Time,Price, and Advanced Booking of Hotel Rooms

ABSTRACT

The effectiveness of revenue management systems has diminished in recent years due to the systems' inability to address the increasing complication of online deal-seeking behavior. To restore their efficiency, one must first understand the changes in advanced-booking behavior and their implications. This study expands the consumer booking model by addressing the impact of time-before-the-date-of-stay and exploring the implication for the hotel's pricing/marketing strategies. The findings underscore the urgent need for empirical research on timing by showing that the predictions of the advanced-booking model, and consequently the effectiveness of RM systems, depend on the actual patterns over time.     

A Code of Ethics for CorporateCode of Ethics

Are corporate codes of ethics necessarily ethical? To challenge this notion, an initial set of universal moral standards is proposed by which all corporate codes of ethics can be ethically evaluated. The set of universal moral standards includes: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. By applying the six moral standards to four different stages of code development (i.e., content, creation, implementation, administration), a code of ethics for corporate codes of ethics is constructed by which companies can be ethically audited for compliance. The newly proposed code of ethics for corporate codes of ethics was then applied to four large Canadian companies representing a variety of industries: telecommunications; banking, manufacturing, and high technology. The ethical audit of the four companies' ethics programs based on the proposed code indicates that all four companies have room to improve the ethical nature of their codes of ethics (i.e., content, creation, implementation, administration).     

Privatization: Possible lessons from the Hungarian case

Hungary was the first Eastern European country to tackle the problem of economic reform: initially in piecemeal fashion, then by introducing broad sets of measures aimed at establishing a market-based economic system. This paper reviews the Hungarian experience with privatization policies and presents some general conclusions regarding the design of successful privatization schemes that might serve as rough guidelines for other countries trying to reduce a vastly overextended public sector.     

The Unexplored Potential of Hope to Level the Playing Field: A Multilevel Perspective

A multilevel view of social change is presented in which socially responsible organizations, society, and high-hope individuals interact in support of hopefulness – thereby leveling the playing field. Suggestions are made about future research and the roles of organizations and society in eliciting hope in organizational and societal cultures.     

Hospital cost control: a bitter pill to swallow.

Americans delude themselves if they think that the rising tide of medical costs can be stemmed for long without sacrificing some beneficial care. Elimination of waste from the medical system can achieve large savings. But these savings cannot offset for more than a few years the cost-increasing effects of new medical technology and an aging population. Comparing the American experience with the rationing of health care in Britain, these authors conclude that though the differences are substantial between the two countries, the United States may well need to apply similar constraints, and that Americans will no longer be willing to support a system of unlimited medical care.     

Scope,timing and strategic adjustment in emerging markets: Manufacturer strategies and the case of MRI

This study examines the realized strategies of all domestic manufacturers in a growing, high technology, industrial market characterized by high levels of regulatory, demand, and technological uncertainty. These manufacturers have behaved quite differently and experienced varying levels of success in the market. A typology of entry strategies grounded in an intensive analysis of these data is presented. Specifically, it addresses the timing and scope of a firm's entry into the market, strategic adjustments over time, and the impact of these decisions on the firm's performance. It is proposed that these strategies represent trade-offs between the risks of resource commitment and competitive preemption. Specific, testable hypotheses based on this typology are also provided.     

Friction in the trading process and the estimation of systematic risk

This paper considers how estimates of the market model beta parameter can be biased by friction in the trading process (information, decision, and transaction costs) that (a) leads to a distinction between observed and ‘true’ returns; (b) causes observed returns to be generated asynchronously for a set of interdependent securities; and (c) thereby introduces serial cross-correlation into security returns. Several propositions are derived from which consistent estimators of beta are obtained, and the effect of differencing interval length on beta estimates is specified. The formulation is contrasted with the related analyses of Scholes-Williams (1977) and Dimson (1979).     

International Telecom Settlements: Gaming Incentives, Carrier Alliances and Pareto-Superior Reform

Liberalized countries that allow competition in international telecommunications favor traffic re-routing practices as arbitrage against foreign monopolists. This view is seriously incomplete. Monopolists, allied with carriers in liberalized countries, can use these practices to reduce termination payments to nonalliance carriersöthereby harming also consumers in liberalized countriesöby gaming regulations that require equal termination rates at both ends and 'proportional return' (the monopolist's traffic is allocated among carriers in proportion to their shares of traffic to its country). We also present a simple bilateral settlements reform that eliminates gaming incentives and other proportional-return distortions, yet benefits both countries.     

Optimal exploration investments under price and geological‐technical uncertainty: a real options model

This article develops a real options model for valuing natural resource exploration investments (e.g. oil or copper) when there is joint price and geological‐technical uncertainty. After a successful several‐stage exploration phase, there is a development investment and an extraction phase. All phases are optimized contingent on price and geological‐technical uncertainty.
Several real options are considered. There are flexible investment schedules for all exploration stages and a timing option for the development investment. Once the mine is developed, there are closure, opening and abandonment options for the extraction phase. Our model maintains a relatively simple valuation structure by collapsing price and geological‐technical uncertainty into a one‐factor model.
We apply the model to a copper exploration prospect and find that a significant fraction of total project value is due to the operational, development and exploration options available to project managers.     

Strategic Environmental Policy, Clean Technologies and the Learning Curve

In the political discussion, it is often emphasized that the environmental service industry (which produces a clean factor of production) benefits from an early and strong environmental policy. This is especially likely if the costs of production are decreasing over time due to learning curve effects. Surprisingly, the environmental service industry has not been integrated into the theory of strategic environmental policy yet. Our main question is whether a national leadership in environmental policy can pay off if profits of the environmental service industry are taken into account. We consider a two-period model with one firm in each country competing on a third market. Emissions can be substituted by the clean factor when deciding upon the production technology. The unit costs of producing the clean factor in the second period are decreasing in the quantity produced in the initial period. We derive the optimal environmental policy for both periods from a national point of view and show that the presence of the environmental service industry can indeed lead to a national leadership in pollution control.