Off-season tourists and the cultural offer of a mass-tourism destination: The case of Rimini

This paper assesses the potential implications on off-season tourism of enhancing the cultural offer of Rimini, a popular Italian seaside holiday destination hosting about 12 million overnight stays per year. Since more than 9 million of these stays are concentrated in the summer season, in the last 20 years. Rimini has been undergoing a policy of seasonality smoothing, which mainly pivots around business and cultural tourism. This assessment has been carried out through discrete choice experiments submitted to a sample of about 800 tourists who visited Rimini outside the summer months. Since tourism can be viewed as a composite good, which overall utility depends on how the component characteristics are arranged, the choice experiments allow to disentangle the importance and the willingness to pay of tourists for different attributes of the holiday. The choice model incorporates a number of possible changes to actual tourism features (which are also the subject of public debate), including them in hypothetical alternative “holiday packages”. The conditional logit analysis of the choice experiments can highlight any synergy or trade-off between cultural and business tourism. Results suggest that business and leisure tourists share many features related to the use of the territory, while there are important trade-offs between these two groups and cultural tourists. Since business tourists have a higher willingness to extend their stay, a softer budget, and their demand is also complementary to the demand of summer tourists (Brau, Scorcu, & Vici, 2009), from the destination point of view investing in this market segment would be the best option. Although a “second best”, however, cultural tourists share with the local population of Rimini many aspects of the demand of territory (Figini, Castellani, & Vici, 2009). Hence, cultural tourism can play a fundamental role in the intermediate season as a tool for smoothing seasonality, to diversify investments and to give value to the city’s cultural heritage.     

Mehrwert für die Marke durch Kommunikation schaffen

Marken ohne Mehrwert haben keine Existenzberechtigung. Nicht immer liegt der Mehrwert jedoch im Produkt oder der Dienstleistung selbst. Vielmehr kann die Kommunikation selbst einen Mehrwert für Marken schaffen. Deshalb wird im folgenden Beitrag gezeigt, wie man den Markenmehrwert einerseits klar kommunizieren und andererseits durch die Kommunikation selbst Mehrwert zum Nutzen für den Kunden und für das Unternehmen schaffen kann.     

Recognizing the Best: The Productive and Counterproductive Effects of Relative Performance Recognition

I use a laboratory experiment to examine the productive and counterproductive effects of providing employees nonpecuniary recognition based on measures of relative performance. I find that, on average, recognition programs increase both productive efforts (those intended to increase one's own performance) and counterproductive efforts (those intended to decrease peer performance) in a setting where it is salient to employees that they can exert both productive and counterproductive efforts. Interestingly, I also find that these effects are moderated by the Dark Triad of personalities, a group of three personality traits. My study reveals that recognition programs mainly lead individuals who score lower on the Dark Triad to increase counterproductive efforts and those who score higher on the Dark Triad to increase productive efforts. These results contribute to the literature on relative performance information by demonstrating that recognition programs can have both productive and counterproductive effects. However, whether these programs produce mainly a productive or counterproductive effect depends on important personality characteristics of the employees.     

MARKET REFORM AND FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN LATIN AMERICA: Evidence from an Error Correction Model

This study models dollar values of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to conditions in seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela) during the 1988-1992 period. Although much research on FDI has used time series data to explain inward or outward flows, two things set this study apart. First, this study includes market reforms as independent variables. Second, this study uses newer time series econometric tools (unit root test and cointegration analysis) to correct for a spurious regression. Our model is robust, explaining 79.4 percent of variation. We found three independent variables (size of current account deficit, size of GDP, and value of privatization less FDI in privatized companies) to be significant. Although we found directional support for three other independent variables (degree of capital market liberalization, low inflation rate, and depreciation of the real exchange rate), none of these proved significant.     

Exchange rate determination: a theory of the decisive role of central bank cooperation and conflict

Economists’ faith that variable exchange rates benevolently equilibrate has been empirically disconfirmed. That faith is here tackled at its theoretical core with an exchange rate model that although ultra abstract, includes the undeniable fundamentals of market power and differential goals of central bankers and large-scale private players. It permits a game theoretic analysis under the assumption that all agents maximize their payoffs. The paper then relaxes the assumption of maximising agents, allowing for a more complex and thus realistic second version of the model that is interpretable within SKAT, the Stages of Knowledge Ahead Theory of risk and uncertainty. In an experimental setting, this second version of the model points to: a) the inability of agents in central banks, governments and the private real and financial sectors to operate in maximising ways; b) destructive central bank conflict; and c) the widely discrepant outcomes arising from the dynamics of individual personality differences. The paper’s theoretical and empirical findings thus both point to the merits of a single world currency.     

Operational planning and competitive strategies of male and female retailers

Interest in the managerial practices of females in business has increased over the past decade due to women's increased representation in business. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that women approach decision making differently from men. The purpose of this study is to determine if gender differences regarding managerial strategies exist in the retail setting. Targeted managerial strategies focused on short-term planning processes (personnel, financial, inventory and market planning) and competitive strategies in operation (differentiation, cost leadership and focus). In a sample of 459 retailers from a twelve-state region, MANOVA was used to determine if significant differences in managerial strategies existed between genders. The data on retail competitive strategies suggest that men and women more likely than male business owners to recognize in the importance of differentiation and focus as retail competitive strategies in their business operations. Gender differences were also found in the operational planning areas of market and inventory planning.     

Will India Be the Next China? Challenges,Prospects and Implications for Australia

India's recent growth performance has been impressive and it appears set to again become a major global economic power. But, sustaining this growth poses formidable challenges. Australia stands to gain much from India's growth. In this article, we review recent developments in the Indian economy, identify policy challenges and discuss short‐to‐medium term prospects, noting some of the main similarities and differences between China and India. Then, we look at opportunities for significant growth in Australian–Indian economic links and policy implications including the possible role of a free trade agreement.