Expectations of Working Relationships in International Buyer–Seller Relationships: Development of a Relationship Continuum Scale

This study is an attempt to develop a scale to measure expectations of buyer–seller working relationships on a cross-cultural basis in the hospitality industry. The focus is on North American and Asian hotel salespeople. The scale development drew from previous research in guanxi relationships, purchasing, and selling strategies. While the results did not support a reliable unidimensional scale that could distinguish between transactional and collaborative working relationships, the methodology did create a framework for further scale development.     

当前经济形势与未来发展趋势的几点判断

本文通过对欧债危机以及美国经济、全球通胀、增长动力转换等方面的分析,指出金融危机对中国的影响仍在深化,经济下行和通胀的压力依然存在.作者同时认为,支撑我国长期增长的因素没有消失,后发优势依然存在,估计未来10年中国经济仍有潜力维持年均8％以上的高增长.应对复杂经济形势的基本思路是,长远要防控由高增长转向中速增长出现大幅下滑的战略转型的风险,当前要预防通胀,优化结构,鼓励改革创新,消除经济扭曲,营造更加公平、公正、自由且充满活力的发展环境.     

Sales promotion—playing to win?

In recent years, below‐the‐line promotion has begun to shed its “Cinderella” image, and is starting to attract the sort of marketing budgets and academic attention that was previously only given to mass‐media advertising. However, there is a general consensus that sales promotion is still neither managed effectively, nor understood thoroughly when compared to more high‐profile above‐the‐line promotion. Improving the understanding and use of sales promotion will require academics and practitioners to analyse and understand each of the very different below‐the‐line techniques and their individual merits. This article is one of two which takes a detailed look at the use of sales promotion competitions.     

Economic Theory and the Problem of Translation

Institutionalism was the dominant approach to public finance prior to WWII, after which it was eclipsed by Pigouvianism and Keynesianism. This transition defined the career of Wisconsin’s Harold M. Groves (1897–1969). Groves was a notable public finance economist, leading textbook author, and drafter of significant tax and labor legislation. He represented the culmination of a multigenerational institutionalist tradition. In this paper, I examine Groves and postwar public finance as a test case for the legacy of Wisconsin institutionalism. To that end, I consider Groves’s contributions to postwar tax policy, his interactions with Henry C. Simons and Richard M. Musgrave, and his view on Keynesian public finance. I identify some Wisconsin institutionalist contributions to modern public finance and offer an explanation for the postwar decline in institutional public finance.     

Strategic Planning and Community Involvement as Contributors to Sustainable Tourism Development

This paper is concerned with the role of stakeholder driven strategic planning as a contributor to the ultimate sustainability of tourism development. An initial literature review describes the evolution of theory related to three specific issues in the study of tourism – sustainability of tourism development as a desirable goal, stakeholder participation as a contributor to sustainability, and strategic planning as an appropriate framework within which stakeholder driven development activity can occur. The review concludes that these concepts are well supported in the literature, with little empirical evidence available on which to base any meaningful level of support. It is therefore argued that the value of these propositions may exist more strongly in theory than in practice. After discussing a number of factors which may negatively impact upon the practical implementation of these theoretical constructs, the paper proposes a quantitative instrument by which a specific tourism development planning process can be assessed for its conformity with desirable principles of sustainability in tourism development. Closing paragraphs indicate an intention to test this instrument across a variety of regional settings.     

Do Asian stock market prices follow martingales? Evidence from spectral shape tests

This paper examines the martingale hypothesis for five Asian stock markets using the spectral shape tests of Durlauf (1991). Unlike the variance ratio test employed in previous studies (eg, Panet al, 1991), the spectral shape tests are consistent againstall stationary alternatives to the martingale null.The spectral shape tests were applied to daily and weekly returns on the stock indices of Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan over a period of 17 years. The results show that the martingale null is rejected for most markets. There is some evidence that the rejections may be due to low frequency or long memory influences.The authors are lecturers, Department of Finance and Banking, National University of Singapore. This paper was presented at the Third International Conference on Asian-Pacific Financial Markets, September 9–11, 1993 in Singapore. We have benefited greatly from the comments of Y K Tse and other conference participants.