Classroom Games: The Allocation of Renewable Resources Under Different Property Rights and Regulation Schemes

The authors describe a renewable resource allocation game designed to stimulate students' interest in and understanding of market failure associated with open-access types of resource use. They also use the game to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of various property rights and regulation schemes. Because this exercise demonstrates the power of unregulated and regulated economic incentives, many types of students may benefit from this game, including undergraduates enrolled in the standard introductory and in more advanced microeconomics classes, as well as courses in environmental economics and natural resource economics. This game was specifically designed so that noneconomics majors in natural resource management and environmental courses could also benefit.     

Measuring customer value and satisfaction in services transactions,scale development,validation and cross‐cultural comparison

Customer value and customer satisfaction are pivotal but at the same time elusive concepts in services marketing theory. This paper focuses on discussing the relationship between these two concepts. We propose operationalization by developing and testing scales, especially operational indicators, for important dimensions and drivers of the services‐value construct. A multitrait‐multimethod design is used to test the robustness of the operationalization. Furthermore, a cross‐cultural data set is used to explore country influences using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation models. Results indicate that the measurement construct is robust and useful in country‐comparative studies.     

A continuity property for local price adjustment mechanisms

This paper makes a case that a (local) continuity property is a reasonable one for any local price adjustment mechanism. This property means that if the starting points (i.e., initial prices) of the adjustment process are ‘close' to one another, and if the characteristics of the economies are ‘close' to one another, then, given any price adjustment mechanism, agents should compute equilibria that are ‘close' to one another. Under preferences which satisfy a ‘surjectivity hypothesis', it is shown that the tâtonnement process satisfies this continuity property on a nice subset of the space of all economies. A characterization of these economies for which the tâtonnement process is locally stable is given. Chart logic is a useful way to think about the path dependent property of implied volatility and about the relationship between implied volatility and historical volatility.     

B2B-Inbound-Marketing — Aktive Interessenten als Kunden gewinnen

In einer B2B-Studie von Marketing Sherpa (2008) gaben 80 % der Entscheider an, dass sie ihre Lieferanten selbst gefunden haben. Nur 20 % wurden von den Anbietern angesprochen. Aktive Interessenten recherchieren geeignete L?sungen und nehmen den Kontakt mit dem Anbieter zunehmend selbst auf. Was k?nnen Anbieter tun, um w?hrend der Entscheidungsvorbereitung eines aktiven Interessenten aufzufallen und kontaktiert zu werden?     

Mit einem lächeln zum wirtschaftlichen erfolg? Ein beitrag zur design-wahrnehmung von produktgesichtern

Dieser Aufsatz zeigt anhand einer empirischen Studie, wie sich Erkenntnisse aus der psychologischen Forschung mit dem Design von Produkten verknüpfen lassen. Dazu werden Hypothesen aus der Gesichterforschung in die Welt der Produktentstehung übertragen. Anhand von Kaffeemaschinen, die dank der Arbeit eines Grafikers die typischen Merkmale des menschlichen Gesichts aufweisen, lassen sich Rückschlüsse auf managementrelevante Zielvariablen wie Kaufabsicht ziehen.     

Negotiating free trade

We develop a dynamic bargaining model in which a leading country endogenously decides whether to sequentially negotiate free trade agreements with subsets of countries or engage in simultaneous multilateral bargaining with all countries at once. We show how the structure of coalition externalities shapes the choice between sequential and multilateral bargaining, and we identify circumstances in which the grand coalition is the equilibrium outcome, leading to worldwide free trade. A model of international trade is then used to illustrate equilibrium outcomes and how they depend on the structure of trade and protection. Global free trade is not achieved when the political-economy motive for protection is sufficiently large. Furthermore, the model generates both “building bloc” and “stumbling bloc” effects of preferential trade agreements. In particular, we describe an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are permitted to form (a building bloc effect), and an equilibrium in which global free trade is attained only when preferential trade agreements are forbidden (a stumbling bloc effect). The analysis identifies conditions under which each of these outcomes emerges.     

The Sale of Assets to Manage Earnings in Japan

In this article we investigate Japanese managers' use of income from the sale of fixed assets and marketable securities to manage earnings. The earnings management target examined is Japanese managers' forecasts of current–year earnings. We find a negative relation between income from asset sales and management forecast error. When current reported operating income is below (above) management's forecast of operating income, firms increase (decrease) earnings through the sale of fixed assets and marketable securities. The results hold after controlling for expected future performance, debt–to–equity ratio, size, growth, and last year's income from asset sales.     

Factor prices and productivity growth during the British industrial revolution

This paper presents new estimates of total factor productivity growth in Britain for the period 1770-1860. We use the dual technique and argue that the estimates we derive from factor prices are of similar quality to quantity-based calculations. Our results provide further evidence, calculated on the basis of an independent set of sources, that productivity growth during the British Industrial Revolution was relatively slow. The Crafts-Harley view of the Industrial Revolution is thus reinforced. Our preferred estimates suggest a modest acceleration after 1800.     

On the economic evaluation of the Stabex system

The discussion on the significance for development policy of the Stabex system, which gained additional impetus as a result of the financing problems observed for the first time in 1981, has up to now suffered from a lack of empirical analysis of the scheme’s effects. The following article attempts to quantitatively determine some of these effects for the period 1975–79 and to evaluate the scheme according to aspects of stabilisation, distribution and allocation.