Diffusion performance of major steel-making countries: alternative econometric tests

The purpose of this study is to compare the speed of diffusion in major steel-making countries. This is a cross-system analysis, involving industrial market countries (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan), quasi-market economies (selected newly industrializing countries, India), and the central planning states (the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe). The study reveals that at least in this, significant case, the latter countries are clearly inferior, i.e. slower.The article seeks the most accurate measure of speed of diffusion of one radical steel innovation, the oxygen process. The speed is estimated by regressing a logistic function not applied to the steel industry to date. Parameters of a logistic function are estimated first with linear least squares methods and then with nonlinear (or iterative) least squares, to establish which offers more accurate estimation than the widely used linear approach. It is shown that the iterative method produces a better statistical fit.Associate Professor; the author would like to acknowledge computational assistance by Steve Langolis, Stanford University, and help in updating the author's data on the world steel production provided by Mark Shafter, London School of Economics.     

Toward Closing the Loop between Infrastructure Investments and Societal and Economic Impacts

The long-term value proposition of transportation infrastructure investments can be significantly distorted if the short-term effects of spatial externalities on land use patterns, economic expansions, and migration patterns are not properly included in the analysis. Some of these effects occur over a short period of time and soon after the investment materializes, whereas others take longer and follow more steady patterns. In this article, we develop a novel dynamical model of a primal society with constructs that are specifically geared toward transportation infrastructure expansions and investments. The model quantifies the impact of these expansions on some key performance indicators and on the overall utility and production capacity of the society. We argue that traditional analytical models that work on the premises of stationary behavior and a static response of society to changes in infrastructure do not correctly capture these effects. The land use patterns and spatial expansion computed from the model are validated against existing theory on land use. Preliminary results on how to use the model for value proposition analysis are also presented using simple case studies.     

Is the FHA Creating Sustainable Homeownership?

We produce first estimates of the sustainability of homeownership for recent Federal Housing Administration (FHA) borrowers. Unfortunately, the FHA does not produce its own statistics on sustainability. Neither does it permit researchers access to its data on internal refinances. This imposes significant barriers to entry for researchers who wish to track FHA borrower performance over time. We carefully construct the required tracking data to overcome this barrier. We forecast that no more than 75% of the 2007–2009 vintages of FHA borrowers will be able to successfully exit the FHA system. Our work raises questions about FHA's role, its accounting and its accountability.     

COMPETITION POLICY AND CARTEL SIZE

This article examines endogenous cartel formation in the presence of a competition authority. Competition policy is shown to make the most inclusive stable cartels less inclusive. In particular, small firms that might have been cartel members in the absence of a competition authority are no longer members. Regarding the least inclusive stable cartels, competition policy can either decrease or increase their size and, in the latter case, the collusive price can rise.     

Removing the contextual lens: A multinational, multi-setting comparison of service evaluation models

Four service evaluation models are identified from the literature that are commonly offered to depict the relationships amongst the primary service evaluation constructs of sacrifice, service quality, service value, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. We comparatively test the models using samples of service consumers in Australia, Hong Kong, Morocco, the Netherlands, and the United States, as well as across varied temporal and service settings. The results of the comparative analyses reveal that one conceptualization, the “comprehensive” model, best captures the identified relationships. This model is the best fitting across all countries and settings, which indicates it has the greatest external validity. These findings are discussed relative to the limitations associated with the use of less generalizable models.     

Differences in consumer perceptions of similarity and dissimilarity

Researchers have usually treated similarity ratings as the simple inverse of dissimilarity ratings. Tversky's theory of perception of similarity and dissimilarity (1977), however, explicitly recognizes that the attributes used in the perception of similarity and the attributes used in the perception of dissimilarity are decidedly different. In fact, the weights assigned to common and distinctive features changes according to the task at hand (i.e., when similarity is to be rated the common features are weighted more, and when dissimilarity is to be rated the distinctive features are weighted more). This study demonstrates these differences in a judgment task of rating similarity and dissimilarity on the basis of data that is external to the subjects.