Internationalization pattern of creative-cultural events: Two cases from Canada

This paper characterizes the internationalization of creative-cultural events through in-depth, longitudinal and ethnographic case-studies of two typical events. It develops four families of propositions based on the extant theory and tests them against their corresponding aspects of the two case-studies. This comparative examination indicates varying levels of supports; and also points to significant differences from traditional patterns of internationalizations processes. This paper’s contributions are in identifying differences in such events’ internationalization pattern and suggesting theoretical explanation for them. A combination of firm-specific advantage (e.g., creative and cultural) and the event’s home location-specific advantages offer a theoretical approach as they attract both the viewers and creative service-providers from the rest of the world to the home of these events. The paper explores the implication for further theoretical research, management of such events and public policy formulations.     

Institutional ownership stability and real earnings management

We examine the relationship between institutional ownership stability and real earnings management. Our findings indicate that firms held by more stable institutional owners experience lower real activities manipulation by limiting overproduction. We further examine how the stability in the shareholdings of pressure-sensitive and insensitive institutional investors affect target firms’ use of real earnings management, respectively. Unlike pressure-sensitive institutional investors, the stability in the share ownership of pressure-insensitive institutional investors (i.e., investment advisors, pension funds and endowments) mitigates target firms’ use of real earnings management. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that institutional investors presence acts as a monitor on target firms’ use of real earnings manipulation activities.     

Can Micro Health Insurance Reduce Poverty? Evidence From Bangladesh

This article examines the impact of micro health insurance on poverty reduction in rural areas of Bangladesh. The research is based on household‐level primary data collected from the operating areas of the Grameen Bank during 2006. A number of outcome measures are considered; these include household income, stability of household income via food sufficiency and ownership of nonland assets, and the probability of being above or below the poverty line. The results show that micro health insurance has a positive association with all of these indicators, and this is statistically significant and quantitatively important for food sufficiency.     

Federal Reserve and private forecasts of growth in investment

This study examines the Federal Reserve and private forecasts of growth in both business and residential investment for 1983-2004 and reaches four main conclusions: First, in support of the asymmetric information hypothesis, the shorter (longer) horizon Federal Reserve forecasts of growth in business (residential) investment contain useful predictive information beyond that included in private forecasts. Second, the Federal Reserve forecasts are all biased. The same is true for the private forecasts of growth in residential (but not entirely for the forecasts of growth in business) investment. Third, the private forecasts overall do better than those of the Federal Reserve in outperforming the univariate forecasts. Fourth, the Federal Reserve and private forecasts of growth in business (residential) investment, while directionally accurate, imply symmetric (asymmetric) loss. We conclude this study by discussing the usefulness of these forecasts.     

A New Application of RFM Clustering for Guild Segmentation to Mine the Pattern of Using Banks’ e-Payment Services

ABSTRACT

With increasing use of point of sale terminals at stores, banks are seeking to achieve a bigger portion in such financial exchanges. An important problem for banks is to identify the most profitable professions. For this purpose, a new application using recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM)-based clustering and customer lifetime value analysis containing two extensions of RFM is proposed for guild segmentation. The methodology is applied on a real data from an Iranian state bank. The findings reveal that this methodology is applicable in practice and could be very effective for bank managers of any other banks.     

Capital mobility and import substitution policies

This paper considers a conventional trade model with intermediate goods and capital mobility. In this framework, raising the barriers to imports tends to carry a country toward high exports. This is a new result and casts serious doubts regarding the proposition that policies of import substitution which characterized much of Latin America in the 1950s are basically inward oriented and tend to carry toward the low import, low export end of the spectrum.     

A general equilibrium analysis of foreign investment and intersectoral linkage

In this paper, we demonstrate that a foreign capital induced growth in a protected sector, which provides an industrial input for agricultural products, may increase welfare even after the entire foreign capital income is repatriated. Such a policy may lead to an increase in the volume of trade along with an increase in the size of the protected sector, quite contrary to the usual perception. The analysed structure also incorporates migration and unemployment.     

Exploring manager’s perspective of service quality strategies in Malaysian Banking Industry

In service industry, the subject of service quality remains crucial as business strive to maintain a comparative advantage in the marketplace. In aftermath of globalization, the operating environment for banking industry has become more dynamic and competitive. Banks have evolved to become diversified financial providers instead of traditional banking-only service providers. With bank placing emphasis on a mutually beneficial bank–customer relationship, customer loyalty must be pursued through repeat purchases. Central to achieving this is often the quality of services offered by the bank should satisfy the customer’s needs. This article attempts to identify any service gaps in Malaysian banking industry and to recommend effective strategies to close these service gaps from bank mangers’ and executives perspectives based on GAPs Model of Service Quality (GAPs Model). Using qualitative data collected from interviews with 30 bank managers and executives, this article provides effectives strategies to close each of the gaps in GAPs Model. It is hoped that the empirical evidences and recommendations provided in this article shed some light to management of banks to improve upon their customer service quality in order to benefit from customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and other behavioural outcomes which will lead to greater competitive advantage and profitability to the banks concerned.