Supply Elasticity and the Housing Cycle of the 2000s

There is no evidence that differences in supply elasticity caused cross‐sectional variation among U.S. housing markets in the severity of the 2000s housing cycle. This is true in three sets of empirical specifications: a first that assumes identical demand changes in the 2000s across markets, a second that proxies for supply elasticity and demand changes in the 2000s with estimates based on price and quantity changes in the 1980s and a third that uses physical and regulatory constraints to proxy for supply elasticity and uses state fixed effects to capture variation in demand conditions.     

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements: The impact of inequity on relationship performance and the moderating role of dependence

Manufacturer–reseller e-business arrangements are changing the nature of channel relationships. When manufacturers supply e-business tools to their resellers, resellers may perceive that the benefits of technology are not shared equitably. This research explores this issue by examining two technology based antecedents of perceived inequity from the reseller perspective. We also examine the impact of perceived inequity on relationship performance, and the moderating role of reseller dependence on the proposed inequity–performance link. The results of the empirical test involving a sample of 224 resellers suggest that perceived inequity negatively impacts relationship performance, while reseller dependence plays a moderating role. Implications of these findings for researchers and managers are discussed.     

Capital Budgeting Practices for R&D: A Survey and Analysis of Business Week's R&D Scoreboard

This paper discusses results of a survey of U.S. Corporations regarding the extent of the utilization of standard capital budgeting measures of investment worth to evaluate R&D projects. This study analyzes responses by three types of R&D activity: Basic, Applied and Development research. The results indicate that discounted cash flow methods are widely utilized in the evaluation of Development projects, and the analysis of Development projects is as sophisticated as the evaluation of non-R&D projects. The use of discounted cash flow analysis techniques for Applied projects is considerably less widespread than for Development projects. However, the utilization of Net Present Value and Internal Rate of Return increases with firm size. Basic research projects are much less likely to be subjected to a formal economic analysis and are generally thought of as being “strategic” investments. This research also indicates that post-audits of Applied and Development projects are based on economic measures, whereas Basic research projects focus on physical or operational goals. Lastly, this research indicates that most R&D projects are terminated because R&D priorities have changed rather than because they are not technically feasible.     

Stromspeicher für die „Energiewende“ – eine akteursbasierte Analyse der zusätzlichen Speicherkosten

Political targets for implementing the German “energy turnaround” aiming at the ambitious extension of renewable energies to generate electricity. However, a majority of the renewable supply is provided by intermittent sources, e.g. wind and solar power. For balancing the increasing supply fluctuations additional storage options are claimed beside of an enforced grid infrastructure and a more flexible demand side. Despite of the political guidelines the economics of additional flexibility measures has to be considered. For this paper we analyse the costs of large scale stationary battery storages to be operated in wholesale markets and transmission grid level. By deriving a key figure based on a life-cycle cost approach, we are able to evaluate the additional costs of electricity of selected battery technologies (lead-acid, lithium ion, sodium sulphur, redox-flow). Moreover, current and valid parameters of the cost analysis are received by scientific and industrial stakeholders of battery systems via online survey and face-to-face interviews. According to the stakeholder estimation a nationwide operation of stationary battery storages will be established at wholesale and transmission grid level until the year 2030. The life-cycle cost analysis, which also includes estimated future cost reductions, shows that lead-acid batteries remain the cost-efficient technology, assuming about 100 storage cycles p.a. In addition, a sensitivity analysis reveals the impact of increasing annual storage cycles as well as the achievable cost reduction by economies-of-scales of the power unit of the storage system.     

Lodging Managers' Perceptions of Work and Personal Life: Balanced or Imbalanced?

ABSTRACT

This study serves two main purposes: (1) to assess lodging managers' perceptions of difficulties and success in balancing their personal and work lives, and (2) to investigate if lodging managers' work interferes with or is enhanced by their personal lives, or vice versa. The results indicate that most lodging managers believe that they have struck a satisfactory balance between their work and personal lives. This study identifies the respective bidirectional effects of the interaction between work and personal life. Personal life boundaries are more permeable to work demands than work boundaries are to personal life demands.     

Hedging Equity-Linked Life Insurance Contracts

Abstract

This paper examines a portfolio of equity-linked life insurance contracts and determines risk-minimizing hedging strategies within a discrete-time setup. As a principal example, I consider the Cox-Ross-Rubinstein model and an equity-linked pure endowment contract under which the policyholder receives max(S_T , K) at time T if he or she is then alive, where S_T is the value of a stock index at the term T of the contract and K is a guarantee stipulated by the contract. In contrast to most of the existing literature, I view the contracts as contingent claims in an incomplete model and discuss the problem of choosing an optimality criterion for hedging strategies. The subsequent analysis leads to a comparison of the risk (measured by the variance of the insurer’s loss) inherent in equity-linked contracts in the two situations where the insurer applies the risk-minimizing strategy and the insurer does not hedge. The paper includes numerical results that can be used to quantify the effect of hedging and describe how this effect varies with the size of the insurance portfolio and assumptions concerning the mortality.     

The international co-movements of Finish stocks

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the international co-movements of Finnish stocks. The vector autoregression (VAR) approach indicates that US and especially Swedish stock markets lead Finnish stock market returns by approximately one or two months. The results based on international market models indicate that the returns of individual Finnish stocks are significantly positively related to those of Sweden, while the relation between Finnish and US returns is significantly lower. The relation seems to vary clearly between industries, some industries being related to US markets as well. Significant time-series instability is reported in the results, however.     

Potential responses by on-campus university students to a university emergency alert

University campuses across Canada and elsewhere are developing and implementing emergency alert systems to warn campus community members about a variety of threats. In this study, focus group discussions were used to examine how undergraduate students living on campus may respond to an emergency alert. A focus group activity used tornado, fire and threatening message alert messages to provide a context for the focus group discussions. After reading the warning message, most students understood the warning message but there was uncertainty about the non-specified threat and how and where to evacuate. Many would believe a message sent by the university as long as it was sent via a phone number that they associated with the university. Personalization of risk varied, and students reported that they would confirm a warning message with a variety of sources including student colleagues, faculty and teaching staff, television and internet sources. Taking protective action by sheltering in place was deemed to be feasible, however evacuation off campus was found to be problematic. We found that the nature of short message service text messages, the characteristics of universities, and the students’ home being in an on-campus residence influenced how the students may respond to an emergency alert message.     

Corporate diversification and firm value: a survey of recent literature

We survey the recent literature on corporate diversification. How does corporate diversification influence firm value? Does it create or destroy value? Until the beginning of this century, the predominant thinking among researchers and practitioners was that corporate diversification leads to an average discount on firm value; however, several studies cast doubt on the diversification discount. In the last decade, there has been no clear consensus as to whether there is a discount or even a premium on firm value. Recent literature concludes that the effect on value differs from firm to firm and that corporate diversification alone does not drive the discount or premium; rather, the effect is heterogeneous across certain industry settings, economic conditions, and governance structures.     

Capital Market Development,Competition, Property Rights,and the Value of Insurer Product‐Line Diversification: A Cross‐Country Analysis

In this article, we show that the effect of product diversification on performance is not homogeneous across countries. Diversified insurance companies perform significantly worse than their focused competitors in countries with well‐developed capital markets, high levels of property rights protection, and high levels of competition. In addition, we find that the diversification–performance relationship for insurance companies depends on company size. For large insurers operating in countries with less developed capital markets, diversification significantly increases performance. Our results suggest that the optimal organizational structure may be different for insurers operating in emerging economies than for insurers operating in developed countries.