不同价格背景下肉鸡产业链主体利益优化研究

[目的]为全面分析肉鸡产业链各主体利益分配情况。[方法]文章以肉鸡主产区山东、河南、河北等省为例,对肉鸡出栏价格处于不同变化趋势下的产业链环节主体成本收益情况进行对比分析,并利用Shapley值测算产业链各主体最佳利益分配值。[结果](1)价格高峰与低谷期肉鸡产业链各环节主体利益分配格局差别较大,研究农产品产业链利益分配时需将农产品价格周期纳入研究范围。(2)各主体合作加强合作可实现利益分配的合理化及增加链条总收益。价格低谷期产业链环节主体种鸡场、养殖户、屠宰加工企业、零售商利益分配值与最佳利益分配比例为10.49:(-0.45):44.42:45.54调整为13.96:18.51:31.33:36.20,合作后肉鸡产业链增值比合作前高1.68元/只。现实利益分配情况与夏普利值测算的最佳分配方案存在一定差距。(3)一体化模式、公司+农户模式下肉鸡产业链各环节由于合同或契约的存在,各主体之间在生产管理、要素供应等方面协作更加紧密,抗市场风险能力相对较强,利益分配格局相对合理。[结论]提出加强肉鸡产业链各环节主体间相互合作、建立公司与农户更加紧密的利益联结机制、做强做大肉鸡行业协会促进肉鸡产业健康发展等建议。     

A study of service quality in rural ICT renters of Iran by SERVQUAL

The development of rural telecommunication services in Iran has been a major and national concern during the past few years. Towards the national planning and in a giant movement, 10 000 centers have been established in rural areas. Because of the novelty of such centers, the authors try to measure the service quality of the rural ICT centers using the SERVQUAL model. The results can be used towards the betterment of the services. Five hypotheses including tangibility, accountability, guarantee, empathy and reliability of service were examined. Twenty four ICT centers were selected in Rasht city as sample. Considering common sense or perception, 63% of the subjects evaluated the quality of services as average. In terms of quality, empathy was ranked as the ideal dimension followed by tangibility, certainties, trust, and guarantee, respectively. However, the least appropriate dimension of quality was given to accountability. In terms of expectation, the highest percentage of individuals, that is, 92% believed that quality of services was important, and believed that among the components of quality indices from the most to the least important items were: reliability, tangibility, accountability, guarantee, and empathy consecutively. This research showed that the SERVQUAL model can be used for determine the quality of services offered by Tele-centers in rural areas.     

Do firms underreport information on cyber-attacks? Evidence from capital markets

Firms should disclose information on material cyber-attacks. However, because managers have incentives to withhold negative information, and investors cannot discover most cyber-attacks independently, firms may underreport them. Using data on cyber-attacks that firms voluntarily disclosed, and those that were withheld and later discovered by sources outside the firm, we estimate the extent to which firms withhold information on cyber-attacks. We find withheld cyber-attacks are associated with a decline of approximately 3.6% in equity values in the month the attack is discovered, and disclosed attacks with a substantially lower decline of 0.7%. The evidence is consistent with managers not disclosing negative information below a certain threshold and withholding information on the more severe attacks. Using the market reactions to withheld and disclosed attacks, we estimate that managers disclose information on cyber-attacks when investors already suspect a high likelihood (40%) of an attack.     

Boldly going where no brain has gone: Futures of evolutionary cognitive neuroscience

Evolutionary cognitive neuroscience (ECN) is a new discipline that employs methodology from cognitive neuroscience to study, in vivo, the proximate mechanisms of putative evolved psychological/cognitive adaptations. The formalized discipline is less than five years old, but has already generated a plethora of research as well as extended our understanding of the evolved nature of the mind/brain. Here we briefly recapitulate the antecedents to an evolutionarily informed cognitive neuroscience, attempt to fit ECN into a broader evolutionary psychology framework that seeks to account for evolved adaptations to recurrent problems faced by our ancestors, and discuss the futures of this newly formed discipline by expounding on methodological techniques and theoretical accounts that may pervade our future. We believe, as the Nobel laureate Nikko Tinbergen has suggested, that a complete understanding of the evolved nature of behavior and cognition (i.e., evolved cognitive adaptations) can only come from investigations at both the proximate and ultimate levels and, thus here, we attempt to cast ECN as the proximate sister discipline to evolutionary psychology. When taken together these two disciplines have the potential to uncover how and why the mind works.     

Living in the age of emotional rationality: Wendell Bell, social media and the challenges of value change

When the change process accelerates, the meaning of the logic of cause and effect in living through this blurring reality clearly diminishes. We have to tell the story of our reality and future both to ourselves and to society with new concepts, words and metaphors. While the importance of instant experience and transience grows, our in-depth understanding of the logic of time gradually crumbles away. The fervency of action widens the limits of reality in a fundamental way, even though our personal human capacity to receive and handle information and experience emotions and events has not changed in the one million years of human history.The present is swelling over the past and the future. The social media transforms into one big global amplifier through which emotional experience is transmitted and strengthened. The asset of collective experiences is that they are universal, they are private and felt on an individual level, and yet they can simultaneously be shared by the others. However, one might also say that even though the growth of information produces more and more different value contents for us to choose from, this freedom of choice is still rather spurious.With the traditional norms, models of action, habits and attitudes we can no longer cope in this totally new reality. We live in an age of controversies which emphasizes emotions with public intimacy and privacy with a realtime audience. We are enchanted by creativity and innovativeness and our decisions have to be made quickly, efficiently and in a short-term basis. We cannot freely consider our values, but in order to cope, we have to try to behave in a way which is the most target-oriented, and at the same time, the tools and methods to cope in this rapidly changing reality are still scarce. Therefore we have to weigh the efficiency and suitability of the means in relation to the objective also in such situations where we cannot make proper value assessments. Emotional universality can become, or at least with the help of skilled media PR professionals, it can be used as a means to commercialize our emotions, or it can help us in the process of building universal values.     

Re‐Examining the Technical Efficiency of Australian Banks: A Bootstrap DEA Approach

This study re‐examines both pure technical and scale efficiency of Australian banks using bootstrap data envelopment analysis (DEA). The aim is to improve the choice of variables of the core profit efficiency model which is commonly used in earlier Australian banking efficiency studies. After we introduce the “interest income” over “net interest income” variable in the core profit efficiency model, the proportion of fully pure technical efficient banks decreased to 23% which is significantly lower than 81% which was reported in a recent study. This research argues that the main issue that has contributed to this difference is that improving the choice of variables significantly increases the discriminatory power of efficiency estimates. Additionally, emphasising on statistical properties of efficiency estimates, this study employs bootstrap DEA to provide confidence intervals and bias corrected estimates of pure technical efficiency scores of the sample banks. The bootstrap results show the importance of incorporating sample variation and bias in estimating efficiency scores. Earlier Australian banking efficiency studies ignored such issues. The new findings from the sample banks could have important implications for the banking industry in Australia.     

Fairness in business: Does it matter,and what does it mean?

Fairness is a value that is touted and typically reinforced from childhood onward. Its association is universally positive. But does fairness have a place in business? Does it extend to the realm in which profit is emphasized? This Business Law & Ethics Corner delves into the matter and provides guidance for decision makers regarding fairness and its implications for business.