What moves housing markets: A variance decomposition of the rent–price ratio

We apply the dynamic Gordon growth model to the housing market in 23 US metropolitan areas, the four Census regions, and the nation from 1975 to 2007. The model allows the rent–price ratio at each date to be split into the expected present discounted values of rent growth, real interest rates, and a housing premium over real rates. We show that housing premia are variable and forecastable and account for a significant fraction of rent–price ratio volatility at the national and local levels, and that covariances among the three components damp fluctuations in rent–price ratios. Thus, explanations of house-price dynamics that focus only on interest rate movements and ignore these covariances can be misleading. These results are similar to those found for stocks and bonds.     

Power Structure and Rent Competition

This paper presents a model of rent competition in a mixed economic system in which wealth maximizing interest group coalitions share wealth according to their relative political power. The model solves for optimal lobbying expenditures of a producer group, a consumer group, and individual firms. The existence of monopolistic rent is not presupposed. Instead, the equilibrium market price, output, and market shares of firms are determined endogenously. As a result, the distribution of rent depends upon the relative political power of each interest group coalition and total lobbying expenditure decreases as the asymmetry in marginal political power among interest group coalitions increases.     

Heritage Tourism in Singapore Chinatown: A Perceived Value Approach to Authenticity and Satisfaction

This study examines object-based and existential authenticity using a multidimensional approach to perceived value. The effects of value perceptions on satisfaction are also examined. Data was collected from tourists at the Singapore Chinatown heritage precinct. The findings revealed that object-based authenticity, existential authenticity, and perceived monetary value positively influenced overall perceived value and subsequently, satisfaction. This paper provides researchers with a theoretical framework of authenticity and perceived value for future empirical studies in the heritage tourism context. It also provides insight into how destination marketers and policy makers can develop effective and sustainable strategies for heritage destinations.     

美国供应链信息披露新法规涉及冲突矿产

金融危机爆发以后,美国国会通过了多德·弗兰克金融改革法案以改革金融体系。除了针对金融机构,该法案也包含了一个对更多行业将会产生巨大影响的条款,内容涉及冲突性地区金属矿产的获取。从2013年开始,许多在美国上市的公司必须对美国证券委员会提交关于企业供应链来源的报告,这一新的信息披露要求,对企业提出了一个复杂的责任问题。     

Customer orientation,engagement, and developing positive emotional labor

Frontline employees must deal on a daily basis with emotionally demanding customer interactions. Such interactions, when coupled with organizational directives to focus upon exemplary customer service, can prompt employees to express feelings and emotions that are not genuine. Such ‘surface acting' has been found to create stress in frontline personnel, but an understanding of how this negative aspect of emotional labor may be minimized is lacking in the services literature. How a frontline employee's individual attributes might interact with a service work context to build deep, as opposed to surface, acting is the current focus. Applying job demands–resources theory, this study investigates how a frontline employee's customer orientation helps to develop positive work engagement, even in the face of contextual demands. Engagement is then linked positively to the beneficial behavior of deep acting which, in contrast to surface acting, has been identified as a less stressful form of emotional labor.     

Managing Opportunism in China: The Roles of Guanxi,Environmental Uncertainty,and Management Culture

ABSTRACT

This cross-cultural comparison aims to understand whether the influence of consumer ethnocentrism (CE) on consumer preference for domestic versus foreign products is product category and country-of-origin dependent. Three countries with dissimilar cultural orientation and economic status—China, South Korea, and the United States—were examined. American consumers were found to be more ethnocentric than Chinese and South Korean consumers. CE was found to significantly and positively predict American and Korean consumers’ preference for domestic products across product categories, while Chinese consumers’ CE did not translate into their preference for Chinese products. In addition, the relationship between CE and purchase preference varied across product categories as well as countries of origin.     

Using the fuzzy set theory to developing an environmental impact assessment index for a thermal power plant

Korean thermal power has had a prominent position in energy policies for the past decades. However, pollutants from the combustion of fossil fuels used in converting thermal energy into electrical energy have undesirable effect on the environment. This paper applies fuzzy set theory (FST) to identifying the significance of various environmental impacts using a specific case study of the electric power utilities in Korea. To this end, we consider nine environmental impacts: mortality, morbidity, forest, agricultural production, materials, visibility, thermal discharge water, landscape, and global warming. A survey of randomly sampled 1,000 households was administrated to obtain value judgments from FST about the environmental impacts of a thermal power plant. The overall results show that global warming is the most important attribute in environmental effect-related decision-making processes and followed by morbidity and mortality in order. The implications of the results for electric power utilities are also discussed. We found that the work and results can provide valuable insights for major decision making in energy and environmental planning of the electric power utilities.     

Cynicism as a Fundamental Dimension of Moral Decision-Making: A Scale Development

Altruism and cynicism are two fundamental algorithms of moral decision-making. This derives from the evolution of cooperative behavior and reciprocal altruism and the need to avoid being taken advantage of. Rushton (1986) developed a self-report scale to measure altruism, however no scale to measure cynicism has been developed for use in ethics research. Following a discussion of reciprocal altruism and cynicism, this article presents an 11-item self-report scale to measure cynicism, developed and validated using a sample of 271 customer-service and sales personnel.     

Impacts of health and environmental consciousness on young female consumers' attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products

This study investigated young female consumers' beauty product shopping behavioural patterns, their perceived importance of product attributes, and their attitude towards and purchase of natural beauty products. This study also examines whether consumers' product attitudes and shopping behaviours are influenced by their health and environmental consciousness. Data were collected from a convenience sample of 210 female college students enrolled at a south‐eastern university in the US. In order to examine the impacts of both health and environmental consciousness on other selected variables, the respondents were divided into four groups based on their scores on the two variables, and a series of analysis of variance were conducted to compare characteristics of the four groups. The results showed that health and environmental consciousness significantly influenced the importance placed on beauty product attributes. Additionally, those with a high level of both health and environmental consciousness were significantly more positive in their evaluations than those with low scores on both variables in their perceptions of natural beauty products. Those with low scores on both variables were significantly less willing than the other groups to pay more for natural beauty products. Analysis of variance results also indicated that the two groups with a high level of environmental consciousness purchased natural beauty products more frequently than those with a low level of health and environmental consciousness, indicating a relatively stronger impact of environmental consciousness than health consciousness on frequency of natural beauty product purchases. Health and environmental consciousness were both significantly related to a respondent's perceived level of knowledge of beauty products and ability to distinguish natural from conventional beauty products.     

When consumers struggle: Action crisis and its effects on problematic goal pursuit

When pursuing goals, consumers often face setbacks that force them to reevaluate their goals. Yet, current goal theory offers limited explanations for how people respond to recurring challenges and disengage from their goals. Through five experiments investigating three primary theoretical aims, this research extends the field's understanding of action crisis, a possible goal pursuit stage marked by internal conflict over whether or not to continue, and investigates it in consumption contexts such as patient–physician relationships, weight loss diets, and environmentally friendly purchasing. Experiments 1A–1C show that consumer action crisis encourages more disengagement‐related and less continuation‐supportive cost–benefit thinking than nonproblematic action phase. Experiment 2 replicates this cognitive shift, and connects action crisis to diminished goal‐related evaluations and weakened commitment. Experiment 3 further clarifies action crisis’ influence on consumer goal pursuit by revealing decreased cognitive and behavioral engagement that does not involve a shift in construal level when compared to action phase consumers. Extending understanding of action crisis as a possible mindset and action phase, these five experiments advance goal disengagement theory by connecting changes in cognition, motivation, and behavior to action crisis.