Growth gains from trade and education

A multi-sector general equilibrium model is presented where education enhances general human capital, which is essential for increasing or maintaining the mobility of workers across industries. The paper shows that international trade, combined with education, can have a positive growth effect by allowing workers to move easily to, and specialize in, the industry with the greatest productivity in each period, which enables an economy to grow in the long run at the growth rate of the industry with the most rapid technical progress. Depending on the initial ratio of general-to-specific human capital stock, multiple equilibrium growth paths can exist including a poverty trap, and trade liberalization can allow an economy in a poverty trap to transform into one with continuous education and higher output growth.     

New Contractual Relationships in the Agency Worker Market: The Case of the UK's National Health Service

In recent years, there has been a trend towards the negotiation of closer contractual relationships between employers and employment agencies. However, little is known about this change or its likely consequences. In theory, such relationships can benefit employers by lowering fees and also reducing many of the hidden costs associated with the use of agency staff by improving the effectiveness of placement matching. Against this is the suggestion that formal partnerships are unlikely to have a positive impact given the uncertainty of demand for temporary labour and broader tendencies for risk displacement in buyer–supplier networks. In this article, our aim is to explore this matter focusing on recent developments in the UK's National Health Service. We find that new contractual relationships such as framework agreements and master vendor contracts are having mixed effects. While they serve to reduce direct costs for employers in the short term, this has been at the expense of relationship building and improvements in placement matching. These developments are also found to have some potentially negative consequences for the agency workforce itself.     

ASP effects in the small-sized enterprise: the case of the Bizmeka service from Korea Telecom

An application service provider (ASP) is a business model providing information technology (IT)-enabled solutions to customers over the Internet. Utilizing an ASP model, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can acquire affordable IT solutions. Korea Telecom (KT), a leading IT company in Korea, provides an ASP service called Bizmeka to SMEs. In this study, we identify factors influencing the perceived benefits of Bizmeka usage. We also examine the relationship between the perceived benefits of Bizmeka usage and customer satisfaction. Based on the results of our survey, we found the following factors to be important in determining customer satisfaction with ASPs: cost and time impact, maintenance impact, and security risks.     

Order Effect and Vendor Inspection in Online Comparison Shopping

In the context of online comparison shopping, the phenomenon of order effect and its impact has profound theoretical and practical significance, as many search engines and shopping portals offer paid placement and paid inclusion in search results. In this study, we investigate how order effects and other market competitive factors work together to attract consumers’ attention to online vendors, which is manifested by the time spent on collecting more vendor information, and the probability of a vendor being included in a consumer’s consideration set. We found that the effect of serial position of a vendor in a list is mediated by consumers’ attention which in turn affects the probability of the vendor being accepted.     

Perceptions of the Ethical Climate in the Korean Tourism Industry

This study investigates the ethical climate types presented in the Korean tourism industry, the differences in the perceptions of these ethical climate types based on individual/organizational characteristics, and the influence of ethical climate types based on job satisfaction/organizational commitment. Empirical findings of this study identify six ethical climate types and demonstrate significant difference and significant influence of the proposed relationships. This research contributes to the existing body of academic work by using empirical data collected from 820 respondents across 14 companies within the Korean tourism industry, to demonstrate the relationship between actual ethical climate types and ethical climate related factors. The findings of this study identify the new factor ‹moral caring,’ which describes an environment characterized by decisions that maximize collective interest, but based on an individual employee’s personal values and ethics. Such a factor has important implications for the service industry, where face-to-face encounters typify the relationship between employee and consumer.     

Fiscal policy and economic growth: some evidence from China

Review of World Economics - China has experienced profound economic and social changes in recent decades. During this period, China’s fiscal policy framework has been substantially reformed....     

Impact of Classified Board on M&A Target Shareholder Value: Nurturing Innovation through Entrenchment

We find that classified board in the M&A target firm is positively related to the target shareholder value, but only for firms with both intensive R&D investment and strong external governance. We also find that firms with classified board exhibit superior quality innovation when they have both intensive R&D investment and strong external governance. These findings are consistent with the view that classified board provides long‐term perspectives that promote productive but risky R&D investment, which is highly valued in M&A. Our findings are distinct from the view expressed in extant literature that classified board enhances target shareholder value because of stronger bargaining power.     

RADIUS RESTRICTION AND FIRMS' SURVIVAL: EVIDENCE FROM THE COFFEE FRANCHISE INDUSTRY

This study investigates the effects of distance restrictions on Korean coffee shops' survival. Restrictions were implemented by South Korea's Fair Trade Commission to limit the headquarters' opening of new shops to protect franchisees' territorial rights. Using extended Cox proportional hazard regression analyses, we find that the hazard rates of all coffee shops decreased significantly under the radius restriction, with more substantial decreases for young stores, attenuating over store ages. However, selective restrictions on five big brands influencing interbrand competition might have changed the coffee franchise industry's landscape and thereby widening the gap between exempted brand coffee shops and the rest. (JEL D22, L40, L66)     

A consumer value analysis of mobile internet protocol television based on a means-end chain theory

With the rise of the 4G technology, TV or video services based on mobile devices have received increasing attention from consumers. Using means-end chain theory, this study examines the cognitive structure of mobile internet protocol television (IPTV) users. Here, the cognitive structure refers to the attribute–consequence–value linkage that consumers consider as important in mobile IPTV services. The study classifies consumers based on two dimensions (their gender and occupation) and presents hierarchical value maps of mobile IPTV services. For this, the study collects data on 112 potential users of mobile IPTV services by using the association pattern technique. The results indicate as the representative cognitive structure of men and students; as that of women; and as that of office workers.