Heterogeneity in asset allocation decisions: Empirical evidence from Switzerland

We analyze the heterogeneity in asset allocation decisions of different investor groups in response to changes in the macroeconomic environment. Using a new data set that includes the monthly portfolio holdings of private, commercial, and institutional investors deposited with Swiss banks, we estimate the relationship between equity and bond holdings and common business cycle indicators. Regression analysis indicates that private investors do not systematically move from stocks into bonds by selling stocks to institutional investors and purchasing bonds from them in adverse macroeconomic states. A VAR-error correction framework including cointegration and error correction restrictions suggests that the investment behavior of commercial investors leads and private investors follow in their investment decisions only slowly over time. The asset allocation decisions of institutional investors are not affected by the actions of private and commercial investors. Our results refute a principle of “institutional irrelevance”.     

Measuring Ethnic Community Involvement: Development and Initial Testing of an Index*

This paper builds on the work of Chaganti and Greene, who distinguish between ethnic minority entrepreneurs/small business owners who are very involved with their ethnic community and those who are not. We extend their work by developing an Index of Ethnic Community Involvement based not only on personal but also business characteristics. We utilize a large sample size (698 interviews with entrepreneurs), drawn from five ethnic groups, and develop a valid and reliable (0.69) Index of Ethnic Involvement (IEI) with a strong emphasis on social capital theory. Our initial analysis shows the IEI predicts some personal and business characteristics. Future development will include building regression models to predict business outcomes. The IEI, when fully developed, promises to be useful for targeting assistance, education and training programs, and policy initiatives for entrepreneurs and small business owners according to the level of ethnic community involvement.     

Transnational networking and business performance: Ethnic entrepreneurs in Canada

It is generally acknowledged that transnational networking plays an important role in promoting the performance of ethnic entrepreneurial firms. Yet distinctions between the different types of transnational networking and their effects on business performance have received scant attention in the literature, probably because ethnicity has been considered to be the main actor in the networking–performance relationship. This paper argues that one of the reasons why business performance differs across ethnic entrepreneurial firms is that ethnic entrepreneurs engage in dissimilar types of transnational networking. Analyses of the data generated by 720 ethnic entrepreneurs in Canada revealed that ethnicity, along with human capital and push/pull factors, both of which are part of our conceptual framework, plays a central role in the engagement of different types of transnational networking and that the different types of transnational networking affect business turnover (sales) and business survival (age). Push/pull factors were found to play a marginal role in business performance. These results highlight the competitive market that immigrants and members of ethnic minority groups encounter in the hosting economy and stress the value of transnational networking.     

On coalitional stability of anonymous interim mechanisms

Summary.   In a situation where agents have private information, we investigate the stability of mechanisms with respect to coalitional deviations. In the cooperative tradition, we first extend the notion of Core, taking into account the information a coalition may have when it forms and the conjectures of outsiders. This leads us to propose a family of Cores rather than a single one. Secondly, we study the stability of Core mechanisms to secession proposals in simple noncooperative games. The two different stability analyses, normative and strategic, tend to give support to the more natural extension of the Core, called Statistical Core, only in situations where some strong form of increasing returns to coalition is met. Without this property, arguments for a concept of Core that is non empty in a reasonably large class of problems are less compelling. Applications to taxation and insurance are given. Received: September 6, 1999; revised version: December 3, 1999     

How location and ethnicity affect ethnic entrepreneurs in three Canadian cities

Few studies on the entrepreneurial contributions of immigrant and/or ethnic entrepreneurs have been carried out in Canada. This article presents results from a cross‐Canadian project. Data were collected from 718 entrepreneurs in three cities. Analysis of the socio‐demographic profile suggests that ethnic entrepreneurs pursue different paths of integration. Firm characteristics suggest that similar support programs are needed for ethnic firms as for all small firms. Also, our analysis suggests that there is no need for new support programs for ethnic firms, except to help them better integrate. Lastly, the use that these entrepreneurs make of social capital only partially confirms the literature. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Public awareness and perception of environmental,health and safety risks to electricity generation: an explorative interview study in Switzerland

Well-informed public preferences are key to enabling successful and sustainable energy transitions worldwide. However, limited explorative evidence exists on what the public already knows and wants to know about the electricity generation technologies and their Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) risks. Understanding these issues is important for preparing informational materials and facilitating formation of informed preferences. We present results of an explorative interview study with 12 Swiss people. Despite the public debate on energy in Switzerland, we still identify significant awareness and knowledge gaps as well as misconceptions related to both technologies and their EHS risks. For accidental risks, the people tend to think beyond probabilities and consequences and consider further aspects, such as risk controllability and trust in experts and authorities. Most importantly, we find that people are able and tend to think of the electricity system as a whole portfolio: they actively realize the need to deploy multiple electricity technologies and accept some of the EHS risks. We conclude with concrete recommendations for preparing informational materials on electricity sector transitions in Switzerland and elsewhere. We also argue that future social research on energy should pay more attention to public perception of whole technology portfolios rather than single technologies.     

The Effectiveness of Post-Disaster Recovery Marketing Messages—The Case of the 2009 Australian Bushfires

An understanding of how best to communicate with the tourism market in the wake of a disastrous event is essential for destination marketing organizations seeking to manage the misperceptions and media-imposed attitudes held by potential visitors. To date, the literature remains silent in terms of the types of messages destination marketing organizations are best to employ when a disaster has hit and consequently marketers often take an “ad hoc” approach to their post-disaster communications that may or may not be effective in terms of encouraging visitation. In response to this knowledge gap, the research presented in this article adopted an experimental methodology to examine the effectiveness of nine disaster recovery message themes commonly used by destination marketing organizations. The messages were presented to respondents via a print advertisement promoting the Victorian region of Gippsland—a tourism region severely affected by the 2009 Black Saturday Bushfires. The results revealed that a marketing message endorsed by a well-known and well-associated celebrity figure is likely to be most effective in encouraging tourists to return to or visit a disaster-affected destination 12 to 24 months following the event. The findings also revealed a significant relationship between past visitation and the time frame in which visitors will visit a disaster-affected region. Those who had visited the region four times or more were much more likely to return within 6 months of the event than less frequent visitors. A final important message revealed in this study was the fact that the tourism market is not averse to disaster recovery promotional activities, a concern often considered by destination marketers when planning their post-disaster recovery campaigns.     

The strategy structure of some coalition formation games

In coalitional games with side payments, the core predicts which coalitions form and how benefits are shared. The predictions however run into difficulties if the core is empty or if some coalitions benefit from not blocking truthfully. These difficulties are analyzed in games in which an a priori given collection of coalitions can form, as the collection of pairs of buyer–seller in an assignment game. The incentive properties of the core and of its selections are investigated in function of the collection. Furthermore the relationships with Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanisms are drawn.     

When do better schools raise housing prices? Evidence from Paris public and private schools

In this paper, we investigate how housing prices react to the quality of education offered by neighboring public and private schools. The organization of secondary schooling in the city of Paris, which combines residence-based assignment to public schools with a well-developed and almost entirely publicly funded private school system, offers a valuable empirical context for analyzing how private schools affect the capitalization of public school performance in housing prices. Using comprehensive data on both schools and real estate transactions over the period 1997–2004, we develop a matching framework to carefully compare sales across school attendance boundaries. We find that a standard deviation increase in public school performance raises housing prices by 1.4 to 2.4%. Moreover, we show that the capitalization of public school performance in the price of real estate shrinks as the availability of private schools increases in the neighborhood. Our results confirm the predictions of general equilibrium models of school choice that private schools, by providing an advantageous outside option to parents, tend to mitigate the impact of public school performance on housing prices.     

Business travellers' perception of service quality: a prefatory study of two European city centre hotels

The business traveller contributes significantly to the turnover of the hotel industry and, with the globalisation of business, this sector shows signs of increasing growth. Service quality has now become one of the main factors used to gain competitive advantage, thus the industry must focus more specifically on the needs and expectations of its business customers. The aim of this paper is to focus on the business travel market and more specifically on the comparison of two hotels in two European cities, Brussels and Manchester. This area of research has not been attempted before and will provide an interesting comparison with findings in USA. A literature review identified the relevant attributes used to measure service quality, which were utilised to design a questionnaire, distributed to customers in a five star hotel in Manchester and in Brussels. The primary data obtained were then compared with the findings of other researchers. The analysis indicated that Brussels scored the majority of the attributes more highly (many significantly) than did Manchester. This may be influenced by the international profile of the Brussels respondents who tended to travel on business more frequently than the Manchester sample. The comparisons with the USA surveys found some inconsistencies that might be attributed to societal differences.Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.