Cross-border leisure mobility styles in the Basque Eurocity

The constitution of Europe has fostered greater human and other mobilities across European borders, however it is not clear whether the border is still actually present in some places or inhibits cross-border mobilities. In this context, a leisure mobilities approach has been used to identify the mobility styles in the Basque Eurocity corridor – a cross-border area between Spain and France. The analysis focuses on leisure mobilities and identifies four different mobility styles based upon leisure orientation variables in terms of values, attitudes and lifestyles; nationality; and socio-demographic characteristics: (1) time-conscious workers, (2) French shoppers, (3) mobile youth and (4) older and less mobile. The results indicate that different leisure orientations and participation levels are highly significant in the constitution of mobility styles, which are usually correlated only with national demographic data. Furthermore, it was identified that a higher identification of mobility constraints was not related to lower levels of participation. Instead, the groups with higher mobility and participation rates raised more awareness of the constraints related to transport and information. Finally, intrapersonal constraints such as age and lack of health showed a greater impact on cross-border mobility, while, unexpectedly, a higher identification of cultural and linguistic constraints was not perceived by participants.     

You can take it with you: Proposition 13 tax benefits,residential mobility,and willingness to pay for housing amenities

The endogeneity of prices has long been recognized as the main identification problem in the estimation of marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) for the characteristics of a given product. This issue is particularly important in the housing market, since a number of housing and neighborhood features are unobserved by the econometrician. This paper proposes the use of a well defined type of transaction costs–moving costs generated by property tax laws–to deal with this type of omitted variable bias. California's Proposition 13 property tax law is the source of variation in transaction costs used in the empirical analysis. Beyond its fiscal consequences, Proposition 13 created a lock-in effect on housing choice because of the implicit tax break enjoyed by homeowners living in the same house for a long time. Its importance to homeowners is estimated from a natural experiment created by two amendments that allow households headed by an individual over the age of 55 to transfer the implicit tax benefit to a new home. Indeed, 55-year old homeowners have 25% higher moving rates than those of comparable 54 year olds. These transaction costs from the property tax laws are then incorporated into a household sorting model. The key insight is that because of the property tax laws, different potential buyers may have different user costs for the same house. The exogenous property tax component of this user cost is then used as an instrumental variable. I find that MWTP estimates for housing characteristics are approximately 100% upward biased when the choice model does not account for the price endogeneity.     

世界石油物探行业发展趋势及中国企业面临的挑战

国际金融危机造成石油公司大幅削减物探投资，对石油物探行业形成巨大冲击。金融危机后，物探作业队伍数量仍处于较高水平，物探市场供给过剩，竞争激烈，物探公司经营困难；大量深海低端船只退出市场，海上物探船走向高端时代；多用户业务投资和收入大幅下降。物探行业的变化给中国石油物探企业带来了巨大挑战。建议中国石油物探公司：1）加强成本管理。理顺流程，加大合力，发挥规模效应，避免重复建设和浪费；加大资源、管理和技术的共享，形成竞争优势；提高公司整体管理水平和项目运作效率。2）重视对国家石油公司和国际大石油公司这两个客户群体的细致分析和研究。3）培育多用户项目运作能力。通过与经验丰富的公司的合作，逐步实现独立自主运作多用户项目。4）大力推进技术创新。将科技投入作为加快企业发展的战略性投入，加强企业技术创新人才的培养和高端技术人才的引进，理顺物探企业技术创新管理体系，提高技术创新的投入产出率。     

Banks’ Net Interest Margin in the 2000s: A Macro-Accounting international perspective

This paper re-examines the determinants of Net Interest Margin (NIM) in the banking industries of 15 developed and emerging economies. It presents three main contributions with respect to previous studies: first, we analyze the determinants of NIM in the years leading to the 2008 financial crisis; second, we account for the role of different accounting standards across countries; third, we use multi-way cluster estimation methodologies which control for cross-sectional and time-series dependence in macroeconomic and banking variables. We find that the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) contributed to lower NIM variations unexplained by standard accounting variables. Interest rate volatility is found to be positively and strongly related to NIM dynamics, whereas inflation risk is often found to be a relevant driver of NIM cross-country differences.     

Modelling Electricity Prices: International Evidence*

This article analyses the evolution of electricity prices in deregulated markets. We present a general class of models that simultaneously takes into account several factors: seasonality, mean reversion, GARCH behaviour and time‐dependent jumps. The models are applied to daily equilibrium spot prices of eight electricity markets. Eight different nested models were estimated to compare the relative importance of each factor in each of the eight markets. We find strong evidence that electricity equilibrium prices are mean‐reverting, with volatility clustering (GARCH) and with jumps of time‐dependent intensity, even after adjusting for seasonality.     

如何推进消防部队后续教育建设

本文通过分析消防后续教育体系存在的问题,阐述了如何构建符消防部队后续教育工作体系。     

Project Management of Production Line Automation: A Comparative Analysis of Project Management in Brazil and Colombia

This article aims to evaluate the production line automation projects developed by Brazilian and Colombian companies from the Project Management perspective, through the analysis of the application degree of PMBOK processes, to understand how formal techniques are being employed in these countries and also to identify improvement opportunities, when necessary. Data were collected through a survey. The similarity index between the ten processes, with the highest application degree in the Brazilian and Colombian samples, was 70%. For the processes with the lowest application degree, the similarity index was 60%. No similar study was found in the literature.     

Stock picking,market timing and style differences between socially responsible and conventional pension funds: evidence from the United Kingdom

As far as we are aware, this study presents the first comparative analysis of the stock picking and market timing abilities of managers of conventional and socially responsible (SR) pension funds, and of their use of superior information. For the United Kingdom, the results obtained show a slight stock picking ability on the part of SR pension fund managers (although it disappears if multifactorial models are considered), and a negative market timing ability on the part of both SR and conventional pension fund managers (these results hold for multifactorial models controlled by home bias). In relation to the management styles, both conventional and SR pension funds usually invest in small cap and growth values, although it is the SR pension funds that are the most exposed to these styles. We also observed that, while conventional pension fund managers make certain use of superior information to follow stock picking strategies, managers of SR pension funds use superior information to follow market timing strategies.     

Implications of perceived competitive advantages,adaptation of marketing tactics and export commitment on export performance

The aim of this exploratory paper is to fill an important gap in the international marketing literature by examining the influence of firm behavior in foreign markets (export commitment and adaptation of marketing tactics) on perceived competitive advantages and export performance. Using a sample of 150 Spanish export firms, the study found that firms that are more committed to their foreign markets are more willing to adapt elements of the marketing program. These firms also perform better in foreign markets. Moreover, the results also point out that adapting marketing tactics does not have direct effects on export performance, although it does have on the achievement of perceived competitive advantages in foreign markets, which positively influence export performance.