Parental control: A study of U.S. subsidiaries in Mexico

This study develops a framework that suggests that subsidiary characteristics, such as performance, purpose and manager nationality affect the extent of control and mechanisms of control (i.e., results, cultural and action controls) that their parent companies exercise over them. Hypotheses were tested using survey responses from 44 Mexican subsidiary—U.S. parent dyads. As expected, results suggest that parental perceptions of subsidiary performance are inversely related to the extent of control that parent companies exercise over these subsidiaries. It was also found that subsidiaries established for purposes relating to a knowledge seeking motivation tended to be subject to more cultural control, but no support was found for the hypothesized relationships between market purpose and results control, and resource purpose and action control. Finally, also as predicted, Mexican managers tended to be subject to greater action control by their U.S. parent than American managers.     

Understanding the motivations of coastal residents to voluntarily purchase federal flood insurance

Federally-backed flood insurance is the primary mechanism by which residents in the United States (US) prepare for and recover from floods. While there is a growing literature on the general uptake of flood insurance, little work has been done to address the factors motivating residents to voluntarily buy and maintain federally-based insurance policies. We address this issue by conducting a survey of coastal residents in four localities in Texas and Florida. Based on survey responses, we quantitatively examine the factors influencing whether residents located outside of the 100-year floodplain obtain insurance policies when it is not required. Using two-sample t-tests and binary logistic regression analysis to control for multiple contextual and psychological variables, we statistically isolate the factors contributing most to the decision to purchase insurance. Our findings indicate that a resident located outside the 100-year floodplain who has voluntarily purchased federal flood insurance can be characterized, on average, as more highly educated, living in relatively expensive homes, and a long-time resident who thinks about flood hazard relatively infrequently but who, nonetheless, thinks flood insurance is relatively affordable. Unexpectedly, the physical proximity of a respondent to flood hazard areas makes little or no discernible difference in the decision to obtain flood insurance.     

Measuring cycling accessibility in metropolitan areas

Different measures of cycling accessibility have been widely introduced in transportation planning. However, those measurements are mainly restricted by the availability of travel behavior data. In addition, there has been limited comprehensive research on the importance of cycling accessibility to destinations based on the travel time or distance. In this paper, a new index for measuring bikeability in metropolitan areas is introduced. A Cycling Accessibility Index (CAI) is developed for quantifying cycling accessibility within local areas in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia. CAI is defined according to gravity-based measures of accessibility. This index measures cycling accessibility levels in terms of diversity of different land uses, number of activities in statistical areas, and the travel impedance between origins and destinations. The Victorian Integrated Survey of Travel and Activity (VISTA) dataset was used to evaluate the index and investigate the association between the cycling accessibility levels and the number of bicycle trips in local areas. The index is assessed by investigating the association between levels of cycling accessibility and the number of bicycle trips in statistical areas. Key findings indicate that there is a significant positive association between bike trips and the CAI.     

A dynamic model of reference price and expected quality

A number of recent papers have developed normative implications of the concept of reference price. In this paper, we extend that literature to incorporate the relationship between expected quality and reference price. We consider the case of a monopolist who makes time-varying decisions regarding price and product quality. Our results suggest that when the effect of a loss (price greater than reference price and product quality less than expected quality) on demand is greater than or equal to that of a corresponding gain, it is optimal for a monopolist to have constant price and product quality levels. When the effect of a gain on demand is greater than that of a corresponding loss, however, we find that it is optimal to maintain cyclical pricing and product quality policies.     

Efficient estimation of tail-area probabilities in sampling experiments

A technique based on the use of control variates is proposed for the efficient estimation, in Monte Carlo experiments, of tail-area probabilities of test statistics whose small-sample properties are unknown. Significant variance reduction can be achieved in some cases.