From home country to home base: A dynamic approach to the liability of foreignness

We argue that the influence of the home country wanes as the firm increases its geographic reach. We introduce the concept of the “home base” to capture the effect of the set of countries in which the firm operates. We expect the dynamic liability of foreignness defined relative to the home base to be a better predictor than the static liability of foreignness defined relative to the home country. We also expect the diversity of foreign experience to increase foreign market entry. We find support for these hypotheses with data on Chinese listed firms investing abroad between 1991 and 2007. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Conjoint Analysis of Tourist Choice of Hotel Attributes Presented in Travel Agent Brochures

The purposes of this study are to demonstrate how it is possible to determine which attributes are the most important in the final choices of tourists who use a travel agent brochure as a source of information and how these attributes influence perceived value in a pre‐purchase stage. We conduct the study in three phases: (i) a qualitative study, (ii) an experiment using choice‐based conjoint analysis by means of a fractional factorial experimental design and (iii) another experiment using a full factorial derived from the same design. Results suggest advertisement size, a hotel's starred rating and price influence perceived value at this stage. The presence of a positive combined effect of price and advertising was found. Implications and directions for future applications are offered, focusing particularly on marketing services. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Viability of competencies,skills and knowledge acquired by industrial design students

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - Many Industrial Design professionals in Spain have difficulties when it comes to getting a job related to their field. They also have...     

Asymmetric rivalry within and between strategic groups

Our study examines asymmetric rivalry within and between strategic groups defined according to the size of their members. We hypothesize that, owing to several forms of group‐level effects, including switching costs and efficiency, strategic groups comprising large firms expect to experience a large amount of retaliation from firms within their group and accommodation from the group comprising smaller firms. Small firms, on the other hand, expect to experience a small amount of retaliation from the group comprising large firms and no reaction from the other firms in their group. We estimate the effect of group‐level strategic interactions on firm performance. Our analysis reveals that the rivalry behavior within and between groups is asymmetric, which supports the dominant‐fringe relation between firms, as described in our hypothesis. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Web 2.0, social capital and work performance in service companies: the employees’ view

Web 2.0 networks have provoked a revolution in the last years due to their capacity to modify human relationships, particularly in business contexts. Social capital, as a crucial intangible asset embedded in Web 2.0 networks, can be extremely helpful to build and optimize personal and organizational power or resources. This exploratory study empirically analyzes the use of Web 2.0 networks for work-related purposes under a new perspective: the perception of Spanish service companies’ employees. Results show a reasonable employee use of Web 2.0 applications with work-related purposes, and identify the main benefits from them and relevant differences in their use.     

Language–Related Differences in a Contingent Valuation Study: English versus Spanish

To test the similarity of English– and Spanish–speaking households responses to a contingent valuation survey, phone interviews were conducted in both languages regarding two forest fire prevention programs. While there were similar response rates, there were significant differences in the most frequent reasons given for refusing to pay. In the pooled logit model, the language intercept and bid interaction variables were insignificant in both programs. The likelihood ratio test of separate logit equations showed no statistical difference between English– and Spanish–speaking households responses to either program. Mean benefits reported by Spanish–speaking households were about one–third lower than English–speaking households, although the difference is not statistically significant.     

Relationship between organizations, institutions, entrepreneurship and economic growth process

The main goal of this paper is to show that organizations and institutions play a relevant role in the economic growth process, both directly and indirectly. Human capital plays a direct role by facilitating the introduction and use of new technologies. A more indirect role is play by entrepreneurial activity in three ways: 1) supplying monetary funds; 2) creating an adequate social climate and 3) encouraging trust in the society. The hypotheses introduced are tested using the data on eleven countries.     

Model selection, estimation and forecasting in VAR models with short-run and long-run restrictions

We study the joint determination of the lag length, the dimension of the cointegrating space and the rank of the matrix of short-run parameters of a vector autoregressive (VAR) model using model selection criteria. We suggest a new two-step model selection procedure which is a hybrid of traditional criteria and criteria with data-dependant penalties and we prove its consistency. A Monte Carlo study explores the finite sample performance of this procedure and evaluates the forecasting accuracy of models selected by this procedure. Two empirical applications confirm the usefulness of the model selection procedure proposed here for forecasting.