Understanding Japanese tourists’ shopping preferences using the Decision Tree Analysis method

This study was designed to assess the factors affecting Japanese tourists’ shopping preference and intention to revisit Korea. The analytical method applied in this study was Decision Tree Analysis, which is under-utilized in tourism studies. A total of 300 questionnaires were collected on the basis of on-site survey method and used for data analysis. Among interesting findings, three groups including ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and spent US$50–300 on shopping’, ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$300–1000’ and ‘respondents who were satisfied, accompanied, and had a shopping expenditure of US$1000–5000,’ showed a high level of intention to return to Korea for the purpose of shopping. In addition, two groups ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of below high school’ and ‘those who were interested in shopping in Korea, preferred a shopping mall as a shopping destination, and had an educational level of a college graduate or above’ showed a higher level interest in merchandise than in shopping venue attractiveness.     

The Challenges of Climate Policy

Climate policy planners and the public should be aware of both economic challenges and arguments that may influence the intensity of the climate policies with which they have to cope. This article examines six economic challenges: cap‐and‐trade versus taxes, non‐price regulations, energy efficiency policies, mitigation versus adaptation, trade effects, and transmission planning. Three additional challenges affect the end itself: ‘fat tails’, discount rates, and whether environmental protection should be evaluated by willingness to pay. If future generations cannot compensate the present for climate policy costs, climate policy is inherently redistributive and cannot be evaluated through cost–benefit analysis alone.     

The critical role of timing in managing intellectual property

In today's environment, timing is a critical part of business strategy. Nowhere is this truer than as regards managing intellectual property in an increasingly global marketplace. The creation and protection of intellectual property assets often depends on consistently taking the right legal action at the right time. The consequences of failing to do so can be disastrous but may only be felt at a later time or in other markets. The difficulty for business people lies in the fact that the time-sensitive aspects of intellectual property cannot be managed effectively by relying on intuition or resolving to see a lawyer when the need arises. This article provides a basic primer on the critical role of timing in identifying, creating, and protecting intellectual property assets. It discusses the most common types of intellectual property—patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets—and compares the role of timing in the creation and protection of each asset type. Most importantly, it summarizes the key issues of timing in the creation and protection of intellectual property.     

When Hosts Become Guests: Return Visits and Diasporic Identities in a Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean Community

The broad intent of this paper is to further contribute to the existing literature that addresses VFR tourism. It suggests that the return visit may ultimately be positioned as a form or type of travel within the larger category of VFR tourism, but a form or type that has built within it a more clear understanding of historic and social contexts and processes. The other broad intent of the paper is to highlight the importance of the relationship between the returning visitor, originating from diasporic communities abroad, and the host community as a stage for the negotiation of identities. The return visit is shown to reflect such underlying processes yet continue to incorporate aspects of individual motivation, which when taken together demonstrate the fluidity of diasporic spaces and transnational identity structures. Using data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork among social networks within the Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean community in Toronto, Canada, it is suggested that return visits are used to retain social histories and contextualise social and cultural backgrounds after migration. The implications for VFR tourism and the relationship between diasporas, transnationalism and tourism are discussed, as is a conceptual model of the return visit.     

Commodity price inflation, retail pass-through and market power

When commodity prices rise, wholesalers and retailers of products derived from basic commodities respond by passing along at least a portion of the price increase to consumers. In this paper we examine whether firms respond differently to positive commodity price shocks than to negative commodity price shocks; that is, whether commodity price volatility alters market power. We exploit recent volatility in food commodity prices over the period 2007-2010 to investigate how commodity price shocks translate into market power in two different vertically-structured food product industries: potatoes and fluid milk. For potatoes, we find both wholesale and retail market power decreases (increases) during periods of rising (falling) commodity prices. Moreover, price-cost margins widen a substantially greater degree in response to negative shocks than margins narrow in response to positive shocks, indicating that commodity price volatility increases market power. For fluid milk, we find that market power likewise declines during periods of rising commodity prices; however, market power does not significantly change during periods of falling commodity prices, suggesting that commodity price volatility decreases market power.     

Running on the spot? A review of twenty years of research on the management of human resources in comparative and international perspective

Research using a comparative and international perspective on the management of human resources is examined, drawing on articles published in leading human resource management, management/organizational behaviour and related social science journals between 1977 and 1997. In total a little under 2 per cent of the articles under review focused on the management of human resources in a comparative and international perspective. The largest group of these articles was comparative in nature (44 per cent), followed by those with an international perspective (35 per cent). A smaller number adopted a combined approach (17 per cent) and a few were separately classified as foreign national studies (4 per cent). Over time, there has been some progress made in terms of the number of articles published and the scope of topics covered. However, many of the articles displayed similar shortcomings to those noted in earlier reviews of cross-national management/organization studies: in particular, an over-reliance on a small number of primarily Anglo-Saxon countries, a lack of a longitudinal perspective, a loose specification of culture, an ethnocentric bias and a frequent failure to explain observed differences and similarities.     

Commercial Mortgage Pricing with Unobservable Borrower Default Costs

This paper develops a pricing model for commercial real estate mortgage debt that recognizes the influence of default transaction costs on the borrower's default decision. These costs are heterogeneous across borrowers and largely un-observable to the lender/investor at the time of origination or loan purchase. A recognition of these unobservable costs can explain why borrower default decisions may differ from those predicted by "ruthless" mortgage-default pricing models. We address the determinants of default choice and timing by replacing sharp default boundaries found in the ruthless models with "fuzzy" boundaries that account for investor uncertainty with respect to evaluating borrower default decisions. To implement our model, we estimate probabilities of default as a junction of time and net equity in the property. Then, given that default occurs, loss severities are modeled based on expected property value recovery net of foreclosure costs and time until the asset is actually sold. Under reasonable parameter value choices, resulting Monte Carlo simulations produce numerical mortgage price estimates as well as component default frequency and severity levels that realistically reflect default premiums and loss levels observed in the marketplace.     

Markup pricing in petroleum refining:: A multiproduct framework

This paper describes a structural model of markup pricing under joint production with quasi-fixed inputs of capital, labor, and inventories. The price–cost markups are functions of the inverse price elasticity of demand, an industry average conjectural variation elasticity, and the inventory to sales ratio. Our empirical findings suggest significant markups over marginal cost that differ considerably by product. This study also estimates the elasticities of markups with respect to supply and demand shocks.     

钉住一篮子货币如何运转?

2005年11月3日,美国国际经济研究所高级研究员,著名国际经济政策问题专家,华盛顿共识提出者约翰·威廉姆森(John Williamson)在中国社会科学院世界经济与政治研究所做题为"钉住货币篮子的制度如何运行(How does the basket peg work)"的讲演.