Harmonizing the interests of a city and its region: Krasnoyarsk krai experience

The paper focuses on the emerging system of territorial strategic planning in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation and municipalities. Suggested for practical application are the best Russian research studies and practices of coordinating the interests of municipal and regional authorities. The analysis of scholarly approaches to the issue in focus allows one to infer that the best elaborated position is that of the staff of the North-Western Office of the Russian Research Center for Local Governance (RRCLG). As regards the express-analysis of practices adopted in the number of the Russian Federation constituent entities, the practices of the Krasnodar krai appear to be the most promising.     

Social Capital and the Terms of Trade for Farmland

Social capital is a person or group's sympathy for or sense of obligation to another person or group. This article introduces social capital into a neoclassical model of farmland exchange and shows how relationships alter the terms of trade. Empirical evidence from a survey of farmers shows that the type of relationship farmland sellers have with farmland buyers has a statistically significant and economically important effect on the minimum-sell price for farmland. Compared to the minimum-sell price when selling to a total stranger in an arm's-length transaction, farmland sellers discount prices to friendly neighbors and relatives and require a premium from unfriendly neighbors and influential people in the community.     

Pricing continuously sampled Asian options with perturbation method

This article explores the price of continuously sampled Asian options. For geometric Asian options, we present pricing formulas for both backward‐starting and forward‐starting cases. For arithmetic Asian options, we demonstrate that the governing partial differential equation (PDE) cannot be transformed into a heat equation with constant coefficients; therefore, these options do not have a closed‐form solution of the Black–Scholes type, that is, the solution is not given in terms of the cumulative normal distribution function. We then solve the PDE with a perturbation method and obtain an analytical solution in a series form. Numerical results show that as compared with Zhang's ( 2001 ) highly accurate numerical results, the series converges very quickly and gives a good approximate value that is more accurate than any other approximate method in the literature, at least for the options tested in this article. Graphical results determine that the solution converges globally very quickly especially near the origin, which is the area in which most of the traded Asian options fall. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:535–560, 2003     

B‐TO‐B E‐COMMERCE: A CONTENT ANALYTICAL ASSESSMENT OF MOTOR CARRIER WEBSITES

An Internet presence is a critical early component in the process of building towards a fully operational and unified e‐commerce strategy. E‐commerce has significantly impacted logistics/supply chain strategies and the development and implementation of a website have become key issues for many firms within the transportation industry. This study provides an overview of website content within the motor carrier industry. Content analysis was used to assess the site design, informational content, and the interactive content of 152 motor carrier websites, and to compare the features offered on the Top 100 motor carrier firm websites with those offered on the sites of smaller carrier firms.     

Does brand name imprinting in memory increase brand information retention?

This article introduces and explores the concept of brand name imprinting. Brand name imprinting is the process of creating and strengthening the brand name node in the brand memory network through brand name exposure. Brand name imprinting at a time prior to the presentation of specific brand information is posited to improve the retention of that information by strengthening the association between the brand name and brand information. The effect is proposed to be automatic and independent of other known means to strengthen memory associations (e.g., level of attention, cognitive elaboration, stimuli vividness, and stimuli distinctiveness). This research also proposes that brand names with neutral meaning better facilitate the imprinting effect, because they do not carry perceptual baggage that can interfere with the creation of new brand name–information associations. An experiment involving brand name imprinting and the learning of brand information supports these assertions. Implications for communication strategy and brand name selection are discussed. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Position limits for cash‐settled derivative contracts

Cash settlement of derivative contracts makes them susceptible to manipulation by traders who expect to close large positions upon final settlement. Cash settlement also increases underlying volatility when hedgers unwind their hedges if they have no incentives to control their trading costs. Limits on the positions that traders can carry into final settlement can be used to mitigate associated economic inefficiencies when surveillance is insufficient. This article develops a model that regulators can use to set these limits that is based upon microstructure theory. The empirical findings indicate that existing position limits are largely inconsistent with those suggested by the model. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:945–965, 2005     

Multiple regimes and cross-country growth behaviour

This paper provides some new evidence on the behaviour of cross-country growth rates. We reject the linear model commonly used to study cross-country growth behaviour in favour of a multiple regime alternative in which different economies obey different linear models when grouped according to initial conditions. Further, the marginal product of capital is shown to vary with the level of economic development. These results are consistent with growth models which exhibit multiple steady states. Our results call into question inferences that have been made in favour of the convergence hypothesis and further suggest that the explanatory power of the Solow growth model may be enhanced with a theory of aggregate production function differences.