Competition for versus on the Rails: A Laboratory Experiment*

European countries and Japan are contemplating more competition in passenger rail service. In the Netherlands, the Ministry of Transport was assigned responsibility for making a recommendation to Parliament for choosing between competition for the rails and competition on the rails. The Ministry commissioned the experiments reported here to acquire better understanding of the properties of the alternative policies. Competition on the rails involves allocation of rights to use station and time‐slot routes by price bids in a combinatorial auction. Competition for the rails involves allocation of rights to regional monopolies by fare‐structure bids for supplying a prespecified minimum schedule.     

Pyrrho's lemma,or have it your way

A simple lemma is derived to support the claim that regression models can be manipulated to a very large extent: by simply adding one regressor one can obtain essentially every set of desired regression coefficients and predictions as well ast-values and standard errors. Consequently, if the product of a specification search is not shown to be generalizable, a sceptical attitude towards its validity is well-founded.     

Local Responsive Talent Management for Foreign Multinational Enterprises in China

China evolves with amazing speed to be a leading player in the world economy. However, the transformation from isolated centrally planned to internationally open market economy during the past 25 years has occurred so fast that the change in the mindset and the adaptation of new modern business practice is still in progress. Foreign multinational enterprises in the mainland of China responded to the resulting shortcomings of Chinese professionals and managers by covering the key position in the organization by their own resources or managers from neighbor Asian countries. In this qualitative study, a new local responsive talent management concept for foreign multinational enterprises with expatriated managers was proposed under special consideration of the cultural business environment in China. The establishment of a learning firm culture with advanced training system to compensate the drawbacks of Chinese professionals was outlined. The coverage of the key positions in the organization by Chinese professionals with established social network and optionally supported by temporary foreign advisors was proposed to improve the firm climax, domestic customer and stakeholder relations.     

Optimal capital accumulation in generalized Leontief models

Summary This study is in normative growth theory. Discounted per capita consumption is maximized subject to Leontief technologies. Numerical linear programming examples exhibiting consumption turnpikes are presented and carefully analysed. Special attention is given to shadow prices and the discount rate in case of a choice between different technologies. It is shown that the introduction of so-called stock activities may lead to unrealistic results. An interesting extension is obtained by assuming embodied technological change. In this case, a new technique in a certain sector of the economy can only be introduced by means of investment. It appears that the consumption turnpike is approached in a very irregular way. The computer time increases substantially, which may be a problem in practical applications of this variant.I am grateful to Professor S.K. Kuipers and Dr. A.B.T.M. van Schaik for their comments and encouragement. Any errors remaining are mine.     

The effect of the New Silk Road railways on aggregate trade volumes between China and Europe

‘One Belt One Road’ is an extensive and complex initiative whose potential effect and influence are still currently pending for answers. This paper addresses the following research question: What is the effect of the New Silk Road intercontinental railways on the trade between China and its trading partners in Central Asia and Europe? We focus on nine railway lines connecting Europe and China, which started operations between 2011 and 2015. The countries’ trade patterns with railway connections to China are then compared to the countries without railway connections to China. We find the intercontinental railways have a positive effect on China’s exports to its trading partners in Central Asia and Europe, especially concerning exports of manufactured goods, machinery and transport equipment and miscellaneous manufactured articles. Moreover, the intercontinental railways have a positive effect on China’s imports of food and live animals from its trading partners.     

The Effect of Brand Gender on Brand Equity

Brand personality has been suggested as an important source of consumer‐based brand equity, yet empirical research on the relation between brand personality perceptions and brand equity is scarce. This article examines the link between masculine and feminine brand personality and brand equity as well as the underlying process of this relationship. Study 1 reported herein involves 140 existing brands and demonstrates that high levels of brand masculinity and femininity relate positively to brand equity, and that this relation is not moderated by participants’ sex. Study 2 demonstrates that brand gender accounts for brand equity ratings above and beyond other brand personality dimensions. Study 3 identifies ease of categorization as the underlying mechanism for the relationship between brand gender and brand equity.     

Nonresponse in panel data: The impact on estimates of a life cycle consumption function

If missing observations in a panel data set are not missing at random, many widely applied estimators may be inconsistent. In this paper we examine empirically several ways to reveal the nature and severity of the selectivity problem due to nonresponse, as well as a number of methods to estimate the resulting models. Using a life cycle consumption function and data from the Expenditure Index Panel from the Netherlands, we discuss simple procedures that can be used to assess whether observations are missing at random, and we consider more complicated estimation procedures that can be used to obtain consistent or efficient estimates in case of selectivity of attrition bias. Finally, some attention is paid to the differences in identification, consistency, and efficiency between inferences from a single wave of the panel, a balanced sub-panel, and an unbalanced panel.     

What’s Causing Overreaction? An Experimental Investigation of Recency and the Hot‐hand Effect

A substantial body of empirical literature provides evidence of overreaction in markets. Past losers outperform past winners in stock markets as well as in sports markets. Two hypotheses are consistent with this observation. The recency hypothesis states that traders overweight recent information; they are too optimistic about winners and too pessimistic about losers. According to the hot‐hand hypothesis, traders try to discover trends in the past record of a firm or a team, and thereby overestimate the autocorrelation in the series. An experimental design allows us to distinguish between these hypotheses. The evidence is consistent with the hot‐hand hypothesis.     

Zur Sozialphilosophie der Ostwirtschaft

Ohne ZusammenfassungDer vorliegende Aufsatz ist das Ergebnis einer Teamarbeit. Insbesondere danke ich meinem wissenschaftlichen Mitarbeiter, Herrn cand. phil. W. Schneider, für seine Beiträge und der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft für eine Sachbeihilfe.