Customer Responsiveness: Getting it Fast and Right Through Impatience and Intolerance

Customer responsiveness is about being fast and right. The value of being right is obvious — customers get something that meets their needs. But the value also depends critically on the speed with which the response is produced. Maximising performance across the two dimensions constitutes excellent customer responsiveness. But, according to interviews with top executives, this may require a surprising management style.     

No Merit in State Education

Supporters of the welfare state have contended that health and education are 'merit goods' which will be undervalued by individual consumers so that they must be provided by the state. Dr Graham Dawson, a specialist in the economics of education, considers means of paying for private education which will keep the consumer better informed of his costs and options and avoid the wastage which follows when state action divorces producer from consumer.     

SATELLITE TELEVISION AND THE DEMAND FOR FOOTBALL: A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME?

A recent development in the UK television industry has been the emergence of satellite coverage of sporting events. This paper examines the relationship between broadcasting and football, culminating in the 1992 joint BBC and BSkyB contract to televise the English Premier League. A demand function is estimated which exteds the familiar model of attendance to incorporate television together with quadratic functions. We find that, although live transmission reduces attendance, the net financial consequences are positive for Premier League teams. Moreover, significant estimators are found for the quadratic functions of pricel earnings, distance, seasonal trend and length of Premier League status.     

Is Environmental Dumping Greater when Plants are Footloose?

We address concerns that globalisation gives national governments incentives to set weak environmental policies and that these incentives are particularly strong in industries where plants are footloose. Using a simple model of imperfect competition, we compare the environmental policies that would be set by non-cooperative governments for two different move structures—where governments set environmental policies after firms decide where to locate (market share game) and where governments set environmental policies before firms decide where to locate (location game). We show that the extent of environmental dumping in the market share game can be greater than in the location game.
JEL classification F 1; H 4; L 5; Q 2     

Blue Box Policy Reform in the Doha Round Negotiations： Effects and China＇s Position

This paper uses an agricultural trade policy simulation model to quantitatively evaluate the effects of Blue Box policy reform on agricultural production and trade, and further provides specific proposals regarding China ＇ s reform position. The results indicate that, if the reform could achieve a reduction in distorting supports in more developed countries, China＇ s total agricultural production would increase, accompanied by a decrease in agricultural imports and a slight increase in exports. In terms of social welfare, producers would gain significantly, consumers would lose and government would not suffer greatly, which is in accordance with current agricultural policies in China. As a core member of G20, China should approve a subsidy level as low as possible required by Blue Box to achieve ＂substantial reductions in trade-distorting domestic supports＂.     

空间利用的变革：北京的经历

Specific changes in land use can, and often do, occur when any social economic system moves from one form to another. When traditional societies transit from traditional land uses to philosophically determined land uses, as in the case of the introduction of socialism or the transition from system of planned economy to a market system, such changes seem concentrated and perhaps exacerbated. Certainly, such circumstances provide the opportunity to see the process of social philosophy and its impact upon land use in a telescoped fashion, The discovery and explanation of these elements might provide some insight into basic human behavior, and its relationship to social control and how people organize space both with and without control. This paper presents the results of observations of changes in land use as they have occurred during the course of transitional economic development in Beijing, China for the past decade. It suggests three new generic categories that can be applied to any culture or society.     

The cyclical behaviour of European bank capital buffers

Using an unbalanced panel of accounting data from 1997 to 2004 and controlling for individual bank costs and risk, we find capital buffers of the banks in the EU15 have a significant negative co-movement with the cycle. For banks in the accession countries there is significant positive co-movement. Capital buffers of commercial and savings banks, and of large banks, exhibit negative co-movement. Those of co-operative and smaller banks exhibit positive co-movement. Speeds of adjustment are fairly slow. We interpret these results and discuss policy implications, noting that negative co-movement of capital buffers will exacerbate the pro-cyclical impact of Basel II.