Behaviour theory and soft transport policy measures

The aim is to propose a theoretical grounding of soft transport policy measures that aim at promoting voluntary reduction of car use. A general conceptual framework is first presented to clarify how hard and soft transport policy measures impact on car-use reduction. Two different behavioural theories that have been used to account for car use and car-use reduction are then integrated in a self-regulation theory that identifies four stages of the process of voluntarily changing car use: setting a car-use reduction goal, forming a plan for achieving the goal, initiating and executing the plan, and evaluating the outcome of the plan execution. A number of techniques are described that facilitate the different stages of the process of voluntary car-use reduction and which should be used in personalized travel planning programs.     

Macroeconomic fluctuations in the Eastern Caribbean: The role of climatic and external shocks

This article develops country-specific vector autoregressive (VAR) models with block exogeneity restrictions to analyze how exogenous factors affect business cycles in the Eastern Caribbean. It finds that external shocks play a key role, explaining more than half of macroeconomic fluctuations in the region. Domestic business cycles are especially vulnerable to changes in climatic conditions, with a natural disaster leading to an immediate and significant fall in output – but the effects do not appear to be persistent. Oil price and external demand shocks also contribute significantly to domestic macroeconomic fluctuations. An increase in oil prices (external demand) is contractionary (expansionary), and the effects dissipate up to three years after the shock.     

INCORPORATING RISK AND AMBIGUITY AVERSION INTO A HYBRID MODEL OF DEFAULT

It is well known that purely structural models of default cannot explain short‐term credit spreads, while purely intensity‐based models lead to completely unpredictable default events. Here we introduce a hybrid model of default, in which a firm enters a “distressed” state once its nontradable credit worthiness index hits a critical level. The distressed firm then defaults upon the next arrival of a Poisson process. To value defaultable bonds and credit default swaps (CDSs), we introduce the concept of robust indifference pricing. This paradigm incorporates both risk aversion and model uncertainty. In robust indifference pricing, the optimization problem is modified to include optimizing over a set of candidate measures, in addition to optimizing over trading strategies, subject to a measure dependent penalty. Using our model and valuation framework, we derive analytical solutions for bond yields and CDS spreads, and find that while ambiguity aversion plays a similar role to risk aversion, it also has distinct effects. In particular, ambiguity aversion allows for significant short‐term spreads.     

Web Services for Negotiation and Bargaining in Electronic Markets: Design Requirements, Proof-of-Concepts, and Potential Applications to e-Procurement

Information Systems researchers continue to develop Web services hoping that, in a near future, these services will be widely offered in the e-marketplace, using a Web-based protocol that is universally adopted for posting, locating and invoking available services. Posting services does not, however, necessarily lead to market transactions, and a number of brokering activities are needed to facilitate trade. These include, but are not limited to, service discovery and ranking, price negotiation and contract preparation. We propose a set of Web services that support the process of negotiation and bargaining to facilitate the matching of supply and demand of Web services. As a market broker, these web services would help (a) discover the supply/demand of web services in e-marketplaces; (b) find the most appropriate available service for a specific request; (c) facilitate services be modified if needed to satisfy user's needs; (d) arbitrate the pricing mechanism with the recourse to bargaining whenever necessary; and (e) generate a contract. As a proof of concept, we illustrate the potential use of Web services for negotiation and bargaining in e-procurement.     

Ten Lessons from a Decade of Debating an EUBS: Robust Findings,Popular Myths and Remaining Dilemmas

The modern debate on a potential EUBS began in earnest around a decade ago, just prior to the onset of the global financial crisis. In the mid-2000s, current account imbalances and diverging unit labour costs triggered a new debate about transfer systems between euro area countries and, particularly, a European unemployment insurance.     

Toward a Model of Word-of-Mouth in the Health Care Sector

An important source of health information is word of mouth (WOM). Nevertheless, a model describing WOM in the health care sector does not exist. The aim of this paper is to contribute to research by providing concrete suggestions for a model of word of mouth in the health care sector. A conceptual framework comprising the theory of cognitive dissonance, the theory of the strength of weak ties, and the theory of perceived risk are used as a theoretical anchor. In order to gain a more precise knowledge of WOM in the health care sector, a literature review of leading health care journals is conducted. The findings are summarized in the form of a model proposal describing the creation, spread, and impact of WOM in the health care sector. As the model summarizes the current WOM literature, it seems to be a good starting point for further research by scholars. The paper also helps practitioners to better understand WOM and integrate the WOM aspects described into their daily work.     

Energy Informatics

Due to the increasing importance of producing and consuming energy more sustainably, Energy Informatics (EI) has evolved into a thriving research area within the CS/IS community. The article attempts to characterize this young and dynamic field of research by describing current EI research topics and methods and provides an outlook of how the field might evolve in the future. It is shown that two general research questions have received the most attention so far and are likely to dominate the EI research agenda in the coming years: How to leverage information and communication technology (ICT) to (1) improve energy efficiency, and (2) to integrate decentralized renewable energy sources into the power grid. Selected EI streams are reviewed, highlighting how the respective research questions are broken down into specific research projects and how EI researchers have made contributions based on their individual academic background.     

Productivity Versus Employment: Quantifying the Economic Effects of an EU–Japan Free Trade Agreement

The European Union and Japan recently entered into negotiations over a bilateral free trade agreement intended to stimulate growth and create wealth. Since customs duties are already low, the success of the liberalisation process hinges on the elimination of non‐tariff barriers. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on two possible liberalisation scenarios: a less ambitious liberalisation and a comprehensive liberalisation. In contrast to classic studies, our paper builds on the modern trade literature, accounting for the dominance of intra‐industry trade in both economies and the existence of heterogeneous firms. Furthermore, we model a search‐and‐matching labour market, allowing us to quantify employment effects of trade liberalisation. We find that a comprehensive liberalisation increases Japanese GDP by 0.86 per cent, whereas the EU experiences only an additional 0.21 per cent of real GDP growth. Most of the growth in real GDP is due to firms' efficiency gains, whereas unemployment is reduced by only a small amount. Other world regions experience small reductions of GDP due to trade diversion effects.     

Turning regulation into business opportunities: A brief history of French food mass retailing (1949–2015)

Abstract

The French retail market stands out among its European counterparts as being more concentrated. Relative to its neighbors, it has a higher number of large stores, such as hypermarkets. This article explains the origins of this market structure by assessing the impact of regulation on the French food retail industry between 1949 and 2015. Despite legislation aimed at curtailing their growth, retailers were able to circumvent legal constraints. Over the period considered, three ‘regulation-adaptation’ loops are described. Retailers’ responses to regulatory regimes affected both their bargaining mechanisms with suppliers and the business models they used to sell their products. By turning regulation into business opportunities, French retailers have managed to create a powerful oligopolistic industry, and are now among the largest retail groups in the world.