Fuzzy Group Decision-Making for Service Innovations in Quality Function Deployment

Since little effort has been devoted to measuring service management from epistemology perspectives, this study develops a scientific framework for its evaluation. Service management is defined as what is perceived by the tourists and decision makers during the process of service generation and delivery processes. This in turn depends on the service conditions experienced during the process and at the accommodation. The study uses fuzzy group decision-making and a Quality Function Deployment method to analyze various service evaluation criteria. It further considers the possibility of “Fuzzy Sets” in making subjective judgments, and applies a Fuzzy-based decision-making method to evaluate service management.     

Reflected Glory Versus Repulsive Envy: How Do the Smiths Feel About the House of the Joneses?*

A key question raised regarding conspicuous consumption is whether such consumption leads to positive or negative net externalities. The present paper examines how the presence of luxury and expensive properties within a local area affects the house prices in Taipei City. Positive externalities may be associated with improved urban amenities or reflected glory. Negative externalities may be associated with the adverse reference group effect; that is, repulsive envy. The paper discusses the spillover effects due to changes in neighborhood's housing characteristics, and shows significant spatial patterns in house prices and the importance of socioeconomic influences on house prices.     

To Invest or Not to Invest in China

This research used two samples of enterprises, 123 that invested in China and 213 that did not, to examine why many Taiwanese enterprises stay home despite others that have invested in China. Our results found that most Taiwanese enterprises are pushed to invest abroad by increasing wages at home and increasing competition in the export market, which lowers their profitability. The key factors determining to invest or not to invest in China are whether they are satisfied with their profits, and whether they are able to upgrade organizational capability, if they are not satisfied with the profits. However, this conclusion does not totally apply to large enterprises. For large enterprises, their investment in China has little to do with profitability and R&D intensity, but more to do with export competition and technological capability. Furthermore, investment in Southeast Asia is complementary to investment in China for large enterprises, but a trade-off for small and medium ones.     

Measuring Monetary Policy in a Small Open Economy with Managed Exchange Rates: The Case of Taiwan

We use sign restrictions to identify monetary policy for a small open economy with heavily managed exchange rates. We apply the proposed sign restrictions to the Taiwanese case, where existing studies tend to find no clear effect of monetary policy shocks on the output and price level. Our principal findings are that a contractionary monetary policy shock causes a permanent and significant decline in real gross domestic product, broad money, and price level. Our identification scheme is able to avoid the puzzling impulse responses from which other identification schemes more or less suffer. The fact that monetary policy has not been correctly identified may have led existing studies to conclude that monetary policy is ineffective.