The Relaxation of Entry Barriers in the Banking Industry: An Empirical Investigation

Until recently, state laws restricted entry into local banking markets in many states by limiting both branching and multibank holding company (MBHC) operations. To the extent that these laws impeded entry into local banking markets, the removal or relaxation of the restrictions should have reduced barriers to entry, leading to more competitive price levels in the affected markets. This paper tests for such effects by examining the changes in deposit interest rates offered by banks operating in markets affected by liberalization of state banking law relative to the changes in deposit interest rates offered during the same time period by banks operating in markets not affected by such liberalization. We find evidence that liberalization of state laws restricting intrastate MBHC operations, interstate branches, and interstate MBHC operations caused deposit interest rates to become more competitive. We, however, find no evidence of such effects associated with the removal of restrictions on intrastate branching.     

Best–Worst Scaling Approach to Predict Customer Choice for 3PL Services

This study describes a simple, theoretically based methodology to analyze the nature of customer demand for third‐party logistics provider service components. The method overcomes limitations in prior studies and enables us to examine the relative importance of product and service attributes as they pertain to the choice of third‐party logistics providers. Two distinct types of customers populate our data: those professing operational attributes and those seeking relational attributes. The theoretical and practical implications are that improved supply chain models can be developed when separate demand structures are taken into account.     

Tourists’ virtual reality adoption: an exploratory study from Lake District National Park

Virtual reality (VR) transforms the way destinations market their tourism offerings. To fully understand the opportunities of a technology, initial research is required assessing user adoption. However, empirical research and particularly exploratory qualitative research on VR adoption in tourism context is limited. Therefore, this study uses an exploratory interview approach with 35 participants near Lake District National Park, UK. Using thematic analysis, this study explores factors that influence VR adoption as well as the influencing factors on tourists’ behavioural intentions. This study adds to academia by qualitatively exploring the adoption of a scarcely researched technology within the tourism context.     

Seebohm Rowntree and the postwar poverty puzzle

In his third social survey of York carried out in 1950, Seebohm Rowntree reported a steep decline since 1936 of the percentage of households in poverty. He attributed the bulk of this decline to government welfare reforms enacted during and after the war. This article re‐examines the survivingrecords from the 1950 survey, using a revised poverty line and looking more closely at the measurement of income. It also re‐assesses the impact of welfare reforms on working‐class poverty, and finds that poverty in York was significantly higher, and the contribution of welfare reform substantially less, than was originally reported.     

An experimental investigation of soft price caps in uniform price auction markets for wholesale electricity

This paper presents the results from an auction experiment using industry professionals and student participants who compete in a simulated wholesale market for electricity. Motivated by the intervention by FERC in response to the “meltdown” of the California spot market, we investigate the effect of including a “soft” price cap in a uniform price auction as a means of mitigating high prices. When prices are driven above the soft cap, offer curves become flat, in contrast to the hockey stick shape observed in a typical uniform price auction for electricity. This flat offer curve leads to market prices that are relatively insensitive to both generation costs and demand reductions.      

Technological opportunity and the relationship between innovation output and market structure

This study examines influences of technological opportunity on the relationship between market structure and the innovation output of different‐size firms. A simultaneous‐equations model is specified and estimated separately for technologically progressive and technologically unprogressive industries. The study finds that innovation activities of small firms and large firms bear different relationships to market structure, in part resulting from interindustry differences in technological opportunity. In technologically progressive industries, innovation output (especially of small firms) is lower in the presence of high concentration and is increased substantially by high R&D intensity. Large‐firm innovation output has a positive effect on industry concentration, but only in technologically unprogressive industries. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Knowing one’s place: The distribution of new accounting academics into a segmented labor market

New academic accountants tend to believe that there is a singular academic labor market that will receive them as they approach the completion of their doctoral programs. In such a world, the caliber of their ideas would be judged according to their ability to make a contribution to the knowledge of discipline. However, past research suggests that a prestige structure exists for doctoral programs such that a candidate’s ability to be placed at a school is a function of his/her doctoral programs position in that hierarchy. In this world, limits exist upon possible placement for most candidates such that the caliber of their work will not be a determinative factor in their placement. Various divisions of the doctoral schools in accounting show that movement to higher groups is difficult for all groups. The higher-tier schools are more able to place their graduates in the same tier. Falls to lower tiers are especially likely for the graduates of the lower prestige groups of doctoral schools. This paper seeks to help participants in the labor market, doctoral candidates and those that hire them, obtain a more informed appreciation for their realistic prospects. In this way, an achievable expectation should lead to more efficient placement behavior.     

Do Community Characteristics Influence Environmental Outcomes? Evidence from the Toxics Release Inventory

This research uses neighborhood characteristics (at the zip code level) in 1990 to explain toxic releases in 1993. It combines the Toxics Release Inventory data with demographic data from the 1990 U.S. Census. We first analyze the location of manufacturing facilities in a particular neighborhood using a sample selection model, and then estimate the relationship between releases in 1993 and the demographic characteristics of the neighborhood in 1990. We conduct the analysis for the entire U.S. as well as for different geographic regions to study regional differences in determinants of environmental outcomes. Releases in nonurban areas of the southeastern U.S. exhibit a pattern suggesting that race might be an important determinant of release patterns. Economic characteristics of neighborhoods (such as income levels and unemployment) also affect releases. Our variables that proxy the propensity for communities to engage in political action exert greater influence on environmental outcomes in nonurban areas.     

The Telecommunications Act at three years: an economic evaluation of its implementation by the Federal Communications Commission

The competitive free-for-all that Congress envisioned in the 1996 Telecommunications Act has for the most part not appeared. The Act calls for two forms of regulatorily-assisted entry into local markets: lease of network elements and resale. The FCC has decreed that the charges for those elements and the resale discounts must emulate the costs of an ideally-efficient firm. This standard is in fact not efficient, and the FCC’s attempt to jump-start the entry of competitors in this way has short-circuited the competitive process itself and jeopardized achievement of the goals of the Act.     

Unique but integrated: The role of individuation and assimilation processes in teen opinion leadership

Opinion leaders propel the diffusion of innovation and exert a significant influence on the marketplace. This influence is especially pronounced during adolescence, a period marked by increasing reliance on peers and the emergence of a tension between two countervailing needs: assimilation and individuation. A survey of 1142 adolescents reveals that these developmental needs affect adolescent opinion leadership in the critical clothing market. Adolescent opinion leadership relies on a balance between desires for assimilation (i.e., centrality within the peer network) and individuation (i.e., need for uniqueness); adolescents' susceptibility to peers' normative influence and gender moderate these relationships. Adolescents who occupy central positions within their peer network tend to be opinion leaders, though only if they are not susceptible to normative influence. Position within the peer network is a key for girls, whereas need for uniqueness is a key for boys. These differences implicate different approaches for managers targeting adolescent males and females.