Background factors to innovation performance: results of an empirical study using fsQCA methodology

On the one hand, we have analyzed the relationships between four key constructs: entrepreneurial orientation, online social networks, organizational learning capability and innovation performance. On the other hand, we have observed the importance of correctly using and justifying the calibration in fsQCA given that the obtained results may differ. We developed an empirical study with 209 four-star and five-star Spanish hotels. Using the fsQCA methodology, the results show that in order to obtain innovative results, hotels should combine Entrepreneurial Orientation and online Social Networks along with organizational learning capability.     

Productivity, returns to scale and product differentiation in the retail trade industry: an empirical analysis using Japanese firm-level data

This paper examines productivity and returns to scale under the assumption of monopolistic competition using Japanese firm-level data. Although differentiating products (services) is considered important in firms?? strategies and productivity growth, it has not been sufficiently investigated in previous studies. In this paper, we study this issue in two retail trade industries, department stores and supermarkets, applying the model of Melitz (2000). Our results indicate that the standard production function is not relevant to estimate productivity in imperfectly competitive markets. It also suggests that the market structure should be carefully considered in productivity analysis. In addition, product differentiation has a positive effect on firms?? revenue for the supermarkets. Furthermore, the retail trade industries possibly follow increasing returns to scale. Thus, policy measures that promote economies of scale and product differentiation should contribute to further growth in these industries. In addition, the results indicate that the regulatory reform of the retail trade industry in 2000 increased the gap between winners and losers in terms of productivity.     

Constructing measures for school process variables: the potential of multilevel confirmatory factor analysis

This article investigates the potential of multilevel confirmatory factor analysis compared to using conventional confirmatory factor analysis, as regards the construction of measures for school process variables within educational effectiveness research. Since both techniques have not been systematically compared within educational research, we propose to contrast several aspects: factor structure, pattern of factor loadings, communalities of the indicators, variance extracted by the factors, internal consistency of the factors, and inter-factor correlations. To this end, teacher questionnaire data are used to construct measures for school process variables. Our results show no substantial differences when comparing both techniques at the teacher level. However, when contrasting the different levels within the more complex technique, we notice a fairly large discrepancy between the teacher-level results and the school-level results.     

Environmental taxes,reforms and economic growth: an empirical analysis of panel data

This paper explores the relationship between environmentally related taxes and the economic growth rate. The analysis also investigates whether this relationship differs between countries that have implemented environmental tax reforms (ETRs) and those that have not. Using panel data from 31 OECD countries over the period 1994–2013, the paper finds that when we allow environmentally related tax revenues to interact with an initial level of real GDP per capita, the overall revenues of these taxes are negatively associated with the economic growth rate in the short and long term. Furthermore, we show that the higher the initial level of GDP per capita, the more environmentally related tax revenues can promote the economic growth rate. The analysis also reveals that the relationship between environmentally related tax revenues and economic growth varies between countries that have a mechanism to redistribute environmentally related tax revenues and those that do not.     

The power of quality models: The example of the SIQ model for performance excellence

Most contemporary total quality management (TQM) practice is influenced, directly or indirectly, by structured, acontextual and standardized quality models. The present paper focuses on the strategic introduction of one such model, namely the Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ) model for performance excellence, in a Swedish public-sector organization, which we refer to as ‘the Authority.’ We take our theoretical stance from Foucault's concept of ‘power/knowledge.’ In describing the case, we focus on the management team of one of the Authority's ten regions. Our analysis shows the members of the management team using the SIQ model to objectify both the organization and themselves as managers. However, contrary to many critical or managerial accounts, the SIQ model was not totalizing: management subjectivities changed but were not entirely reconstituted, and some resistance to them was generated by the members of the management team, in their role as professionals.     

Exemption laws and consumer delinquency and bankruptcy behavior: an empirical analysis of credit card data

In this paper, we examine how homestead, personal property, and garnishment exemption laws affect consumer’s delinquency and bankruptcy behavior by focusing on the credit card market. In particular, after controlling for credit supply and shock effects like unemployment we investigate whether consumer propensity for delinquency, formal bankruptcy, and informal bankruptcy changes with respect to the exemption levels those resident cardholders enjoy. Our results show that loose garnishment and property exemption laws increase delinquency. Furthermore, while loose garnishment and property exemption laws encourage informal bankruptcy, loose homestead and property exemption laws encourage formal bankruptcy. These results imply a certain degree of substitutability between formal and informal bankruptcy.     

Adjusting for the environment in DEA: A comparison of alternative models based on empirical data

Due to the existence of free software and pedagogical guides, the use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been further democratized in recent years. Nowadays, it is quite usual for practitioners and decision makers with no or little knowledge in operational research to run their own efficiency analysis. Within DEA, several alternative models allow for an environmental adjustment. Four alternative models, each user-friendly and easily accessible to practitioners and decision makers, are performed using empirical data of 90 primary schools in the State of Geneva, Switzerland. Results show that the majority of alternative models deliver divergent results. From a political and a managerial standpoint, these diverging results could lead to potentially ineffective decisions. As no consensus emerges on the best model to use, practitioners and decision makers may be tempted to select the model that is right for them, in other words, the model that best reflects their own preferences. Further studies should investigate how an appropriate multi-criteria decision analysis method could help decision makers to select the right model.     

Financial development and economic growth: an empirical evidence from the GCC countries using static and dynamic panel data

This paper contributes to the existing empirics of finance-growth nexus of all GCC countries with new results based on a larger dataset and longer time period 1975–2012, incorporating additional control variables, FDI, interaction term of FDI & financial development variables, and oil production. We employed four estimation techniques, Pooled OLS, Fixed effect estimation, Random effect estimation, and the system GMM estimation and used static and dynamic panel data. We obtain a robust finding of consistently a positive effect of financial sector development (FSD) on economic growth of GCC region with implication that a substantial improvement in FSD was in place. The results indicate that FDI, Fixed capital formation and oil production contribute positively to the economic growth of this region. The study results signify for a continuity of the on-going financial reform process, supervision & monitoring exercises to bring hitherto more dividends to the GCC economies.     

The inverse operationalisation of concepts for the secondary analysis of quantitative data: an example from the study of parental collaboration

Properly validated scalar variables are often viewed as the gold standard for the operationalisation of concepts in quantitative data. This is a sensible approach at the planning stage of the survey process. However, when working with data that has already been collected for another purpose, such variables cannot always be expected. This is particularly the case when one wishes to analyse a concept that has not previously been studied in a particular context. This paper provides an example of the construction of a binary variable for the concept of parental collaboration, using data from the Growing Up in Scotland study. It examines the decision-making process for the “inverse operationalisation” of the concept, an innovative method which starts with the assumption that all cases in the dataset demonstrate a particular property (parental collaboration), and gradually chips away at those which provide sufficient evidence to suggest otherwise, until a working variable is created.     

资源型城市旅游资源开发的实证研究——以山西临汾为例

煤铁资源型城市临汾面临着产业转型的压力,而旅游业将为资源型城市带来良好的经济、环境、社会效益,因此,实施旅游替代战略是临汾当前的理想选择.根据临汾的旅游资源现状,其旅游形象可定位为"壶口雄风兴尧都,花果林立新煤都",通过实施发展工业旅游、大力发展旅游替代、联姻其他替代产业、开展会展节庆旅游、开发特色旅游商品等旅游资源开发战略,使临汾的经济获得新的发展,城市可持续发展得以实现.     

Network effects with quality change: an empirical analysis of the Japanese mobile telecommunications market, 1995–2001

This study assesses the role of network effects under rapid quality change in the Japanese mobile telecommunications market by utilizing a simple framework based on a discrete choice model of product differentiation. The results indicate the existence of network effects in the Japanese mobile telecommunications market during the late 1990s and early 2000s. However, changes in the value of mobile telecommunications services mainly depend on quality changes; the contribution of network effects is negligible. Additionally, over time, network effects make a diminishing contribution to improving consumers' valuations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quasi‐rational and ex ante price expectations in commodity supply models: an empirical analysis of the US broiler market

A statistically optimal inference about agents' ex ante price expectations within the US broiler market is derived using futures prices of related commodities along with a quasi‐rational forecasting regression equation. The modelling approach, which builds on a Hamilton‐type framework, includes endogenous production and allows expected cash price to be decomposed into anticipated and unanticipated components. We therefore infer the relative importance of various informational sources in expectation formation. Results show that, in addition to the quasi‐rational forecast, the true supply shock, future prices, and ex post commodity price forecast errors have, at times, been influential in broiler producers' price expectations. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于灰色关联理论的旅游业影响因子分析——以浙江省为例

利用灰色关联分析法对浙江省2005-2010年的旅游产业进行了定量分析,发现浙江省旅游业影响因子从大到小的关联排序为:国内生产总值、人均国内生产总值、城镇家庭收入、旅客周转量、客运量、在校大学生人数、星级饭店数、运输线路距离、广播电视覆盖率。通过建立GM(1,1)模型,对浙江省国内旅游收入和国际创汇进行了短期预测。     

Principal components at work: the empirical analysis of monetary policy with large data sets

The empirical analysis of monetary policy requires the construction of instruments for future expected inflation. Dynamic factor models have been applied rather successfully to inflation forecasting. In fact, two competing methods have recently been developed to estimate large‐scale dynamic factor models based, respectively, on static and dynamic principal components. This paper combines the econometric literature on dynamic principal components and the empirical analysis of monetary policy. We assess the two competing methods for extracting factors on the basis of their success in instrumenting future expected inflation in the empirical analysis of monetary policy. We use two large data sets of macroeconomic variables for the USA and for the Euro area. Our results show that estimated factors do provide a useful parsimonious summary of the information used in designing monetary policy. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding gentrification: an empirical analysis of the determinants of urban housing renovation

The “back-to-the-city” phenomenon presented an unpredicted countercurrent in the prevalent tide of suburbanization, and this process of upper-income resettlement in the inner city has been thoroughly analyzed in the urban economic literature. Housing renovation, a process that always accompanies gentrification and constitutes a significant portion of residential housing investment, has been studied much less. Contrary to the expectation that “location matters,” the existing empirical studies have concluded that most neighborhood amenities and structural attributes are insignificant as determinants of renovation. Using a detailed parcel-level data set that documents all residential renovation activity in Chicago between 1995 and 2000, this paper establishes that the characteristics of a building and its neighborhood do indeed influence the likelihood that it will be renovated.     

Latent variable models for time series: A frequency domain approach with an application to the permanent income hypothesis

The theory of estimation and inference in a very general class of latent variable models for time series is developed by showing that the distribution theory for the finite Fourier transform of the observable variables in latent variable models for time series is isomorphic to that for the observable variables themselves in classical latent variable models. This implies that analytic work on classical latent variable models can be adapted to latent variable models for time series, an implication which is illustrated here in the context of a general canonical form. To provide an empirical example a latent variable model for permanent income is developed, its parameters are shown to be identified, and a variety of restrictions on these parameters implied by the permanent income hypothesis are tested.     

A goal programming-discriminant function approach to the estimation of an empirical production function based on DEA results

This paper describes a new frontier estimation procedure which relies on results obtained from Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The paper reviews some of the earlier works in this area and points out potential difficulties with them. It further suggests ways to validate such developments. A procedure is constructed on the basis of a Goal Programming (GP)-Discriminant Function model developed in stages during the 1980s. A numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed procedure. Then, an extensive simulation in which the GP-based procedure is compared to three regression-based techniques is presented. The simulation results clearly indicate the superiority of the proposed technique over the regression alternatives.     

Development of a critical appraisal tool for assessing the reporting quality of qualitative studies: a worked example

Quality & Quantity - Conducting a critical appraisal is considered as one of the essential steps in any type of qualitative synthesis. While various appraisal tools are available in the...