Mature Australian consumers' adoption and consumption of self-service banking technologies

The slow diffusion of self-service banking technologies (SSBTs) into the mature consumer market necessitates research to understand better this growing section of the population and the diversity that exists within this market. This research analyses the 50+ market through a segmentation approach based on the level of use of SSBTs. Three segments were identified: non-users, low users and medium-to-high users of SSBTs; these are profiled by frequency of use and demographic variables. The medium-to-high user segment embraces a range of SSBTs and uses credit cards to facilitate their financial activities. Non-users and some low users prefer the customary way of conducting transactions and enjoy the personal interaction with the bank employee. These two segments do, however, have a moderate level of credit card use. Finally, a small percentage of diffusion discontinuance was identified in this study of the mature consumer market.     

BEA's Regional Economic Accounts Program: Recent and Planned Improvements

This article highlights recent improvements and plans for further improvements to each of BEA’s major regional economic accounts programs. The improvements focus on the acceleration of release of the estimates and on the preparation of new and extended estimates. There also is a brief discussion on BEA’s research effort to improve the regional accounts.JEL Classification E010     

On the smoothness of optimal paths II: some local turnpike results

We study the local turnpike property for two classes of infinite-horizon discrete-time deterministic maximization problems which have common applications, e.g., optimal growth theory. We follow a functional-analytic approach and rely on an implicit function theorem for the space of the sequences which converge to zero. We shall assume the existence of an optimal path which is not necessarily a steady-state. Relying on material developped in Blot and Crettez (Decis Econo Finance 27:1–34, 2004), “On the smoothness of optimal paths” Decis Econ Finance, 21:1–34, 2004), we provide conditions under which a variation in the initial conditions (i.e., capital stock and discount rate) yields an optimal solution which converges toward a reference solution when time becomes infinite. We also provide new results on bounded solutions of difference equations. We gratefully thank the editor, Silvano Holzer, and two anonymous referees for remarks and advices on a previous version of this paper.     

Progressive stress accelerated life tests under finite mixture models

In this paper, progressive stress accelerated life tests are considered when the lifetime of a product under use condition follows a finite mixture of distributions. The experiment is performed when each of the components in the mixture follows a general class of distributions which includes, among others, the Weibull, compound Weibull, power function, Gompertz and compound Gompertz distributions. It is assumed that the scale parameter of each component satisfies the inverse power low, the progressive stress is directly proportional to time and the cumulative exposure model for the effect of changing stress holds. Based on type-I censoring, the maximum likelihood estimates (MLEs) of the parameters under consideration are obtained. A special attention is paid to a mixture of two Rayleigh components. Simulation results are carried out to study the precision of the MLEs and to obtain confidence intervals for the parameters involved.     

Bestimmung von Kapitalkosten in diversifizierten Unternehmungen: Verfahrensvergleiche und Anwendungsempfehlungen

Die Notwendigkeit zur wertorientierten Führung und Steuerung von Unternehmungen gewinnt durch die zunehmende Professionalisierung der Kapitalmarktteilnehmer, die Basel-II-Richtlinien für Banken sowie die Neuregelung zum Goodwill Impairment weiter an Dynamik. Innerhalb der Wertkonzepte nehmen Kapitalkosten als zentraler „value driver“ eine herausragende Bedeutung ein. Vor diesem Hintergrund werden die unterschiedlichen Verfahren zur Ermittlung von Kapitalkosten, darunter auch das erst kürzlich vorgestellte Market-derived Capital Pricing Model, diskutiert und mittels eines zu entwickelnden Kriterienrasters systematisch miteinander verglichen. Schlie?lich entwickelt der Beitrag aus den Erkenntnissen des Verfahrensvergleichs sowie einer Expertenbefragung praktische Anwendungsempfehlungen.     

Characterizations of negative multinomial distributions based on conditional distributions

In this paper characterizations of negative multinomial distributions based on conditional distributions have been studied.