The relationship between satisfaction and loyalty: A mediator analysis

This study proposes a multiple mediation model to analyze the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty. The study's contribution to the literature is to examine, empirically, the main antecedents and determinants of this endogenous variable in greater depth. Thus, the research fills a gap in the literature through its analysis of the mediating role of perceived switching costs and the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offerings. This study applies variance-based structural equation modeling via partial least squares to a sample of 785 customers from 74 insurance companies in the service sector. The results show that perceived switching costs – to a greater extent – and the perceived lack of attractiveness of alternative offerings – to a lesser extent – are significant mediators in the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.     

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.     

Transformations of the state variable and learning dynamics

This article examines dynamics in a model where agents forecast a one dimensional state variable through ordinary least squares regressions on the lagged values of the state variable. We study the stability properties of alternative transformations of the state variable, such as taking logarithms, which the agent can endogenously set forth. Surprisingly, for the considered class of economies, we found that the transformations that an econometrician would attempt are destabilizing, whereas alternative transformations, which an econometrician would never consider, such as convex transformations, are stabilizing. Therefore, we ironically find that in our set‐up, an active agent who is concerned about learning the economy’s dynamics and who in an attempt to improve forecasting transforms the state variable using standard transformations, is more likely to deviate from the steady state than a passive agent.     

THE EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF RENT‐SEEKING COSTS

Abstract This survey focuses on the efforts, carried out mainly by public choice scholars, to measure the social cost of rent seeking. The concept, introduced by Gordon Tullock in 1967 and coined by Anne Krueger in 1974, is well known and accepted by the profession, but its empirical measurement has fallen behind with respect to its theoretical formulation, an often criticized lack in the literature. Although there are good general surveys, none has specifically focused on reviewing the empirical efforts made to measure the phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a survey.     

Modelling regional policy scenarios in the agri-food sector: a case study of a Spanish region

The agri-food industry has several features of great importance for sustainable economic growth in rural areas. The objective of this work is to evaluate the effects associated with different scenarios of growth, and changes in the regional agri-food industry. These scenarios simulate changes in exports and imports, changes in technology and changes in the level of industrial integration. We develop a computable general equilibrium model calibrated for the region. Our results indicate that policies trying to improve the competitiveness and dynamism of strategic sectors as the agro-industrial complex in this regional economy exert positive effects on its growth and income, having notable impacts on local job markets but also in other sectors and activities linked through the whole production chain.     

Job Classification for the Purpose of Making Optimal Decisions Concerning Management Control

The job classification literature has been dominated by a micro‐level orientation reflective of the needs of specialists in human resources. In contrast, we take a multidisciplinary approach involving both micro‐ and macro‐level variables to propose a relatively simple system comprised of four job classes. Our model isintended to inform management as to the type and mix of controls (e.g., centralization, formalization, and various human resources policies) that could be applied to different job types to optimally promote the overall goals of the organization. Fuzzy numbers analysis is employed to illustrate the application of the system using four jobs in a car dealership in Spain. Copyright © 2012 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modelling Electricity Prices: International Evidence*

This article analyses the evolution of electricity prices in deregulated markets. We present a general class of models that simultaneously takes into account several factors: seasonality, mean reversion, GARCH behaviour and time‐dependent jumps. The models are applied to daily equilibrium spot prices of eight electricity markets. Eight different nested models were estimated to compare the relative importance of each factor in each of the eight markets. We find strong evidence that electricity equilibrium prices are mean‐reverting, with volatility clustering (GARCH) and with jumps of time‐dependent intensity, even after adjusting for seasonality.     

Trends in time allocation: A cross-country analysis

Using detailed time-use data for seven industrialized countries from the 1970s until today we document general decreases in men's market work coupled with increases in men's unpaid work and child care, and increases in women's paid work and child care coupled with decreases in unpaid work. We also find almost universal increases in the time devoted to watching television over this period, and uncover a widespread increase in leisure inequality in favor of lower educated adults. Trends in leisure inequality mirror the general increase in income and earnings inequality experienced in most countries over this period, especially after the mid-1980s. All these findings are consistent with previous results for the US. However, in contrast to the increases in leisure found for the US, we fail to find common trends in leisure time across countries over the period analyzed.     

Determining the MSE-optimal cross section to forecast

In this paper, we address the question of which subset of time series should be selected among a given set in order to forecast another series. We evaluate the quality of the forecasts in terms of Mean Squared Error. We propose a family of criteria to estimate the optimal subset. Consistency results are proved, both in the weak (in probability) and strong (almost sure) sense. We present the results of a Monte Carlo experiment and a real data example in which the criteria are compared to some hypothesis tests such as the ones by Diebold and Mariano (1995),  and  and Giacomini and White (2006).     

An automatic Portmanteau test for serial correlation

This article introduces a data-driven Box–Pierce test for serial correlation. The proposed test is very attractive compared to the existing ones. In particular, implementation of this test is extremely simple for two reasons: first, the researcher does not need to specify the order of the autocorrelation tested, since the test automatically chooses this number; second, its asymptotic null distribution is chi-square with one degree of freedom, so there is no need of using a bootstrap procedure to estimate the critical values. In addition, the test is robust to the presence of conditional heteroskedasticity of unknown form. Finally, the proposed test presents higher power in simulations than the existing ones for models commonly employed in empirical finance.