association is constant; hence, scholars have seldom investigated factors potentially affecting the gender–ethics association. Thus, using managers as the research target, this study examined the relationship between gender and ethics and analyzed the moderating effect of cultural values on the gender–ethics association. The results showed that, compared with female managers, their male counterparts are more willing to justify business‐related unethical behaviors such as bribery and tax evasion, and that the gender difference in ethics becomes more pronounced under the cultural dimensions of collectivism, humane orientation, performance orientation, and gender egalitarianism. This study used data obtained through surveying 2,754 managers in 27 nations.     

An investigation into the link between consumer's product involvement and store loyalty: The roles of shopping value goals and information search as the mediating factors

This research proposes a theoretical model explaining the roles of multiple mediating factors – product quality, service quality, and information search –in the association between product involvement and store loyalty. The extant literature has examined different determinants of store loyalty but paid less attention to understand the link between product involvement and store loyalty and the underlying mechanisms. This study contributes to the literature by a) providing a comprehensive framework of involvement – loyalty link and b) investigating complex mediation effects. In this study, survey data were subjected to regression analysis to test parallel mediation and serial mediation effects of product quality, service quality, and information search in the link between consumer's product involvement and store loyalty. The results indicate that both product quality and information search mediate the association between product involvement and store loyalty. In addition, both product quality and service quality mediate the association between product involvement and information search. Results also indicate that product quality and information search work as serial mediators in the association between product involvement and store loyalty. For additional level of analyses, data were also subjected to Importance-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA). Theoretical and managerial implications are also provided.     

Multiple directorships,family ownership and the board nomination committee: International evidence from the GCC

In this paper, we investigate the association between outside board directorships and family ownership concentration. Using a sample of 1091 firm-year observations of non-financial publicly listed firms from Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC) during the 2005 to 2013 period, we find a positive association between family ownership and the number of outside directorships held by board members. This finding is consistent with the notion that family ownership reduces a board's monitoring capabilities. We also test whether the recent corporate governance reforms in GCC, which were designed to protect investors and minority shareholders, affect firms' incentives to establish a board nomination committee (NC). We find the existence of a board NC and the quality and characteristics of NC membership act to suppress the positive association between outside directorships and family ownership. Our results are robust to the use of alternative measures of outside directorships and family ownership and models that test for endogeneity. Overall, our results suggest that the institutional specificities of emerging economies such as those in the GCC can sustain high levels of multiple directorships, which could impair the quality of corporate governance.     

Re-examining the risk–return relationship in banks using quantile regression

Financial data for the US banks listed during 2001–2007 are analysed to re-examine the risk–return relationship in the banking industry. A key feature of this study is the analysis of the changing distribution of return on equity across banks and over time by the quantile regression (hereafter QR) model and a meaningful comparative analysis with the results of the ordinary least squares estimates is examined. The following conclusions are drawn from the empirical results. First, while a positive risk–return relationship is presented for the profitable banks, the risk–return relationship is negative for the profitless banks. Second, the ‘V’ shape relationship between bank risk and profitability identified by this study could satisfactorily explain the existing risk–return puzzle among the prior empirical studies.