Making Chile Visible: Purposes,Operationalisation and Audiences from the Perspective of Nation Branding Practitioners

Chile has become the paradigm of nation branding in Latin America, employing branding initiatives to try to shake off the uncomfortable past of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, as well as to create a ‘new’ image that fits into a globalised and neoliberal world. Whilst there has previously been some analysis of Chile’s branding efforts, the viewpoints of the local actors involved in these initiatives have largely been ignored. This article addresses this issue, examining the tensions faced by different individuals who have taken part in nation branding in the country. Drawing on interviews with some of these individuals, this article examines three areas of tension: (1) the conflicting purposes guiding the practice of nation branding, (2) the difficulties around the operationalisation of nation branding and (3) the controversies regarding the intended audiences for their efforts.     

Dependence of the Russian defense industry on oil prices: Conversion

The article analyzes the impact of the collapse of world oil prices on the reduction of defense budget, production of weapons, innovative and personnel potential of the defense industry, and on country’s defense capability. Some proposals for the concept of structural changes in the defense industry have been formulated based on experience converting the defense industries in the Soviet Union, the United States, China, and France.     

Nanotechnology and the new technological revolution: Expectations and reality

This paper reviews the existing mechanisms of innovative development in the world economy focusing on emerging technologies markets evolution on the example of nanotechnology. The question has been raised of whether nanotechnologies can provide the core of the new technological revolution, and whether these prospects exist for NBIC convergence. In this connection the development of the global market for nano-enabled products following the 2007–2009 crisis and the reliability of the related development forecasts have been assessed. Particular attention has been paid to peculiarities of nanoenabled product market structure and the impact of stagnating R&D costs in the field of nanotechnology.     

A Representative Committee by Approval Balloting

A new voting rule for electing committees is described. Specifically, we use approval balloting and propose a new voting procedure that guarantees that if there is a committee that represents (with a given proportion of representatives) all of the existing voters, then the selected committee has to represent all of voters in at least the same proportion. This property is a way of selecting a committee that represents completely all of voters when such a committee exists. The usual voting rules in this context do not satisfy this condition.     

Developing a quality prioritization procedure for IPTV service

This study developed a procedure to determine the quality priorities of the internet protocol television (IPTV) service. First, a set of key elements of IPTV service quality was developed based on a literature review and a focus group interview. Second, analytic hierarchy process and the Kano model were applied to identify the requirements of experts and customers, respectively. The experts measured the importance and difficulty of management, whereas the customers measured the satisfaction level and importance of each quality element. Third, quality priorities were calculated through the entropy principle and scenario-based analysis. The proposed procedure is illustrated with a case study of a telecommunications company in Korea.     

Understanding repeat playing behavior in casual games using a Bayesian data augmentation approach

With an estimated market size of nearly $18 billion in 2016, casual games (games played over social networks or mobile devices) have become increasingly popular. Because most casual games are free to install, understanding repeat playing behavior is important for game developers as it directly drives advertising revenue. Game developers are keenly interested in benchmarking their game versus the market average, and understanding how genre and various game mechanics drive repeat playing behavior. Such cross-sectional analysis, however, is difficult to conduct because individual-level data on competitors’ games are not publicly available, and that the casual gaming industry is highly fragmented with each firm making only a handful of games.I develop a Bayesian approach, based on a parsimonious Hidden Markov Model at the individual level in conjunction with data augmentation, to study repeat playing behavior using only publicly available data. After applying the proposed approach to a sample of 379 casual games, I find that the average daily attrition rate across game is around 36.5%, with an average “play” rate of 47.9%, resulting in an average ARPU (average revenue per user) across games of around 20.5 cents. Certain genres are linked to higher attrition rates and play rates. In addition, giving out a “daily bonus” or limiting the amount of time that gamers can play each day are associated with a 17.7% and 16.4% higher ARPU, respectively.     

Analyst Herding and Stock Price Crash Risk: Evidence from China

We examine the proposition that firms with disproportionately more analysts herding in their coverage, as measured by a larger herding index value, have higher crash risk. Our findings are consistent with the main proposition. The results suggest that information production, rather than monitoring, is the primary mechanism behind the positive relation between herding and crash risk. Our conclusion is robust to different measures of crash risk, crash risk windows, herding measures, subsamples, and instrumental estimation. In addition, using post‐earnings announcement drift, we report that analyst herding slows down bad news transmission in the market. Our findings extend the literature by documenting that analyst herding plays a role in enhancing crash risk. Analyst herding has economic consequences on the covered firms. We offer support for the concern in the literature regarding analyst herding and market fluctuations.