Household savings and present bias among Chinese couples: A household bargaining approach

Family savings is crucial to long-term wellbeing for all members in a household, particularly in a Chinese context where costs of living increasingly shift from government to individuals. Savings are typically examined as a balance of financial behaviors and spending preferences; however, this study highlights how savings in a family context is also a function of relationship status. Drawing on intra-household bargaining models, we analyze data from the 2014 China Family Panel Studies to examine the extent to which men's and women's relative power in the household explain variation in savings levels across families. Our findings indicate that women's greater bargaining positions (e.g., income and assets) correspond with greater savings for the family. However, such bargaining power constitutes a net negative for family savings when women have both greater relational power and higher spending preferences. We suggest that family savings can and should be understood as an outcome of dynamic bargaining conditions in addition to income factors.     

Toward a Resource-Based Theory of Bargaining Power in International Joint Ventures

Political, cultural, industrial, and firm-specific factors comine to make the bargaining relationship between international joint ventures partners a particularly complex one. This study focuses on one aspect of the problem: the relationship between the resources that a partner contributes and the bargaining power that it achieves in the venture. It traces ideas of bargaining power in the literature, to elicit what types of resource are likely to lead to dominance, the identifies several resources generally thought to be important contributions to a joint venture. The resources are ranked according to criteria of tacitness and appropriability, then displayed in matrix form to illustrate the expected outcome of bargaining in two-party international joint ventures.     

Knowledge based resources, property based resources and supplier bargaining power in Hollywood motion picture projects

Supplier bargaining power is a factor that must be considered in resource based theories of dynamic capability. As competitors develop capabilities for dynamically changing resource configurations, they become more reliant on suppliers and allies. Because different types of supplier will have more or less bargaining power, some resource configurations will be more attractive to buyers. Hypotheses are developed and tested using data on star power, intellectual property, knowledge based resource quality, costs and revenues for 278 motion pictures released in the United States in 2000 and 2001. Suppliers appear to fully appropriate returns to knowledge and property based services, while buyers benefit from control of intellectual property and from the combination of intellectual property and talent behind the camera.     

Radius Restrictions on Retail Chains and the Similarity of Neighboring Shopping Centers

In Canada and the US, shopping center developers may impose ‘radius restrictions’ on tenants in their shopping centers, prohibiting tenants in a particular shopping center from opening another store within a certain radius. Whether a radius restriction is imposed on a chain will depend upon the relative bargaining positions of the chain and the developer. This paper presents an empirical analysis of regional shopping center composition in Canada, using variables that reflect the bargaining power of retail chains and shopping center developers. We find that large, well established, and growing chains are more likely to enter neighboring malls, consistent with the hypothesis that whether a chain enters neighboring malls depends upon its bargaining power. As well, we find that a chain is more likely to enter neighboring malls owned by large developers, consistent with large developers trying to keep retail chains out of the malls of small developers.     

How Good Are You at Getting a Lower Price? A Field Study of the US Automobile Market

Many large ticket items, such as cars and real estate, involve extensive bargaining on the part of consumers. From a consumer protection perspective, it is thus important to understand the determinants of bargaining outcomes and identify ways in which consumers can improve their bargaining performance. This research identifies several situational factors, including the information available to the consumer, the promotional environment, and a customer??s trade-in, that may have an impact on the bargaining outcome. A unique dataset is created from the US automobile market that combines actual vehicle transaction data with survey data on buyer search and bargaining behaviour. The results show that these situational variables indeed have an impact on the price a consumer pays. Specifically, on average, consumers who used the Internet and those that were offered a manufacturer rebate saved $481 and $2,126, respectively, while consumers who traded-in their old vehicle ended up paying $159 more on the new car compared to consumers who did not trade-in. Interestingly, the impact of some of these situational variables differed depending on the consumers?? ability to bargain and their enjoyment of bargaining. For example, high ability bargainers achieved more price reductions than low ability bargainers, given more information and a more active promotional environment, but this advantage did not extend in overcoming the negative impact of a trade-in. On the other hand, while buyers who enjoy bargaining do not possess a better position in a bargaining situation, they have greater tendency to search for price information and thus are better at identifying suppliers that offer a lower initial price. From a policy perspective, these results suggest that information search should be encouraged and made easier, particularly for consumers who dislike bargaining. Furthermore, even if some consumers have a high bargaining ability, there are still circumstances where their ability to get a lower price is limited. Education that highlights these pitfalls is likely to improve the final bargaining outcome and thus enhance consumer welfare.     

MEXICAN-AMERICAN WIVES' SATISFACTION WITH RESOURCE USE AS INFLUENCED BY EMPLOYMENT STATUS

The employment status of 356 Mexican-American wives was examined in relation to availability and usage of family resources and to quality of life. More similarities than differences by employment status were found in satisfaction with resource management. Nevertheless, full-time homemakers were more satisfied with discretionary time, amount and quality of work accomplished at home, and friendships than were full- or part-time employed wives. Employed wives perceived their family income as more adequate than non-employed wives but were not significantly more satisfied with the standard of living resulting from this income. Wives were generally satisfied with their family life and overall quality of life regardless of employment status.     

产业分析报告——澳大利亚英特网服务供应商

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This reportaimsto analyze competitiveness Ofintemet industy in Australia Using five forces model.Competition is more intensive between Telstra andOptuswhich have a remarked position in the market.     

Endogenous political organization and the value of trade agreements

In a bargaining model of endogenous protection, I introduce fixed costs of political-organization that need to be incurred by capitalists prior to actual lobbying. Unlike Maggi and Rodriguez-Clare [J. Pol. Econ. 106(3) (1998) 575] intersectoral capital mobility is disallowed. Nevertheless, I am still able to obtain their main result that a government with low bargaining power vis-à-vis the import-competing lobby precommits to a free-trade agreement. Further, with high fixed organizational costs, the government prefers to stay out of such agreements. Its maximum bargaining power consistent with signing a trade agreement has an inverse-V-shaped relationship with respect to the size of fixed costs.     

(De)Unionization,Trade Liberalization and Selection

The effects of union bargaining power and trade liberalization on industry selection are analysed within a two‐country heterogeneous‐firm model with firm‐specific unions and inter‐country asymmetries in size and union power. Union bargaining power is shown to have more nuanced effects on efficiency and welfare than what typically suggested by conventional wisdom. While the higher wages resulting from an unfavourable union power differential harm firms' competitiveness, by reinforcing standard market access mechanisms, they give rise to aggregate demand effects that can act as a catalyst for industry and result in a pro‐variety effect.     

Friend or foe: Customer-supplier relationships and innovation

This study provides an empirical investigation of the impact of customer-supplier relationships on firm innovation in an interorganizational framework encompassing transaction cost economics, resource dependence theory, and the theory of incomplete contracts. Using a sample of U.S. firms for the period from 1980 to 2005, this study explores how customer concentration and customer bargaining power affect a supplier's process innovation and product innovation measured with R&D-to-assets ratio and patents (also citations), respectively. The findings imply that a concentrated customer base, which reflects a strong customer-supplier relationship as well as high switching costs, motivates suppliers to invest more in R&D and become more innovative. However, the evidence also suggests that strong customer bargaining power creates hold-up problems and forces suppliers to invest less in R&D and innovation. The results are robust to sophisticated econometric techniques that control for endogeneity and suggest heterogeneous effects of business partnerships on firm innovation.     

Simulated Negotiations in the Hiring of a Salesforce Manager: Tests of Two-Person Bargaining Solutions

This paper examines the ability to predict bargaining outcomes consistent with Nash, Kalai-Smorodinsky, and Gupta-Livne bargaining models as well as two heuristic solutions based on interpersonal (cardinal) comparisons of utility. Equal earning and equal loss solutions are developed from bargainers' multi-attribute utility functions. An experimental test of these bargaining solutions is conducted for simulated negotiations between a representative of sales force management and a representative of sales force employees over the hire of a regional sales manager. Results show that proportional (Kalai-Smorodinsky) solutions are generally more likely when bargaining is conducted in attribute space, and equal loss solutions are more likely in utility space.     

Reciprocal Tariff Reductions Under Asymmetric Bargaining Power

Increasing heterogeneity of participants that form the basis of WTO trade negotiations has raised concerns about unfair treatment of weak countries due to their lack of bargaining power. The WTO responds to these concerns by arguing that the institutional design with its specific rules such as the principle of reciprocity serves to reduce inequalities in bargaining power by giving smaller (weaker) countries more voice. A recent study has challenged this result for a particular type of reciprocity, namely the volume approach. Given the wide discretion of how reciprocal concessions are conducted, I give a more complete picture of how different kinds of reciprocity affect the bargaining outcome of asymmetric countries. It turns out that, while the volume approach amplifies the negative effects of power asymmetries, a tariff formula approach has the ability to reverse this effect. For low symmetries, the Swiss formula does the best job, whereas for larger power differences, a linear formula is best suited to reduce the impact of power asymmetries.     

Bargaining power and information in SME lending

Small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are informationally opaque and bank dependent. In SME lending, banks largely rely on soft information, because the scale and scope of hard information are limited. We analyze whether and how hard and soft information affects the borrower??s bargaining power vis-à-vis its bank. We use the fact that, for a given credit rating, certain borrowers obtain better loan terms than others to define measures of relative bargaining power. Using SME loan data from the USA and Germany, we find that more favorable soft information (management skills and character) increases borrower bargaining power. We also show that more favorable soft than hard information improves borrower bargaining power. The results are not driven by manipulation or statistical limitations of the credit ratings. Our study suggests that soft information represents an important and direct determinant of borrower bargaining power, affecting the outcomes of the loan contracting process.     

Parental style and consumer socialization among adolescents: A cross-cultural investigation

The paper examines how parental style affects consumer socialization in a cross-national context, focusing on family communication orientation, adolescents' use of influence strategies, susceptibility to peer influence, and impulse buying tendency. Multiple-informant data from each family (i.e., father, mother, and adolescent) are used in the analysis. The findings suggest that Chinese adolescents, compared with their Canadian counterparts, use less bilateral influence strategies (reasoning, bargaining), but more unilateral influence strategies (playing on emotions, stubborn persuasion); they are also less susceptible to peer influence, and have less impulse buying tendency. Across both cultures, authoritarian parents are more socio-oriented than authoritative, permissive, and neglectful parents, whereas authoritative and permissive parents are more concept-oriented than authoritarian and neglectful parents. Furthermore, adolescents with authoritative and permissive parents more likely use bilateral influence strategies than those with authoritarian parents, while adolescents with neglectful parents use more unilateral influence strategies than those with other parental styles. These findings provide novel insights on market segmentation and international marketing practices.     

事务所行业专长、客户谈判能力与审计费用

文章以我国上市公司为对例,实证研究了事务所行业专长和客户谈判能力对审计费用的影响,研究结果表明:在总体上,我国审计收费与事务所行业专业化水平显著正相关,与客户谈判能力显著负相关,行业专业化水平愈高的事务所,审计收费溢价愈多;谈判能力愈强的企业,折价愈多;相对而言,有行业专长的事务所和国际"四大"的专业化收费溢价更多;但在客户谈判能力较高时,事务所的专业化溢价水平较低;客户谈判能力的折价效应仅在"非四大"审计时存在,"四大"审计时不存在;在无行业专长的"非四大"审计时存在,有行业专长的"非四大"审计时不存在;在企业的谈判能力强时存在,企业的谈判能力弱时不存在。     

Family Firms and Labor Productivity: The Role of Enterprise‐Level Bargaining in the Italian Economy

We investigate the role of Italian firms in labor productivity performance. We find that family‐owned firms have lower labor productivity than their non‐family counterparts. In a second step, we estimate the role of firm‐level bargaining (FLB) to determine whether family‐controlled firms that adopt this type of bargaining may partially close the gap in terms of labor productivity with their non‐family competitors. Our results, obtained through IV estimation to control for endogeneity bias, suggest that enterprises under family governance achieve significant labor productivity gains—greater than those achieved by their non‐family counterparts—when they adopt firm‐level bargaining.     

The Politics of Protection: An Institutional Approach to Government–Industry Relations in the British and United States Cotton Industries, 1945–73

Internationally, the establishment of the GATT marked the beginning of a shift to greater trade liberalism. Against this background the governments of developed economies have generally treated textiles as a special case. This essay focuses on the differing level of political bargaining power exerted by the cotton industry interest groups in Britain and the United States, in their quest for protection, since 1945. It demonstrates that, to understand why pressure groups in the United States gained more concessions than those in Britain, it is necessary to consider the differing institutional and political environments in which they operated and the historical forces which shaped them.     

晚年独居意味着孤独吗?——基于社会网络的调节与中介作用分析

老年人独居比例和孤独感的上升已经成为家庭现代化转型中的典型现象,现有对二者关系的研究忽视了社会网络的视角。基于2014年中国老年健康影响因素跟踪调查数据,利用潜在类别分析和logistic回归模型考察了社会网络在老年人独居和孤独感之间所发挥的作用。研究发现,老年人独居并不意味着会感到孤独,不同类型的社会网络加重或缓解了独居带来的孤独感上升。具体而言:第一,老年人社会网络可以分为多元-活跃型、社会-消极型、子女-消极型和单一-活跃型四种类型;资源禀赋丰富的老年人具有多元-活跃型社会网络的概率更大。第二,仅具有子女-消极型社会网络的老年人,单人独居才会显著提升他们的孤独感。第三,单人独居和夫妇独居老年人均会通过多元-活跃型的社会网络缓解自身孤独感。应通过积极的公共政策,从能力建设和社区环境营造两方面,推动老年人社会网络向多元-活跃型转变。     

Understanding the Innovation Behavior of Family Firms

This paper examines innovation behavior in family firms, analyzing their innovation efforts, sources, and results. Its underlying premise is that innovation behavior depends on the firm's resource endowment and the level of risk inherent in the decision to innovate, factors that make family involvement an influential characteristic in innovation processes. Using a large sample of Spanish firms, the findings show that family firms perform fewer innovation efforts and are less inclined to turn to external sources of innovation—such as technological collaboration—than nonfamily firms. Finally, family firms are more likely to achieve incremental innovations than radical innovations.