Wage convergence and trade

We examine differences in wage rates across countries for workers employed in the same industry, distinguishing workers in the low, medium and high‐skill groups. These differences are large and show persistence over time. We ask, nonetheless, whether there is evidence of convergence, much as is done in studies of convergence in per capita income across countries. With our focus on the micro level, we expect convergence to reflect, at least in part, the degree of integration of a country or industry into the world economy and examine particularly the role of market integration and trade. Our results show strong evidence of convergence in a diverse sample of 39 countries, which includes most large economies whether rich or poor. The estimated convergence rate over the period from 1995 to 2008 is about 4% per year for workers in all skill groups, higher in the more integrated economies of the EU than in other economies without such open borders and lower in industries supplying services rather than manufactures. Also, we find evidence that the rate of growth of domestic output impacts positively on the growth of wages in an industry, providing a source for ongoing deviations from the convergence prediction.     

Determinants and Outcomes of Online Brand Tribalism: Exploring Communities of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs)

Online consumption communities, involving millions of online consumers, have been created around massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). Within these communities, players who share interest in MMORPGs convene, interact, and collaborate with fellow players and achieve game‐related outcomes. As these online social networks have been noted to augment, and perhaps supplant person‐to‐person interaction, this study focuses on the drivers of inherent interpersonal relationships, the nature of the constructed society, and resulting consumer initiatives to sustain and nurture the organization. Specifically, this research suggests that MMORPG communities transcend more facile forms of online or brand communities and demonstrate characteristics that can most aptly be construed as brand tribalism in the anthropological sense. Here, the challenge and telepresence innate in playing MMORPGs, cognitive and affective involvement associated with MMORPGs, and commitment to MMORPGs are modeled as antecedents of brand tribalism or a sense of the relationship with the brand and MMORPG community. Consequently, intent to purchase MMORPG‐related virtual products, recruitment of other MMORPG players, and word of mouth are identified as consequences of this unique consumer–brand relationship. Further analysis reveals the negatively charged emotional measure (i.e., defense of the tribe) within the tribalism instrument explains more variance in the outcome variables than the positively charged emotional measures (i.e., lineage, social, sense of community). Implications and future research directions are offered.     

Heterogeneity in Urban Park Use of Aging Visitors: A Latent Class Analysis

This study describes and predicts urban parks use patterns for various age groups, with specific attention to the growing group of older adults. Park use intensity of various age groups is described. Subsequently, a multinomial logit model is estimated to describe urban park choice as a function of park features, activities, and socio-demographics. To identify segments in park use patterns of aging visitors a latent class model is estimated. Data are collected from a sample of 1,107 residents of the Eindhoven region in The Netherlands in 2002. The results indicate that age significantly affects park choice behavior. Specifically, four segments of older visitors were identified that clearly differed in their park use patterns: active health oriented users, active socially oriented users, passive local users, and moderate users.     

Influence of Socio-Demographics and Residential Environment on Leisure Activity Participation

Participating in leisure activities provides important benefits for all people. However, there is a substantial reduction of (green) leisure opportunities in cities, and the green spaces that are available often are poorly accessible. The purpose of this study is to analyze the diversity of participation in various types of leisure activities and to determine the relationship between leisure activity participation and characteristics of the residential environment depending on socio-demographic characteristics. Diary data from 803 respondents living in the Eindhoven region in the Netherlands were used. Four segments were identified that differ regarding their leisure activity participation, and a modest impact of green space accessibility was found.     

Optimal subsidies to declining industries: Efficiency and equity considerations

This paper considers equity versus efficiency in a small economy that subsidizes an industry facing falling world market prices. Subsidies keep up output in the short run when wages and factors are rigid. But once introduced, subsidies become permanent, because of pressures from vested interests. This creates missalocation of resources in the long run. An optimal efficiency subsidy balances the short-run gains and long-run losses. It should be raised when prices fall if there is full employment initially and lowered if there is unemployment. An optimal distribution subsidy, which aims at maintaining the existing income distribution, should always be raised.     

Fresenius AG: High-speed Globalization

At first glance, Fresenius' emergence as the global leader in renal care is a classic consolidation story: price pressure on products, a changing regulatory environment, and the advent of truly global competition. Under these conditions, there are first mover advantages to building scale and bringing costs down, and Fresenius was very quick off the mark. The Fresenius tale has two special twists. First, the firm made a major move into services to speed up consolidation in the product sector; and, second, it transformed from a command and control bureaucracy to an entrepreneurial, profit-oriented business structure. These strategic and organizational innovations have changed the character of the industry and enabled very rapid globalization. Broader research suggests that other high-speed globalizers too need to simultaneously adapt strategy and organization to changing competitive conditions.     

Beyond mean estimates of price and promotional effects in scanner-panel sales–response regression

Traditional mean estimates of conditional sales given price and promotion variables may provide misleading guidance about the underlying market mechanisms, since high, low, and medium sales, respectively, may be generated by quite different price and promotion strategies. Empirical evidence for consumer good scanner data reveals nonlinearities and heteroskedasticity in the sales–response relationship—mean effects typically average and hence may obscure a potentially rich nature of observational data. Besides addressing the heterogeneity of price and promotional effects, the proposed quantile regression framework allows direct estimation of monotonicity restricted nonlinear pricing effects for quantiles of the sales distribution.