Assessing the Value of Collaborations in Tourism Networks: A Case Study of Elkhart County,Indiana

This study explores the determinants of perceived value derived from interorganizational collaborations in a tourism destination. The authors propose a theoretical model of perceived value drawing upon the rich stream of literature related to strategic collaborations and interorganizational networks. The model was tested using a cross section of tourism organizations operating within Elkhart County, Indiana. The results indicate that a significant positive value of collaboration is achieved from dyadic relationships. Importantly, the results suggest that the positive effect achieved from one-to-one partnerships decreases once an organization collaborates with several other organizations. The article discusses various implications for managing strategic tourism partnerships.     

Who will lead and who will follow: Identifying Influential Users in Online Social Networks

Along with the explosive growth of the phenomenon Online Social Networks (OSN), identifying influential users in OSN has received a great deal of attention in recent years. However, the development of practical approaches for identifying them is still in its infancy. By means of a structured literature review, the authors analyze and synthesize the publications particularly from two perspectives. From a research perspective, they find that existing approaches mostly build on users’ connectivity and activity but hardly consider further characteristics of influential users. Moreover, they outline two major research streams. It becomes apparent that most marketing-oriented articles draw on real-world data of OSN, while more technology-oriented papers rather have a theoretical approach and mostly evaluate their artifacts by means of formal proofs. The authors find that a stronger collaboration between the scientific Business and Information Systems Engineering (BISE) and Marketing communities could be mutually beneficial. With respect to a practitioner’s perspective, they compile advice on the practical application of approaches for the identification of influential users. It is hoped that the results can stimulate and guide future research.     

Trade creation and the status of FTAs: empirical evidence from East Asia

East Asia has been considered a latecomer with respect to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). Since the turn of the last century, however, FTAs with East Asian participation have seen an intra- and extra-regional expansion. Many trade initiatives have been proposed, negotiated or even implemented. This introduces interesting perspectives for the analysis of trade agreements regarding their anticipatory trade effects. This paper focuses on the trade impact of FTAs at different stages that East Asian economies participate in. The central part of this study is an econometric analysis that applies panel data to the gravity model of international trade flows. We augment the traditional model with variables to estimate trade effects of bilateral and multilateral agreements and year-to-year changes in the stages of their implementation. Our results reveal that there exist anticipatory effects preceding the actual implementation of bilateral FTAs with East Asian participation. Further, anticipation effects are larger for bilateral than for multilateral agreements, possibly because the realisation of bilateral agreements is considered more realistic.     

Cross-cultural entrepreneurship research: Current status and framework for future studies

Although cross-cultural research in the field of entrepreneurship is still in its infancy as a research stream, it offers important inferences for both theory and practice. Some have criticized the relative immaturity of previous survey-based studies’ methodology. In order to address this flaw, we analyze existing survey-based studies in the field of cross-cultural entrepreneurship to identify research gaps in content and methodology and then derive the most appropriate analytical approach to fill the gaps for this type of research. Finally, we present a practical framework in which to conduct sound and prudent future studies, integrating the most appropriate analytical approach, general methodological insights, and the particularities of entrepreneurship research in a cross-cultural setting.

The Effect of Pricing on Demand and Revenue in Federal Reserve ACH Payment Processing

Because the automated clearinghouse (ACH) has been found to have lower social costs than paper checks, the Federal Reserve has been promoting more widespread use of ACH by lowering ACH processing fees. In this paper, we have obtained the first numerical estimates of ACH demand elasticities, a measure of the responsiveness of ACH demand to price changes. Various methods are employed to estimate the demand elasticities to determine how robust the estimates are. During the period 1985–1996, the Federal Reserve lowered the per-item price of interregional ACH, while the per-item price of intraregional ACH stayed constant. We take advantage of this unique pattern of historical price changes implemented by the Federal Reserve to estimate the effect of price changes on demand for ACH.We find that the volume of ACH processed by the Federal Reserve responds to changes in per-item fees, but the increase in volume that results from a price decline is very small and not statistically significantly different from 0, except in the case of debit origination. The results suggest that the Federal Reserve cannot expect to generate substantial additional volume by lowering its prices further. However, commercial banks may be able to increase the volume demanded by lowering their own ACH fees. We also examine how volume growth initiated by a price cut affects unit costs. Given the relatively large-scale economies found for ACH, volume growth leads to lower unit costs. However, to outweigh the revenues lost as a result of a price decline, ACH volume would have to increase by an amount much greater than our estimates indicate is likely. Consequently, a decline in per-item ACH fees likely would lead to lower net revenues.     

Measuring the effect of watch-preceded and direct rating changes: a note on credit markets

This paper analyzes the importance of distinguishing between watch-preceded and direct rating changes for the credit default swap (CDS) market by examining a total of 2991 rating change announcements, 1526 watchlist placement announcements, and 430 rating affirmations following watchlist placements. The results show that watch-preceded downgrades do not lead to significant CDS market reactions, while direct downgrades are associated with a significant increase in CDS spread levels. Likewise, we document that watchlist placements for downgrade lead to increases in firms’ CDS spreads. CDS markets do not react to rating upgrades but watchlist placements for upgrade result in an immediate decrease in CDS spreads. Rating affirmations following watchlist placements for downgrade lead to slight reductions in CDS spreads, while affirmations following watchlist placements for upgrade have no effect on CDS spreads. These findings demonstrate the importance for empirical research on the interaction between credit markets and rating announcements to differentiate between watch-preceded and direct rating changes, particularly for rating downgrades.     

Course Allocation via Stable Matching

The allocation of students to courses is a wide-spread and repeated task in higher education, often accomplished by a simple first-come first-served (FCFS) procedure. FCFS is neither stable nor strategy-proof, however. The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley for their work on the theory of stable allocations. This theory was influential in many areas, but found surprisingly little application in course allocation as of yet. In this paper, different approaches for course allocation with a focus on appropriate stable matching mechanisms are surveyed. Two such mechanisms are discussed in more detail, the Gale-Shapley student optimal stable mechanism (SOSM) and the efficiency adjusted deferred acceptance mechanism (EADAM). EADAM can be seen as a fundamental recent contribution which recovers efficiency losses from SOSM at the expense of strategy-proofness. In addition to these two important mechanisms, a survey of recent extensions with respect to the assignment of schedules of courses rather than individual courses is provided. The survey of the theoretical literature is complemented with results of a field experiment, which help understand the benefits of stable matching mechanisms in course allocation applications.     

Aid Delivery through Non‐governmental Organisations: Does the Aid Channel Matter for the Targeting of Swedish Aid?

This paper analyses whether aid channelled through non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) is less affected by selfish donor motivations and better targeted to needy recipient countries than aid distributed by state agencies. We employ Tobit (and Probit) models and make use of an exceptionally detailed database that allows an assessment of the allocation of Swedish aid channelled through NGOs in comparison to the allocation of Swedish official aid. Our analysis provides mixed results. On the one hand, NGOs appear to be altruistic as far as available indicators on political and commercial motivations of aid can tell. On the other hand, needs‐based targeting of aid by NGOs turns out to be surprisingly weak. GDP per capita of recipient countries shapes the allocation of official aid, but not that of aid channelled through NGOs. The headcount of absolute poverty has a significantly positive effect on aid allocation, but its impact is not particularly strong when NGOs are involved. Overall, the Swedish case supports the sceptical view that NGOs are not necessarily superior donors compared to state aid agencies.     

Why some are more equal: Family firm heterogeneity and the effect on management’s attention to CSR

Research at the family firm–Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) nexus lacks agreement about whether family firms are more or less socially responsible than their non‐family counterparts, which leads discussion relating to the bright and dark side of socioemotional wealth (SEW). We add to this ongoing debate in two different ways. First, we build on family firm heterogeneity and argue for a gray side to SEW, located between the bright and dark sides that is dependent upon the kind of family firm ownership. Second, we assume that prior research on a diverse set of CSR behaviors may, to some extent, explain the contradicting results; thus, we propose going back a step and focusing on management’s attention to CSR as an important antecedent of CSR behavior. By analyzing the letters to the shareholders of German HDAX firms from 2003 to 2012, this study finds that family ownership positively affects management’s attention to CSR, mainly driven by founders and family foundations. The research adds to our understanding of the family firm–CSR nexus by scrutinizing the role SEW plays in management’s attention to CSR when it comes to family firm heterogeneity.