Protecting children's privacy online: How parental mediation strategies affect website safeguard effectiveness

Concern toward children's safety in an online environment has resulted in demands for safeguards to protect their online privacy when involved with a wide variety of commercial websites. Unfortunately, little academic research has examined how effective safeguards are in limiting children's disclosure of information. We fill this void by examining how proposed safeguards may interact with various types of parental involvement in limiting children's willingness to disclose information online. The results of two studies involving preteen, young teen, and older teen children show that safeguard effectiveness depends on both the type of parental mediation and the particular age group. Implications are presented for retailers, educators, and parents.     

Comparing international human resource management practices between Yaohan and Jusco in Hong Kong

The performance of Jusco and Yaohan in Hong Kong was examined and compared by exploring their international human resource management (IHRM) practices in terms of recruitment and selection, compensation, and training and development. Yaohan and Jusco employed different IHRM systems as a response to their contextual factors – history and background of the company, and competitive environment and business strategy, especially the use of retail technology. The results show that the IHRM systems employed by Yaohan and Jusco affect the performance of the company, and explain the factors contributing to Yaohan's bankruptcy and Jusco's increasing profitabiliry.     

Regulation FD and analysts’ vs. investors’ weightings of the cash components of earnings

This paper investigates whether investors’ bias in processing the information contained in the cash components of annual earnings has been reduced, and whether the difference in bias between financial analysts and investors has decreased subsequent to Regulation Fair Disclosure (hereafter, Reg FD). We compare analysts’ and investors’ weightings of the three cash flow components of earnings, defined by Dechow, Richardson, and Sloan (2008), from 1985 to 2008, using historical weightings as benchmarks. Our results show that, in the post Reg FD period, the magnitude of investors’ (analysts’) mis-weightings has decreased (increased), and the differences between analysts’ and investors’ mis-weightings have become smaller. Overall, these results suggest that financial analysts’ information advantages over investors declined after Reg FD took effect, and that investors consequently are less biased in assessing the persistence of the cash flow components of earnings following the implementation of Reg FD.     

Endogenous Exchange Rate Volatility, Trading Volume and Interest Rate Differentials in a Model of Portfolio Selection

This paper considers a portfolio model of exchange rate determination and focuses on endogenous sources of exchange rate volatility. It is shown that, in addition to volatility transmitted by conditionally heteroskedastic interest rates, the larger the serial correlation in interest rates the stronger the effect of interest rate differentials on exchange rate volatility. These features are supported by the data. The paper also looks at the volume–volatility relationship implied by the model.     

Agricultural trade liberalization under bilateralism: an international network perspective

Global negotiations in agricultural trade have been considered unsuccessful. Given this fact, the paper studies whether bilateral agreements, rather than global agreements, can lead to Agricultural Global Free Trade by means of decoupled and compensatory payments. For this purpose, the new advances of the international trade network literature have been adopted.     

Globalization,Economic Development and the Reliance on Guanxi as a Job Search Strategy for Chinese Students

The concept of networking for business has been documented extensively in the international business literature. In particular, relationship networking, or guanxi, has become a much-studied phenomenon since the wealth-creation success of Overseas Chinese and their Mainland China counterparts became noticeable in the early 1990s. Relatively less well known is the use of guanxi as a job search strategy. In the wake of domestic economic reforms and increasing international economic pressures, young graduates are having to rely less on job placements arranged by their universities, and more on their own initiative. This is a report of the extent to which guanxi is a significant job search strategy among final year business students at Shantou University in Guangdong Province, China. With its exceptionally strong links with Overseas Chinese, Shantou is well placed to give its young people an advantage in tapping into the job opportunities created by international trade and incoming investments.     

“Natural” and “Fresh”: An Analysis of Food Label Claims in Internationally Packaged Foods in Singapore

Food claims invite controversies on account of their potential to mislead consumers while at times masquerading as health information devices. In the United States, Europe, and Australia/New Zealand, scholars have extensively studied the prevalence of food claims, the regulatory repercussions, and effects of such claims on consumers’ food perceptions and dietary choices. Our study is an attempt to address a gap in related research focused on Asia by situating the inquiry in Singapore where consumers are exposed to a wide variety of such claims due to the universality of food imports. This study examines the state of food claims by the food product’s region of origin, and focus specifically on the use of terms “natural” and “fresh” on food labels. We present recommendations for food marketing policymakers and practitioners.     

Logrolling Procedure for Multi-Issue Negotiation

In order to better deal with the complexity in multi-issue negotiation, a quantitative method which produces Pareto optimal solutions through jointly improving exchange of issues is proposed. The trade-off process is modelled using logrolling, in which loss in some issues is traded for gain in others, resulting in overall gain for all parties. This mutual gain approach is designed based on the integrative negotiation strategy. The objective of the logrolling method is in negotiation support by providing a structure and systematic analysis for ill-defined multi-issue negotiation problems. This study presents a formal representation of logrolling, the sequential logrolling procedure that is based on the exchange of two issues, and the general properties of the efficient frontier produced by logrolling under a linear preference assumption. The study also includes some discussion on implementation aspects of the logrolling method.