The roles of insurance and well-specified standards in dealing with environmental risks

The present liability system for managing environmental risks has had huge transaction costs through the courts with limited funds actually utilized for compensation (except to the lawyers) and cleanup of wastes. This paper discusses the use of insurance coupled with well-specified standards as an alternative to the current system. It illustrates the potential for the use of these policy tools in the context of two environmental risk management problems: providing liability protection to contractors involved in asbestos removal and protecting commercial property lenders and owners from liabilities associated with environmental contamination.     

TRAINING AND LABOUR MARKET SEGMENTATION

A two period model of the training decision is analysed using a human capital approach. The segmented labour market model where training opportunities distinguish entrants is compared with a competitive structure with homogeneous entrants. The main conclusions in the paper are the clear effects of training wages and the different effects in the two market structures of both wages and employment prospects in the unskilled market on training.     

Technology-enabled interactions in digital environments:a conceptual foundation for current and future research

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science -     

Targeting Conservation Investments in Heterogeneous Landscapes: A Distance-Function Approach and Application to Watershed Management

To achieve an environmental objective at least cost, decision makers must integrate information about spatially variable biophysical and economic conditions. Although the biophysical attributes that contribute to an environmental outcome are often known, the way in which these attributes interact to produce the outcome is often unknown. We introduce a nonparametric conservation targeting approach that relies on distance functions to cost-efficiently allocate conservation funds. We apply the approach empirically to the case of conservation contracting for water-quality objectives. The contract portfolios derived from the application have many desirable properties, including intuitive appeal and robust performance across plausible parametric scoring measures.     

Raising the bar (6)

Raising the bar (6). Spatial Economic Analysis. This editorial summarizes and comments on the papers published in issue 12(4) so as to raise the bar in applied spatial economic research and highlight new trends. The first paper addresses the question of whether ‘jobs follow people’ or ‘people follow jobs’. The second paper develops a new methodology to determine functional regions. The third paper is a major contribution to the growing literature on new modelling approaches and applications of disaster impact models. The fourth paper focuses on the costs and benefits of higher education. The fifth paper develops a two-step procedure to identify endogenously spatial regimes in the first step using geographically weighted regression, and to account for spatial dependence in the second step. Finally, the sixth paper estimates a dynamic spatial panel data model to explain house prices and to show that restricted housing supply in the city of Cambridge, UK, has some undesirable labour market effects.     

A model of multiple-unit ownership as a diffusion process

This paper develops and tests a new model for multiple-unit adoptions of durable goods based on the diffusion modeling tradition. Multiple-unit adoptions are a major component of sales for many consumer durable product categories. For instance, sales of multiple-unit adoptions for televisions have been higher than both first adoptions and replacement purchases since 1977, while for automobiles, they have represented more than 20% of sales since 1966 in Australia. The structural drivers of multiple-unit adoptions are quite different from either first purchase or replacement purchase. Hence, identifying and modeling the multiple-unit component of sales is important for aggregate sales forecasts. Moreover, consumer requirements for additional units of a product are likely to be considerably different than for the other components of sales (first purchases and replacement purchases). As such, the ratio of the first, multiple, and replacement sales components will strongly influence the product mix requirements of the market.

While forecasting and influencing multiple-unit sales are an important managerial issue, very little attention has been given to multiple-unit ownership in the diffusion modeling literature. The only model available was developed for the purpose of modeling relatively short-term behavior of multiple-unit adoptions, rather than the longer-term pattern of sales. We propose a model of multiple-unit adoptions as a diffusion process.

We apply the model to both color television and automobiles. Analysis of the model's long-term fit and forecasts in these applications provide support for the structure of the new model.     

Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Designs

Despite all best efforts, the design process often leads to the introduction of products that do not meet customer expectations. Although the design team typically applies customer-related information from several sources, the product design somehow fails to satisfy customer requirements. Clearly, we need to develop a better understanding of the process by which designers in large development organizations transform information about customer requirements into the final design specification. To improve our understanding of this process, Antonio J. Bailetti and Paul F. Litva examine design managers' perspectives on the sources of customer requirement information. During the evolution of a product design, the design team applies information that is endorsed by marketing and product management. Common sources of such information include commercial specifications, inferences from existing products and services, deployment studies, and external standards. When this management-endorsed information is deemed inadequate, designers supplement it by creating and sharing their own customer-related information. This local information includes the results of benchmarking function and performance, the designers' perceptions of a service provider's installed base of equipment, and validations of intermediate designs. Marketing and product management cannot easily review the local information that designers create and share in evolving a final design. This article highlights the importance of creating mechanisms for ensuring that customer requirement information from various sources is internally consistent. To meet this goal of consistency, organizations must ensure that customer requirements information produced by marketing satisfies the information processing requirements of the design community. In addition, the knowledge that designers actually apply to produce a design must incorporate customer requirement information endorsed by marketing and product management at all stages of product development.     

The first space hotel employees: Human resources challenges in a post-terrestrial paradigm

ABSTRACT

This article discusses some of the issues regarding the first employees to work in a space hotel. As space hotels initially will be vastly different to existing hotels on Earth, it is important to question what human resource challenges this will raise for hospitality workers and providers. To assist reflection on this issue, the notions of space tourism and space tourist are explored, and a definition of a space hotel is included to create product and service boundaries. Plausible futures methodology is used to create five main human resource considerations and concludes by suggesting this sector is largely unexplored.     

Why Mortgage Borrowers Persevere: An Explanation of First and Second Lien Performance Mismatch

Borrowers with a pair of mortgages collateralized by the same property sometimes continue to make payments on one while defaulting on the other. We articulate a framework for understanding this performance mismatch that emphasizes two types of borrowers: those with stable equity positions who perceive they are facing moderate or temporary liquidity shocks, and those facing severe financial stress in combination with negative equity. The former have an incentive to enter mismatch and subsequently cure, while the latter would default on both contracts. Our empirical analysis using newly available, national samples of matched first‐ and second‐lien mortgages supports this view.