A membership pricing policy to facilitate service scale-expansion

This paper proposes a multi-year membership pricing policy for a service business like a gym chain. In the pricing policy, the equivalent membership price per year is relatively low to attract customers, and the multi-year membership fees must be prepaid in full. The prepaid cash provides resources for scale-expansion by opening new stores. We develop a nonlinear mixed integer programming model to formulate the pricing decisions. Numerical experiments reveal that the multi-year membership pricing policy, from a long-term perspective, is substantially better than the business-as-usual pricing policy (1-year membership) in cash balance, profit, and market share. Yet, the performances of the two pricing policies do not differ much from a short-term perspective. These findings indicate that the multi-year pricing policy may be a good strategy, because it initially attracts less attention of competitors; suddenly it emerges and substantially outperforms its competitors in cash balance, profit, and market share.     

Assessment of innovation and foreign direct investment: An investigation of OECD countries

Using a panel cointegration method incorporating structural breaks and cross-sectional dependence, this paper explores the long-run equilibrium relationship between innovation and foreign direct investment (FDI) in 30 OECD countries. The results from the panel stationary test show that FDI and innovation variables follow a stationary process with several structural breaks over the period 1999–2018. The results also suggest an equilibrium relationship with structural breaks between FDI and innovation in OECD countries. The panel dynamic OLS model with breaks further reveals that FDI is positively associated with innovation performance and vice versa in OECD countries. Therefore, this paper sheds light on the relationship between FDI and innovation in OECD countries.     

Multi-product capacitated facility location problem with general production and building costs

This research introduces the multi-product capacitated facility location problem with general production and building costs (MP-CFLPGC). The MP-CFLPGC extends previous problems found in the literature by including multiple products and general production and building cost functions that allow the modeling of different behaviors like economies of scale and congestion. The MP-CFLPGC is formulated as a mixed integer linear program (MILP). To evaluate the performance of the proposed formulation we analyze the results of a commercial optimizer on a set of 288 randomly generated test instances that resemble the Colombian cement industry supply chain. After one hour the optimizer achieved an optimality gap of 1.0 % or less in 55 % out of the 288 test instances. On average the optimality gap was 3.57 %. Additionally, we propose a randomized mathematical-programming-based heuristic for the test instances where the MILP formulation presents significantly high optimality gaps.     

Sustainability Strategy and Eco‐Innovation: A Moderation Model

This study develops a moderation model to examine the role of a proactive environmental strategy on eco‐innovation. Drawing upon the perspectives of contingency theory, this study argues that the impacts of sustainability strategy on eco‐innovation depend on market demand, innovation intensity and government subsidy. The sample used to test the hypotheses is obtained from the Community Innovation Survey in Taiwan. A total of 2955 manufacturing firms are included in the final sample. A logit moderating regression is adopted to analyze the models. The results reveal that market demand and government subsidy positively moderate the relationship between environmental strategy and eco‐innovation. Specifically, firms are more likely to adopt a proactive environmental strategy to improve eco‐innovation under high levels of market demand and government subsidy. Furthermore, the results indicate that innovation intensity affects the effect of environmental strategy on eco‐innovation, but the direction of the influence varies with different categories of eco‐innovation. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Revisiting the relationship between suicide and unemployment: Evidence from linear and nonlinear cointegration

This study employs the linear and nonlinear ARDL cointegration methodologies to examine the potential symmetric and asymmetric responses of suicide rates to unemployment rates in the US from 1928 to 2013. Our results suggest that suicide rates are pro-cyclical with respect to the business cycle (measured by changes in the unemployment rate) after extensively controlling for divorce and fertility rates. Unemployment has symmetric long-run effects on the age-adjusted suicide rate and four age-specific (from ages 25–34 to 55–64) suicide rates, while the effect of an economic expansion on suicide rates for those aged over 45 is greater than the effect of an economic recession. These findings imply that the effect of an economic expansion on the decrease of the suicide rate is higher than the effect of an economic recession on the increase of the suicide rate for individuals aged over 45. Therefore, intervention designed to reduce suicidal behaviors should emphasize periods of economic recession more than periods of economic expansion for those of middle age and beyond.     

财政支出差异性对创业活动的激励效应分析

经济新常态下，创业是推动中国经济发展、改善民生的重要途径。创业过程的风险性、不确定性及正外部性需要政府给予积极支持。基于2007-2015年中国内地30个省市（除西藏外）数据，运用动态面板模型，考察地区财政支出和创业活动的关系。研究结果表明：财政支出规模对创业活动数量及创业活动质量具有滞后的积极作用；财政支出规模的滞后效应源于财政支出结构的滞后效应，不同财政支出结构对创业活动质量影响的差异较大；同时，创新是提升创业活动质量的重要手段。因此，政府应积极支持“大众创业、万众创新”，各地区财政创业扶持资金应该从规模和结构上进行调整，重点优化有利于创新的支出结构，为创业提供良好的公共环境。     

儒家始祖形象的三种形态及其意义

传统儒家从未停止对事物根源与本质的探索。所谓"物有本末,事有终始","始"之字义常常兼具逻辑上的原初性与价值上的根本性。始祖作为生民存续之始和人道的开端,其形象隐含着重要的理论意义,更关联着儒家思想与制度的核心。本文分别从感生之祖、始封之祖、生民之祖三种形态出发,追溯始祖形象的特点,并试图通过这一讨论来理解儒家家国建构的不同模式及其基础。     

Meanings of Food among Polish and American Young Women

Food carries different meanings across cultures and times. This study aimed to explore the meanings of food among young women in Poland and the United States using a qualitative approach. The findings show that, in both countries, women associate food with health, pleasure, and socializing, but overall Polish women are less emotional about food. More specifically, in the United States, women associate food with love, their identities, and have more conflictual feelings about food, whereas in Poland women associate food with creativity. The study discusses marketing implications of the results.     

Dissipative Competition: Evidence from a Quasi‐Natural Experiment

We document that contrary to the conventional view, the costs of domestic firms in terms of selling, general and administrative expenses and cost of goods sold increase significantly following exogenous shocks that increase competition, namely material import tariff cuts affecting US manufacturing industries over the period 1974–2005. Incompatible with an agency explanation, the cost increase is more pronounced among firms with higher CEO/insider/board ownership. We further find that the cost increase is more evident among firms with smaller market share and among focused firms. Generally, our results are consistent with the notion of ‘dissipative competition’ discussed in the seminal papers by Tullock.