Unravelling the design process of business models from linear to circular: An empirical investigation

In the last years, circular economy has represented one of the most-debated topics in management research. Although the understanding of this industrial paradigm has significantly improved over the last decade, a number of important research questions still remain unanswered. Among them, the design process of business model through which established firms evolve from being linear to circular deserves further investigation. Existing research still falls short to investigate how companies design the dimensions of value creation, value transfer, and value capture of their business models to launch circular products into the market. By leveraging a multiple case study analysis of four companies in the paper and beverage industries that have launched six circular products, the paper examines the process that these companies have followed to face the transition toward a circular business model. The paper contributes to the research field in the intersection between new product development and circular business models, by showing that the process toward a circular business model occurs along three major phases, that is, idea generation, product development, and commercialization. In each phase, companies implement peculiar managerial practices for launching circular products into the market, which typically address all the dimensions of the business model and follows a recurrent path over time.     

Hurry! Sale Ends Soon: The Impact of Limited Inventory Availability Disclosure on Consumer Responses to Online Stockouts

A prevalent challenge for online retail supply chain managers is maintaining and managing adequate inventory levels to support and fulfill consumer orders and purchases. Interestingly, this challenge is not only about maintaining inventory availability, but also how to effectively disclose and communicate inventory availability, particularly if a stockout occurs. This article investigates a conceptual model that explores the impact of online inventory availability disclosure on consumer perceptions in the context of a stockout. Based on expectation disconfirmation theory, the core of the model is the notion that limited inventory availability would stimulate expected consumer competition, which in turn, causes consumers to not be as negatively impacted by stockouts. Contrary to this prediction, however, the results of this experimental study show that consumers are actually more dissatisfied when low inventory availability items are out‐of‐stock. This is likely due to the combined impacts of a stockout encounter and a “loss” of a competitive shopping scenario. Thus, implications of these findings for future research and supply chain practice are offered accordingly.     

信息非对称性与市场失灵

金融市场是指资金供应者和资金需求者方通过信用工具进行交易而融通资金的市场。金融市场的好处在于它有效地降低了商品和证券的交易成本．并且证券的交易价格能够充分反应当前有效市场的所有信息。根据有效市场假说，     

The analysis of students’ academic achievement: the evaluation of peer effects through relational links

In literature, the analysis of the influence of the environmental context on individual choices and behaviors, with particular reference to areas related to school and academic education, is usually performed through the methodology of peer effects. In this study, after presenting a brief overview on this approach, we propose a procedure for the analysis of the dependence of students’ academic performances on the contextual effects, determined by the sociometric ties observed between them, and by the subsequent division of the network into groups, using the linear-in-mean model for social interactions. This procedure is then applied to real data, collected in a second level degree course of the university of Rome Tor Vergata, for the construction of some models on student academic achievement. Empirical evidence suggests that peer effects are a significant determinant of performance, and that they identify explanatory aspects of individual achievement, that usual regressors are not able to catch.     

Narratives of travel: desire and the movement of feminine subjectivity

This article explores a philosophical question concerned with the nature of the desire that moves one to travel, to engage with and know the world in its difference. Drawing upon French feminist theory I take up the Hegelian tradition of theorizing desire as a social relation that structures the everyday dynamics between self and other, self and world. Desire is also profoundly embodied, affective and unconsciously mediates our travel relations and experiences in culturally specific ways. Yet, within the leisure and tourism literature desire has rarely been theorized beyond the notion of individual motivation or an ideological conception of consumer wants as the product of false consciousness. In contrast this paper develops a textual analysis of the metaphors and narratives of travel that mediate the (western) feminine subject's desire to move into the world and engage with difference. As part of this method I draw upon excerpts from my own travel diaries to examine how different trajectories of desire structure the movement of feminine subjectivity within phallocentric culture. The journey of desire is inevitably incomplete, uncertain and produces moments that profoundly disturb and decentre the self. These liminal or heterotopic moments in travel afford us the possibility of glimpsing other modes of desire and hence different ethical relations between self and other, self and world.     

Two-mode networks: the measurement of efficiency in the profiles of actors’ participation in the occasions

In two-mode networks, the analysis of centrality aims at identifying the actors that reach predominant roles and positions by participating in the observed occasions, without investigating how they do it. In this paper, we focus on the identification of the actors who reach a significant level of connection with the others on the basis of an unsteady, but efficient, profile of participation. The concept of efficiency will be formally introduced using an axiomatic system, and extended to the network of occasions, leading to the concept of power center. We will then propose two approaches to the measurement of efficiency and power centers, based on a confrontation, namely a ratio, between actors’ and occasions’ level of social proximity and number of occasions attended (for actors), or number of participants (for occasions). The level of actors’ and occasions’ social proximity will be measured using a centrality approach. Finally, we will present an empirical application to a real two-mode network, in order to practically analyze the features and properties of the proposed indexes, and to compare them with the main centrality measures.     

Probabilistic forecasts of volatility and its risk premia

The object of this paper is to produce distributional forecasts of asset price volatility and its associated risk premia using a non-linear state space approach. Option and spot market information on the latent variance process is captured by using dual ‘model-free’ variance measures to define a bivariate observation equation in the state space model. The premium for variance diffusive risk is defined as linear in the latent variance (in the usual fashion) whilst the premium for variance jump risk is specified as a conditionally deterministic dynamic process, driven by a function of past measurements. The inferential approach adopted is Bayesian, implemented via a Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm that caters for the multiple sources of non-linearity in the model and for the bivariate measure. The method is applied to spot and option price data on the S&P500 index from 1999 to 2008, with conclusions drawn about investors’ required compensation for variance risk during the recent financial turmoil. The accuracy of the probabilistic forecasts of the observable variance measures is demonstrated, and compared with that of forecasts yielded by alternative methods. To illustrate the benefits of the approach, it is used to produce forecasts of prices of derivatives on volatility itself. In addition, the posterior distribution is augmented by information on daily returns to produce value at risk predictions. Linking the variance risk premia to the risk aversion parameter in a representative agent model, probabilistic forecasts of (approximate) relative risk aversion are also produced.     

HAPPINESS AND HEALTH: TWO PARADOXES

Abstract This paper aims to establish systematic relationships between the two rapidly growing research streams on the socio‐economic determinants of happiness and health. Although they have been pursued quite independently by different communities of researchers, empirical evidence points to very similar underlying causal mechanisms. In particular, in both cases per capita income seems to play a major role only up to a very low threshold, beyond which relative income and other relational factors become crucial for happiness and health. On the basis of these structural analogies, we argue that a process of cross‐fertilisation between these two research streams would contribute to their development by clarifying the relationship between happiness, health and their determinants. Finally, we observe that the two literatures have converging policy implications: measures meant to reduce poverty and inequality and invest in social and environmental capital may improve both health and happiness of the individuals.     

御米油 健康“油”然而生

提到罂栗，不禁让人联想到毒品，避之不及，但有医学研究却证明，罂栗榨出的油中含有比普通食用油更丰富的营养价值。