总编圈点

本期刊登了四篇关于THC的文章和报道。这四篇文章和报道是:《对话THC》、《THC造访中国实录》、《一石激起千重浪——中国货主直面THC》和《广东货主协会成立》。中国货主坚决反对远东班轮公会操纵班轮公司强行收取THC:远东班轮公会则不顾中国货主强烈反对,贸然决定于今年元月15日在中国开征THC,致使中国货主与班轮公会的斗争进入白热化阶段。远东班轮公会恃强凌弱,一意孤行。中国货主协会于2001年12月19日和2002年元月23日与远东班轮公会进行了两次谈判,中国货主协会旁征博引,摆事实讲道理,说得班轮公会理屈词穷,但为了维护单方利益,不顾中国货主的坚决反对,班轮公会仍然操纵班轮公司强制征收THC。这更加引起中国货主的强烈不满,也引起中国政府和国际经贸界的关注。远东班轮公会操纵班轮公司于1997年在广东口岸征收ORC,是采取偃旗息鼓、暗渡陈仓的手法得逞的。这次征收THC则不然,他们以为有了在广东、福建征收ORC的基础,在全中国口岸加收THC便可以大张旗鼓地进行了,不会有什么障碍     

Entry and Competition in the Postal Market: Foundations for the Construction of Entry Scenarios*

This paper presents a model of entry and imperfect competition, which is inspired by the product differentiation literature and incorporates facts pertaining to the postal sector. There are two operators: incumbent and potential entrant. The entrant offers only one of the products (commercial mail) with a specific technology and delivers only to part of the addressees (located in low cost areas). Its degree of coverage is viewed as a quality attribute; it affects demand and hence market share. The incumbent faces a USO while the entrant is an unregulated profit maximizing firm. To illustrate the potential applications of our approach, we provide some numerical simulations of entry scenarios.     

Intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation: insights from the health care service industry

Intrapreneurship affects our daily lives and is a research topic of great importance. Given the current economic climate, its relevance to firm performance has increased considerably both among academics and practitioners. Specifically, our approach has focused on the identification, analysis and explanation of the determinants/variables that influence the intrapreneurship process in the health care service industry, including the private, public and social sectors. The methodology employed consisted of collecting primary data via a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was sent by e-mail to health care employees and middle managers from the northern and center regions of Portugal, and the study covered 202 professionals from 45 organizations. The results show that the participating health care team members present intrapreneurial behavior, and health care organizations create favorable internal conditions that support the theoretical concepts of intrapreneurship and firm entrepreneurial orientation (FEO).     

Crowding-in and crowding-out effects of public investments in the Portuguese economy

This study analyses the effects of public and private investment on Portuguese GDP in the period 1960–2013. After a review of the literature based on works developed in the context of VAR analyses, an alternative econometric strategy is proposed. We opt for ADL models using the methodology of Krolzig-Hendry-Doornik. We estimate direct effects of public and private investments on themselves and also a system of simultaneous equations and calculate the multipliers of the exogenous variables, represented by the current external transfers, the short-run nominal interest rate and public debt ratio. Additionally, we tested a model with the first three equations of the system, using beyond those variables the real exchange rate as an exogenous variable. The results point to the existence of a complementarity between private investment and public investment rather than any idea of substitutability. We find that public debt has important negative effects on public and private investments and consequently on output. Public investment has positive effects on output and on private investment. The appreciation of the real exchange rate has an important and long-lasting negative effect upon output, confirming the presence of a mechanism associated with a Dutch-disease phenomenon in the Portuguese economy.     

Beyond the Work‐to‐Leisure Conflict: A High Road through Social Support for Tourism Employees

The purpose of this study was to test the direct and moderating effects of job strain variables on the Job Demand–Control–Support model. A total of 422 tourism employees completed a questionnaire. Hierarchical and moderated regression models were employed to test the proposed relationships between job strain variables and work‐to‐leisure conflict. Results indicated that job demands had a positive relationship with work‐to‐leisure conflict, whereas the schedule flexibility and the time‐off flexibility were negatively related to work‐to‐leisure conflict. Results also found that supervisor support could moderate the influence of tourism employees' job demands on work‐to‐leisure conflict. Implications of stress management and job design for human resource department are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A closed-form solution for options with ambiguity about stochastic volatility

We derive a closed-form solution for the price of a European call option in the presence of ambiguity about the stochastic process that determines the variance of the underlying asset’s return. The option pricing formula of Heston (Rev Financ Stud 6(2):327–343, 1993) is a particular case of ours, corresponding to the case in which there is no ambiguity (uncertainty is exclusively risk). In the presence of ambiguity, the variance uncertainty price becomes either a convex or a concave function of the instantaneous variance, depending on whether the variance ambiguity price is negative or positive. We find that if the variance ambiguity price is positive, the option price is decreasing in the level of ambiguity (across all moneyness levels). The opposite happens if the variance ambiguity price is negative. This option pricing model can be used to address various empirical research topics in the future.     

PMP® certification as a core competency: Necessary but not sufficient

This research seeks to investigate the relationship between project management certification and established project management core competencies in the IT industry. This study was conducted in two phases, the objective being to first identify those characteristics most common to the successful hire of project managers, from the perspective of IT recruiters. Once identified, the study sought to determine preference for these characteristics from the point of view of corporate IT executives. Two hypotheses were tested in an effort to determine the valuation of Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification as a core competency and as an indicator of project success. Both hypotheses were rejected, as results indicated that PMP® certification was the least valued of 15 core competencies and that there was no difference in project success rates between PMP®‐certified project managers and uncertified project managers. In addition, recruiters' and IT executives' suggestions for improvement in the delivery of the project management body of knowledge are discussed.