Mexico's private toll road program reconsidered

Mexico's private toll road program of 1989–1994 is famous both as one of the first and the most ambitious highway privatization programs among the developing countries and as one of the most dramatic failures. In just five years Mexico awarded 52 concessions totaling over 5300 km of toll roads, but as early as 1993 many of the concessions had to be renegotiated and in 1997 the government was forced to takeover 23 of them at an immediate financial cost of billions of dollars. This paper reconsiders the Mexican program and, with the benefit of hindsight, argues that it does not deserve its bad reputation. Although Mexico made some important mistakes in the design of the concessions, many of the highways turned out to be socially worthwhile investments. Moreover, the restructuring of the concessions in 1993–1997 converted many of them into financially profitable projects over the long-term, while the 1997 bailout ended up costing the government little in budget terms.     

The demand for and the supply of distribution services: A basis for the analysis of customer satisfaction in retailing

This paper brings together two bodies of literature. One of them is a literature on the special role of the consumer in retailing. The other one is the literature on customer satisfaction. This joining of literatures is accomplished by identifying distribution services as outputs of retail firms and fixed inputs into the production functions of consumers and relaxing the standard assumption that the demand for these services is always equal to the supply of these services. The result is a new conceptual framework for the analysis of customer satisfaction in retailing. This framework extends the basic ideas on customer satisfaction developed for manufacturing in a homogeneous single product setting to the heterogeneous multi-product setting relevant for many retailers. The paper illustrates one approach to the implementation of this framework with data for a set of supermarkets in Pamplona, Spain, that measure distribution services by asking consumers questions explicitly identifying these services. The five main categories of distribution services identified by the conceptual framework and measured in the data are economically important and statistically robust determinants of customer satisfaction with supermarkets. These results are obtained controlling for other variables typical of the customer satisfaction literature and measuring customer satisfaction in a manner consistent with that literature. The results are robust to corrections for sample selection and alternative estimation methods. Perhaps our most interesting novel result is that the effect of the determinants of customer satisfaction on future purchase intentions in the supermarket case is different when measured directly in a one stage process than when measured indirectly in a two stage process through the attributes/satisfaction/ purchase intentions chain.

The evaluation of a surveillance system for violent and non-intentional injury mortality in Colombian cities

Since 2002, the Institute for Peace Promotion and Injury/Violence Prevention (CISALVA) at the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia and the Colombia Program at Georgetown University have developed and implemented 21 epidemiologically based municipal crime observatories in intermediate-sized municipalities in Colombia. These crime observatories serve as monitoring centres that provide low cost, geo-referenced methods of data collection and analysis, which allow cities to develop more responsive policies and prevention programmes and enhance governance. This article focuses on the methodology employed and lessons learned that may be applicable to similar settings. Worth noting within the results was a significant decrease in homicides after the first year of the programme. Whether or not such results could be attributed to the method or to the nature of the interventions and policy initiatives stemming from it remains open to conjecture.     

房地产投资决策中实物期权方法的应用

传统的净现值投资决策方法将不确定性视为一种损失,忽略了项目投资的灵活性和战略性,往往造成项目价值的低估,而实物期权弥补了NPV法的不足。本文将实物期权方法}J入房地产投资决策中,对比分析了传统净现值法的一些不足,介绍了实物期权的基本理论,并采用了B-S期权定价模型对房地产投资决策过程中蕴含的迟延期权进行了案例分析。     

高效液相色谱法同时检测染发剂中3种二氨基酚类物质

建立了采用高效液相色谱法同时检测染发剂中3种二氨基酚类物质含量的方法。样品经0．1％甲酸水溶液提取,正己烷净化后,用ZORBAXEclipsePlusC8色谱柱进行分离,流动相为甲醇、乙腈和0．2％庚烷磺酸钠水溶液,梯度洗脱。分离后采用紫外检测器进行检测,外标法定量。在优化实验条件下,3种化合物的线性范围为0．2—10．0mg／L,相关系数均大于0．998。3种二氨基酚类化合物的检出限为0．1mg／L,定量下限为0．2mg／L,加标平均回收率为76．0％-109．8％,相对标准偏差均不高于7．9％。该方法灵敏度高、操作简单高效,适用于染发剂中3种二氨基酚类物质的检测。     

Impact of Market Orientation and ICT on the Performance of Rural Smaller Service Enterprises*

Market orientation (MO) is considered as a competitive strategy for the smaller service enterprises based in rural locations. A model is proposed and validated for the rural tourism sector that encompasses the effects of MO and of the use of information and communications technology (ICT) on business activity, taking into account the business's financial results, improvements to the rural location, and the more personal, intangible impact on the local entrepreneur. ICT is found to have a positive impact on MO and outcomes, whereas, similarly, the adoption of MO is found to have a positive effect on outcomes.     

战略性贸易政策在中国的适用性分析

在美国次贷危机冲击之下,全球经济陷入低迷,美国等发达国家纷纷采用战略性贸易政策调整本国经济.本文从美国实践该战略的结果出发初步分析这一战略在中国的适用性.     

在数学建模中培养学生创新性思维及建议

本文论述了数学建模对培养学生创新能力、提高综合素质的重要作用,指出大学生创新性思维能力的培养是数学建模活动的核心目标,对在数学建模活动中如何培养学生的创新性思维能力作了讨论,并根据学校开设数学建模课程及参加数学建模竞赛活动的现状,就如何提高数学建模成绩提出了一些建议.     

Beyond Contracts: Love in Firms

The traditional theories of the firm leave no room for love in business organizations, perhaps because it is thought that love is only an emotion or feeling, not a virtue, or because economic efficiency and profit making are considered to be incompatible with the practice of charity or love. In this article, we show based on an approach to the human action within the organization, that love can and must be lived in firms for firms to operate efficiently, be attractive to those who take part in them, and act consistently in the long run.