Quality management as a driver of innovation in the service industry

This study identifies the combination of factors that lead to quality management reinforcing innovation capability as an organization’s strength. The results from 133 Spanish service organizations show that competitive strategy, manager’s motivation to adopt quality management, and customer orientation are the key factors that explain the presence of innovation capability as a firm’s strength. As some pioneering research points out, the impact of quality management on innovation depends mainly on managers’ interpretation of this management philosophy. When quality management focuses on discovering new customer needs and even new markets, it contributes to strengthen the organization’s innovation capability.     

Comparative analysis on the effects of the Asian and global financial crises on precious metal markets

The global financial crisis has vigorously struck major financial markets around the world, in particular in the developed economies since they have suffered the most. However, some commodity markets, and in particular the precious metal markets, seem to be unscathed by this financial downturn. This paper investigates therefore the nature of volatility spillovers between precious metal returns over fifteen years (1995-2010 period) with the attention being focused on these markets’ behavior during the Asian and the global financial crises. Daily closing values for precious metals are analyzed. In particular, the variables under study are the US$/Troy ounce for gold, the London Free Market Platinum price in US$/Troy ounce, the London Free Market Palladium price in US$/Troy once, and the Zurich silver price in US$/kg. The main sample is divided into a number of sub periods, prior to, during and after the Asian crisis. The aim of this division is to provide a wide and deep analysis of the behavior of precious metal markets during this financial event and of how these markets have reacted during times of market instability. In addition, this paper also looks at the effects of the global financial crisis from August 2007 to November 2010 using GARCH and EGARCH modeling. The main results show that there is clear evidence of volatility persistence between precious metal returns, a characteristic that is shared with financial market behavior as it has been demonstrated extensively by the existing literature in the area. In terms of volatility spillover effects, the main findings evidence volatility spillovers running in a bidirectional way during the periods; markets are not affected by the crises, with the exception of gold, that tends to generate effects in all other metal markets. However, there is little evidence in the case of the other precious metals generating any kind of influence on the gold market. On the other hand, there is little evidence of spillover effects during the two crisis episodes. Finally, the results from asymmetric spillover effects show that negative news/information have a stronger impact in these markets than positive news, again a characteristic that has been also exhibited by financial markets.     

On The Expected Discounted Penalty function for Lévy Risk Processes

Abstract

Dufresne et al. (1991) introduced a general risk model defined as the limit of compound Poisson processes. Such a model is either a compound Poisson process itself or a process with an infinite number of small jumps. Later, in a series of now classical papers, the joint distribution of the time of ruin, the surplus before ruin, and the deficit at ruin was studied (Gerber and Shiu 1997, 1998a, 1998b; Gerber and Landry 1998). These works use the classical and the perturbed risk models and hint that the results can be extended to gamma and inverse Gaussian risk processes.

In this paper we work out this extension to a generalized risk model driven by a nondecreasing Lévy process. Unlike the classical case that models the individual claim size distribution and obtains from it the aggregate claims distribution, here the aggregate claims distribution is known in closed form. It is simply the one-dimensional distribution of a subordinator. Embedded in this wide family of risk models we find the gamma, inverse Gaussian, and generalized inverse Gaussian processes. Expressions for the Gerber-Shiu function are given in some of these special cases, and numerical illustrations are provided.     

European monetary integration and persistance of real exchange rates

The aim of this paper is to analyze whether the persistence properties of the European real exchange rates changed when their currencies joined the euro or during the monetary integration process. More specifically, we investigate whether, as a result of the single currency or the previous macroeconomic stability, nominal price rigidities have decreased and the persistence of real exchange has fallen. We test for stationarity against a change in the integration order on different competitiveness measures during the period that runs from the middle of the seventies to nowadays. The results show that the real exchange rates of the European periphery (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Finland) underwent a change in their order of integration from I(1) to I(0) at some time around the middle of the 1990s. On the other hand, the real exchange rates of the Central European countries, with a greater stability in the 1980s and 1990s, changed their integration order earlier, if at all, mostly during the 1980s. So, the euro seems to have had, on the whole, little influence on the persistence of real exchange rates. Only for a few countries do our findings detect a significant decrease in persistence related with the nominal convergence process.     

Nonuniform DIF Detection using Discriminant Logistic Analysis and Multinomial Logistic Regression: A comparison for polytomous items

This study focused on the effectiveness in nonuniform polytomous item DIF detection using Discriminant Logistic Analysis (DLA) and Multinomial Logistic Regression (MLR). A computer simulation study was conducted to compare the effect of using DLA and MLR, applying either an iterative test purification procedure or non-iterative to detect nonuniform DIF. The conditions under study were: DIF effect size (0.5, 1.0 and 1.5), sample size (500 and 1000), percentage of DIF items in the test (0, 10 and 20%) and DIF type (nonuniform). The results suggest that DLA is more accurate than MLR in detecting DIF. However, the purification process only improved the correct detection rate when MLR was applied. The false positive rates for both procedures were similar. Moreover, when the test purification procedure was used, the proportion of non-DIF items that were detected as DIF decreased for both procedures, although the false positive rates were smaller for DLA than for MLR.     

Is a Tax Cut on Cultural Goods Consumption Actually Desirable? A Microsimulation Analysis applied to Spain*

Proposals for tax cuts on cultural goods represent an ongoing debate in cultural policy. The main aim of this paper is to shed some light on this debate using microsimulation tools. First, we have estimated an Almost Ideal Demand System for 19 different groups of goods, including cultural goods. Expenditure and price elasticities have been obtained from this model. Using this information, three alternative cuts in the VAT rate on cultural goods have been microsimulated and evaluated in terms of revenue and welfare. These types of fiscal reforms will lead to welfare and efficiency gains that can be described as regressive.     

A Partially Hidden Markov Model of Customer Dynamics for CLV Measurement

Customer lifetime value (CLV) measurement is challenging as it requires forecasting customers' future purchases. Existing stochastic CLV models for this purpose generally make the following assumptions: 1) purchase behavior of customers can be described by purchase frequency and the average monetary value of transactions, 2) customers keep the same purchase behavior pattern over time, 3) purchase frequency and monetary value are independent, and 4) customers are active during a limited period of time after which they permanently defect. We develop a new stochastic model that relaxes these four assumptions. First, in addition to the number of transactions and its monetary values, we also model purchase incidence decisions (i.e. whether or not to purchase). Second, our partially hidden Markov truncated–NBD-GG (PHM/TNBD-GG) model allows dynamic purchase patterns, dependence between purchase frequency and monetary value, and customers to become active after a few periods of temporary inactivity. Validation of our model on two datasets demonstrates that if assumptions 1 to 4 of existing stochastic models are violated our model produces more accurate forecasts of future customer behavior.     

Cereal price shocks and volatility in sub‐Saharan Africa: what really matters for farmers’ welfare?

The lack of information as well as some misperceptions about the distinction between the welfare consequences of higher versus more volatile cereal prices has limited the effectiveness of policy interventions during the recent food crises in many developing countries. This article proposes an integrated empirical strategy to investigate and compare the different effects of these two phenomena and tests it using nationally representative household survey data from four sub‐Saharan countries. Results show that the negative impacts of a cereal price increase substantially outweigh the effects of price volatility on household welfare across the entire income distribution. The amplitude and the distribution of those effects depend heavily on specific factors, such as: the weight of food consumption over total expenditure; the budget share devoted to cereals; the substitution effect among food groups; and the relative number of net sellers versus net buyers accessing the market. We also show that volatility mainly harms the poorest quintile of the population.