Mental mapping and heritage visitors’ spatial perceptions

Visitors’ activities tend to be spatially oriented in destinations. Mental mapping is a useful method for revealing how visitors spatially perceive tourism destinations. However, studies of this kind are under-researched in the tourism field. Therefore, this study investigates the ways in which visitors spatially perceive the World Heritage Sites (WHSs) of Macau through the use of mental maps drawn by a sample of 400 respondents. Comparisons of the mental maps revealed that respondents possessed a relatively limited spatial knowledge of the WHSs, and this recognition varied according to the gender, place of origin, travel mode, type of trip, social interaction with local people and length of stay. While the real-life world of visitors was identified by the mental mapping approach, some suggestions for formulating strategies are provided.     

Bed and Breakfast operators’ work and personal life balance: A cross-cultural comparison

Bed and Breakfasts (B&B) represent a unique sector in the tourism industry. This study expands on previous hospitality work and life balance studies by investigating the cultural influences on B&B operators’ work and personal lives. The results indicated that Taiwanese B&B operators, who are in the collective culture, perceive less difficulty in their balancing work and personal lives, and they receive more family and social support compared to their American counterparts, who are within an individualistic culture. Both groups experienced equally satisfactory levels of successful balance. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed, and future studies are proposed.     

低收入住房政策的国际经验借鉴:需求方补贴

随着国家住房保障制度的发展,世界各个工业化国家自20世纪70年代以来,对住房需求方进行国家补贴已变得越来越重要.近年来关于西方住房政策的研究认为,无论是从理论还是从实践效果来讲,需求方补贴的相关政策及执行在实现住房保障、促进社会公平方面起到了越来越积极和重要的作用;与此同时,随着近年来西方国家社会经济结构的转变,需求方补贴与传统的供给方补贴方式相比,负面影响更少,补贴的效力和效率更高.这些国际经验对于中国建立和完善城市住房保障制度具有重要的参考价值.论文旨在对低收入住房需求方补贴的相关国际经验进行概括总结,并探讨其对中国住房保障制度发展的借鉴意义.     

A NOTE ON THE OPTIMAL CUTOFF POINT IN BANKRUPTCY PREDICTION MODELS

A modified Bayesian decision model is derived in the study to systematically estimate an optimal cutoff point for bankruptcy prediction models. In addition, a loss function is implemented in the model so that the total error costs instead of the total error probability is minimized. Any dichotomous classification problem with unequal error costs would find this decision model useful.     

An Investigation of the Female–Male Wage Gap During the Industrial Revolution in Britain

During the industrial revolution women's wages were substantially lower than men's. This article documents the wage gap and shows that in most cases it can be explained without reference to wage discrimination. First, the wage data we have overestimate the wage gap; correcting for biases due to measurement error reduces the size of the wage gap. Second, because differences in productivity were substantial, the corrected wage gap is consistent with these.     

Opportunity Discovery, Problem Solving and a Theory of the Entrepreneurial Firm

abstract When should an entrepreneur employ a market to help discover and exploit opportunities, and when should the entrepreneur create a firm to do so? If a firm is created, how should it be organized? In this paper we argue that opportunities equate to valuable problem‐solution pairings, and that opportunity discovery relates to deliberate search or recognition over this solution space. As problem complexity increases, experiential (or ‘directional’) search via trial‐and‐error provides fewer benefits, and cognitive (or ‘heuristic’) search via theorizing becomes more useful. Cognitive search, however, requires knowledge sharing, when knowledge is distributed among specialists, that is plagued by a knowledge appropriation hazard and a strategic knowledge accumulation hazard. Markets, authority‐based hierarchy, and consensus‐based hierarchy then have differential effects on the efficiency of opportunity discovery given the complexity of the associated problem. Those entrepreneurs with exceptional capabilities of opportunity recognition can efficiently adopt authority‐based governance over a wider range of complexity. We thus combine the two major modes of opportunity discovery – search and recognition – onto one framework that can explain different entrepreneurial organizational forms, resulting in an entrepreneurial theory of the firm.     

Intra‐industry bankruptcy contagion: Evidence from the pricing of industry recovery rates

How does bankruptcy contagion propagate among industry peers? We study the debt recovery channel of industry contagion by examining whether the cost of a company's debt is affected by the observed recovery rates of its bankrupt industry peers. Our results show that lower industry recovery rates are associated with higher loan spreads, but only when the contracts were originated during industry bankruptcy waves. Consistent with the debt recovery channel of industry contagion, we find that the negative effects of industry recovery rates are significantly stronger under situations where the effect is expected to be more salient.     

External balance sheets as countercyclical crisis buffers

The external balance sheets of many emerging market countries are distinguished by their holdings of assets primarily in the form of foreign debt and foreign exchange reserves, while their liabilities are predominantly equity, either foreign direct investment or portfolio equity. We investigate the claim that this composition served as a buffer for the emerging markets during the global financial crisis of 2008–09. We use data from a sample of 67 emerging market and advanced economies, and several indicators of the crisis are utilized: GDP growth rates in 2008–09, the occurrence of bank crises and the use of IMF credit. Our results show that those countries that issued FDI liabilities had higher growth rates, fewer bank crises and were less likely to borrow from the IMF. Countries with debt liabilities, on the other hand, had more bank crises and were more likely to use IMF credit. We conclude that the “long debt, short equity” (hold debt assets, issue equity liabilities) strategy of emerging markets did mitigate the effects of the global financial crisis.     

Product-, corporate-, and country-image dimensions and purchase behavior: A multicountry analysis

This research focuses on consumer perceptions that are developed on the basis of a firm’s advertising appeals as well as other factors. In conceptualizing brand-image perceptions, the authors extend the frequent use of productrelated images to include corporate and country images attached to brands. The authors report findings based on secondary economic and cultural data at the macro level and the results of a global brand-image survey conducted in the top 20 international automobile markets at the individual level. The findings suggest that while consumers’ attitudes toward corporate image and country image exert main effects on their brand purchase behavior, the effects of certain product-image appeals are moderated by sociodemographics and national cultural characteristics. The empirical results are broadly supportive of the proposed hypotheses and provide a consumer-based extension of Roth’s work on global brand image. Ming-Huei Hsieh (hmh@saturn.yzu.edu.tw), Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of International Business, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan. She has obtained her Ph.D degree (2002) from Warwick Business school of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. Prior to her Ph.D. study, she conducted several market research projects for major multinationals, including General Motors, Procter & Gamble, Bayer, Johnson & Johnson, and Prudential in Taiwan. She is currently studying a variety of topics in cross-national consumer research. Specifically, she is exploring topics in brand management. She is also interested in the areas of Internet marketing and customer relationship management (CRM). She has articles published in theJournal of International Marketing, theJournal of Product and Brand Management, and theJournal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce. Shan-Ling Pan (pansl@comp.nus.edu.sg), Ph.D., is an assistant professor and the coordinator of the Knowledge Management Laboratory (http://kmlab.comp.nus.edu.sg) in the Department of Information Systems of the School of computing at the National University of Singapore. He received his MBA degree (1993) from the University of Texas at San Antonio, his MA degree (1996) from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and his Ph.D. degree (2000) from the University of Warwick, United Kingdom. His primary research focuses on the recursive interaction of organizations and information technology (enterprise systems), with particular emphasis on organizational issues such as work practices, cultures, structures, decision making, change, and strategy implementation. His research work has been published inInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transaction on Engineering Management, theJournal of the American Society for Information Systems and Technology Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery, Information and Organization, theJournal of Strategic Information Systems, theEuropean Journal of Information Systems, andDecision Support Systems. Rudy Setiono (rudys@comp.nus.edu.sg) received his Bachelor of Science degree from Eastern Michigan University and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984, 1986, and 1990, respectively. He has been with the National University of Singapore since 1990 and he is currently an associate professor in the School of Computing. His research interests include linear programming, nonlinear optimization, and neural networks. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves as an associate editor ofIEEE Transactions on Neural Networks. His publications have appeared in theSIAM Journal on Control and Optimization, theEuropean Journal of Operational Research, theJournal of Optimization Theory and Applications, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on Data and Knowledge Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Systems Man and Cybernetics, Neural Computation, Neurocomputing, Connection Science, Management Science, and many other reputable journals.     

Classical Ricardian Theory of Comparative Advantage Revisited

According to the classical Ricardian theory of comparative advantage, relative labor productivities determine trade patterns. The Ricardian model plays an important pedagogical role in international economics, but has received scant empirical attention since the 1960s. This paper assesses the contemporary relevance of the Ricardian model for US trade. Cross-section seemingly unrelated regressions of sectoral trade flows on relative labor productivity and unit labor costs are run for a number of countries vis-à-vis the United States. The coefficients are almost always correctly signed and statistically significant, although much of the sectoral variation of trade remains unexplained.