Note from the Editor

Dear Readers: When this issue comes out it will have been one year since Itook on the role of     

A Human Development Index for U.S. Cities: Methodological Issues and Preliminary Findings

This paper builds upon the work of the United Nations Development Program in expanding the use of the Human Development Index (HDI). This index, originally created to compare human development among countries, has been modified to allow comparisons among cities in the United States. This paper discusses the methodology used to develop the cross-city HDI, as well as the results for the twenty-five cities chosen for this study. The results offer an intriguing "snapshot" of human development in each city, as well as an encouraging, although limited, benchmark for policy making in cities.     

Negative customer engagement behaviour: the interplay of intensity and valence in online networks

ABSTRACT

Recent marketing and service research highlights the detrimental impact of negative customer engagement behaviour (CEB) in online social networks. Nevertheless, the extant literature captures the impact of what customers say about service providers in their negative reviews and fails to provide any understanding of different intensity levels of negative engagement. This article marks the first attempt to provide a more nuanced view of negative CEB by investigating the impact of six forms of negatively valenced influencing behaviour (NVIB) using two online experiments. Our results provide new insights into intensity levels of NVIB and how they are moderated by positive reviews. Practically, this paper addresses one of the challenges for service providers in managing NVIBs, centred on understanding the heterogeneity of its forms. The results suggest that managers use semantic tools to detect the intensity levels of NVIB and to prioritise handling and/or mitigating the more intense NVIBs when they occur.     

The politics and economics of wool marketing, 1950–2000

The history of marketing, research, development policies and intervention in marketing of the wool clip is reviewed from the perspective of an insider. The overall theme is that politics took over comprehensively from clear economic policy advice on wool marketing in the past 50 years and woolgrowers paid a high price for this. The idea of 'integrated marketing' including an export monopoly, a buffer stock scheme and coordinated promotion and R&D, collectively a strong interventionist philosophy, has waxed and waned. Having borne most of the costs of these failed policies, remaining woolgrowers can now look forward to a market less distorted by political interference.     

Generalized habit formation in an Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System: An application to meat expenditures in the U.S.

The Inverse Almost Ideal Demand System (IAIDS) model of Moschini and Vissa (1992) and Eales and Unnevehr (1994) is extended to include: (1) general, nonlinear, nonadditive habit effects; and (2) a specification for habit stock terms that allows purchases from the distant past to influence current consumption (long memory). The resulting models are compared with a linear habit effects model and a static specification. The empirical estimation is on U.S. quarterly meat expenditures (1961–1993), with each model being subjected to a battery of misspecification tests. Results of these tests, along with tests of homogeneity and symmetry restrictions, indicate clearly that the most generalized dynamic specification-the one with nonlinear, nonadditive long-memory habit stock effects-is preferred. Furthermore, persistence effects are found to be qualitatively important in that flexibility, consumption scale, and habit flexibility estimates differ, in some instances substantially, between alternative specifications.     

Subtle world: Beyond sustainability, beyond information

A number of authors have examined the relationship between sustainability and information technology, most acknowledging that the connection is complex and problematic. In this essay, we revisit aspects of the debate and explore the relationship between sustainability and information at a fundamental level. We argue that the connection should be approached with caution and skepticism since it does little to address or edify the challenges of the ecological crisis. We conclude by exploring the shapes of a different, and hopefully more productive, kind of discourse.     

Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs： Second Force of Chinese Economy

Most of the foreign-funded enterprises in China are in fact funded by overseas Chinese. They have made indelible contributions to China＇s remarkable economic achievement. Their pioneering spirit has already been written into the glorious annals of China＇s economic development!