<Emphasis Type="Italic">The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan</Emphasis> by Sebastian Mallaby

I agree that Sebastian Mallaby’s detailed and well-sourced The Man Who Knew: The Life and Times of Alan Greenspan, will be essential for every future economic historian studying the Greenspan era. That said, Mallaby does not convey to his readers a sound understanding of monetary policy. I disagree with Mallaby’s claim that Greenspan could and should have done something about the housing and subprime mortgage bubbles. Peter Wallison makes a strong case that the affordable housing quotas did not just “encourage” but forced the GSEs to buy subprime mortgages. Information available in real time on aggregate subprime mortgage issuance was seriously flawed because the GSEs did not report accurately. Greenspan cannot be held responsible for the GSEs hiding the subprime debt on their balance sheets. These mortgages were central to the crisis. It seems improbable that any monetary policy mistake of 2001–05 was large enough to create the crisis. Mallaby could have written a final chapter emphasizing the Maestro resisting the power of a malign and evil pair of GSEs and the power of the President and Congress of the United States pursuing a disastrous housing policy. Despite the Maestro’s best efforts, Leviathan triumphed and brought ruin upon the Nation.     

Integration by Emerging Economy Multinationals: Perspectives from Chinese Mergers and Acquisitions

The integration process of international mergers and acquisitions by emerging economy multinationals is fraught with challenges of liabilities of foreignness and country of origin. We use insights from institutional theory and draw on the experience of Chinese international mergers and acquisitions to explore these challenges faced by emerging economy multinationals during postmerger integration. We find that these challenges, which are primarily caused by informal institutional differences, can be overcome by developing organizational capabilities for integration and employing mechanisms for appropriate control and justice during the integration process. The study contributes to the ongoing discussions about the relevance of sociocultural influences in the successful integration of international mergers and acquisitions. Our framework proposes initiatives that managers from emerging economies can take to overcome postmerger integration challenges. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Bundling attractions for rural tourism development

Tourism is often regarded as a viable solution to economic crisis, especially for remote areas without many development options. While many tourism destinations have strong cultural or heritage assets, not all destinations have primary attractions that can bring visitors to the region. Rather than developing special interest “themes”, rural areas that do not have enough of any one type of tourism resource to act as a primary draw may consider bundling different attraction types to increase visitation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the preferences of visitors to secondary heritage sites and explore the relationship between heritage tourism and alternative, non-heritage activities in rural areas. Findings revealed that motivation to visit small-scale heritage sites consisted of two dimensions: learning and recreation. The two motivational dimensions influenced visitors’ interest in different heritage attractions and likelihood of visiting heritage tourism “scenarios”. As for alternative activities, there was a cluster of “popular” activities that were enjoyed by both learning-oriented and recreation-oriented respondents, but recreation-oriented visitors were more interested in nature-based activities and sport-related activities than learning-oriented visitors. Findings can help rural communities improve secondary attractions and diversify their tourism product by bundling heritage attractions with non-heritage activities.     

The nutrition transition and agricultural transformation: a Preston curve approach

The nutrition transition in diets and health is closely tied to other aspects of economic development, including agricultural transformation and urbanization as well as demographic change and epidemiological transition from infectious to noncommunicable disease. Over time, dietary patterns typically shift from widespread inadequacy of many foods and nutrients, especially for children and mothers, into surplus energy intake and rising obesity with continued inadequacy of healthier foods. Diet‐related diseases remain the largest single cause of premature death and disability in all regions. This article combines food availability and dietary intake data from more than 100 countries over 30 years with a wide range of other evidence to characterize the nutrition transition and its association with changes in agricultural production and the food environment, asking how future dietary patterns might be steered toward healthier outcomes as national incomes grow.     

Crowding standards at Petra Archaeological Park: a comparative study of McKercher's five types of heritage tourists

To achieve sustainability in heritage tourism, tourists should be placed at the heart of the management and planning processes. Indicators and standards-based frameworks were developed in the field of outdoor recreation management to manage and measure crowding and other problematic issues in parks and related areas. Using normative theory and visual research methods, this article aims to examine crowding standards of tourists at Petra Archaeological Park, and compare these standards between the types of heritage tourists suggested by a model developed by Bob McKercher. Results showed that tourists’ acceptability levels go down with an increasing number of tourists, and tourists who are highly motivated to visit heritage sites (i.e. purposeful and sightseeing heritage tourists) had the most restrictive acceptable number of tourists at the park. The normative standards formulated in this article provided a guidance to manage crowding at Petra.     

Managing Relations Between R&D and Marketing in New Product Development Projects

This article examines the R&D/marketing interface conditions found within an extensive data base of new product development innovation projects. The incidence of different types of problems between these two important functions are analyzed and the effects of these observations on project outcomes are discussed. The article contains a number of recommendations for increasing the success rates of innovation projects by using a model that improves conditions at the R&D/marketing interface.     

Examining the efficacy of self-classification approach in segmenting special-interest tourists: food tourism case

Self-classification is used as an a priori approach to tourist typology and market segmentation. However, skepticism still surrounds its ability to incorporate the multidimensionality of tourist behavior. This study seeks to empirically verify the efficacy of a single-item self-classification approach. The robustness of this self-classification measure is examined by comparing it to a data-driven multidimensional psychographic approach in terms of its ability to predict the behaviors of tourists toward food-related destination consumption. Results suggest that the single-item self-classification approach performs equally well as the psychographic approach in segmenting food-related consumption behaviors. The implications and limitations of this study are also discussed.