关于进一步加强新形势下价格工作的研究报告

价格问题事关社会、经济、政治发展和稳定大局，价格在经济发展和社会和谐建设中有重要作用。在《中华人民共和国价格法》实施10周年之际，课题组就价格工作进行了调研。主要从价格的基本功能、价格机制形成、市场运行规律等方面，探讨了价格在宏观调控中的重要作用具有不可替代性；提出创新价格管理理念和机制，发挥好价格在宏观调控中不可替代的作用的具体目标思路；分析了当前价格体制和机制运行中存在着诸多不适应因素；为发挥好价格在宏观调控中的作用，研究并提出了切实抓好“五大”着力点等对策建议。     

Organizing and integrating marketing and purchasing in business markets: An introduction to the special issue, issues and implications

The article is the introductory paper to the special issue on “Organizing and Integrating Marketing and Purchasing in Business markets”. It analyses the different organizational issues in the marketing and purchasing interfaces by an extensive analysis of the literature. It introduces the different contributions to the special issue and draw some reflections on further research steps.     

Corporate discourse and environmental performance in Argentina

There is substantial research and policy interest in the relationship between firms and the natural environment, including how this relationship is influenced by regulators, international pressures, rival firms and stakeholder demands. With some exceptions, the ‘softer’ dimensions of environmental aspect management – how attitudes, beliefs and perceptions and the human factors drive corporate behaviour – have been understudied. The work that exists tends to be informal, and allows little scope for the statistical validation that is required for robust inference. This paper examines whether corporate values towards the environment affect a firm's environmental performance. It uses survey methods as well as content and discourse analyses of interview text and corporate reports and web sites to explore the links between managerial ‘mindsets’ and the environmental performance of the firms of which they are a part. Though the application is Argentina, the lessons learned can be generalized to other developing and industrialized countries. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

The Health Consequences of Adverse Labor Market Events: Evidence from Panel Data

This study investigates the associations between self‐assessed adverse labor market events (experiencing problems with coworkers, employment changes, financial strain) and health. Longitudinal data are obtained from the National Epidemiological Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions. Our findings suggest problems with coworkers, employment changes, and financial strain are associated, respectively, with a 3.1 percent (3.3 percent), 0.9 percent (0.2 percent), and 4.5 percent (5.1 percent) reduction in mental health among men (women). Associations are smaller in magnitude and less significant for physical health.     

Endowment Origin,Demographic Effects,and Individual Preferences in Contests

In modern firms the use of contests as an incentive device is ubiquitous. Nonetheless, experimental research shows that in the laboratory subjects routinely make suboptimal decisions in contests even to the extent of making negative returns. The purpose of this study is to investigate how earning the endowment, demographic differences, and individual preferences impact behavior in contests. To this end, we conduct a laboratory experiment in which subjects expend costly resources (bids) to attain an award (prize). In line with other laboratory studies of contests, our results show that subjects overbid relative to theoretical predictions and incur substantial losses as a result. Making subjects earn their initial resource endowments mitigates overbidding and thus increases efficiency. Overbidding is linked to gender, with women bidding higher than men and having lower average earnings. Other demographic information, such as religiosity, and individual preferences, such as preferences toward winning and risk, also influence behavior in contests.     

Gender-Based Pricing in the Hairdressing Industry

This paper reviews the evidence and evaluates the claim that the hairdressing industry systematically discriminates on the basis of gender and compares the way in which courts in the UK and US have dealt with such allegations. We argue that "transaction costs" can be used to provide an alternative (perhaps more satisfactory) explanation for the pricing patterns observed than does price discrimination. Any decision to ban gender-based pricing will imply a difficult trade-off between economic efficiency and concerns for gender equality.