Network-based market knowledge and product innovativeness

An ongoing debate in marketing literature is whether market knowledge facilitates or impedes new product innovativeness. To reconcile inconsistent findings, this study disaggregates market knowledge into breadth and depth dimensions and uncovers their divergent effects on new product innovativeness. Given organizations’ increasing reliance on network contacts for access to market knowledge, we focus on market knowledge derived from external ties. Based on an empirical test of 244 firms in China, this study finds that market knowledge breadth has a U-shaped relationship, whereas market knowledge depth has an inverted U-shaped relationship, with product innovativeness. These findings carry important theoretical and managerial implications.     

Foreign Manufacturing Multinationals and the Transformation of the Chinese Economy

I.The argument in brief China became the world's largest destination for foreign direct investment (FDI),almost all of which is FDI in manufacturing and assembly,in 2003,before falling back into a solid second place.These FDI flows have revolutionized China's industrial base and shifted the composition of Chinese exports     

International macroeconomic announcements and intraday euro exchange rate volatility

The short-run reaction of Euro returns volatility to a wide range of macroeconomic announcements is investigated using 5-min returns for spot Euro–Dollar, Euro–Sterling and Euro–Yen exchange rates. The marginal impact of each individual macroeconomic announcement on volatility is isolated whilst controlling for the distinct intraday volatility pattern, calendar effects, and a latent, longer run volatility factor simultaneously. Macroeconomic news announcements from the US are found to cause the vast majority of the statistically significant responses in volatility, with US monetary policy and real activity announcements causing the largest reactions of volatility across the three rates. ECB interest rate decisions are also important for all three rates, whilst UK Industrial Production and Japanese GDP cause large responses for the Euro–Sterling and Euro–Yen rates, respectively. Additionally, forward looking indicators and regional economic surveys, the release timing of which is such that they are the first indicators of macroeconomic performance that traders observe for a particular month, are also found to play a significant role.     

Fair trade,ethical decision making and the narrative of gender difference

Fair trade (FT) is of growing interest to those carrying out research into ethical decision making. In this paper, we report findings from a recent survey of FT purchasing among 688 retail shoppers in the United Kingdom. We examined the relationship between individual differences, in terms of gender and age, and three outcome measures: purchasing, word of mouth (WOM) recommendation and social advocacy. Though age appeared to have no significant effects, we found evidence of gender difference in each outcome measure. Females in our sample were more likely to purchase FT goods, to recommend them by WOM, and to advocate FT purchasing to friends and family. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the literature on ethical decision making and gender difference.     

The Hot–Cold Decision Triangle: A framework for healthier choices

People often behave in ways that are clearly detrimental to their health. We review representative research on unhealthy behaviors within a parsimonious framework, the Hot-Cold Decision Triangle. Through this framework, we describe how when people embrace colder state reasoning??instead of risking the pitfalls of heuristics and visceral reactions??they are more likely to behave healthily. We also illustrate how some heuristics and visceral urges can be leveraged to encourage healthier choices. We conclude by discussing unexplored research directions, as well as substantive implications for individuals, marketers, and policymakers.     

Elections, exchange rates and reform in Latin America

In this paper, we study the link between real exchange rate (RER) depreciation and elections in Latin America. Our contribution is threefold. First, we employ a statistical model that takes into account the pervasive conditional heteroskedasticity found in financial data and includes a wide range of macroeconomic variables as regressors. Second, we test whether the wave of central bank reform that swept the region has had any effect on the existence or strength of the electoral cycle in exchange rates. Third, we test an additional hypothesis, namely, that financial liberalization may also be an important variable explaining changes in electoral effects on the real exchange rate. In a panel of 9 Latin American countries with available macroeconomic data and a history of exogenous election dates, we confirm the previous findings that real depreciation intensifies after elections even when modeling the significant conditional heteroskedasticity in these data. We also show, for the first time in the literature, that post-election exchange rates are significantly less predictable. We go on to test whether central bank reform has influenced the way in which elections affect the RER in Latin America. If reform has been effective at reducing political manipulation of the exchange rate, then any relationship we see between elections and the RER before central bank reform should be mitigated in the post-reform era. We find that the relationship disappears after reform and that post-reform real exchange rates are also significantly less volatile. Finally, we show that financial liberalization seems to have a stronger effect on the conditional variance of the RER than does central bank reform, but reform has a stronger impact on the conditional mean.     

Provincial fiscal positions and business cylce synchronization across China

This paper examines to what extent Chinese provinces with similar fiscal policies have synchronous business cycles. Following Darvas, Rose, and Szapáry (2007), we create a measure of fiscal policy divergence between provinces i and j and see if it is associated with the correlation of output movements between i and j. To examine this relation, we use the correlation model of Frankel and Rose (1998). Since causation can run from both fiscal policy to output fluctuations and from output fluctuations to fiscal policy, we instrument for fiscal policy using government expenditure on cultural activities which remains steady across the business cycle. Results show that provinces with similar budgetary positions tend to have similar business cycle movements.     

Factors affecting the service quality of the tour guiding profession in Macau

This study examines the factors affecting the service quality of the tour guiding profession in Macau. In‐depth interviews were conducted with representatives from the Macau Tourist Guide Association, the Macau Government Tourist Office and selected practising tour guides to explore the issues from multiple insiders' perspectives. The factors identified were classified into six categories: unhealthy business practices, market domination, immaturity of tourist market, changing tourist behaviour, intense competition between inbound tour operators and human resource issues. The findings suggest that a number of these problems actually originated from the unhealthy business practices of the tourist‐generating country, namely mainland China in this study. Considering the growing importance of the Chinese outbound tourism market, the study findings will be of significant value to Macau and to other destinations targeting the Chinese market. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.