The Role of Inbound Tourism in the Singaporean Economy: A Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) Assessment

This study has employed recently published input–output (I–O) tables and tourism survey data and built a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model, to assess the role of inbound tourism in the Singaporean economy and thus to reveal its implications for tourism marketing. Compared with the I–O analysis, the CGE modeling takes into account the feedback effect in the economy and thus produces more reliable results. The modeling results show that inbound tourism contributes significantly to the Singaporean economy, but it competes mildly with non-tourism sectors for resources. Although tourism shopping accounts for about half of total tourism expenditure, its economic contribution is much less than that of the tourism service in terms of GDP, employment, household income, and tax revenue. This suggests that, in developing and marketing Singapore as a tourist destination, more efforts are needed to encourage tourism services demand.     

The marketing cube

Today's business professional should consider three dimensions, or success drivers, when devising marketing programmes: profitability, profit potential and likelihood for retention — the ’marketing cube‘. Simply said, the margins on customers who fall into the ’right customer‘ group, as defined by this framework, are too great to ignore. Profit, widely confused with lifetime value, is a fact based on previous behaviour — and many financial service organisations are now calculating revenue minus costs for each customer to determine profit. Profit potential is an estimate of one individual customer's contribution to a company's bottom line. It emerges from a model. The modelled profit less actual is referred to as ’profit opportunity‘.Retention is the third component of the framework, and here there are ways to predict the loss of revenue from customers and implement preventive measures, before this loss even happens. A matrix of these three dimensions can help any financial service marketer build a next most logical product model and business rules that govern a successful customer relationship management (CRM) programme.     

Jurisdictional fragmentation equalizes housing consumption

If a homogeneous tract of land is divided into separate jurisdictions, each containing a different income class, then in equilibrium all residents will consume identical housing, regardless of income. This result depends on the property tax being used to finance the local public sector, and per capita costs of the public good being independent of population. Profit maximization by land developers is also required.     

Teledemocracy from the top

Teledemocracy, the use of new communications and information technology to widen the scope of the public's political participation, is a hot topic. Over the past few years a number of wide-scale teledemocratic experiments have taken place, for example in New Zealand, the State of Washington, and Hawaii, and the idea is being increasingly discussed in the scholarly as well as popular literature.¹ The reasoning behind, and justification for, teledemocracy has been expounded before.² This Comment, however, attacks the problem from a new perspective - where do politicians fit into such a system, and why should they nurture its development?     

The influence of perceived discrimination,orientation to mainstream culture and life satisfaction on destination loyalty intentions: the case of international students

This study examines three psychological phenomena (perceived discrimination, orientation to mainstream culture and life satisfaction) in explaining destination loyalty of international students. A sample of 489, short-term (n?=?174) and long-term (n?=?315) international students completed an online survey. Results from structural equation model-AMOS (analysis of moment structures) indicated that (1) orientation to mainstream culture positively influences destination loyalty intention and (2) orientation to mainstream culture mediates the relationship between perceived discrimination and destination loyalty intention. These results suggest that to facilitate destination loyalty intention, institutions may need to develop a support system that can promote positive cross-cultural adjustment.     

Estimating the U.S. Import Demand for Melons: A Dynamic Analysis Approach

The United States is one of the world's leading consumers as well as one of the world's leading producers of melons. However, U.S. melons are produced only from May through December. In order to supplement the domestic demand and make melons available year-round, the United States imports melons from Latin American countries. This article analyzes the U.S. demand for imported fresh and frozen melons using monthly data on import volumes and values. A static and a dynamic linear Almost Ideal Demand System are estimated using Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR). The estimated parameters are used to estimate the short- and long-run price and expenditure elasticities.     

Innovation strategies and firm performance: Simple or complex strategies?

This paper analyzes the effect of various innovation strategies (ISs) of firms on their future performance, captured by labor productivity. Using five waves of the Community Innovation Survey in Sweden, we have traced the innovative behavior of firms over a decade, that is, from 2002 to 2012. We defined ISs to be either simple or complex (in various degrees). We call an IS a simple IS when firms engage in only one of the four types of Schumpeterian innovations, that is, product, process, marketing, or organizational, while a complex IS is when firms simultaneously engage in more than one type. The main findings indicate that those firms that choose and afford to have complex ISs are better off in terms of their future productivity in comparison with those firms that choose not to innovative (base group) and also in comparison with those firms that choose simple ISs. The results are mostly robust for those complex innovators that have a higher degree of complexity and also keep the balance between technological (product and process) and non-technological (organizational and marketing) innovations.     

Modelling spikes and pricing swing options in electricity markets

Most electricity markets exhibit high volatilities and occasional distinctive price spikes, which result in demand for derivative products which protect the holder against high prices. In this paper we examine a simple spot price model that is the exponential of the sum of an Ornstein–Uhlenbeck and an independent mean-reverting pure jump process. We derive the moment generating function as well as various approximations to the probability density function of the logarithm of the spot price process at maturity T. Hence we are able to calibrate the model to the observed forward curve and present semi-analytic formulae for premia of path-independent options as well as approximations to call and put options on forward contracts with and without a delivery period. In order to price path-dependent options with multiple exercise rights like swing contracts a grid method is utilized which in turn uses approximations to the conditional density of the spot process.