Managing perceived risk for credit card purchase through supplementary services

The present study aims to understand the significance of supplementary services as nonpersonal sources of information to consumers to handle perceived risk associated with the purchase of credit card services. The impact of supplementary services is particularly studied towards functional risk and psychological risk. The study is based on primary data collected by a survey with the help of a questionnaire administered through personal interviews. It is found that supplementary services can play a significant role in controlling functional and psychological perceived risk associated with credit card services. Marketers of credit cards can enhance the value of services to customers and can thus enhance purchase possibilities by reducing perceived risk through supplementary services that are controllable. Perceived risk in financial services marketing is an important factor from the consumers’ point of view for purchase decisions and is also an issue of significance to service marketers. It is an original attempt to examine the relationship between perceived risk and supplementary services.     

Network formation with heterogeneous players

This paper extends the connections model of network formation by allowing for players who are heterogeneous with respect to values as well as the costs of forming links. Our principal result is that centrality and short average distances between individuals are robust features of equilibrium networks.     

BILATERALISM AND FREE TRADE*

We study a setting with many countries; in each country there are firms that can sell in the domestic as well as foreign markets. Countries can sign bilateral free‐trade agreements that lower import tariffs and thereby facilitate trade. We allow a country to sign any number of bilateral free‐trade agreements. A profile of free‐trade agreements defines the trading regime. Our principal finding is that, in symmetric settings, bilateralism is consistent with global free trade. We also explore the effects of asymmetries across countries and political economy considerations on the incentives to form trade agreements.     

Identifying Long Run Supply Curve of India

Identifications of a vertical then a horizontal supply curve are successively imposed on Indian time series inflation and industrial output growth data in a two-equation Structural Vector Autoregression (SVAR) model. The results provide an indirect test of the identifications. A high elasticity of long run supply cannot be ruled out, because supply shocks have a large impact on inflation and demand has a large and persistent effect on output levels. But supply is subject to frequent shocks. Estimated structural shocks, capture historical recessions and turning points well. Pro-cyclical policy induced demand shocks aggravated negative supply shocks or failed to take full advantage of positive supply side developments.

     

Queues with hyper-poisson arrivals and bulk exponential service

Summary In this paper the time-dependent solution of a queueing system is discussed under the conditions (i) the units arrive according to Hyper-Poisson distribution withl branches (ii) the queue-discipline is ‘first come first served’ (iii) the Service-time distribution is exponential with maximum capacity ofM units being served at one instant. Some results have been obtained when the waiting space is finite; in particular the probability for service to be idle has been obtained. Also for infinite queueing-space case, the expressions for the state probabilities and the mean queuelength under steady state conditions have been found.     

A strategic analysis of network reliability

Abstract. We consider a non-cooperative model of information networks where communication is costly and not fully reliable. We examine the nature of Nash networks and efficient networks. We find that if the society is large, and link formation costs are moderate, Nash networks as well as efficient networks will be ‘super-connected’ i.e. every link is redundant in the sense that the network remains connected even after the link is deleted. This contrasts with the properties of a deterministic model of information decay, where Nash networks typically involve unique paths between agents. We also find that if costs are very low or very high, or if links are highly reliable then there is virtually no conflict between efficiency and stability. However, for intermediate values of costs and link reliability, Nash networks may be underconnected relative to the social optimum.     

Conformism and diversity under social learning

Summary. When there are competing technologies or products with unknown payoffs an important question is which technology will prevail and whether technologies with different payoffs can coexist in the long run. In this paper, we use a social learning model with local interactions to study this question. We show that the adoption of technologies as well as the prospects of conformism/diversity depend crucially on the nature of interaction between individuals and the heterogeneity of preferences in a society. Received: May 10, 1999; revised version: February 4, 2000     

The Indian exchange rate and Central Bank action: An EGARCH analysis

We analyze the impact of conventional monetary policy measures such as interest rates, intervention, and other quantitative measures, on exchange rate level and volatility, and compare these to the impact of Central Bank communication using dummy variables in the best of a family of GARCH models estimated with daily and monthly Indian data. Since India has a managed float, we also test if the measures affect the level of the exchange rate. We find variations in the Euro/Dollar rate strongly affect the Rupee/Dollar level and volatility. The interest rate differential has strong perverse effects, tending to increase variance and depreciate the Indian currency. News decreases volatility as it adds to scarce information. Domestic policy variables affect both level and volatility, and persist at the monthly frequency, but sometimes work at cross-purposes. Communication channels have potential but were not used effectively.