Developing global products and marketing strategies: A rejoinder

In this issue of JAMS, Dr. Lyn Amine presents a “comment and an extension” to our previously published article. Such efforts are often constructive, and in this spirit, we present a discussion responding to Dr. Amine’s comments. Our response, combined with Dr. Amine’s comments, hopefully will provide constructive research avenues in international product and marketing strategy development. He has published extensively in the areas of international marketing and retailing. His research and publication areas include international marketing, high tech marketing, and advertising management. His research and publication interests include sales management, international marketing, and retail management.     

Industrial clusters and the competitiveness of The Netherlands

Summary In this contribution the application to The Netherlands of Michael Porter's new method for assessing the competitiveness of a nation is presented. Special attention is given to the clustering of Dutch industries, their geographical scope and the integration of services. On this basis we assessed Porter's approach. Our conclusion is that the clustering method is a valuable tool but may be improved upon, and that too much and one-sided emphasis is put on national specificities.     

Career Analysis: the Missing Link In Managerial Assessment and Development

Robin Jacobs and Robert Bolton argue that, although competency-based assessment methods have improved the haphazard management development practices of the past, they nonetheless provide an incomplete picture for improving performance and developing potential. They suggest that self-development through a career planning framework might provide the missing link and present a case study in this area based on their work in the Nationwide Building Society. Robin Jacobs is a Lecturer in Management at the Open University Business School as well as one of the directors of Transitions Limited, and Robert Bolton is Human Resources Manager at the Nationwide Building Society.     

Dynamic jump intensities and risk premiums: Evidence from S&P500 returns and options

We build a new class of discrete-time models that are relatively easy to estimate using returns and/or options. The distribution of returns is driven by two factors: dynamic volatility and dynamic jump intensity. Each factor has its own risk premium. The models significantly outperform standard models without jumps when estimated on S&P500 returns. We find very strong support for time-varying jump intensities. Compared to the risk premium on dynamic volatility, the risk premium on the dynamic jump intensity has a much larger impact on option prices. We confirm these findings using joint estimation on returns and large option samples.     

The marginal cost of public funds is one at the optimal tax system

This paper develops a Mirrlees framework with skill and preference heterogeneity to analyze optimal linear and nonlinear redistributive taxes, optimal provision of public goods, and the marginal cost of public funds (MCF). It is shown that the MCF equals one at the optimal tax system, for both lump-sum and distortionary taxes, for linear and nonlinear taxes, and for both income and consumption taxes. By allowing for redistributional concerns, the marginal excess burden of distortionary taxes is shown to be equal to the marginal distributional gain at the optimal tax system. Consequently, the modified Samuelson rule should not be corrected for the marginal cost of public funds. Outside the optimum, the marginal cost of public funds for distortionary taxes can be either smaller or larger than one. The findings of this paper have potentially important implications for applied tax policy and social cost–benefit analysis.     

Financial development,financial liberalization and social capital

The relationship between financial liberalization policies and financial development is controversial. The impact of these policies differs greatly across countries. In the literature, the quality of formal institutions has been identified as an important source of this heterogeneity, as countries with a weak institutional environment generally fail to benefit from financial liberalization. Using panel data covering 82 countries for the period 1973–2008, we find evidence that social capital may substitute for formal institutions as a prerequisite for effective financial liberalization policies. In particular, we find that during the post Washington-consensus period countries with a high prevailing level of social capital can ensure that financial liberalization positively influences financial development, despite the poor quality of their formal institutions.     

Towards a fairer manager performance measure: a DEA application in the retail industry

Abstract

Retailers need to determine the performance of their individual stores and, beyond the stores, the managers in charge of running them. The aim of this paper is to develop performance standards that can be applied to fairly distribute rewards to managers regarding their performances by taking into account store neighbourhood characteristics. In order to propose a fairer measure of store performance, the authors introduce and explore the concepts of organizational justice and store efficiency. They use real data from a French supermarket chain and a geomarketing approach. The two-step Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model results are compared with a retailer’s ranking. The retailer tends to favour points of sale having a more important sales area, with more employees and operating in a more densely populated area with a higher buying power. The ranking stemming from the DEA model links store performance to other geo-demographic variables.