Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

This study examined the customer‐related antecedents of the customer's intention to switch firms. Customer citizenship behavior was a key element in this study. Scholars have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, the way that customer citizenship behavior relates to other attitudinal variables and the intention to switch has scarcely been analyzed. The proposed hypotheses were verified using partial least squares variance‐based structural equation modeling applied to 947 users of beauty care service firms in five countries. The results suggest that customer citizenship behavior is an antecedent of satisfaction, trust, and attitudinal loyalty. Two of these variables influence customers’ intentions to abandon relationships with the service provider. The implications of these findings enhance managers’ and scholars’ understanding of the determinants of customers’ intentions to switch firms.     

In Search of the Transmission Mechanism of Fiscal Policy in the Euro Area

This paper applies the DSGE‐VAR methodology to assess the size of fiscal multipliers in the data and the relative contributions of two transmission mechanisms of government spending shocks, namely hand‐to‐mouth consumers and Edgeworth complementarity. Econometric experiments show that a DSGE model with Edgeworth complementarity is a better representation of the transmission mechanism of fiscal policy as it yields dynamic responses close to those obtained with the flexible DSGE‐VAR model (i.e. an impact output multiplier larger than one and a crowding‐in of private consumption). The estimated share of hand‐to‐mouth consumers is too small to replicate the positive response of private consumption. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How credible is the North Korean threat?

We perform event analysis on particular episodes of tension in the Korean peninsula between 2000 and 2008, and investigate the effect of the events on South Korean financial markets (stock markets, bond yield spreads and the exchange rate) given that South Korea would be the first affected by a military aggression from North Korea. Surprisingly, in nearly all cases, these events, which have often been dramatized in the world media, have no significant impact on either of these variables or only a very small one. We also find no significant impact of events on listed firms that would a priori be likely to suffer from increased tension between the two Koreas. Since financial markets often contain better predictions than expert opinions or surveys, these results strongly suggest that the North Korean threat is non‐credible.     

Nondiscretionary residential water use: the impact of habits and water‐efficient technologies

Several studies published in the last few decades have demonstrated a low price‐elasticity for residential water use. In particular, it has been shown that there is a quantity of water demanded that remains constant regardless of prices and other economic factors. In this research, we characterise residential water demand based on a Stone‐Geary utility function. This specification is not only theory‐compatible but can also explicitly model a minimum level of consumption not dependent on prices or income. This is described as minimum threshold or nondiscretionary water use. Additionally, the Stone‐Geary framework is used to model the subsistence level of water consumption that is dependent on the temporal evolution of consumer habits and stock of physical capital. The main aim of this study is to analyse the impact of water‐saving habits and water‐efficient technologies on residential water demand, while additionally focusing attention on nondiscretionary uses. This is informed by an empirical application using data from a survey conducted among residents of Brisbane City Council, Australia. The results will be especially useful in the design of water tariffs and other water‐saving policies.     

Searching for Goldilocks: The Distance‐Based Capitalization Effects of Local Public Services

This article empirically models the effect of distance on residential property values of three different types of services, fire, police and emergency medical services. Interesting economic trade‐offs emerge as service station proximity provides both amenity and disamenity effects. Using over three million home sales from the state of Florida along with two different measures of distance, this study provides evidence of nonlinear capitalization effects on local housing values. A difference‐in‐difference model utilizing new facility construction provides corroborating evidence of these findings.     

Urban Warfare Ecology: A Study of Water Supply in Basrah

This article assesses the impact of armed conflict on the drinking water service of Basrah from 1978 to 2013 through an ‘urban warfare ecology’ lens in order to draw out the implications for relief programming and relevance to urban studies. It interprets an extensive range of unpublished literature through a frame that incorporates the accumulation of direct and indirect impacts upon the hardware, consumables and people upon which urban services rely. The analysis attributes a step‐wise decline in service quality to the lack of water treatment chemicals, lack of spare parts, and, primarily, an extended ‘brain‐drain’ of qualified water service staff. The service is found to have been vulnerable to dependence upon foreign parts and people, ‘vicious cycles’ of impact, and the politics of aid and of reconstruction. It follows that practitioners and donors eschew ideas of relief–rehabilitation–development (RRD) for an appreciation of the needs particular to complex urban warfare biospheres, where armed conflict and sanctions permeate all aspects of service provision through altered biological and social processes. The urban warfare ecology lens is found to be a useful complement to ‘infrastructural warfare’ research, suggesting the study of protracted armed conflict upon all aspects of urban life be both deepened technically and broadened to other cases.     

The uncertainty challenge of contingent collaboration

Contingent knowledge workers will play an increasingly important role in organisational success as workers transition in and out of project‐based innovation teams with more frequency. Our research finds that collaborators in the contingent, high‐skill workforce face uncertainty challenges to their work that are unique from the independent, contingent professionals more often studied. The article proposes a theoretical framework of uncertainty to guide us in understanding collaborative contingent knowledge workers’ work experience. Interviews with postdoctoral researchers reveal four findings about the influence of these highly uncertain work environments on collaborative contingent knowledge workers – collaboration isolation, frustrated independence, performance anxiety and internalised blame. Perhaps most concerning is that the workers internalise the negative impacts as personal failings instead of recognising them as consequences of a poorly designed work environment. This study argues for the need to manage and mitigate different sources of uncertainty to avoid creating an unnecessary burden on contingent knowledge workers, and to enable a sustainable, contingent knowledge workforce.     

Dissecting Exchange Rates and Fundamentals in the Modern Floating Era: The Role of Permanent and Transitory Shocks

In this paper, we apply a permanent–transitory decomposition method to analyze the link between nominal exchange rates and fundamentals in the modern floating era. The results suggest that transitory shocks dominate nominal exchange rate fluctuations, while permanent shocks dominate the variations in fundamentals. Therefore, the findings suggest that the nominal exchange rate should not be approximated by a pure random walk. Moreover, we find that unobserved fundamentals in the Taylor rule model can explain the transitory components in exchange rates.