Ponds,Power and Institutions: The Everyday Governance of Accessing Urban Water Bodies in a Small Bengali City

While researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. These are understood as a composite resource that is simultaneously water, land and public space. This analysis draws on a case study from a small city in West Bengal, India, and is based primarily on data from open interviews with different actors with a stake in urban ponds. The article demonstrates that in a context of ambiguity of the statutory governance regime and fragmented control, the (re)production of the pondscape is embedded within complex relationships of power whereby social marginalization can be offset at least momentarily by local institutions such as neighbourhood clubs and political parties.     

System dynamics modelling and forecasting health tourism demand: the case of Russian resorts

This article presents the results of the system dynamics modelling of the regional market of health tourism in the Krasnodar region of Russia. The research was based on various indicators characterizing the supply and demand for this type of tourism for years 2006–2012. The medium-term forecast made by constructed model shows a possible decrease in number of health tourists and income of sanatorium organizations. Price competition of inexpensive foreign resorts was a key factor influencing the market of tourist services; therefore ruble devaluation to US dollar may improve the prognostic indicators.     

Expectations and industry location: a discrete time dynamical analysis

The new economic geography (NEG) aims to explain long-term patterns in the spatial allocation of industrial activities. It stresses that endogenous economic processes may enlarge small historic differences leading to quite different regional patterns—history matters for the long-term geographical distribution of economic activities. A pivotal element is that productive factors move to another region whenever the anticipated remuneration is higher in that region. Given the long-term nature of NEG analyses and the crucial role of expectations, it is astonishing that most of the existing models assume only naïve or myopic expectations. However, a recent stream of the literature in behavioral and experimental economics shows that agents often use expectational heuristics, such as trend extrapolating and trend reverting rules. We introduce such expectations formation hypotheses into a NEG model formulated in discrete time. This modification leads to a system of two nonlinear difference equations (corresponding, in the language of dynamical systems theory, to a 2-dimensional piecewise smooth map) and thus enriches the possible dynamic patterns: with trend extrapolating (reverting) the symmetric equilibrium is less (more) stable; and it may lose stability only via a flip bifurcation (or also via a Neimark–Sacker bifurcation) giving rise to a period-doubling cascade (or also to quasi-periodic orbits). In both cases, complex behavior is possible; multistability, that is, the coexistence of locally stable equilibria, is pervasive; and border-collision bifurcations are also allowed. In this sense, our analysis corroborates some of the basic insights of the NEG.     

Modelling user perception of bus transit quality

This article evaluates how bus users perceive the quality of their public transport service. In particular it looks at how perception of quality varies according to the available information. The experiment compares an overall evaluation of service quality before and after making passengers reflect on the importance of certain fundamental system variables which they may not have previously considered.Focus groups were used to individualise the most relevant variables. A quality survey was carried out both on-board buses and at bus stops and the overall service quality was related to the aforementioned variables using ordered probit models. The perception of quality is shown to change with the category of user and that there tends to be more criticism towards variations in overall quality until the users are stimulated into thinking more deeply about other influential variables. The application of this methodology may provide operating companies with valuable information for planning marketing policies aimed at different categories of user, in order to improve the service quality and attract more passengers to using public transport.     

Russia’s salt industry: Problems of development

The paper describes the current situation in the salt industry. It points to the inadmissibly high and expanding market share of imported salt products despite the country’s own colossal resource base and the domestic enterprises’ huge unused capacities. It has been shown that OAO Russian Railroads (OAO RZhD) will economically benefit due to its reasonable policy of selective reduction of the railroad shipment tariffs for salt for domestic producers due to the inevitable growth of the country’s own salt output.     

Consumption volatility and financial openness

Economic theory predicts that the integration of financial markets lowers the volatility of consumption. In this article, we study long-term trends in the consumption volatility of the G7 countries. Using different measures of financial openness, we find evidence that greater financial openness has been associated with lower consumption volatility. However, volatility of consumption relative to output has not declined.     

The Influence of Unethical Peer Behavior on Observers’ Unethical Behavior: A Social Cognitive Perspective

The relationship between unethical peer behavior and observers?? unethical behavior traditionally has been examined from a social learning perspective. We employ two additional theoretical lenses, social identity theory and social comparison theory, each of which offers additional insight into this relationship. Data from 600 undergraduate business students in two universities provide support for all the three perspectives, suggesting that unethical behavior is influenced by social learning, social identity, and social comparison processes. Implications for managers and future research are discussed.     

Design principles of hybrid approaches in new product development: a systematic literature review

Setting the right approach for new product development (NPD) in the presence of uncertainty remains an ongoing debate in innovation management. Stage-gate systems (SGS) and agile methodology (AM) are the dominant approaches. Recently, hybrid approaches (combining SGS and AM) have been proposed. Although these hybrid approaches represent a significant development in NPD, combining them without considering their design principles might lead to contradictory and competing conceptual formulations, thus increasing the difficulty of comparison among studies. Moreover, scholars and practitioners may struggle to understand when, why and how a certain configuration of the NPD process provides the right response to different manifestations of uncertainty. The current literature faces problems regarding the clarity of design principles (e.g. flexibility and adaptability), and this has led to research gaps concerning the uncertainty contingency and outcomes of hybrid approaches. This study combines bibliometric and content analyses to identify four design parameters and principles of NPD hybrid approaches: flexibility, adaptability, velocity and integration. Our findings might help advance the development and comparison of different hybrid approaches.     

Real effects of financial reporting and disclosure on innovation

This paper reviews the literature on the real effects of financial reporting and disclosure on corporate innovation, highlighting both the possible channels of influence and the potential challenges that researchers face when attributing causal effects. We discuss the concept of innovation, emphasising the specific characteristics that make investments in innovation difficult to report. We then provide a review of the nascent work relating disclosure to innovation, which we organise around three channels: financing, compensation and learning. Finally, we discuss recent efforts aimed at increasing the quality of corporate disclosures, including disclosures of firms’ innovative activities. Throughout the paper, we highlight the trade-offs of disclosure (reduced information asymmetry and increased proprietary costs), which are particularly exacerbated in the context of corporate innovation.     

Credit risk,owner liability,and bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis

We relate credit risk and owners’ personal guarantees to bank loan maturities during the global financial crisis. The findings, which remain robust to reverse causality, show that firms rated as low risk, with a strong relationship with the bank, whose owners provided personal guarantees and with large loan sizes obtained longer maturities. Banks with larger nonperforming loans provided loans with shorter maturities. Firms with low‐ and high‐risk ratings that provided owners’ personal guarantees obtained longer maturities. These findings shed additional light on the relationship between risk and loan maturities and the role of personal guarantees in reducing information asymmetries.