城市文艺复兴:新竹旧城的城市竞争策略

新竹是台湾最早开发的城市之一,拥有一百七十多年建城历史,具有独特的都市纹理.市中心拥有两大核心:其一是以清朝时期的城隍庙为中心,环绕着东门、西门、南门、北六四条街道;其二是以日据时期的东门圆环为中心,放射出九条老街,俗称‘九龙抢珠',此两大核心围塑出新竹旧城的繁荣地带,为新竹市民与游客最重要的活动空间.自1980年新竹科学园区设立后,高科技产业词发展,迄今十万名高科技从业人员与高消费族群,造成东南亚最大的购物中心、各大百货公司以及连锁卖场的兴起,使得新竹旧城所围塑的传统购物空间,以及传统产业与历史建筑,面临逐渐没落的危机.研究在整合传统街区的商业及历史资源,进行街道、建物、店面、商家及游客的调查与问卷,提出重建城市资源,包括密集的公共运输系统、传统建筑及人文景观、历史老店的专业服务品质、传统美食、公共空间、人情味、及文化气息与历史古迹等,具体拟定"新竹旧城City Mall"的城市竞争策略,并发展都市更新与都市景观的规划及设计构想,包括地区环境改造、城市中心管理(Town Center Management)、交通需求管理(Transport Demand Management)、以及观光旅运管理(Tourism Transport Management)等,以达成新竹城市文艺复兴的目标.     

How to Encourage Customers to Use Legal Software

This study attempts to identify customer retention strategies for legal software and discusses their effectiveness for three consumer groups (stayers, dissatisfied switchers, and satisfied switchers). Although previous studies propose several antipirating strategies, they do not discuss how to enhance customer intentions to use legal software, which is crucial for software companies. The authors provide four generic retention strategies developed from both antipiracy and customer loyalty literature. The results indicate lower-pricing, legal, communication, and product strategies all enhance customer purchase intentions toward legal software. The lower-pricing strategy is more useful for stayers and dissatisfied switchers, and the communication strategy is most useful for dissatisfied switchers. Both the legal and product strategies have similar impacts on purchase intentions across the three segments. From a firm perspective, a product strategy is most worthwhile and useful across all segments.     

A Social Interactions Model with Endogenous Friendship Formation and Selectivity

This paper analyzes the endogeneity bias problem caused by associations of members within a network when the spatial autoregressive (SAR) model is used to study social interactions. When there are unobserved factors that affect both friendship decisions and economic outcomes, the spatial weight matrix (sociomatrix; adjacency matrix) in the SAR model, which represents the structure of a friendship network, might correlate with the disturbance term of the model, and consequently result in an endogenous selection problem in the outcomes. We consider this problem of selection bias with a modeling approach. In this approach, a statistical network model is adopted to explain the endogenous network formation process. By specifying unobserved components in both the network model and the SAR model, we capture the correlation between the processes of network and outcome formation, and propose a proper estimation procedure for the system. We demonstrate that the estimation of this system can be effectively done by using the Bayesian method. We provide a Monte Carlo experiment and an empirical application of this modeling approach on the friendship networks of high school students and their interactions on academic performance in the Add Health data. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Trust disposition,trust antecedents,trust, and behavioral intention

Trust is important for fostering successful relationships, reducing uncertainty and risk, and increasing willingness to purchase. This study tests the replications in the mobile banking (m-banking) industry and the influence of trust on purchase intention via investigating the relationships between disposition to trust, and trust antecedents to trust in forming trust in m-banking services, which in turn leads to behavioral intention to adopt those services. In spite of numerous studies being focused on the critical role of trust in recent decades, the topic of multidimensional trust antecedents in m-banking, as well as the effects of disposition to trust on m-banking adoption intention has been relatively neglected. Based on the data collected in Taiwan, the results reveal significant positive relationships between disposition to trust, trust antecedents, and trust. Meanwhile, the relationship between trust and behavioral intention are positively significant. Contributions and managerial implications are discussed.     

Exploring uncharted territories of the hedge fund Industry: Empirical characteristics of mega hedge fund firms

This paper investigates mega hedge fund management companies that collectively manage over 50% of the industry's assets, incorporating previously unavailable data from those that do not report to commercial databases. We find similarities among mega firms that report performance to commercial databases compared with those that do not. We show that the largest divergences between the performance of reporting and nonreporting mega firms can be traced to differential exposure to credit markets. Thus, the performance of hard-to-observe mega firms can be inferred from observable data. This conclusion is robust to delisting bias and the presence of serially correlated returns.     

Suppliers’ and customers’ information asymmetry and corporate bond yield spreads

This study investigates the information asymmetry effects of suppliers and customers on a firm’s bond yield spreads by employing American bond market data from 2001 to 2008. This study finds that both suppliers’ and customers’ information asymmetry effects significantly explain a firm’s bond yield spreads. Besides, the information asymmetry effects of more important suppliers and customers are more significant than those of less important ones. The results are robust even after controlling for other well-known firm specific and economic variables.     

The Relationships between Resource Configurations and Launch Strategies in Taiwan's IC Design Industry: An Exploratory Study

Within the last decade, the link between launch strategies and new product performance has been widely investigated. However, the relationship between resource configurations and launch strategies has received little attention. This study endeavors to fill that void by examining the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of market growth and competitiveness on the relationship between resources and launch strategies. Drawing on contingency theory and strategic studies, this study proposes that resource contingencies affect changes in launch strategies. This study also suggests that market characteristics play a contingent role in the relationships between the configurations of resources and launch strategy choices. Based on extensive studies reporting on market characteristics and their links to strategies, this study proposes that two market characteristics—market growth and competitiveness—are relevant for launch strategy decision making. Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design industry has been used as the analytical sample, as it has been identified as a promising sector for new product development. Based on the result of investigating 90 firms, four resource configurations are identified: (1) strategic and organizational abilities; (2) technological capabilities; (3) societal assets and goodwill; and (4) physical assets. Furthermore, two different launch strategies—innovative and product advantage and cost oriented—also are discovered. The results from a seemingly unrelated regression model reveal that technological capabilities and societal assets and goodwill contribute to the variation in the firms' choices of launch strategies. This study further conducted the simple slope analysis to observe the effect of the technological capabilities on the innovative and product advantage strategy under different levels of the market growth rate. The results interestingly showed that firms with technological capabilities demonstrated different degree of tendencies in employing this strategy in alignment with various market growth rates. The finding sheds some lights on the moderating role market characteristics play on the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. Academic implications and suggestions for practitioners also are provided.     

Managing Key Account Portfolios across the Process of Relationship Development: A Value Proposition–Desired Value Alignment Perspective

Purpose: While extant key account management (KAM) research provide considerable insight into specific aspects of KAM, no studies have yet offered a process model that concurrently addresses the three important characteristics of KAM (i.e., temporality, dyadic interactions, and account heterogeneity). To fill this void, the present research investigates an industrial seller's KAM practice from the alignment perspective to develop a comprehensive process model that depicts the important underlying characteristics of focal firm–key accounts dyadic relationships.

Methodology: Employing a case study approach, the present study adopts in-depth interviews with eleven informants involved in four dyadic relationships, respectively. Multiple dyads interviews helped us determine whether the emergent themes are resonant across dyads. On the other hand, cross-dyad analysis helped us identify idiosyncratic KAM treatment among heterogeneous key accounts.

Findings: Drawing upon the literature and the field data, this study reveals four different patterns of alignment (i.e., opportunistic alignment, passive alignment, mutualistic alignment, and compensatory alignment) that may be enacted in accordance with the different relationships developed with the individual key accounts. Across the four focal firm–key account dyads, this study further uncovers how various factors (i.e., idiosyncratic investment, power structures, behavioral norms, and commitment) precipitate different alignment patterns and drive alignment transitions over time.

Practical Implications: This article suggests that a focal firm should manage its key accounts by aligning its value proposition with the specific desired value of each individual account and adjust its management approach based on different phases of dyadic relationship development.

Originality Value: This article extends knowledge of KAM by concurrently addressing its dyadic and heterogeneous nature in a process model. The alignment-oriented view of KAM sheds light on the underlying characteristics of focal firm–key accounts relationships and contributes to our understanding of managing key account portfolios throughout the process of relationship development.     

Information disclosure and price manipulation during the pre-closing session: evidence from an order-driven market

On 20 February 2012, the Taiwan Stock Exchange Corporation launched an order-matching simulation mechanism for five minutes during the start of the pre-closing session, in order to increase information disclosure during this period (13:25–13:30). Pre-closing information disclosure significantly reduces both trading costs and closing-price volatility, as well as price manipulation. The decrease in price manipulation found in this work is due to pre-closing information disclosure, not the behaviour of investors shifting to an earlier time. Further, if a stock price rises or falls by more than 3.5% in the simulation in the last minute during the closing session, trading of the stock will be suspended for two minutes from 13:31 to reduce volatility. However, this trading mechanism (suspended-closing) does not seem to have achieved the intended goals of the authorities, as it has not been able to significantly reduce closing-price volatility and price manipulation.     

Impacts of Monetary, Fiscal and Exchange Rate Policies on Output in China: A Var Approach

Applying the VAR model and using the interest rate as a monetary policy variable, we find that in the long run, output in China responds negatively to a shock to the interest rate, the real exchange rate, government debt, or the inflation rate, and it reacts positively to a shock to government deficits or lagged own output. When real M2 is chosen as a monetary policy variable, long-term output in China responds positively to a shock to real M2 or lagged own output, and it reacts negatively to a shock to the real exchange rate, government debt, or government deficits. Its response to a shock to the inflation rate is negative when government debt is used and is positive when government deficits are considered. In the short run, fiscal policy is more important than monetary policy in three out of four cases. In the long run, monetary policy is more influential than fiscal policy in three out of four cases. Therefore, the government may consider conducting monetary and fiscal policies differently in the short run and long run. The government needs to be cautious in pursuing deficit spending as its long-term impacts depend on the monetary variable employed. The policy of maintaining a relatively stable exchange rate is appropriate as the depreciation of the Yuan may hurt the economy in the short run.JEL Classifications: E5, F4, H6