Discrimination by shipping conferences?

Shipping conferences have for years been under heavy attacks from developing countries. It was with a view to finding out whether there was any justification for these grievances that the HWWA-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung — Hamburg (The Hamburg Institute for International Economics) prepared a wide-ranging inquiry for the Federal Ministry of Transport, the most important results of which are summarised in the following article.     

Assessing the Market Value of Real Estate Property with a Geographically Weighted Stochastic Frontier Model

In this study we consider the problem of sellers, buyers and real estate appraisers in determining the price for a house, taking into account the characteristics of the house and its location as well as the goals of these three different parties. The appraiser's job is to determine the fair market value of the house, while the buyer and seller want to find, respectively, the lowest and highest feasible price for it. We combine recent developments in geography and econometrics to develop an approach that determines local estimates of property values from the perspectives of the buyer, seller and appraiser, taking into account the characteristics of the house as well as its location. We illustrate our approach analyzing closing prices in one residential real estate market.     

Incorporating choice dynamics in models of consumer behavior

This paper presents a framework for organizing and discussing factors influencing consumer choice dynamics, how these factors may be incorporated into models of buyer behavior and problems that may arise in estimating such models. The paper identifies research issues and delineates possible approaches. Proceedings of Session on Choice Dynamics at the Banff Symposium on Consumer Decision-Making and Choice Behavior. All authors share equally in content and remaining errors.     

Drivers of Durable Peace: The Role of Justice in Negotiating Civil War Termination

Attaining durable peace after a civil war has become a major challenge, as many negotiated settlements relapse into violence. How can civil war negotiations be conducted and peace agreements formulated so as to contribute to lasting, durable peace? Previous research has focused on the durability of peace agreements, measured as the absence of violence. This study develops an index to measure durable peace for a period of 8 years after the agreement had been reached, and evaluates the new measure using an existing data set. We ask whether impacts on durable peace are similar or different to those found for the durability of agreements. This question suggests a number of hypotheses that are evaluated with 16 cases of peace agreements. Stable agreements are shown to mediate the relationship between equality provisions in peace agreements and durable peace, and to also mediate the relationship between procedural justice and the reconciliation component of durable peace. Interestingly, economic stability is not a dividend of peace agreements.     

The role of lifetime activity cues in customer base analysis

This paper develops the notion of lifetime activity cues in customer base analysis. The authors first discuss the impact of lifetime indicators, such as customers' conceptual response to marketing activities, and then demonstrate how such lifetime cues can be embedded into the Pareto/NBD model. The authors theoretically analyze the implication of this additional behavioral indication on the model's predictions. In an illustrative example, they aim to establish an intuitive understanding of the effects of such information. Evidence from the cellular phone industry supports the relevance of this concept: The empirical study finds a substantial improvement in predictive accuracy in two independent holdout samples. The study concludes with a discussion of the managerial relevance of the proposed approach and opportunities for further research.     

Country of origin: A competitive advantage?

Country of origin has been identified in the literature as an important cue that might be used by global marketers to influence consumers' valuation of the brand. Its effect on consumer perceptions, affect and behavioral intentions has been widely documented, based on consumer surveys and laboratory experiments. Despite this empirical evidence, we argue that country of origin is only one extrinsic cue among many extrinsic and intrinsic cues available to the consumer in a real purchase situation. Furthermore, in real life, consumers are likely to engage in some level of information search, which would further dilute the country of origin effect in the marketplace. Based on these arguments, we conclude that country of origin might not necessarily lead to a competitive (dis)advantage in terms of a price premium or discount. For a sample of products, we show that the objective product quality varies significantly by country of origin, and that these differences are consistent with extant research on country of origin effects on consumers' perceptions. After controlling for quality differences across brands, we demonstrate that marketers from different countries charge prices that are justified by differences in product quality. Price premiums or discounts are therefore explained by differences in product quality rather than the image effect produced by the country of origin cue.     

The Rural Environment Protection Scheme of the Republic of Ireland

Agricultural modernisation has had an impact on the Irish environment but official policy to address this developed only slowly. The reform of the EU CAP provided the incentive for the formulation of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (REPS). This is a wide-ranging scheme to promote environmentally friendly farming through application of 11 measures and six supplementary measures. Significant characteristics of the REPS include its: universal availability, voluntary nature, comprehensiveness, payment limitation, tailoring to individual farms and inclusion of training. There has been a high level of adoption, with participation being greatest in the small-farm west with its cattle and sheep enterprises.     

Supplier development and the relationship life-cycle

The mainstream view holds that over time buyer–supplier relationships evolve through a number of phases. As a consequence, supplier development as a buyer–supplier relationship management practice should also be adapted to the life-cycle phase. Supplier development activities matching the buyer–supplier relationship life-cycle phase will lead to more favorable performance improvements. However, prior studies have neglected the relationship life-cycle perspective. This empirical study shows how the length of the buyer–supplier relationship can be used to improve the explanatory power of models investigating the performance outcomes of supplier development activities. The results show that supplier development is more effective in mature as opposed to initial and declining life-cycles phases.