基于消费行为视角的可持续消费分析

消费与环境的可持续性存在密切关系，改变消费过程已被认为是朝向可持续发展的重要步骤，消费行为及其驱动力影响可持续消费的实现。本文基于消费行为理论视角，用一个综合方法构建了一个可持续消费模型，探讨了可持续消费的本质，并指出其政策意义。     

Acknowledging the Purpose of Partnership

The paper explores a case of partnership between a large pharmaceutical company and a national charity in the United Kingdom, a partnership from which the drug company sought improved public relations, and the charity money. Neither side was able to accept this reality. Managers of the partnership insisted that its only purpose was to improve the lifestyle of teenagers. They were supported by a literature on partnership that also tends to ignore the distinction between the task the partnership is set and its fundamental purpose. While much is made of the benefits of partnership, there are likely to be costs, both private and social, associated with failure to admit the purpose of partnership.     

The business-to-business relationship dimensions in financial services markets

This paper discusses the nature of financial business relationships by drawing on the IMP Group’s theory of industrial relationships. It discusses, among other aspects, the interaction process between banks and their corporate clients, the longevity of relationships, the interdependence between both sides, and the atmosphere of financial services relationships. The conclusions are thought to be interesting and useful for the managers of firms and financial services when setting relationship marketing policies and for academic research on business-to-business services relationships. The field research was done in Portugal and the case method was used.

Negotiating free trade

We develop a dynamic bargaining model in which a leading country endogenously decides whether to sequentially negotiate free trade agreements with subsets of countries or engage in simultaneous multilateral bargaining with all countries at once. We show how the structure of coalition externalities shapes the choice between sequential and multilateral bargaining, and we identify circumstances in which the grand coalition is the equilibrium outcome, leading to worldwide free trade. A model of international trade is then used to illustrate equilibrium outcomes and how they depend on the structure of trade and protection. Global free trade is not achieved when the political-economy motive for protection is sufficiently large. Furthermore, the model generates both “building bloc” and “stumbling bloc” effects of preferential trade agreements. In particular, we describe an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are permitted to form (a building bloc effect), and an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are forbidden (a stumbling bloc effect). The analysis identifies conditions under which each of these outcomes emerges.     

Heuristic Approximation to Cramér-von Mises Type Statistics

We derive a formal expansion for a distribution in terms of another distribution. As a particular case we get the formal Edgeworth expansion. The heuristic procedure that we present is used to obtain approximations for distribution functions of the Cramér-von Mises and Watson goodness-of-fit statistics. Finally we compare our results with some obtained in the literature.     

Chi-Square Tests Under Models Close to the Normal Distribution

Many test statistics follow a χ² distribution because a normal model is assumed as underlying distribution. In this paper we obtain good analytic approximations for the p-value and the critical value of χ² tests when the underlying distribution is close but different from the normal model. With these approximations we study the robustness of validity of χ² tests     

Fiscal Shocks and The Sectoral Composition of Output

We study the impact of shocks to different types of government spending on the sectoral composition of output for a panel of EMU member countries. We find that fiscal shocks lead to an increase in the relative size of the nontraded sector, with the impact varying across the different spending categories. There is typically no significant impact on the level of production in the tradables sector but the level of imports increases and the level of exports declines in most cases. Overall, the results show that fiscal shocks matter not only for aggregate variables but also for the sectoral composition of output. The sectoral output results are consistent with previous work concerning the impact of fiscal shocks on the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontradables.     

A note on “A directional slacks-based measure of technical inefficiency”

In this note we show, by means of several examples, that a directional distance function model cannot be matched with an additive model. Specifically, we show the difference between the directional slacks-based measure and the corresponding directional distance function.     

One-sample tests for a generalized Fréchet variance of a fuzzy random variable

A procedure to test hypotheses about the population variance of a fuzzy random variable is analyzed. The procedure is based on the theory of UH-statistics. The variance is defined in terms of a general metric to quantify the variability of the fuzzy values about its (fuzzy) mean. An asymptotic one-sample test in a wide setting is developed and a bootstrap test, which is more suitable for small and moderate sample sizes, is also studied. Moreover, the power function of the asymptotic procedure through local alternatives is analyzed. Some simulations showing the empirical behavior and consistency of both tests are carried out. Finally, some illustrative examples of the practical application of the proposed tests are presented.     

Share the Fame or Share the Blame? The Reputational Implications of Partnerships

We use an adverse selection model to study the dynamics of firms' reputations when firms implement joint projects. We show that in the case of joint projects a firm's reputation does not necessarily increase following a success and does not necessarily decrease following a failure. We also study how reputation considerations affect firms' decisions to participate in joint projects. We show that a high‐reputation partner is not necessarily preferable to a low‐reputation partner and, when implementation of the joint project by a single firm is possible, a high‐quality partner may not be preferable to a low‐quality partner.