Beyond the Urban–Suburban Divide: Urbanization and the Production of the Urban in Zurich North

Starting from current debates on ‘global suburbanism' and ‘postsuburbia', this article explores the changes that the former ‘urban periphery' of Zurich North has experienced in the last three decades. It mobilizes Henri Lefebvre's triadic concept of conceived, perceived and lived space in aid of an analysis of the profound urban transformations that can be observed. The construction of a new tramline serves as a guideline for an analysis of the implementation of new governance arrangements strengthening cross‐border cooperation between individual municipalities and new strategies of cooptation and expertise. This resulted in the production of new urban structures which led to a more densely woven and connected urban fabric primarily providing spaces for the headquarter economy and middle‐class housing. Concomitantly, great efforts have been made to create new public spaces, an urban image and even an urban atmosphere. These have proved at least partially successful, thus promoting a symbolic redefinition of the former urban periphery as a distinctively ‘urban' space. Conventional definitions and concepts no longer suffice to adequately understand such novel urban forms, leading to the conclusion that division into an ‘urban' and a ‘suburban' world is no longer a useful tool for urban analysis.     

The impact of the institutional and infrastructural environment on innovation-based development in today’s world

This paper provides a comparative assessment of innovation-based development in Russia and several OECD and BRICS countries. Several tiers of countries have been introduced based on the assessment. The impact of various factors on innovation performance has been calculated for each tier using the tier average values of indicators that correspond to these factors. As a result, the most common features that are typical for a given level of development of an innovation environment are identified. The analysis provides a basis for recommendations regarding a strategy for innovation-based development of the Russian Federation.     

To post or not to post: social media sharing and sporting event performance

Social networks are becoming increasingly important for consumers, especially in the context of sport, where the service experience is highly intense. Few studies have combined subjective event performance variables and social network variables to analyze social network content sharing by sports practitioners. This article investigates the use of social networks in relation to sporting events. An empirical study examined the role of social network variables and sporting event performance variables in social media use. The sample consisted of 410 triathletes (72.2% male) aged between 18 and 66 years (mean 37.03 ± 8.62). Four analyses were performed using fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis to examine the causes of sharing comments through social media, sharing photos and videos on social media, participant satisfaction, and word‐of‐mouth (WOM). The event's general image was a necessary condition in all cases. The combination of participants’ satisfaction and positive event image and the combination of social network use and positive event image lead to social network content sharing by athletes. The combination of positive event image and participant satisfaction leads to a positive WOM.     

Self‐Determination Theory and Word of Mouth about Energy‐Saving Behaviors: An Online Experiment

The growing community concern for the environment, and rising energy costs to consumers, has led many power utility companies to adopt strategies aimed at reducing energy consumption in the home and workplace. These strategies have typically been based on extrinsically regulated pricing mechanisms. Although more intrinsically driven interventions have been examined, they are often complex and expensive to implement due in part to the high level of human interaction involved. This two‐part study suggests simpler more cost‐efficient alternatives to enhancing energy saving. It does this via two separate but related studies that examined the application of self‐determination theory (SDT) and word of mouth (WOM) within online communities. The findings suggest a significant increase in reported energy‐saving behaviors over time supporting the role of SDT. There was also evidence that positive WOM increases satisfaction of the three psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness, further enhancing energy‐saving behavior. These findings have important implications for marketers in terms of behavior change.     

Entry,trade costs,and international business cycles

Are firm entry and fixed exporting costs relevant for understanding the international transmission of business cycles? We revisit this question using a model that includes entry, selection to exporting activity, physical capital accumulation and endogenous labor supply. We determine that once the stochastic process for exogenous productivity is calibrated to consider the endogenous dynamics in TFP created by the number of firms and the time series volatility of entry is calibrated to the data, our model yields minimal departures from the Backus et al. (1992) benchmark. The richer model shares all of the successes of the previous model in terms of the volatilities of aggregate quantities, as well as its failures, in terms of replicating patterns of international co-movement and the volatility of international relative prices.     

Examining bank SEOs: Are offers made by undercapitalized banks different?

Despite extensive monitoring, banking operations are often considered opaque, and despite explicit capital adequacy regulation, banks may have substantial discretion in their financing. Both monitoring and capital regulation have changed substantially over time, with the adoption of FDICIA being one important breakpoint. This article empirically studies seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) by banks to understand how opacity and capital regulation interact to determine the timing of bank SEOs and their market valuation. SEOs both by banks that are undercapitalized relative to regulatory standards and also well-capitalized banks are fully discretionary when it comes to SEOs, even before FDICIA. Both undercapitalized and well-capitalized banks experience similar and significantly negative stock price reactions to SEO announcements, and also have similar prior patterns of insider trading and similar economic drivers of the issuance decision. Moreover, post-SEO abnormal stock returns are similar to benchmark returns for both types of issuers in the long run, suggesting that, contrary to the well-documented evidence for industrial SEOs, investors understand the value implications of bank SEOs upon announcement. The evidence implies that undercapitalized banks' SEOs are more discretionary and that all bank SEOs are less opaque than implied by earlier studies.     

Internationalizing audit education

Audit education is typically offered only to accounting majors. We argue that auditing provides a way of thinking that could serve as a framework for an accounting curriculam. We describe two parts of a course content that could be incorporated into an existing auditing course or a begining accounting course. The first section emphasizes accountability; the second emphasizes the role of the auditor in the accountability process. The concepts are best taught within an international paradigm that permits examination of various institutional environments.     

Price and quality components of imports of food products into the UK

This paper analyses the principal factors responsible for the growth in the value of imports of the UK food sector, during the period 1985-90. On the basis of estimates of translog multilateral price indices it assesses the relative contribution of changes in the quality of imported products and factors other than quality to growth in import values of food products. The main conclusion is that growth in quality appears to be the principal reason for the growth in unit values of imports and the trade deficit incurred by the food manufacturing sector.