Leverage regulation: An agent-based simulation

An agent-based financial market model is used to simulate the effects of financial regulation to reduce financial leverage. Results suggest that regulating leverage using margin calls can lead to less frequent financial crises per century, however, it creates harder hit financial crises than without regulation. In addition, regulation where the central authority tries to prick bubbles also leads to less frequent financial crises, but, creates greater volatility. Lastly, I find that leverage regulation where agent’s ability to borrow is not dependent on price produces less frequent crises and less volatility than the other regimes.     

Approaches to managing co-production for the co-creation of value in a museum setting: when authenticity matters

ABSTRACT

This qualitatively-based empirical research explored the strategies used by two museums to manage their roles in co-production as well as how they manage, motivate and guide visitors through the process of co-production. We also gained insights into how visitors responded to these strategies. Our findings suggest that the two museums employ different strategies to co-produce the consumption experience and that their strategies were linked to the nature of authenticity that is apparent in the museums. Strategies included explicitly controlling the visitor experience through empowering visitors to design their own visitor experience. The success of these strategies relied on the two museums recognising the situational variables of the context of consumption and adopting appropriate strategies that enabled them and the visitors to leverage the value of the visitor experience. The findings from this study suggest that further research should be undertaken on how authenticity might be integrated into a service-dominant logic paradigm and service strategies aimed at enhancing the co-creation of value.     

多元主体参与的科技馆区域协同发展模式研究

科技馆作为提升全民科学素质的重要基地,面临进一步提升科普服务能力、优化科普资源配置的急切需求。近年来,我国科技馆在区域协同发展、资源共建共享等方面取得了一些成功经验,逐渐摸索出总分馆制、科普联盟、社会共建等区域协同发展模式,有效推动了资源共享与社会协同程度,但也面临着发展不平衡、运行管理制度欠缺等困境。为了推进构建多元主体参与的科技馆区域协同发展新格局,应当坚持开放共享的发展思路,通过加强顶层设计,增强自身造血功能,构建评价体系等途径实现科技馆健康有序发展。     

Restaurant Food Choices by Moms: An Exploratory Study

Restaurants are always seeking to better understand customer decisions. Mothers are of significance to restaurants as they have a direct influence on others, primarily children and spouses. This study focuses on what affects the restaurant food choices of “Moms” (a woman with at least one child 10 years or under). Three categories of factors were uncovered: externalities which occur outside of the restaurant environment, concurrencies which occur in the restaurant at the point of purchase, and confirming factors which cause an item to be confirmed or rejected after the purchase intention has formed. This article examines the externalities category.     

基于激光切割技术的科技馆文创产品开发实践研究——以“记里鼓车拼装玩具”为例

科技馆开发文创产品,能够更好地实现自身的社会功能,对于延伸科技馆科普教育功能、满足公众对科普事业的需求具有重要意义。激光切割技术,作为一种加工制作方法,为文创产品研发设计提供了技术支持。本文基于激光切割技术的文创产品（拼插玩具）的开发实践,阐述激光切割技术在文创产品开发中的应用、科普文创产品设计理念与开发策略、自研科普文创产品研发思路与开发流程等,以期对科技馆行业内的文创产品开发工作有所启示。     

Country effect on firm performance: A multilevel approach

The debate about the impact of environmental constraints on firm performance in developing countries is relevant for business enterprises and governments. However, the academic literature offers limited empirical evidence comparing firm performance in emerging and developed countries. This paper performs a statistical analysis based on a sample of more than 10,000 firms in a 10-year span. A cross-classified 3-level hierarchical linear model allows the estimation of country, industry and country-industry interaction effects, which have roughly the same relative importance each. The analytical procedure is able to estimate the influence of each specific country on firm performance and produce a ranking of nations based on this effect. Country effects have a greater positive influence on firm performance in emerging countries than in more developed economies.     

Goods-market competition and profit sharing: a multisector macro approach

This paper develops a theoretical model that relates the degree of goods-market competition with the extent of profit sharing. Our multisector framework indicates that increased competition in goods markets leads to an increased weighting on firm profits in an optimally indexed contract. Consequently, our model predicts that a rising extent of profit-sharing arrangements in the United States should accompany an increase in the degree of goods-market competition. Available, but limited, data on profit sharing in the United States are generally consistent with this fundamental implication of the model.     

企业信息化投资比例分析

信息化已经逐步成为企业管理层日益重视的决策内容,中国企业信息化的热情已经达到了一个相当高的程度。但是,推进企业信息化的最终动力来自于企业自身对信息化的需求。企业对信息化需求的强弱程度,直接体现在企业对信息化的投资比例分配上。     

Structural change and cumulative causation: A Kaldorian approach

This paper presents a multisectoral model based on Kaldor's approach to explain the importance of structural change and cumulative causation. Divergence in countries' growth rates in Kaldorian models are explained either by different degrees of increasing returns among sectors on the supply side or by different income elasticities of exports and imports on the demand-side, but it is not explained by both factors together. In this vein, a multisector growth model that combines different sectoral income elasticities and different sectoral increasing returns is built to explain how structural changes toward high-tech industries can trigger a process of cumulative causation and ensure higher growth rates in the long run.     

Modeling preference evolution in discrete choice models: A Bayesian state-space approach

We develop discrete choice models that account for parameter driven preference dynamics. Choice model parameters may change over time because of shifting market conditions or due to changes in attribute levels over time or because of consumer learning. In this paper we show how such preference evolution can be modeled using hierarchial Bayesian state space models of discrete choice. The main feature of our approach is that it allows for the simultaneous incorporation of multiple sources of preference and choice dynamics. We show how the state space approach can include state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity, and more importantly, temporal variability in preferences using a correlated sequence of population distributions. The proposed model is very general and nests commonly used choice models in the literature as special cases. We use Markov chain monte carlo methods for estimating model parameters and apply our methodology to a scanner data set containing household brand choices over an eight-year period. Our analysis indicates that preferences exhibit significant variation over the time-span of the data and that incorporating time-variation in parameters is crucial for appropriate inferences regarding the magnitude and evolution of choice elasticities. We also find that models that ignore time variation in parameters can yield misleading inferences about the impact of causal variables. This paper is based on the first author's doctoral dissertation.     

An adaptive nonlinear approach for estimation of consumer satisfaction and loyalty in mobile phone sector of India

To facilitate business growth assessment of customer׳s, satisfaction and loyalty levels in mobile sector are two important issues which need in-depth investigation. These two levels of customers are nonlinearly related to their corresponding attributes. The past studies have mostly assumed linear relation and have mostly used regression based models for estimation of these levels and the results are not encouraging. To overcome this limitation, the present study has developed simple nonlinear models for accurate estimation of these two parameters using their related key factors and results obtained are shown to be much better. This paper has also observed the positive effect of satisfaction on the loyalty estimation of customers. Employing the proposed nonlinear adaptive models, the service provider can also predict the satisfaction and loyalty levels of each of its customers which help the organization to determine the number of possible future churners.     

Reduce product counterfeiting: An integrated approach

There is substantial interconnection between the reduction of product counterfeiting and quality management. This article seeks to demonstrate how integrating anti-counterfeiting initiatives into quality management strategies can reduce risk in the supply chain. We explore issues pertaining to product counterfeiting, the practical application and constraints of anti-counterfeiting initiatives within the supply chain, and the intersection of anti-counterfeiting initiatives with quality management programs. Gaps in current management strategies to address these issues are identified, and a potential remedy to address these deficiencies is proposed. Practical suggestions regarding the application of quality principles to offset counterfeiting should reduce risk in the supply chain.     

The long and short of money and prices: a market equilibrium approach

The paper examines the exogeneity of money and prices within a money demand function. Two modifications to traditional money demand vector error correction modeling are made. The first modification is to introduce a money supply function, while the second is to estimate the behavior of the money sector and real sector simultaneously. Incorporating the additional information removes many of the possible biases and, therefore, allows for more efficient estimation of money and price behavior. Overall, significantly more support is found for the existence of ‘buffer stock’ relationships than has been found in the previous research.     

Understanding recreational shopping: A new approach

Abstract

In this article recreational shopping is of concern, the course of action whereby individuals experience enjoyment from shopping. The article reviews previous research in the area and suggests directions for further research. It is suggested that research in the area would benefit from drawing more upon research that focuses on the sociocultural, experiential, and symbolic aspects of consumption, such as, for instance, consumer culture theory (CCT). Thus, it is argued that recreational shopping needs to be acknowledged as a multifaceted activity that may be performed in various ways and embody different types of consumer meanings. It is also argued that there is a need to focus more on the influence of retail environments on individuals engaged in recreational shopping.     

Explaining ethnic entrepreneurship: An evolutionary economics approach

The cultural approaches and the economic approaches advocated by mainstream neoclassical economists and new institutional economists fail to provide an adequate explanation of the differences between ethnic groups in the rate of business formation. These approaches provide only a partial explanation, much of which is based on static, predetermined exogenous and/or endogenous factors. By comparison the old institutional economists’ framework, when applied to this area, offers a more holistic explanation of differential ethnic business formation by bringing together a range of cultural and economic factors that emphasize the path dependency of activities and the dynamic evolution of behaviour and actions.     

Emerging Economies' March Toward Globalization: From China to Muscatine

ABSTRACT

In this paper, a university business faculty-based workload model (WLM) is described. The WLM incorporates all the activities associated with university academic life and serves as a base for the management and/or change management of any of these. The WLM also provides an objective, transparent and equitable mechanism for the allocation of workload for all academics in the faculty, recognizing that there are certain activities which have strategic importance and need to be encouraged. In this paper, the strategic academic activity selected for illustration is research activity and output (within an Australian context). The WLM can be adapted to suit most other country's higher education systems. The WLM per se explicitly incorporates an element of research management which is supplemented, due to the research context adopted in this paper, by a sub-model, the Research Quantum management Model (RQMM), whose specific intent is the (change) management of research activity and its subsequent output (research quantum).     

Cannibalization vs. competition: An empirical study of the impact of product durability on automobile demand

Many durable product categories have well developed and organized secondary markets that make it easy for consumers to purchase used versions in lieu of new ones. Manufacturers in these categories therefore face a dilemma in deciding on how much durability to build into their new products. High durability levels increase the risk that future new product sales are lost to used versions (the cannibalization effect), but can also help the firm take sales from new and used versions produced by its rivals (the competition effect). However, there has been no empirical research to determine the relative sizes of these two effects.Our research seeks to fill this gap in the literature via an empirical study of the demand for new and used vehicles in the US automobile market. We analyze two datasets; the first from the mid-sized sedan segment in the Indianapolis DMA during 2004–2006 and the second from the Entry Sports Utility segment in the Los Angeles DMA during the period 2003–2005. We propose and implement a durability metric that is based on the over-time trajectory of used car prices and estimate a structural model of differentiated product demand with heterogeneous consumers who choose among new and used vehicles and consider durability in their choice decisions. Both datasets reveal that durability significantly impacts the demand for new and used vehicles with mean durability elasticities estimated to be about 1.7. Both datasets also show that the competition effect (85%) is significantly greater the cannibalization effect (15%). While the prior theoretical literature generally recommends that firms avoid cannibalization by reducing product durability, our findings imply that manufacturers who increase the durability of their products may see net sales gains as a result.     

转轨经济中的金融自由化:次序与路径选择

发展中国家在推进金融市场化改革进程中,引发了大规模的通货失控,信用紧缩及资本外流问题.经验告诉我们,金融服务贸易市场开放的“次序”至关重要.根据我国初始经济条件、国际国内政治环境和经济形势、政府能力和政府的社会信任度,我国金融开放应做出适合自己的次序安排和路径选择.     

Shedding light on sharing ECONOMY and new materialist consumption: An empirical approach

In the last decade, the sharing economy has emerged as a business model that improves the use of goods, uses fewer resources than traditional markets, increases social interactions and promotes more responsible and environmentally friendly consumption. This has led various authors to propose that the sharing economy could be a business model that will change consumers’ relationship to objects and the materialistic lifestyle. This exploratory research is, to the best of our knowledge, the first to specifically identify a new consumer materialism with the sharing economy. To this end, a survey was conducted among 384 participants in the sharing economy, identifying not only the drivers of the new materialism but also their impact on consumption.Our conclusions show that we are currently experiencing a new materialism in which the main elements of traditional materialism—property and the accumulation of goods and the happiness derived from the accumulation of goods and their exhibition as a status symbol—are losing importance. Thus, materialism is evolving from a mere static accumulation of goods towards a hybrid model in which property and the enjoyment of goods coexist with the enjoyment of experiences, which are becoming increasingly more important. Last, participation in the sharing economy drives this new materialism through its contribution to a greater awareness of consumption. In other words, the consumer has a greater consumption awareness.This paper proposes theoretical foundations to conceptualize the new materialism and a new materialist consumer profile that represents a break from the traditional conception, provides evidence on the dynamics of the feedback and empowerment of the sharing economy, and finally contributes by shedding light on its impact because the dynamics and impact of the sharing economy are more complex than they initially seem and thus it is necessary to analyse different angles and concepts.     

The impact of media fragmentation on audience targeting: An empirical generalisation approach

With increasing fragmentation, advertisers are choosing media based upon their ability to deliver specific target markets to maximise return on media expenditure. In doing so, they rely upon the claims of media providers (whether in part or in full) about how their audiences differ from those of competing offerings. In this paper we consider just how successful media have been at attracting specialist audiences. We seek empirical generalisation by including a very broad range of audience member characteristics, multiple media types, two countries and three years of data in our analysis. We find that while there are some differences in the audiences that competing media deliver, these differences are largely inconsequential when (a) considered in light of the audience differentiation claims made by the media themselves and (b) that implicit in the audience targeting concept is the notion that media audiences are highly segmented. This research will challenge advertisers' entrenched assumptions about audience targeting and provide useful benchmarks for advertisers who place any credence on media selling propositions.