Additive and Multiplicative Uncertainty Revisited: What Explains the Contrasting Biases?

above the certainty level while for additive uncertainty the price should be lower than the certainty level. This note gives an intuitive explanation for the result after first presenting a parsimonious review of the two models. We also discuss which, if either, of the two models is more realistic. Received December 14, 2001; revised version received July 16, 2002 Published online: April 30, 2003 We thank referees for helpful comments. Ciaran Driver would like to acknowledge the research facilities from ANU, Canberra for their help in writing this paper.     

Tourism today: A geographical analysis : by D.G. Pearce Longman, Harlow, 1986, 229 pages, £9.95

Chris Cooper, of Surrey University's Department of Management Studies for Tourism and Hotel Industries, describes the uses and significance of the technique of interpretation in providing an interface between the tourist destination and the visitor. Interpretation can enhance the visitor experience by making the attributes of the resort more comprehensible.     

Foreign direct investment and vertical integration of production by Japanese multinationals in Thailand

We test the vertical model of foreign direct investment (FDI) empirically using firm level information on Japanese multinational activity in Thailand. These data allow us to investigate the effects of both home country (Japan) and host country (Thailand) characteristics on the inter-industry pattern of FDI. For 85 manufacturing industries over the period from 1985 to 1995, we find a positive influence of industry variation in skill intensity and market size in the host country and a negative effect of transport costs on the amount of FDI. These results provide strong direct econometric evidence of vertical integration of production across the countries. Journal of Comparative Economics 32 (4) (2004) 805–821.     

iTV: A major opportunity for financial services,or not?

Interactive television has arrived, thanks to substantial technology investments that have been made by Sky and others. It is growing in importance as innovative interactive applications are developed for broadcast programmes (eg the BBCi service and Big Brother), and for advertising — and will develop further when broadband deployment gets to critical mass. Readers should not expect a television-variant of the world wide web, however. This was tried during 2000–2002 in the form of web look-alike, interactive ‘walled garden’ sites, and failed to attract critical mass footfall. The model has evolved and now revolves around interactive content synchronised with broadcast, which offers financial services companies an interesting new way to increase awareness and to differentiate the service presentation. Furthermore, over the next ten years, broadband is expected to usher in a new era of personalised television — in which specialised broadcasts (such as personal pensions advice programmes) can be made available on demand. The observations in this paper are mainly drawn from the UK, where digital television penetration is high; the lessons can be applied more broadly, however, and are relevant to any organisation thinking of promoting its service through entertainment channels.