Product Differentiation,the Volume of Trade and Profits under Cournot and Bertrand Duopoly

This article analyses how product differentiation affects the volume of trade under duopoly using Shubik-Levitan demand functions rather than the Bowley demand functions used by Bernhofen (2001). The drawback of Bowley demand functions is that an increase in product differentiation increases the size of the market so the increase in the volume of trade may be the result of the increase in the size of the market rather than the increase in product differentiation per se. The Shubik-Levitan demand functions have the advantage that an increase in product differentiation does not increase the size of the market, but consumers still have a ‘love of variety’. It is shown that the volume of trade in terms of quantities falls with increasing product differentiation when the trade cost is relatively low, but rises with increasing product differentiation when the trade cost is relatively high. Among the results, it is shown that the trade liberalisation is more likely to be profitable under Cournot duopoly than under Bertrand duopoly for differentiated products with a positive trade cost.     

异质性通胀预期的信息粘性与信息更新频率

不同微观群体的通胀预期具有明显的异质性特征,而厘清异质性通胀预期的信息粘性和信息更新频率特征是构建前瞻性货币政策体系的重要基础.本文基于经典的流行病学模型,运用2001年1季度至2014年4季度我国居民与专家的通胀预期调研数据,分析了这两组具有代表性的异质性通胀预期的信息粘性与信息更新频率.研究表明:(1)我国居民和专家的通胀预期存在交互影响机制而非单向传染;(2)二者的信息粘性特征迥异,居民预期具有很高的信息粘性,而专家预期不具有粘性;(3)居民每季度有接近1/3的人更新预期信息,而所有专家每季度都进行信息更新.     

异质性预期下宏观审慎政策与货币政策的协调效应

本文在新凯恩斯DSGE模型中引入基于Agent的计算经济学的建模思想,构建了基于Agent的DSGE模型,从社会福利的角度探讨宏观审慎政策效应及其与货币政策的配合策略.研究发现:基于Agent的DSGE模型中,产出与通货膨胀对货币政策冲击的反应较“传统新凯恩斯DSGE模型”平缓,并且持续时间更长;本文模型更加符合现实经济,样本内外预测能力较传统新凯恩斯DSGE模型与VAR模型好;当经济面临违约风险冲击及生产力冲击时,中央银行运用包含逆风策略的货币政策工具与宏观审慎政策工具相配合对经济波动影响最小,更有利于维护金融稳定以及减少福利损失.     

Service Quality Expectations: Exploring the Importance of SERVQUAL Dimensions from Different Nonprofit Constituent Groups

Given the multiplicity of “customers” in the nonprofit sector, the need for nonprofits to ensure that quality service delivery matches customer expectations is difficult yet paramount. Nonprofit organizations serve several constituent groups: the service recipient, donor, volunteer, and general public at large. While each constituent group may not be perceived as a customer in the general sense, each group is making quality assessments that may affect performance evaluations, donations, volunteerism, and brand equity decisions. Hypothesis support was found, distinguishing between the importance of the different SERVQUAL dimensions and the perspective roles played within the nonprofit scenarios. Respondents playing the role of volunteer rated Empathy and Assurance highest and Tangibles lowest. Respondents playing the role of donor rated Reliability and Tangibles highest and Empathy lowest. Respondents playing the role of recipients rated Empathy and Responsiveness highest and Tangibles lowest. Finally, respondents playing the role of volunteer rated Assurance and Reliability highest and Tangibles lowest.     

Price Versus Quantity in a Duopoly with a Unilateral Effect and with Bargaining over Managerial Contracts

This study examines the endogenous choice of each firm’s strategic contract, that is, a price contract or a quantity contract, in a duopoly in which their demand functions are asymmetric when the content of their managerial contracts is determined through bargaining between the owner and the manager. The degree of asymmetry between their demand functions corresponds to the relation between the goods they produce. In contrast to the case wherein each firm’s delegation parameter is determined through profit maximization, we show that the quantity competition cannot become the equilibrium market structure when the bargaining power of the manager relative to that of the owner is sufficiently low. In particular, when the relation between the two goods is complementary, two asymmetric market structures can be observed in equilibrium. Furthermore, we consider the situation in which the relative bargaining power of the manager to that of the owner within each firm is different between the two firms.     

消费者对农产品质量安全的关注度及管理策略

本文在疏理国内外相关理论研究文献的基础上,通过调查获得的数据,分析不同特征的消费者对农产品安全质量的关注状况,并提出了相应的管理策略,为加强农产品的质量安全管理及市场管理提供重要的依据,也利于进一步规范农产品的生产和流通,增强国内农产品的竞争力。     

An Experimental Study of Cognitive Dissonance,Product Involvement,Expectations, Performance and Consumer Judgement of Product Performance

Abstract

This experimental study investigates the effects of cognitive dissonance, expectations, and product performance on product evaluations. The study improves upon the methodological problems of the past experimental studies. The results of a 2×2×2 factorial design suggest that product involvement acts as a moderator in the postdecisional product evaluation process. The theoretical and empirical findings suggest communication guidelines for the advertisers.     

Dumping in a Global World: Why Product Quality Matters

Anti‐dumping actions are now the trade policy of choice of developing and transition economies. To understand why these economies have increasingly applied anti‐dumping laws, we build a simple theoretical model of vertical intra‐industry trade and investigate the strategic incentives of exporting firms to undertake dumping. We show that the definition of dumping matters. Based on a comparison of low‐quality and high‐quality prices, only unilateral dumping by the low‐quality firm obtains. By contrast, the standard WTO definition leads to either reciprocal or unilateral dumping by the high‐quality firm, depending on cross‐country differences in incomes, the height of tariff protection and on exchange rate changes.     

Gender Differences in Service Quality Expectations in the Fast Food Industry

Abstract

Services marketers can influence the evaluation of service quality by “managing” customer expectations. Expectations can also provide insights into market segmentation strategies. Gender is often used as a segmentation variable since it is easily identifiable, accessible, and profitable. The purpose of this study was to examine if there are any gender-based differences in the expectations of service quality in the fast food industry. Hypotheses on gender differences in expectations were tested by an ANOVA, where the composite scores of each of the five dimensions of fast food service were used as dependent variables. The expectations of women were significantly higher than men in four of the five dimensions of fast food service quality.     

我国农产品质量安全政策影响因素分析

农产品质量安全近年来愈发受到社会中各个群体的关注,而其中大多数质量安全问题都是可以通过我国政策的调整来加以保障的。为此,作者基于农产品质量安全问题,对我国现有影响质量安全政策中的不足进行讨论,并提出改进对策与建议。     

浅谈产品实现过程的质量管理

随着社会发展及国家对质量的大力宣传,质量管理越来越受企业的认可和重视,而特殊行业则引入更高要求的行业质量体系。通过以某铁道产品加工企业质量管理现状为例,该企业按照IRIS管理体系进行过程控制,获取了IRIS体系证书,充分证明了体系运行正常。但在产品实现过程的管理中新产品项目管理运行、人力资源配置、技术的优化、信息平台的建设等工作迫在眉睫。该企业在设计和开发工作时,应充分考虑各种输入条件,通过产品实现情况,修订完善工艺;完善相关管理制度,建设信息平台;加强使用质量管理工具,有效提高设计水平和质量管理水平;建立一个系统用以保持和提升员工的资格,并重点关注培训的评估。     

Product Quality and the Criminal Law

When considering product quality, focus on the civil law as the means of obtaining consumer redress should not blind one to appreciation that the criminal law also has a useful role to play. Even in circumstances in which physical harm to the consumer has not occurred, economic detriment can be sufficient for the quality of a product to be questioned in the context of not only civil but also criminal proceedings. This article uses the example of English law to explore the rationales for regulation of product quality backed by criminal sanctions, and shows how there may be overlaps but also divergences in the scope of coverage of civil and criminal laws.     

Understanding Customer Role and its Importance in the Formation of Service Quality Expectations

A search of the Service Quality (SQ) and Customer Satisfaction (CS) literature reveals a gap in knowledge relating to the ‘expectation’ formation aspect of the disconfirmation paradigm.

Little consideration has been given to the ‘role’ of the customer in the service encounter, albeit that the above literature mostly customer that one measure of output performance comprises a customer comparison of the various delivery components with a self-established standard, of which ‘expectations’ appears the most common. A need exists to identify not only how customers define the standards and parameters for evaluation, but also, how the customers’ understanding of their role during service interaction affects the expectations they form.

This paper addresses the above need through the development and subsequent exploratory testing of a conceptual model of expectation formation. In addition to the recognised expectation antecedents of ‘experience’ and ‘familiarity,' two ‘role’ construct dimensions ‘role understanding’ and ‘role benefit’ are introduced in a broader expectation antecedent framework. The relationship between ‘experience’ and ‘familiarity’ with respect to expectations is found to be indirect in nature; with ‘role understanding’ and ‘role benefit’ both performing a mediator function. Managerial and research implications are discussed.     

Quality in Electronic Commerce B2C: Perceptions,Expectations and Importance

There are two academic and professional fields that are strategically important to today's firms: electronic commerce B2C (business to consumer) and Total Quality Management. Their joint appearance in the present scenario gives rise to opportunities and challenges on quality literature that need to be tackled. On that basis, this paper studies the predictive value of the alternative scales of quality in electronic commerce B2C: scale of perceptions, scale of difference (perception minus expectations) and scale of weighted differences. As a result, the measures of perceptions have more predictive value than other measures. However, the measures of expectations and the measures of importance have been considered for diagnostic proposes.     

进口中间品质量对企业生产率的影响:不同层面的实证

文章借鉴Amit K&Khandelwal(2013)的方法,使用2000-2006年中国工业企业数据库和中国海关数据库的匹配数据,测度进口中间品质量,并从不同层面实证检验了进口中间品质量对企业生产率的影响差异。结果表明:我国企业进口中间品质量对生产率有显著的正向影响;这种影响在不同层面存在差异,具体表现为进口中间品质量对加工贸易企业、外资企业、从发展中国家进口的企业和中高技术行业的企业生产率的促进效应明显高于其他对应类型的企业;学习效应在进口中间品质量的生产率影响中起主要作用;此外,文章还发现企业规模与生产率存在正向关系,说明中国企业总体还未达到规模不经济阶段。     

Different Effects of Utilitarian and Hedonic Benefits of Retail Food Packaging on Perceived Product Quality and Purchase Intention

Since consumers primarily make in-store purchase decisions, firms use product packaging to attract potential consumers. Ever-increasing market competition in many food product industries has further fueled this phenomenon in firms. However, the question of how retail food packaging affects consumer processes has received very little attention. This study investigates the benefits of food packaging on consumer responses to hedonic products by comparing different benefits (i.e., utilitarian and hedonic) of food packaging to understand which one has more impact on consumers’ perceived quality and purchase intention. The results show that both utilitarian and hedonic benefits of retail food packaging are critical predictors of consumer evaluations but play different important roles in determining customers’ reactions. Utilitarian benefits of food packaging impact perceived quality more than hedonic benefits do. Compared to utilitarian benefits, hedonic benefits of retail food packaging have more impact on consumer purchase intention.     

Entry into Export Markets and Product Quality

Using a rich data set of Chilean exporters, we analyse several issues regarding the relationship between entry into export markets and product quality. We find that every year, a large number of new exporting relationships are initiated, but the survival rate of these entries is very low and declines over time. Using unit values as a proxy for product quality, our estimations show that entry is generally associated with higher product quality. This higher quality, however, tends to reduce over time and eventually disappears three years after entry. In addition, our evidence suggests that the positive relationship between entry and quality is more prevalent in new exporters. To better identify this effect, we explore whether there are systematic differences across sectors. As expected, for sectors in which quality differentiation may be important, our findings reveal that reference‐price and differentiated products show a higher price in the year of entry and a longer convergence to incumbent prices. These results hold after controlling for potential sample selection bias.     

New Evidence on Price and Product Quality

A variety of investigations have indicated that consumers subjectively perceive a positive relation between price and product quality. However it is also necessary to consider the objective analysis of actual price-quality relations which exist among competing products available for consumer choice. This investigation reviews findings from some subjective and objective evaluations of the price-quality relationship, followed by an objective analysis of price versus quality among 135 recently marketed groups of products in five product categories. Findings indicate that for 51 percent of the products a positive price-produce quality relation may be inferred, and dramatic differences in this relation are evident from one product category to another. Implications of these findings for the efficiency of consumer decision-making, the performance of consumer markets and future research on objective price-quality relations are discussed.