Real exchange rate dynamics in the presence of non-traded goods and transaction costs

This paper studies the role of non-traded goods and transaction costs in accounting for the puzzling behavior of real exchange rates. We show that introducing the transaction costs and non-traded goods in an otherwise standard competitive model dramatically improves its ability to rationalize observed real exchange rate dynamics.     

The rationality and efficacy of decisions under uncertainty and the value of an experiment

Summary A decision maker faces a known prior distribution over payoff relevant states. We compare the expected utility of this individual under two scenarios. In the first, the decision maker makes a choice without further information. In the second, the decision maker has access to an experiment before choosing an action. However, the decision maker does not know the true joint distribution over states and messages. The value of the experiment as measured by the difference in the two utility levels can be negative as well as positive. We give a condition which is necessary and sufficient for the experiment to be valuable in our sense, for any decision problem.An earlier version of this paper was circulated under the title Noisy Bayes Updating and the Value of Information. We have gained from the comments of Stephen Coate, John Geanakoplos, Larry Samuelson, Timothy Van Zandt and seminar participants at Harvard Business School, Princeton, Boston University, the international conference on game theory at Stony Brook 1992 and the Winter meeting of the Econometric Society at Anaheim 1993. The first author received support for this project from NSF grant #SES-9308515 and a University of Pennsylvania Research Foundation Grant.     

The switchover to digital broadcasting in Korea

This study investigates the development of Korean digital TV transition by tracing the interaction between social and technological entities from various perspectives at different developmental stages. A socio-technical analysis examines the dynamic interactions among the stakeholders in the switchover to digital broadcasting, showing how the various actions taken by leading stakeholders affect diverse groups of stakeholders. The overall findings show that Korean digital TV transition is the outcome of a proactive strategy by industry stakeholders and the Korean government's top–down policy of supporting such a transition. It is argued that the policy of a top–down transition, which overlooks coordination among stakeholders, harms consumers and hinders effective and sustainable development. The case of Korea has implications for other countries that are pursuing digital transition strategies.     

Affective and continuance commitment and their relations with deviant workplace behaviors in Korea

This study examined the nature of the relations between affective and continuance components of organizational commitment (Meyer & Allen, 1991, Human Resource Management Review, 1: 61–89) and deviant workplace behaviors (DWB; Bennett & Robinson, 2003) in a sample of 120 Korean employees and their supervisors. As expected, we found that affective commitment was negatively related, and continuance commitment was positively, albeit modestly, related to supervisor ratings of DWB. Implications for the theory and practice are discussed.     

Efficiency of the OLSE for regressions on two-dimensional grids with sinusoidal regressors and spatially correlated errors

For spatial regressions with sinusoidal surfaces, the ordinary least squares estimator (OLSE) is shown to be asymptotically as efficient as the generalized least squares estimator (GLSE) in that the covariance matrices of the two estimators have the same nontrivial limit under the same normalization.     

Antecedents of consumers’ intention to visit food trucks

The food truck industry has become a national phenomenon in the United States by gaining attention and praise. However, there has been limited attention on how and why consumers decide to patronize food trucks. The purpose of the study is to investigate determinants of consumers’ intention to patronize food trucks by applying the model of goal-directed behavior. Structural equation modeling was employed to assess the relationships among constructs in the proposed research model. This study contributes significant theoretical and practical implications by first attempting to examine what specific psychological variables influence the decision-making process regarding consumers’ intention to visit food trucks.     

Safety,security and peace tourism: The case of the DMZ area

It comes as no surprise that peace and tourism is an important topic today in tourism literature. Despite the strength of global tourist demand, many destinations, especially in the developing world, are facing fluctuations in tourist arrivals, due to unsafe political conditions. This study discusses the symbiosis between tourism and peace and its opposite, war, and the likely impacts of each condition on several tourist destinations. A turbulent security environment, caused by international and civil wars, coup d'etat and terrorist attacks has already demonstrated its negative impact on tourism development in many countries around the world (Taylor & Quayle, 1994). The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between safety, tranquility, peace, and successful tourism, using surveys completed by both international and domestic tourists. More specifically, it is about the effects of the absence of safety, security and peace on domestic and international tourism in the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ) area. The general findings demonstrate that the subjects of the study view the implication of the existence of a peaceful environment on tourism favourably.     

Motivations behind Consumers’ Organic Menu Choices: The Role of Environmental Concern,Social Value,and Health Consciousness

This study aimed to examine underlying motivations of consumers’ intention to visit a restaurant featuring organic menu items and willingness to pay (WTP) for organic menu items. In particular, this study incorporated environmental concerns, social value, and health consciousness as key motivators. An online survey was conducted with a self-administered questionnaire, and a total of 473 responses were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results showed that environmental concern was the strongest predictor of WTP, followed by social value and health consciousness, whereas health consciousness was the most influential factor on intention to visit, followed by social value and environmental concern.     

Exploring the comparative importance of online hotel reviews’ heuristic attributes in review helpfulness: a conjoint analysis approach

Online travel reviews have become increasingly important as a result of the intangible and heterogeneous characteristics of the tourism industry as well as the recent diffusion of social media. This exploratory case study intends to examine the comparative importance of the six heuristic attributes (reviewer location, reviewer level, reviewer helpful vote, review rating, review length, and review photo) with respect to review helpfulness in the online hotel review context. Moreover, the salience of the individual levels within each review attribute and the importance of the attributes in positive and negative review-rating groups are compared. In total, 1,158 reviews of a hotel on TripAdvisor were collected and analyzed through conjoint analyses. This study found that the review rating and reviewer helpful vote attributes are the two most important factors. Finally, three major propositions are suggested based on findings of the study, and several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

RV Traveler’s Pull Factors to Campgrounds in Leisure Tourism

The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying structures of RV traveler’s pull factors to campgrounds and confirm the results by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with multiple data sets. The results identified the following five dimensions of the campground traveler’s key attributes: Activity, Amenity, Essentials, Price, and Store. The “Essentials” factor had a grand mean of 4.47, which was the highest among the five factors. Therefore, campground owners and managers should pay extra attention to maintaining a high quality on those essential attributes first, before considering adding or promoting any other items.