Price competitiveness of tourism packages to Australia: Beyond the “Big Mac” index

One issue facing any country or region concerns its price competitiveness as a package tour destination. One method of measuring this is to use what in other contexts has been referred to as the Big Mac approach. The “Big Mac” is a simple product with ingredients in fixed proportions, whereas the tourism product is a very complex one comprising different components depending on tourist expenditure patterns. There is no equivalent tourism product offered across countries, as the nature of the product is tailored to the origin market, expenditure levels and the length of the trip involved. The key issue is that of how to standardize the products being compared, so as to determine their relative price competitiveness. A method of constructing price competitiveness indexes, developed by the authors, can be applied to develop measures of the price competitiveness of different tour packages. This paper has three aims: To set down the essence of the preferred approach to measuring price competitiveness, noting its advantages and limitations; to employ this approach to construct price competitiveness indexes for package tours to Australia from Japan and the USA; and to indicate areas for farther research into the price competitiveness of package tourism worldwide.     

May’s theorem in an infinite setting

We generalize May’s theorem to an infinite setting, preserving the elementary character of the original theorem. We define voting scenarios and generalized voting scenarios, and prove appropriate versions of May’s theorem. The case of generalized voting scenarios specialized to a countably infinite set of voters and the collections of all coalitions that have asymptotic density, shows that majority rule is the only aggregation rule that satisfies neutrality, irrelevance of null coalitions, anonymity, and positive responsiveness.     

Subsidization of S&Ls under the flat-rate deposit insurance system: Some empirical estimates

This study provides some estimates of the magnitude of the subsidies extracted by S&L holding companies under the present flat-rate deposit insurance system. The results suggest that the flat-rate deposit insurance system induces substantially uneven and inequitable distribution of subsidies among thrift institutions. The analysis of the thrift institutions' asset volatilities over the 1966–1988 period does not support the claim that deregulation of the industry has led to a systematic increase in risk-taking in the industry. On the other hand, we find that a large fraction of the asset volatilities are attributable to firm-specific investment policies and that the risk of the institutions' assets change considerably over time. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that switching to a risk-based deposit insurance system would be economically more efficient than the present scheme. We provide some recommendations for policy changes that can increase the efficacy of risk-based insurance by increasing the level of monitoring by depositors and the financial markets.     

Adverse selection as an explanation of credit rationing and different lender types

An adverse selection model is utilized to demonstrate that informational asymmetry may make it wealth optimal for the financial intermediary (FI) to credit ration and to rationalize the existence of different lenders in the credit market. The crucial assumption is that borrowers differ in their tolerance for a lender-imposed default penalty, the severity of which also varies with the lender. The credit rationing portion proves that the FI will: 1) be forced by a binding regulatory constraint to overinvest in capital; 2) ration its worst risk class borrowers; 3) establish its optimal loan interest rate on the basis of the average quality of its loans and the interest rate elasticity of the borrower demand in its best risk category; and 4) decrease the total loan volume and increase the loan interest rate due to an increase in the capital requirement, but the effect on the default risk quality of its loan portfolio is ambiguous. The existence result is that if a lender has a high default penalty, he can charge a lower rate and attract only “good” borrowers, i.e., heterogeneous lender types encourage the screening of borrowers and vice versa.     

Estimating the variance of the ratio estimator for theMidzuno-Sen sampling scheme

Summary The problem of estimating the variance of the ratio estimator for theMidzuno-Sen sampling scheme is further studied in this paper. Sufficient conditions are derived for which the suggested variance estimator is always positive definite.     

“长三角”旅游服务质量预警机制建立的研究

打造中国旅游的“金三角”,苏、浙、沪三地必须实现旅游资源的整合。而建立有效的旅游服务质量预警机制是实现旅游资源整合的基础。     

企业统计如何迎接新挑战

随着我国《统计法实施细则》的颁布,在这一新的形势下,企业统计应如何发挥其作用,值得我们每一位统计工作者深思,本文对此进行了探讨。     

新厂新制：提升管理见效益——天津大唐国际盘山发电有限责任公司的管理实践

新厂新制的天津大唐国际盘山发电有限责任公司,是一家国有资本投资控股的中国新型火力发电企业。投产四年以来,进行的管理现代化理念和管理标准、管理流程方面的探索和实践,对于中国电力企业管理现代化,将产生积极的影响。新厂新制的机制管理现代化理念的构建天津大唐国际盘山发电公司(简称盘电)机组进入商业化运行后,引进广东核电集团的标准化管理、上海宝钢和大亚湾核电站的点检定修、北京华电天仁公司的康派优化控制管理系统,全面实施企业信息化建设,积极构建适应新厂新制的安全生产管理理念,创建了预防为主,超前控制,全员全方位全过程参…     

Code and conduct in French cuisine: Impact of code changes on external evaluations

We study the effects of organizational code‐preserving and code‐violating changes on external evaluations by third parties—an essential but under‐studied strategic outcome. We define code‐preserving changes as a variation in the firm's product range that preserves the social code within which the firm positions its offering. By contrast, a code‐violating change corresponds to a variation in the product range that breaks with past codes and embraces another social code. Our analyses of French haute cuisine restaurants show that code‐preserving changes and code‐violating changes have positive effects on external evaluations. Both effects decline with prior evaluations received by the organization, but only the effect of code‐violating changes is reduced with age. Moreover, external evaluations improve when restaurants undertake more code‐preserving changes than their direct competitors but decline when they make more code‐violating changes than competitors. These results enable us to derive implications for research on strategic change, strategic groups, and strategic social positioning. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.