Transportation security and the role of resilience: A foundation for operational metrics

This paper presents operational metrics to determine a passenger transportation system's resilience to terrorism. The metrics range from those specific to the number of trips to more holistic measures that include the contribution of these trips directly and indirectly to economic activity. These metrics can aid decision-makers in rendering more informed judgments about resource allocation and how to design a portfolio of security and recovery strategies.The paper also provides a framework for evaluating transportation risk, including the important role of perceptions in potentially amplifying these risks. It provides a range of strategies to promote resilience as well. Resilience of a transportation system is then quantified using the real-world case of the 2005 London subway and bus bombings. In terms of ordinary resilience, we find that 77.4 percent of total journey reductions on attacked modes were offset by increases in substitute modes for the 4 months following the attacks. We also estimate that 76.9 percent of total journey reductions on attacked modes were the result of a “fear factor,” as opposed to capacity reductions.The paper concludes with a set of proposed prospective resilience measures to evaluate the potential resilience of a transportation system. These metrics are based on the vulnerability, flexibility, and resource availability to cope with a terrorist attack or natural disaster.     

Representations of Hosts in Travel Writing: The Guardian Travel Section

In this paper, we examine representations of hosts to tourist destinations covered in journalistic travel reports published in the Travel Section of the Saturday edition of the British broadsheet newspaper The Guardian in 1997. Methodologically, the paper is anchored within the constructionist view of discourse, i.e. we assume that in the linguistic representation of people, places, or events, discursive choices not only describe the reality but also construct its ideologically preferred version. We demonstrate that in the travel reports examined here, local people tend to be represented in three principal categories: (1) homogeneous ethnic or social group; (2) observed bearers of the 'national' or 'community' characteristics; or (3) as 'featureless' helpers to the travellers. Arguing that these representations are constitutive of Foucauldian regimes of truth we propose that the reports are a means of constructing a known and tamed reality that is safe for the readers/prospective tourists to travel to.     

PRICING OF HIGH‐DIMENSIONAL AMERICAN OPTIONS BY NEURAL NETWORKS

Pricing of American options in discrete time is considered, where the option is allowed to be based on several underlyings. It is assumed that the price processes of the underlyings are given Markov processes. We use the Monte Carlo approach to generate artificial sample paths of these price processes, and then we use the least squares neural networks regression estimates to estimate from this data the so‐called continuation values, which are defined as mean values of the American options for given values of the underlyings at time t subject to the constraint that the options are not exercised at time t. Results concerning consistency and rate of convergence of the estimates are presented, and the pricing of American options is illustrated by simulated data.     

Relationship quality as a resource to build industrial brand equity when products are uncertain and future-based

This article extends our understanding of industrial branding and the influence of buyer–seller relationships by examining key constructs within an industrial context where products are uncertain and future-based. SEM results elicited from 249 buyer surveys empirically validate satisfaction, trust and commitment as dimensions of relationship quality, and show that buyer–seller relationship quality facilitates direct and indirect seller brand equity accruals. Findings reveal that while focusing on sellers' corporate and product brands is good advice for building buyer–seller relationships, seller resource allocations to these areas should vary depending upon the selected target market segment(s). Findings support that sellers should place more focus on developing quality relationships with buyers than they should in focusing on the non-relational attributes of their corporate brands; however, if sellers choose to bypass building high quality customer relationships, they should instead funnel resources into their product brand offerings. Findings demonstrate that buyers credit their own skills and acumen when evaluating products with which they are confident, and ascribe increased value to the involvement of the seller as their attitude and certainty decrease. These findings provide strategic guidance to the sellers of uncertain and future-based industrial products.     

An event-based perspective on the development of commitment

This paper proposes a new perspective on the development of commitment. We propose that organizational events are evaluated relative to a person's values to determine whether the person fits or misfits the organization. The fit information is then organized into commitment elements, which reflect the extent to which workplace events fit (relative to misfit) a particular value across events over time. We propose that elements are organized around values, not events, such that values are the main effect and events are the moderators of said effect on elements. Elements are, in turn, formative indicators of the latent commitment construct. They are the proximal causes of commitment. Multiple elements contribute to a single commitment and they are weighted via the value hierarchy. Our perspective contributes to the literature by: (a) being developmental; (b) focusing on events; and, (c) having implications for both within-person and between-person questions about commitment development.     

Modeling Change in Older Adults' Leisure Activities

Changes in three domains of leisure (i.e., informal, formal, and physical) were examined using data from individuals ages 50 and over from all three waves of the Americans' Changing Lives study (N = 1,911), and different patterns of change were found. Individual growth curve modeling suggested that while no change occurred over time on average within domains, significant individual differences were found in these patterns across all domains. Limitations in physical functioning and depressive symptoms predicted lower participation across domains, but other predictors including age, race, and gender made a difference. Older age only predicted decreases in the physical domain.     

Perverse supply response in peasant agriculture: A review

Abstract

The long‐running debate concerning the special characteristics of peasant production in less developed countries which may lead to perverse supply responses in their agricultural sectors is explored. Four stages in the debate are identified. The first was based on casual observation and the target income or fixity‐of‐wants hypothesis. The second took account of peasant own‐consumption and focused on the marketed surplus. The third addressed the possible effect of uncertainty and risk aversion on supply response. The fourth is embodied in modern farm household models of peasant behaviour. Although the predictions regarding supply response derived from these models vary, they all suggest that agricultural supply response may be negative. The bulk of empirical evidence, however, for both total production and marketed surplus tends to refute the notion, whether it is theoretically consistent or not, that supply response in peasant agriculture is negative.     

Reconciling microeconomic and macroeconomic estimates of price stickiness

This paper attempts to reconcile the high estimates of price stickiness from macroeconomic estimates of a New-Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) with the lower values obtained from surveys of firms’ pricing behaviour. This microeconomic evidence also suggests that the frequency with which firms adjust their prices varies across sectors. Building on the insights of Carvalho (2006), we present Monte Carlo evidence that suggests that in the presence of this heterogeneity estimates of the NKPC obtained using conventional methods, such as GMM, are likely to considerably overstate the degree of aggregate price stickiness. Furthermore, if roundabout production is a characteristic of the economy the NKPC will falsely suggest that a sizeable fraction of prices are indexed to past inflation. These problems arise because of a type of misspecification and a lack of suitable instruments.     

Return performance volatility and adaptation in an automated technical analysis approach to portfolio management

This paper discusses the design of a quantitative computational intelligence portfolio management system and evaluates the advantages of some adaptive mechanisms to enable the system to adjust its management approach as market conditions change. A detailed analysis of the performance of the system outside is also provided. It is found that an adaptive methodology where trading rules are able to adjust to market conditions performs better, having greater excess returns and lower volatility than a fixed rule approach. We consider several performance metrics, including portfolio alpha and information content. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.