Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.     

Random regret minimization for consumer choice modeling: Assessment of empirical evidence

This paper introduces to the field of marketing a regret-based discrete choice model for the analysis of multi-attribute consumer choices from multinomial choice sets. This random regret minimization (RRM) model, which has recently been introduced in the field of transport, forms a regret-based counterpart of the canonical random utility maximization (RUM) paradigm. This paper assesses empirical results based on 43 comparisons reported in peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, with the aim of finding out to what extent, when, and how RRM can form a viable addition to the consumer choice modeler's toolkit. The paper shows that RRM and hybrid RRM–RUM models outperform RUM counterparts in a majority of cases, in terms of model fit and predictive ability. Although differences in performance are quite small, the two paradigms often result in markedly different managerial implications due to considerable differences in, for example, market share forecasts.     

Cambium non est mutuum: exchange and interest rates in medieval Europe

A major gap in our understanding of the medieval economy concerns interest rates, especially relating to commercial credit. Although direct evidence about interest rates is scattered and anecdotal, there is much more surviving information about exchange rates. Since both contemporaries and historians have suggested that exchange and rechange transactions could be used to disguise the charging of interest in order to circumvent the usury prohibition, it should be possible to back out implied interest rates from exchange rates. The analysis presented in this article is based on a new dataset of medieval exchange rates collected from commercial correspondence in the archive of Francesco di Marco Datini of Prato, c. 1383–1411. It demonstrates that the time value of money was consistently incorporated into market exchange rates. Moreover, these implicit interest rates are broadly comparable to those received from other types of commercial loan and investment. Although on average profitable, the return on any individual exchange and rechange transaction did involve a degree of uncertainty that may have justified their non‐usurious nature. However, there were also practical reasons why medieval merchants may have used foreign exchange transactions as a means of extending credit.     

Beyond Dutch disease

How does the deterioration of rule of law in Russia in recent years affect its ability to move away from an export pattern dominated by natural resources? We investigate this question using three datasets for Russia's bilateral trade relations for goods, services and investment at disaggregated level with its partner countries over the world. Our empirical analysis shows that the deterioration of the rule of law in Russia since 2003 has affected the long‐run trade performance of Russia in sophisticated and technology‐intensive manufactured goods, as well as its inward investments with advanced economies. It is precisely this type of trade that Russia should nurture to diversify away from hydrocarbons export dependence. Our statistical analysis also shows that Russia remains to a large extent an outlier within the multilateral trading system. It exports disproportionately less to partner countries which are or had become members of the WTO over our period of analysis. Russia's trade appears to have been negatively affected by the accession of these countries to the WTO. Russia itself finally acceded to the WTO in July 2012 amidst signs of a modest improvement of its rule‐of‐law indicators.     

Rivaroxaban for non-valvular atrial fibrillation and venous thromboembolism in the Netherlands: a real-world data based cost-effectiveness analysis

Background: Non-vitamin K antagonist oral anticoagulants (NOACs) have been included in international guidelines as important alternatives to vitamin K antagonists (VKAs) for the treatment of venous thromboembolism (VTE) and stroke prevention in non-valvular atrial fibrillation (NVAF). Meanwhile, in the Netherlands, NOACs are widely used next to VKAs. The objective of this study is to estimate the cost-effectiveness of treatment with rivaroxaban compared to VKAs in NVAF and VTE patients in the Netherlands, using data from international prospective observational phase IV studies.

Methods: Two models were developed to represent NVAF and VTE patients, populated with patients from the XANTUS (NCT01606995) and XALIA (NCT01619007) international prospective observational studies. The 1-year cost-effectiveness of rivaroxaban use, compared to VKAs, was explored in a population consisting of NVAF and VTE patients (base case) as well as for four scenarios with sub-populations: NVAF patients only, VTE patients only, NVAF patients with unstable international normalized ratio (INR), and NVAF patients using an INR self-measuring device.

Results: In the base case, rivaroxaban saved €72,350 and gained 21 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) in a simulation of 2,000 patients over the use of VKAs. Ergo, rivaroxaban was dominant over VKAs. The probabilistic sensitivity analysis showed a probability of 85% for rivaroxaban being dominant and 100% at a willingness-to-pay threshold of €20,000/QALY. Rivaroxaban appeared to be dominant in all scenarios as well, except for the NVAF-patients-only scenario where the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) was €157/QALY.

Conclusions: In patients with NVAF or VTE, rivaroxaban treatment is likely to be cost-effective and a potentially cost-saving alternative to VKA in the Netherlands.     

Measuring price discovery: The variance ratio, the R, and the weighted price contribution

We analyze the statistical properties of three price discovery measures: The variance ratio, the weighted price contribution (WPC), and the R² of unbiasedness regressions. We find that, if the price process is a driftless martingale, only the WPC is an unbiased estimator for the return variance explained during a time interval. For autocorrelated processes with a drift, only the R² of the unbiasedness regression is consistent, but it is biased for small samples.     

Processes of non-identification: Business school brands and academic faculty

This paper examines the internal implications of branding within higher education, a specific context which is dominated by the co-existence of strong professional logics and identity structures. We focus on how and whether academic faculty identify with the branding practices undertaken by their respective institution. The paper proposes a communicative perspective on brand identification to understand how academic faculty relate to and make sense of the brand. The findings, from responses of 65 faculty members at five business schools, indicate widespread indifference and non-identification with brand messages. Specifically, we identify four types of disconnects between faculty members and branding practices of their respective schools, namely ambiguity, emptiness, misalignment, and irrelevance. The evidence of these disconnects, we argue, suggests that the faculty members refrain from relating the brand to their own identities. Although individuals relate to discourses around the brand, these are often not internalized and do not thereby impact on their individual identity. Rather than navigating between identity tensions, they eschew identification altogether. We contribute to research on how branding works inside contemporary organizations – including higher education - through questioning the role of identity in branding processes seen as the management of meaning.