Increasing efficiency in direct contact heat transfer

Revamping the top section of the water quench tower in an olefins plant provided a 74% reduction in pressure drop. First stage compression ratio was reduced from 2.21 to 2.02. An additional modification of the lower section of such a column with tower packing reduced the heat rejected to the cooling water by 35% with no increase in pressure drop.     

Improving salesforce performance: A meta‐analytic investigation of the effectiveness and utility of personnel selection procedures and training interventions

Research on the effectiveness in improving salesforce performance through personnel selection procedures and training interventions was examined by meta‐analytic techniques applied with 157 predictor‐criterion effect sizes involving selection procedures and 12 effect sizes involving training interventions. Significant effect sizes, on average, were obtained for (a) composite‐domain assessment against both subjective (ratings) and objective (sales performance) criteria, (b) single‐domain assessment against both criterion types, and (c) training interventions with respect to both criterion types combined. Significant variability was found among individual effect sizes within all categories of aggregation. Of the six specific categories of single‐domain assessment considered, five yielded significant validity for each of the two criterion types. Follow‐up utility analyses revealed improvements in sales productivity of from 14.8% to 34.1% for selection procedures and of 23.1% for training. Associated dollar‐based utility estimates indicated particularly substantial dollar gains for organizations employing composite‐domain selection with rigorous selection ratios, and lesser, but still substantial, gains from single‐domain selection with rigorous selection ratios, and from training interventions. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Tradable planning permits for land-use control in Germany

In addition to a broad range of qualitative land development objectives, the German Federal Government has committed itself to reduce the growth of settlement and traffic areas from currently 113 ha (2004–2007) to 30 ha per day by 2020. In order to attain this ambitious quantitative goal, our paper presents a market-based policy of ‘tradable planning permits’. This system would control land development by fixing the total amount of open space loss in a period with allocated planning permits, which can be traded between local jurisdictions. Since this approach is based on the cap-and-trade principle, we evaluate the transfer of traditional emission trading concepts to land-use control and explore regulatory options of potential systems: an undifferentiated permit system, a trading-ratio system and variations of zonal permit systems. We subject these alternative approaches to critical evaluation by using a variety of important criteria including efficiency gains, ecological effectiveness, hot spot formation and transaction costs. Finally, we summarize the potentials, limitations and risks of a permit trading system in general while reflecting the ongoing German debate on open space preservation.     

Economics at the FCC, 2017–2018: Internet Freedom,International Broadband Pricing Comparisons,and a New Office of Economics and Analytics

The Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC’s) current strategic plan lists four priority goals: closing the digital divide; promoting innovation; protecting consumers and public safety; and reforming the FCC’s processes. Economists at the FCC contribute toward the realization of each of these goals, through analysis of the nature and significance of the underlying problems that regulations are intended to solve, as well as assessments of alternative solutions. Three major FCC initiatives demonstrate the role that economic analysis played in Commission decisions in 2017–2018: the Restoring Internet Freedom Order; the new hedonic pricing model that was used in the International Broadband Data Report; and the order that reorganized Commission economists into the Office of Economics and Analytics.     

Financial instruments with sports betting components: Marketing gimmick or a domain for behavioral finance?

We examine theoretically and experimentally a certain class of new financial instruments which are designed as lotteries on the outcome of prominent sports events like the Soccer World Cup 2006. From a theoretical point of view, sports betting products may be superior to a fixed rate investment because of heterogeneous expectations, risk-loving behavior of investors or additional non-monetary utility components. In comparison to the direct placement of bets at bookmakers’, sports betting products may be preferable in cases of hedonic framing. Our experimental section, however, reveals the limited practical relevance of these theoretical arguments for “average” decision makers. Despite this, financial instruments with sports betting components offer a certain profit potential due to the diversity of preferences across individuals. Summarizing, the issuance of sports betting products may actually be mainly driven by marketing aspects, nevertheless sports betting products may be considered to be “viable” niche products with low cost of capital for banks.     

The Role of Context Intensity and Working Memory Capacity in the Consumer's Processing of Brand Information in Entertainment Media

Despite the increasing use of entertainment media such as movies, sport telecasts, or video games as a way to get in touch with consumers, the understanding of the cognitive processing of brand information in these environments is still limited. This current research investigates the role of two moderating factors on brand information processing in entertainment media: Context intensity and working memory capacity. Context intensity relates to the perceived level of excitement in a communication environment, while working memory capacity indicates a consumer's ability to control his or her cognitive resources. The results of an experimental laboratory study reveal that context intensity negatively affects visual attention for brand information (i.e., intensity attention assumption), while working memory capacity has a positive influence on memory for brands (i.e., capacity memory assumption). These findings hold important implications for marketing management: First, managers should place brand information in situations where context intensity is rather low in order to facilitate the target group's visual attention. Second, the frequency and duration of brand information should be adjusted to the target group's ability to cognitively process such information.     

Incorporating long-term effects in determining the effectiveness of different types of online advertising

Although online advertising has become a full member of the marketing mix and is still growing in importance, studies of long-term, or lagged, advertising effects have generally either neglected online advertising channels or have treated online advertising as one homogeneous block. We analyze the short- and long-term effectiveness of different types of online advertising channels by incorporating separate time lags for each advertising channel. We look at the sales effect of email, banner, and price comparison advertising (PCA) using a sample of 2.8 million purchases and more than 1.1 million individual costumers aggregated to 365 days. Our analysis shows that email advertising has the longest effect, followed by banner advertising and PCA. We find that the length of the effect does not always go hand in hand with its intensity since, for example, banner advertising lasts longer than PCA but performs worse in terms of actual sales. This research yields important insights for theory and practice since it shows how to model long-term advertising effects and provides meaningful insights for improving the allocation of advertising budgets.     

Organizational form and output quality

This paper re‐examines the relationship between a firm's organizational form, not‐for‐profit versus for‐profit, and its output quality. The Arrow‐Hansmann theory of hidden action on the part of providers predicts higher quality for not‐for‐profit suppliers. This prediction has a puzzling lack of support in the empirical literature. We propose a theory that resolves the empirical puzzle and generates additional testable implications. The theory starts with the traditional assumptions of hidden action and supplier altruism. It then incorporates two additional features of real‐world markets: hidden information on supplier ability to provide high quality and a variation across buyers in the degree of informational asymmetry. The central prediction of the theory is that quality has a higher variance across for‐profits than across not‐for‐profits. Preliminary evidence from the US market for hospital care is consistent with this prediction.     

GAAP,GFS and AASB 1049: perceptions of public sector stakeholders

Efforts by Australian standard‐setters to harmonise public sector financial reporting resulted in AASB 1049, which sought to bridge the divide between generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP)‐based and government finance statistics (GFS)‐based financial statements. However, whether AASB 1049 has resulted in information that is considered appropriate for the public sector has not been examined. We explore this issue by comparing the requirements of AASB 1049 with the responses from a survey of public sector stakeholders on the appropriate accounting treatment and presentation of selected financial items. The analysis suggests consensus with AASB 1049 on presentation issues but less consensus on accounting treatments.     

Equity yields

We study a new data set of dividend futures with maturities up to ten years across three world regions: the US, Europe, and Japan. We use these asset prices to construct equity yields, analogous to bond yields. We decompose the equity yields to obtain a term structure of expected dividend growth rates and a term structure of risk premia, which decomposes the equity risk premium by maturity. We find that the slope of the term structure of risk premia is pro-cyclical, whereas the slope of the term structure of expected dividend growth rates is counter-cyclical. The comovement of yields across regions is, on average, higher for long-maturity yields than for short-maturity yields, whereas the variation in this comovement is much higher for short-maturity yields.