Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

What's happening in the world of product innovation? What are the tough issues that managers are facing? And what's going to happen in the remaining years of this decade? In this article, several members of the Editorial Board of The Journal of Product Innovation Management offer their ideas about where the important problems lie. This is the fodder for a good round table discussion and through the medium of this journal we'll engage in such a discussion in this and a subsequent issue.     

The International allocation of trade-tied aid: A quantative analysis for the export quota scheme in coffee

Zusammenfassung Die internationale Verteilung der Handelshilfe: eine quantitative Analyse des Systems von Exportquoten für Kaffee. - Die bisherigen Untersuchungen über die internationale Verteilung der Entwicklungshilfe haben sich haupts?chlich mit der Finanzhilfe befa▾t. Dagegen fehlen Untersuchungen über die Handelshilfe, obgleich es eine ganze Reihe von handelspolitischen Ma▾nahmen gibt, die implizite Transfers an Entwicklungsl?nder einschlie▾en. In diesem Aufsatz werden die Bestimmungsgründe für Handelshilfe theoretisch gekl?rt, und empirisches Material über implizite Schenkungen und Einnahmen wird vorgelegt, die in einer der Formen der Handelshilfe enthalten sind, n?mlich in dem System von Exportquoten auf dem Weltkaffeemarkt. Dabei wird das unterschiedliche Verteilungsmuster der Handelshilfe nach dem Internationalen Kaffeeabkommen einerseits und der offiziellen Entwicklungshilfe andererseits herausgearbeitet. Es wird gezeigt, da▾ die Verteilung der Handelshilfe davon abh?ngt, ob ein Land Kaffeeexporteur oder -importeur ist, ob es Mitglied des Abkommens ist oder nicht und wie seine Netto-Handelsposition ist. Bedürftigkeit spielt keine Rolle bei der Verteilung dieser Art von Handelshilfe.

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Résumé L’allocation internationale de l’aide assujettie au commerce: une analyse quantitative pour le systéme de quota exportatrice de café. - Les études existantes sur l’allocation internationale de l’aide ont concentré principalement sur l’aide financière. Il n’y a pas d’études sur l’allocation de l’aide assujettie au commerce (AAC) bien qu’une grande variété des mesures de politique commerciale existe qui inclut des transferts implicites en faveur des pays en voie de développement. Cette étude clarifie théoriquement les déterminants de l’AAC et présente quelque évidence empirique pour des donations et recettes implicites dans un des types de l’AAC, c’est le système de quota exportatrice dans le marché mondial de café. La structure d’allocation de l’AAC sous l’Accord International de Café et de l’assistance officielle étrangère est analysée. L’auteur démontre que la distribution des flux de l’aide des pays dépend de la question si les pays sont des exportateurs ou des importateurs de café, des membres ou non-membres de l’Accord aussi bien de leur position commerciale nette. Indigence n’est pas importante pour l’allocation de cette forme de l’AAC.

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Resumen La asignación internacional de ayuda al desarrollo ligada al comercio: un análisis cuantitativo del sistema de cuotas de exportación de café. - Los estudios existentes sobre la asignación internacional de la ayuda al desarrollo se concentran especialmente en la ayuda financiera. Faltan estudios sobre la ayuda al desarrollo ligada al comercio, a pesar de la gran variedad de medidas de política comercial que incluyen una transferencia implícita a los países en desarrollo. En este estudio se clarifican teóricamente las déterminantes de la ayuda al desarrollo ligada al comercio y se presenta evidencia empírica sobre donaciones implícitas en relación a una de las formas de ayuda ligada al comercio, el sistema de cuotas de exportación en el mercado mundial del café. Se elabora el patrón diferencial de asignación de ayuda ligada al comercio bajo el Acuerdo International del Café y la ayuda oficial. Se muestra que la distribución internacional de los flujos de ayuda depende de las siguiente características: si los países son exportadores o importadores de café, signatarios del acuerdo o no y de su posición comercial neta. La asignación de esta forma de ayuda ligada al comercio es independiente del grado de necesidad de ayuda.

     

The nature of listed real estate companies: property or equity market?

This paper addresses the question of whether shares of public real estate companies should be treated as real estate or as equity investments. Because theoretical considerations do not suffice for making such a classification, we empirically investigate correlation structures and cointegration relationships of private and public real estate and equity markets for the United States and the United Kingdom. Our results suggest that public real estate stocks show similarities to the general stock market with regard to short-term return co-movements. For long-term investment horizons, the interdependence between direct and securitized real estate is much stronger. However, in the latter case, real estate stocks substantially lead the private property markets.

All-pay war

We study a model of conflicts and wars in which the outcome is uncertain not because of luck on the battlefield as in standard models, but because countries lack information about their opponent. In this model expected resource levels and production and military technologies are common knowledge, but realized resource levels are private information. Each country decides how to allocate its resources to production and warfare. The country with the stronger military wins and receives aggregate production. In equilibrium both comparative and absolute advantages matter: a larger resource share is allocated to warfare by the country with a comparative advantage in warfare at relatively low realized resource levels, and by the country with an absolute disadvantage in warfare at relatively high realized resource levels. From an ex-ante perspective the country with a comparative advantage in warfare is more likely to win the war unless its military potential is much lower.     

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION UNDER TRACKING ERROR AND WEIGHTS CONSTRAINTS

The performance of active portfolio managers who must comply with a weights constraint is often assessed against a benchmark. The weights constraint is common as the funds are committed by their own prospectus to a minimum (or maximum) portfolio concentration. We characterize the optimal asset allocation and analyze the implications of the weights constraint on the manager's performance and on the relevance of the information ratio. We obtain that because of the weights constraint, at the optimum, the information ratio often decreases when the manager is free to deviate more from the benchmark.     

Viewer Preference Segmentation and Viewing Choice Models for Network Television

Abstract

Individual viewing decisions have a direct impact on the media planning of television advertisers and, consequently, on the revenues of the major television networks. This paper represents an attempt to better understand these decisions. We use Nielsen people meter data to build a perceptual space for programs. That space is then used to develop models explaining viewers' decision to watch television and their choice of programming. The program-choice model is a clusterwise logit model which searches for segments with similar viewing preferences. A segment-level logit model is then used to model the on-off decision. These models can be used by advertisers and advertising agencies to understand the viewing audience better, and thus to help guide their advertising media placement decisions. The models can also help television networks design programs and program schedules that are more attractive to viewers (and thus advertisers).     

The Predictive Power of Anisotropic Spatial Correlation Modeling in Housing Prices

This paper develops a method to capture anisotropic spatial autocorrelation in the context of the simultaneous autoregressive model. Standard isotropic models assume that spatial correlation is a homogeneous function of distance. This assumption, however, is oversimplified if spatial dependence changes with direction. We thus propose a local anisotropic approach based on non-linear scale-space image processing. We illustrate the methodology by using data on single-family house transactions in Lucas County, Ohio. The empirical results suggest that the anisotropic modeling technique can reduce both in-sample and out-of-sample forecast errors. Moreover, it can easily be applied to other spatial econometric functional and kernel forms.