与狮同行

参与一年一度的Cannes Lions戛纳国际广告节。是每一位广告人难得的经验。今年有机会置身其中，最兴奋的，就是有幸上台亲手接过金狮子的荣誉。回顾今次行程。获益良多．能够一次观赏到来自世界各地的出色作品．感觉就像众多甜品放在面前，琳琅满目，每件作品也想慢慢解馋，慢慢消化，另一方面。却受时间所限。怕过分享受．会错过很多精彩作品。当然，观赏之余，亦提供一个与来自其他地区的广告人交流的机会。了解多一点，眼界与思维也国际化起来。所以，今次绝对是全方位大考验。挑战接收力、消化力和体力。     

The persistence of economic profit

Recently, as practitioners and researchers from developed countries have increasingly probed the activities of emerging economies, what exactly drives the long-term economic profitability of firms in China has become the most salient issue in the above fields. However, a study dedicated to the persistence analysis of profitability differentials among firms in China has not yet been proposed. This study thus employs China’s business database to examine the persistence in the incremental components of the industry and firm effects on economic profitability and tests the hypotheses that conform to the conventional wisdom of relative rates of persistence. A persistence partitioning model is fitted to a new data set, and the results show that the incremental effects of industry on economic profitability persist longer than the incremental effects of the firm. In other words, the long-term competitive advantages of firms in China are more predictable and sustainable based on industry influences compared to firm factors. These findings support the predictions of industrial organization economics, and provide some implications for corporate strategy.     

Assessing systemic risks and predicting systemic events

The paper develops a framework for assessing systemic risks and for predicting systemic events, i.e. periods of extreme financial instability with potential real costs. It contributes to the literature on the prediction of financial crises mainly in two ways: first, it uses a Financial Stress Index for identifying the starting date of systemic financial crises. Second, it uses discrete choice models that combine both domestic and global indicators of macro-financial vulnerabilities to predict systemic financial crises. The performance of the models is evaluated in a framework that takes into account policy maker’s preferences between missing crises and issuing false alarms. Our analysis shows that combining indicators of domestic and global macro-financial vulnerabilities substantially improves the models’ ability to forecast systemic financial crises. Our framework also displays a good out-of-sample performance in predicting the ongoing Global Financial Crisis.     

The visual history of the Tableau Économique

This article looks at the history of the Tableau Économique from a visual point of view. It shows that Quesnay invented the Tableau to formalize visually his economic theory, and that he used different versions of the Tableau (‘Zigzag’, ‘Précis’ and ‘Formule’) for reasons of visual rhetorics. Accordingly, the visual history of the Tableau clarifies several problems identified by previous ‘ecommentors’. The paper concludes that the history of the Tableau as an image cannot be equated with that of Quesnay's abstract economic model without missing the Tableau Économique's raison d'être.     

What explains recent changes in international monetary policy attitudes toward inflation? Evidence from developed countries

This paper identifies source(s) contributing to the recent international shift in monetary policy attitudes toward inflation. Data from 18 developed countries suggests that this shift is connected to the universal increase in policy responses to economic openness in the 1990s.     

A model for testing the relationship of nursing care and patient outcomes

Studying patient outcomes alone may not provide enough information to determine the associated factors that must be improved when the desired patient outcomes are not achieved. The purpose of this correlational study was to investigate the effects of perceived quality of nursing care and coordination of care on patients' comfort, satisfaction, and length of hospital stay. The overall model-data fit was good according to four indices: the chi-square value, goodness of fit index, adjusted goodness of fit index, and the Steigers root square error of approximation. The proposed model, effects of care quality on patient outcomes, was tested. The relationship between quality of nursing care and the proposed outcomes was tested. The results provide important information to the nursing profession and policymakers in meeting patient care needs.     

Psychological Contract Breach in a Chinese Context: An Integrative Approach

ABSTRACT    This study examined the antecedents and outcomes of psychological contract breach as well as why and how psychological contract breach is related to these outcomes. Respondents were Hong Kong Chinese employees (N=152). Results showed organizational change and history of contract breach to be related to psychological contract breach which, in turn, was related to turnover intentions, psychological withdrawal behaviour, and civic virtue. Further, trust in employer fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and the work outcomes of psychological withdrawal behaviour and civic virtue but partially mediated the psychological contract breach–turnover intentions relationship. Lastly, interactional justice failed to moderate the relationship between psychological contract breach and the work outcomes.     

The Effects of Consumer-Directed Health Plans on Health Care Spending

We use unique data from an insurer that exclusively offers high-deductible, "consumer-directed" health plans to identify the effect of plan features, notably employer contributions to the spending account, on health care spending. Our results show that the marginal dollar contributed by the employer to the spending account is entirely spent on outpatient and pharmacy services. In contrast, out-of-pocket spending was not responsive to the amount the employer contributes to the spending account. Our results represent the first plausibly causal estimates of the components of consumer-driven health plans on health spending. The magnitudes of the effects suggest important health care spending consequences to higher employer contributions to spending accounts. Our findings are most directly relevant to health reimbursement arrangement plan designs, though our results are still of value to health savings account plan designs.     

The strategic and cultural legitimacy of HR professionalization in Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, human resources (HR) practice has reached a point of professionalization not yet apparent in other parts of China creating opportunities for best practice diffusion across rapidly developing cities, provinces, and regions. The aim of this paper is to ascertain the strategic and cultural legitimacy of human resource management (HRM) in Hong Kong from the perspective of the occupation’s status as an emerging profession. Combining established theory on professions with documented insights from normative associational ideals, this paper derives four major sources of HR professionalization, which it entitles strategy, communication, administration, and discipline. Assuming that tasks performed by the most senior, qualified and experienced practitioners hold greatest empirical sway over the prospect of occupational association, this study finds that a combination of strategic and communication practices emerge as the two most likely routes to HR professionalization. Based on survey responses from a representative sample of 172 certified practitioners, the findings support the notion of HR as a strategic asset, raising important implications for the professional status of the occupation within an Asian management context.