Disentangling the Pure Time Effect From Site and Preference Heterogeneity Effects in Benefit Transfer: An Empirical Investigation of Transferability

Two identical open-ended contingent valuation surveys assessing willingness-to-pay for better protection against flooding were administered in 2005 and 2010 at the same site. The 2010 survey was administered to the same respondents as those interviewed in 2005 as well as to new participants. This experimental design allows us to separate the pure temporal dimension from the spatial and social dimensions of transferability, thereby permitting an investigation of the temporal reliability associated with a transfer of value estimates over a 5-year time horizon. Having isolated the pure effect of time, the design further allows assessing the social dimension of transferability.     

Is property crime caused by drug use or by drug enforcement policy?

The relationships among drug offenses, prorperty crime, and the allocation of police resources are investigated in a structural model using data from Florida countries. Law enforcement resources are scarce, and as efforts to combat drug crime increase the amount of these resources allocated to property crime is reduced. This reallocation of police resources results in reduced deterrence for property crime and, as a result, an increase in these crimes. The evidence presented suggests that rising property crimes in Florida are at least partially the result of drug enforcement policy.     

Arenas of Development - A Space Populated by Actor-worlds, Artefacts, and Surprises

In this paper the notion 'development arena' is presented and discussed. The notion is suggested to function as a cognitive space for research. It seeks to catch and describe the relational, unstable and heterogeneous character of the development process. It should sensitize both researchers and managers towards processes of technology development that are poorly accounted for in economic and management theory. Thereby, we wish to contribute to critical discussions about the role of management and the directions it chooses for development of technologies and products. The elements and transformations involved in shaping and restructuring activities in a development arena are described and discussed based on a case study of the development of HDTV as the next generation television. It exemplifies different moments and aspects of technology development. A number of configurations of specific processes in a development arena are used to exemplify the strengths of this notion. The notion is compared with other theoretical concepts that have been proposed to explain and model the processes that structure industries, markets, and products.     

Innovation Aesthetics: The Relationship between Category Cues,Categorization Certainty,and Newness Perceptions

Recent research notes a disconnect between what marketers deem new and innovative versus what consumers actually perceive. Many factors may contribute to this; however, the factor that has significant potential to first attract a consumer to a new product, visual aesthetic design, is investigated in this research. Findings from four studies indicate that if a consumer cannot affix a category label to a new product with certainty, as can happen with innovative aesthetics, a product's newness will be underappreciated and product evaluations will suffer. By utilizing a categorization framework and specifically accounting for the role of categorization certainty, insight into the effects of innovative visual aesthetics and why newness perceptions are inherently subjective, and therefore, potentially hazardous to new product adoption, is provided.     

Hotels and restaurants—are the risks rewarded? Evidence from Norway

The purpose of this paper is to apply accounting-based risk measures to describe and compare the risk involved in accommodation and restaurants to three other industries. It is found that the variation in earnings is particularly high in construction, but also significant in accommodation and restaurants. The volatility in construction is caused by variance in sales. Construction companies experience low profits when the economy is depressed, while earnings boom when the economy progresses. On the other hand, earnings in retail are stable. It appears that retailing provides low risk and steady profits.The sales variance in accommodation and restaurants is fairly low. The high variability in earnings is mainly caused by operational and financial leverage. Despite the high total risk, hotels and restaurants earn less profit than the other industries examined. Apparently, the market does not reward self-inflicted risk induced by high leverage. Perhaps Norwegian accommodation providers and restaurant keepers have concerns other than maximising profit and minimising risk, and owners’ lifestyles are reflected in the financial accounts. An alternative explanation might be that the accommodation/catering sector has had unrealistic expectations in the period covered by the research.     

An environmental performance index for products reflecting damage costs

Several studies have demonstrated how to use DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) based techniques to estimate environmental performance indices. None of these studies, however, are taking information on the environmental damage costs of the pressure types considered into account. This study is bridging a gap between environmental indices founded in physical pressures and damage costs founded in welfare economics. The aim of the paper is twofold: first, to demonstrate how to implement the information on environmental damage costs within a DEA based environmental performance index, and second, to estimate these indices at product level by using Danish input-output data and environmental data from 1997.     

Accounting Policy Disclosures and Analysts' Forecasts

Using an international sample, I investigate whether the extent of firms' disclosure of their accounting policies in the annual report is associated with properties of analysts' earnings forecasts. Controlling for firm‐ and country‐level variables, I find that the level of accounting policy disclosure is significantly negatively related to forecast dispersion and forecast error. In particular, I find that accounting policy disclosures are incrementally useful to analysts over and above all other annual report disclosures. These findings suggest that accounting policy disclosures reduce uncertainty about forecasted earnings. I find univariate but not multivariate support for the hypothesis that accounting policy disclosures are especially helpful to analysts in environments where firms can choose among a larger set of accounting methods.     

Regulation,recession, and bank lending behavior: The 1990 credit crunch

This article utilizes a pooled time-series and cross-section sample of banks to investigate the causes of the credit contraction which occurred during the 1990–1991 period. The methodology involves an econometric model which recognizes that banks' decisions regarding lending and capital are simultaneously determined. Bank lending behavior is modeled as being determined by a combination of economic conditions, loan quality problems, and capital growth. The results of the econometric tests are consistent with a multiplicity of factors contributing to the reduction in lending. The evidence suggests that the credit contraction of 1990–1991 cannot be explained solely as a result of recession and low capital levels. Changes in the supervisory climate and in bank capital regulation, perhaps coupled with independent changes in bankers' assessments of the risk climate, were likely responsible for a substantial part of the credit contraction.