An Empirical Study of an Online Travel Purchase Intention Model

This study empirically tests a structural model of factors affecting consumers' online purchase intentions for travel products. The findings indicate that information quality, service quality, and system quality are valid measurements to evaluate the quality of travel-oriented website designs. In terms of travelers' perceptions, convenience, value, and merchandise options are three effective measurements of travelers' attitudes toward purchasing travel products online. Quality of travel website design, travelers' attitudes, and customers' satisfaction demonstrate significant influence on travelers' purchase intentions. Travelers' attitudes and customers' satisfaction also serve as strong mediators for the links between quality of travel website design and purchase intentions. Future research can capitalize on this study as a basis to formulate other models or to create a new model to test tactics that can increase travelers' repurchase intentions and strengthening consumers' e-loyalty.     

Tourists’ Experiences of Mindfulness in Dubai,United Arab Emirates (UAE)

Mindfulness is a relatively new theoretical area that has received little research focus. This is surprising, considering the wealth of benefits to individuals and businesses who adopt a mindful philosophy. The aim of this study was to reduce this gap in knowledge by attempting to understand how mindfulness affects tourists’ experiences while holidaying in a popular tourist destination, such as Dubai. Results suggested that mindfulness appears to occur indiscriminately and, almost, haphazardly. Empirical results of the study revealed that mindfulness was a likely occurrence regardless of visitor demographics, and that mindfulness would impact what visitors remembered and why.     

The joint determinants of cash holdings and debt maturity: the case for financial constraints

We examine the joint choices of cash holdings and debt maturity for a large sample of firms for the 1985–2013 period. We find that there is a positive relation between debt maturity and cash holdings. Our results hold after taking into account endogeneity among leverage, debt maturity, and cash holding. We posit that this positive relationship will be found among firms facing financial constraints and we find support for this hypothesis. Our results are robust after we control for agency problems, international taxation, bank loan liquidity covenants and default risk.     

Sequential estimation in generalized linear models when covariates are subject to errors

Sequential methods have been used for many applications; especially, when fixed sample procedures are not possible and/or when “early stopping” of sampling is beneficial for applications. At the same time, the issue of how to make correct inferences when measurement errors are present has drawn considerable attention from statisticians. In this paper, the problems of sequential estimation of generalized linear models when there are measurement errors in both adaptive and fixed design cases are studied. The proposed sequential procedure is proved to be asymptotically consistent and efficient in the sense of Chow and Robbins [Ann Math Stat 36(2):457–462, 1965] when measurement errors decay gradually as the number of sequentially selected design points increases. This assumption is useful in sequentially designed experiments, and can also be fulfilled in the case when replicate measurements are available. Some numerical studies based on a Rasch model and a logistic regression model are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed procedure.     

Public Policy,Vested Interest,and Common People in Brazil in the Twenty-First Century

We offer an original institutional approach to analyzing policies meant to regulate the actions of common people in the Brazilian state agenda in recent years. We also address the reactions of vested interests against this agenda. Such vested interests rely on corporations’ ceremonial encapsulation of state policies — policies that were established during the decades when Brazil’s industrialization process took place. Brazilian policies for the common people, however, are a twenty-first-century phenomenon.     

Three Decades After James Street’s “The Institutionalist Theory of Economic Development”: What Does Institutional Approach to Economic Development Mean Today?

James Street’s article, “The Institutionalist Theory of Economic Development,” (1987) is a masterpiece of institutionalist research on economic development. The thirty-year anniversary of its publishing is an invitation to review what the institutional approach to economic development means today. This article, therefore, aims to present a historical survey of works published in the Journal of Economic Issues (JEI) on economic development.     

Chinese Migrant Farmers in the Russian Far East: Impact on Rural Labor Markets

The close proximity of China and Russia, the activities of Chinese farmers, and the reduction in Russian labor resources have created job opportunities for Chinese workers in the Russian Far East (RFE). Chinese workers fill a labor shortage in agriculture, but little research has been done on them. We developed an econometric model to test the effects of Chinese intermittent migration on labor markets in the RFE. We found the proximity of Chinese to Russian farms reduces wages for both Russian and Chinese workers and increases their part-time employment on Russian farms. The greater availability of Chinese workers in the region results in lower number of family members working on Russian farms. Thus, the influx of Chinese workers may contribute to demographic shifts in the Russian population.     

“金砖国家”网络通信服务及数字产品交易市场发展现状

当前存在并广泛使用的计算机网络体系是数字产品交易兴起和发展的重要基础,反过来数字产品交易市场也成为促进计算机网络基础设施和通信服务水平发展的催化剂。在这种背景下,随着“金砖国家”网络覆盖率和通信服务水平的提高,网络用户对数字产品的需求日益增加。本文通过对“金砖国家”互联网基础设施和网络通信服务发展水平的分析发现,中国、俄罗斯和巴西已经形成相对完整、符合当前发展需要的网络服务体系,而印度和南非还处于后发阶段。通过对“金砖国家”数字产品交易市场发展现状的分析可以看出,中国在各类数字产品的生产和销售方面具有绝对优势,俄罗斯和巴西处于快速发展阶段,甚至在个别领域超过中国,而印度和南非的数字产品交易市场则处于萌芽阶段。