从网易博客刮起的百事风暴——百事可乐与网易合作博客营销案例

5月8日,百事可乐在网易投放了一则活动通告,由此掀起了一场波澜壮阔的百事风暴……"只要上传你为中国队加油的照片到pepsi.163.com,参加‘百事我创,我要上罐’活动,你将有机会成为21名登上百事中国队纪念罐的一员,并出现在全国超过1亿个百事可乐罐上,并有机会获得内含5,000元人民币消费金的招商银行百事纪念卡!"     

Are Women Less Selfish Than Men?: Evidence From Dictator Experiments

Research in social sciences other than economics indicates substan tial differences in behaviour between men and women. The general conclusion drawn from this work is that women will be more socially-orientated (selfless), and men more individually-orientated (selfish). This paper reports the results of a double-anonymous dictator experiment designed to permit the emergence of basic gender differences in economic behaviour. Our results are intended to provide a baseline for further research. We find that women, on average, donate twice as much as men to their anonymous partners when any factors that might confound cooperation are eliminated     

Volatility dynamics of NYMEX natural gas futures prices

We examine the volatility dynamics of NYMEX natural gas futures prices via the partially overlapping time‐series model of Smith (2005. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 20, 405–422). We show that volatility exhibits two important features: (1) volatility is greater in the winter than in the summer, and (2) the persistence of price shocks and, hence, the correlations among concurrently traded contracts, displays substantial seasonal and cross‐sectional variation in a way consistent with the theory of storage. We demonstrate that, by ignoring the seasonality in the volatility dynamics of natural gas futures prices, previous studies have suggested sub‐optimal hedging strategies. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 28:438–463, 2008     

Gray Matters on Screen: Intelligence Agencies,Secret Societies,and Hollywood Movies

We normally think of government agencies as acting in a purely rational and instrumental way. In the case of intelligence agencies, we presume they rely on reason and science to protect the national interest. By contrast, the general view of secret societies and occult groups is that they engage in rituals and practices that have little or nothing to do with normal social intercourse, or even with reality. This article shows that these common assumptions are false, and that secret societies and intelligence agencies share many important traits. Our understanding of the CIA's role in supporting the production of Hollywood movies will be enhanced by taking these similarities into account. Intelligence work and the operations of secret societies are shown to overlap in five categories: religious underpinnings, occult practices to control the mind, cryptography, violations of social convention, and cryptic transparency—the ability to carry out secret activities in plain sight. These affinities explain why the CIA can promote movies that are actually quite candid in their revelation of the dark underside of the Agency. In so doing, the CIA projects a subliminal message that whatever questionable actions it takes are justified by a higher good, which can only be known by insiders.     

A reexamination of the web‐based job demand for PHR and SPHR certifications in the United States

Over the past decade, the exponential growth in Professional in Human Resources (PHR) and Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) certifications awarded by the Human Resource Certification Institute substantiates the need to reexamine the base rate of HR job announcements that require or prefer such certification. Based on a sample of Web‐based job announcements in 2002, Aguinis, Michaelis, and Jones (2005) reported that only 1.4 percent required or preferred PHR/SPHR certification. Using a similar design, the current study found that 15.6 percent of job announcements required or preferred PHR/SPHR certification, which is nearly 11 times the rate found in the Aguinis et al. (2005) study. Results also suggested the demand for PHR/SPHR certification was positively related to experience, educational level, and job title level, with the base rate reaching 25.1 percent for managerial HR roles.     

Entrepreneurial finance,credit cards,and race

This paper examines the impact of financial deregulation on entrepreneurship. We assess the impact of credit card deregulation on transitions into self-employment using state-level removal of credit card interest rate ceilings following the US Supreme Court's 1978 Marquette decision as a quasi-natural experiment. We find that credit card deregulation increases the probability of entrepreneurial entry, with a particularly strong effect for black entrepreneurs. We demonstrate that these effects are magnified in states with a history of racial discrimination and link the results to discrimination-based barriers to entry.     

Efficient empiricism: Streamlining teaching,research, and learning in empirical courses

The increasing importance of empirical analysis in economics highlights the need for efficient ways to bring these skills to the classroom. R Markdown is a new technology that provides a solution by integrating writing, statistical work and computation into a single document. R Markdown benefits students and instructors by streamlining teaching, research, and collaboration. The authors report on their use of R Markdown in undergraduate teaching, including core courses, electives, and senior theses. They discuss the costs and benefits of adoption, and explain the advantages of R Markdown in teaching reproducibility of empirical work, avoiding time-consuming and error-prone “cut and paste,” and facilitating a one-stop solution for importing, cleaning, manipulating, visualizing, and communicating with data.     

The Use of Telephone Directories as a Sample Frame: Patterns of Bias Revisited

A study was undertaken to reassess the utility of using telephone directories as a sample frame. A survey research unit within the Genesee County Health Department of Flint, Michigan, randomly sampled 1,031 households from the city of Flint using a complete listing of dwellings within the city as a universe. In addition to the normal interview schedule used, households were given a supplemental questionnaire on telephone service. The adult household respondent was asked if the household had a telephone and, if not, why. If the household had a telephone the respondent was asked if the number was listed in a phone directory or not. If the phone was unlisted, the respondent was asked why. The results were quite similar to those found by past research. There were a number of statistically dependent relationships found between whether or not households had listed or unlisted phones and various characteristics of household heads as well as other household features. It is concluded that using a telephone directory as a sample frame may lead to a significant sampling bias. Telephone sampling can still be a useful marketing tool if random digit dialing is used. This latter suggestion is briefly discussed.