Intensity estimation for inhomogeneous Gibbs point process with covariates‐dependent chemical activity

Recent development of intensity estimation for inhomogeneous spatial point processes with covariates suggests that kerneling in the covariate space is a competitive intensity estimation method for inhomogeneous Poisson processes. It is not known whether this advantageous performance is still valid when the points interact. In the simplest common case, this happens, for example, when the objects presented as points have a spatial dimension. In this paper, kerneling in the covariate space is extended to Gibbs processes with covariates‐dependent chemical activity and inhibitive interactions, and the performance of the approach is studied through extensive simulation experiments. It is demonstrated that under mild assumptions on the dependence of the intensity on covariates, this approach can provide better results than the classical nonparametric method based on local smoothing in the spatial domain. In comparison with the parametric pseudo‐likelihood estimation, the nonparametric approach can be more accurate particularly when the dependence on covariates is weak or if there is uncertainty about the model or about the range of interactions. An important supplementary task is the dimension reduction of the covariate space. It is shown that the techniques based on the inverse regression, previously applied to Cox processes, are useful even when the interactions are present. © 2014 The Authors. Statistica Neerlandica © 2014 VVS.     

HOUSING DYNAMICS OVER THE BUSINESS CYCLE

Housing construction, measured by housing starts, leads GDP in a number of countries. Measured as residential investment, the lead is observed only in the United States and Canada; elsewhere, residential investment is coincident. Variants of existing theory, however, predict housing construction lagging GDP. In all countries in the sample, nominal interest rates are low ahead of GDP peaks. Introducing long‐term nominal mortgages, and an estimated process for nominal interest rates, into a standard model aligns the theory with observations on starts, as mortgages transmit nominal rates into real housing costs. Longer time to build makes residential investment cyclically coincident.     

Fostering fair and sustainable marketing for social entrepreneurs in the context of subsistence marketplaces

Abstract

In recent years, in-depth, on-the-ground research has generated many insights into the nature and functioning of subsistence marketplaces and the people who operate in them. Such knowledge is bound to be useful to various companies and organisations, as they seek to engage such marketplaces, particularly for marketing managers, who quite likely have not had education or experience in marketing in such impoverished settings. This paper complements these practical insights with a normative ethical framework, presented in the marketing literature and labelled the integrative justice model (IJM) for impoverished markets, so as to synthesise a new framework for fair and sustainable marketing for social entrepreneurs in the context of subsistence marketplaces.     

Gender Differences in Online Customer Satisfaction: The Asymmetric and Nonlinear Effect

ABSTRACT

The article aims to determine the extent of gender-related differences in user satisfaction with websites with a focus on the asymmetric and nonlinear effects of customer satisfaction. An experiment was conducted with 15 men and 15 women who undertook a typical task (scenario) on 44 websites. Overall, 1,320 evaluations of website quality attributes were obtained and analyzed. The results reveal that men and women differ in their website quality assessment. Marketing professionals should consider their target audience's gender when designing a quality website, or even devise ways of approaching both gender groups through distinct means.     

Agricultural support in selected Eastern European and Eurasian countries

The goal of this article is to assess the agricultural policies of eight countries from the former Soviet Union. They hold great potential for agricultural production, and some are relatively unanalysed from the point of view of agricultural policy. The analysis was conducted using qualitative and quantitative evidence. The key challenges facing the region are food security and competitiveness. Policy approaches range from strong interventionism to almost complete liberalisation. Budgetary support is relatively low compared to EU and OECD averages. Transfers to producers dominate (especially input subsidies and on-farm investment support) in all countries, and support to rural development and general services is weak. While prices for crops are near world prices, prices for animal products are fairly high in some countries, indicating high developmental needs. It is possible to discern four broad clusters of countries.     

The Hierarchical Erosion Effect: A New Perspective on Perceptual Differences and Business Performance

Organizations are coalitions of individuals with heterogeneous interests and perceptions (March and Simon, 1958/1993). We examine an important source of heterogeneity, namely the different perceptions individuals hold across hierarchical levels. We introduce the notion of a hierarchical erosion effect whereby individual perceptions about specific practices become less favourable the lower one goes in the hierarchy. Using data from 4,243 employees across four levels in 38 business units, we provide evidence that this effect exists, controlling for other factors, including the overall favourability of the business unit culture across eight practices. We show how the size of this hierarchical erosion effect varies depending on the nature of the organizational practice being evaluated and the extent to which executives share strategic information widely, and we also show that a lower hierarchical erosion effect is correlated with higher business unit growth. In doing so, we enrich understanding of two aspects of March and Simon's work, their notion of intra‐organizational heterogeneity and their distinctive view of the nature of hierarchy.     

Skill development in reverse mentoring: Motivational processes of mentors and learners

Building on Murphy's (2012) model of reverse mentoring, we examine the psychological processes that contribute to skill development in initiatives where knowledge is transferred from younger to older individuals. We employ a sample of younger mentors (n = 457) and older learners (n = 293) participating in a digital skills initiative to test parallel moderated mediation models. Our findings show extrinsic motivation plays a dominant role in the development of younger groups' mentoring skills, while older learners' digital skills development is primarily driven by intrinsic motivation. We also find positive affect and self‐efficacy can serve as personal resources in this context, but only for mentors. Taken together, our results suggest motivational processes in reverse mentoring unfold differently for the two groups involved in the exchange. Recommendations for human resource practice, including specific guidelines for developing intergenerational learning initiatives, are discussed.     

Choice experiment,multiple programmes contingent valuation and landscape preferences: How can we support the land use decision making process?

The promotion of cost–benefit analysis for social and environmental policy choices is much debated. Then, the conception of a valuation method for the non-market benefit of these policies is still of a main research interest. Among direct valuation methods, the choice experiment method (CEM) becomes a highly attractive valuation procedure, in giving at the same time the economic value of the impacts of the different components of the policy as well as the global impact of a policy package. However, the main-effect designed protocol aiming to limit the cognitive burden of scenarios’ evaluation disregards the important question of the existence of substitution or complementary relation between these programmes for their main beneficiaries. Furthermore, the independent valuation and summation strategy developed in CEM opens to overvaluation or under valuation of the willingness to pay values. The aim of this article is to conduct testing of the additivity bias with CEM results. The distribution of the willingness to pay values for possible combinations of landscape programmes aiming to maintain two agricultural landscape attributes as well as one moorland attribute inferred from the earlier CEM survey is compared to results obtained with the sequential contingent valuation procedure for multidimensional policy suggested by Hoehn (1991). Our empirical results suggest that the additivity bias is not statistically significant in our case, even if specific relation between landscape attributes due to what we call the composition effect is of concern for the population we interviewed. Furthermore, landscape preferences derived from our empirical investigation support the need for more integration of agricultural issues with the local land-use issues.