A Re-examination of the Legalization of Casino Gambling from the Japanese Tourist Perspective: A 10-year Review

With the explosion of casino development in the Asia Pacific as well as the USA, casino gambling has become more culturally embraced as a recreational activity. The purpose of this study was to re-examine the legalization of casino gambling in Hawaii from Japanese-speaking tourists' perspective and compare these results with a previous study completed a decade before. With the continuing decrease of Japanese visitors to Hawaii, and with the importance of the Japanese market to Hawaii's economy, state officials are considering other forms of tourism to help revive the Japanese tourism market and increase Hawaii's global competitiveness. By analyzing the responses of the current Japanese-speaking tourists to Hawaii and comparing these responses with the Japanese tourists surveyed 10 years previously (1996), an attempt can be made to determine whether Japanese tourists in 2006 have changed their perception of the legalization of casino gambling in Hawaii. This research examines a number of challenges to consider concerning the legalization of gaming in an established tourism destination such as of Hawaii. Although the findings of this study indicate that the Japanese-speaking tourists have changed their perspective from past studies on the effects that legalization of casino gambling has in Hawaii, future research should focus on other segments of the tourist market.     

Two‐part Pricing,Public Discriminating Monopoly and Redistribution: A Note

This note analyzes some properties of optional two‐part pricing in a two‐type economy. First, the optimal contracts along the Paretian frontier are described. Then, the duality relation between the Rawlsian program and the discriminating monopoly is demonstrated. Last, this property is used to build a mutualist mechanism implementing the constrained Pareto optima.     

The NOME law: implications for the French electricity market

In December 2010, France approved the law “Nouvelle Organisation du Marché de l’Electricité” (or NOME law) to promote competition in the retail electricity market. In practice, the law allows retailers to buy nuclear production from the incumbent, at a regulated access price. This mechanism works up to a ceiling of 100 terawatt hours, which represents one quarter of the incumbent’s production from nuclear plants. Each retailer is assigned a share of that amount proportionally to its portfolio of clients. We contribute to the debate raised by the NOME law regarding the evolution of retail market prices. We show that a price decrease results if the ceiling is sufficiently high compared to the market share of the retailers competing with the incumbent. This pro-competitive effect is stronger when the incumbent’s rivals take into account the impact of their market strategy on the redistribution rule. Finally, we find that, if the regulated price of the NOME electricity is set above the nuclear cost, the incumbent realizes a gain that may result in strategic withholding, weakening the pro-competitive effects of the law.     

Frontiers of futures research: What's next?

This paper describes some important frontiers of futures research with the aim of identifying new opportunities for improving the value and utility of the field. These frontiers include the exploration and/or the reexamination of

(a) Potential for integrating new technology with futures research methods,

(b) Ways to reduce the domain of the unknowable,

(c) Ways to account for uncertainty in decision making,

(d) Strategies for planning and management of nonlinear systems operating in the chaotic regime,

(e) Ways to improve understanding of psychological factors that lead to irrational decisions

(f) Appropriate levels of aggregation in investigation of forecasting problems.

(g) The potential offered by new sources of social data.

Future issues of science and technology

The Millennium Project involved 237 scientists, futurists, and policymakers around the world in a two-round Delphi on the future issues of science and technology (S&T) over the next 25 years. This is the first of a 3-year study. The study began by asking science attaches to Washington, DC, what questions were worth asking to their leading scientists and issues that were important to explore on an international basis. A series of questions were identified and rated. Actions to address the questions were also suggested and rated. The results are presented in this paper with some regional differences discussed. The next year of the study interviewed S&T policymakers for the management and policy implications of these findings, and the third year developed scenarios based on these implications.     

Creating a corporate culture in support of a global strategy

If U.S. companies want to succeed both domestically and internationally, that means many need to begin now making some major changes to their corporate cultures.     

Defining the ethical standards of the high-technology industry

At least five sets of ethical standards influence business people's decisions: general cultural, company, personal, situational, and industry standards. Each has an official or espoused form encoded in written documents such as policy statements and codes of ethics and an unofficial form that develops as people use the espoused standards. (We call these unofficial standards values in action.) To determine whether the high-technology industry deserves its reputation for moral laxness, a pilot questionnaire was designed. It asked employees to rate the acceptability in the workplace of ethical behaviors relating to safety, third parties, and cheating the company. The findings show that employees in high-and low-technology industries uphold espoused values of safety. Relations with third parties are influenced by the existence of company codes of ethics, especially in small companies. Actions involving cheating the company need to be investigated further.Nancie Fimbel is an Associate Professor of Business Ethics and Business Communication at the School of Business, San Jose State University. Jerome S. Burstein is the author of Computers and Information Systems (2nd ed.), a popular textbook in computer science. He is an Associate Professor of Information Resource Management at the School of Business, San Jose State University.     

The positioning of overseas honeymoon destinations

The objective of this study was to investigate the competitiveness of seven overseas honeymoon destinations among potential Korean tourists, and the positioning among them. The main analytical techniques used were multidimensional scaling and correspondence analyses. Results included a variety of information on image similarity, strengths, and ideals of destinations among seven sites, as well as the relationships of major sociodemographic and tourism variables to the sites. The results provide significant insights for a more effective approach to the market positioning of competing places for a honeymoon trip.     

Do Venture Capitalists Add Value to Small Manufacturing Firms? An Empirical Analysis of Venture and Nonventure Capital‐Backed Initial Public Offerings

We examine a set of small, venture capital (VC)-backed manufacturing firms and compare it to a control sample of nonVC-backed manufacturing firms going public between 1990 and 1996. We use the degree of underpricing, three-year sales growth, three-year cumulative stock return, and three-year survivability as measures of success. First, we test if the presence of VC backing results in significant differences in success between the two samples. Next, we test if certain VC and deal characteristics are discriminators within the VC-backed sample of firms. Despite previous literature, which argues for either inferior or superior VC post-initial public offering (IPO) performance, these tests indicate no significant differences between VC- and nonVC-backed firms. Additionally, it is found that VC and deal characteristics are not discriminating factors within the VC sample.