The Effects of Megamergers on Efficiency and Prices: Evidence from a Bank Profit Function

This paper examines the efficiency and price effects of mergers by applying a frontier profit function to data on bank megamergers. We find that merged banks experience a statistically significant 16 percentage point average increase in profit efficiency rank relative to other large banks. Most of the improvement is from increasing revenues, including a shift in outputs from securities to loans, a higher-valued product. Improvements were greatest for the banks with the lowest efficiencies prior to merging, who therefore had the greatest capacity for improvement. By comparison, the effects on profits from merger-related changes in prices were found to be very small.     

Transport logistic services in Russia: Integration in the world market

This paper considers problems of increased foreign trade networks requiring faster growth of multimodal shipping and exact coordination of all points in the chain of freight delivery. Special attention is paid to rail and sea shipping integration in major directions of freight flows.     

Deregulating the domestic natural gas market: Conditions and mechanisms

The paper looks at topical points of the formation of the domestic natural gas market, the definitive ones being the rules of interaction between the monopoly company and the independent gas producers. Elaborated corporate interaction rules are presented as a Grid Code. The mechanism of a business game between key domestic gas market players is proposed as a Grid Code development tool.     

The future of the uplands

Upland areas provide UK society with many important functions, goods and services, but have experienced a number of disturbing trends and face an uncertain future. This paper outlines historic, current and future drivers of environmental, economic, socio-cultural and policy change in UK uplands, and assesses how these have affected or are likely to affect ways in which land is used and the provision of ecosystem services. Information is synthesised into scenarios summarising a range of possible futures anticipated for UK uplands to 2060 and beyond. Finally, innovations in science, technology, governance and policy are evaluated that could enable uplands to continue providing key ecosystem services under a range of scenarios. The paper concludes that many upland areas will need to be prepared for significant reductions in grazing and prescribed burning. Conversely, other areas could experience agricultural intensification, for example significant increases in grazing or an expansion of arable or bioenergy crops into upland valleys, due to anticipated increases in global demand for food and energy. These scenarios will take place in the context of climate change. Many may take place together and may interact with each other, with complex and unpredictable implications for the upland environment, economy and society. In this context, a number of advances are needed in science, technology and policy to maintain viable upland communities and the future provision of ecosystem services. These may include funding for ecological and hydrological restoration via carbon offsetting or other means. It may also involve advances in ecosystem service modelling, mapping and valuation, which through stakeholder participation could facilitate more integrated rural planning. New forms of environmental governance need to be explored that can empower those interested in developing upland economies to maintain thriving upland communities, while managing the ecosystem services they provide as efficiently as possible.     

Raise Rates to Raise Inflation? Neo‐Fisherianism in the New Keynesian Model

Increasing the inflation target in a New Keynesian (NK) model may require increasing, rather than decreasing, the nominal interest rate in the short run. We refer to this positive short‐run comovement between the nominal rates and inflation conditional on a nominal shock as Neo‐Fisherianism. We show that the NK model is more likely to be Neo‐Fisherian the more persistent is the change in the inflation target and the more flexible are prices. Neo‐Fisherianism is driven by the forward‐looking nature of the model. Modifications that make the framework less forward‐looking make it less likely for the model to exhibit Neo‐Fisherianism.     

Cointegration analysis and the UK demand for nitrogen fertilizer

Nitrogen fertilizer taxes have been proposed as a means of controlling agricultural ‘over-production’ and nitrate pollution of water courses in the EC. This paper constructs time-series models of fertilizer demand which provide quantitative information relevant to this issue. Time-series data on the use of nitrogen fertilizer in UK agriculture is found to have a unit root with non-zero drift coupled with a one-time change in drift after testing against the alternative hypothesis that the process is trend-stationary with a break in trend. The stochastic component of the nitrogen use series is cointegrated with the ratio of the price of nitrogen fertilizer to the price of agricultural output. Appropriate error correction models are estimated. Both the short-run and long-run price elasticities of the response of nitrogen use are found to be rather low. Some brief policy conclusions are drawn.     

SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW OF TOURISM GROWTH NEXUS: AN OVERVIEW OF THE LITERATURE AND A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL PAPERS

This study performs the first citation-based systematic literature review of the tourism-growth nexus. The citation analysis provides a bird's eye view of this literature, which, in turn, identifies the sources of knowledge in terms of most influential journals, authors, and articles. A detailed content analysis of 100 most influential papers has been generated on the nature of the study, variables used, country of analysis, type of analysis, the methodology, and the direction of causality. In total, 284 papers were found relevant in the Scopus database using a comprehensive list of keywords. The citation analysis reveals that Tourism Management is the leading journal with a total of 2527 citation counts, whereas Tourism Economics is the leading journal with a total of 41 publications on this topic. Juan Gabriel Brida is the most prolific author, whereas Lee and Chang (2008) is recognized as the most influential paper. The content analysis reveals that 58% have applied time series, and 38% have used panel data analysis. Tourism causing growth is the leading result of both time-series and panel studies. International tourism receipts/earnings/expenditure and the number of international tourist arrivals are the most widely used variables to measure tourism.     

The sales recovery audit: Learning to walk the talk

Little research attention has been devoted to the impact of salesperson failure and recovery management on customer relationship development. This paper develops a theoretically anchored and externally validated sales recovery audit for the purpose of assessing sales organization performance in these matters. Results based on a survey of 177 sales managers indicate that practice of sales recovery efforts lags behind their perceived importance as they relate to organizational success. The sales recovery audit presented here can be a useful tool to continuously evaluate and enhance sales recovery efforts for the purpose of building a stronger relationship selling organization.     

Estimation of the mean in ranked set sampling with non responses

The estimation of the population mean when ranked set sampling [rss] is used for selecting the sample and non responses [nr] are present, is studied. The nr stratum is sub sampled using simple random sampling with replacement. Two strategies are analyzed. One of them is based on the selection of a sub sample from the nr in each cycle. The other uses sub samples selected among the nr in each rank.  The accuracy of the proposed estimators is characterized by the corresponding expected variances. Simulations and real life data are used for analyzing the behavior of them. Acknowledgements: This paper was developed partially during the visit of the author to Université des Antilles et Gouyane. The author gratefully acknowledges the helpful suggestions of the referees and thanks the support of DAAD for visiting Humboldt University where a version of the paper version was made.