Endogenous tastes and stable long-run choice

Suppose that short-run preferences depend upon consumption one period earlier. Then there is an acyclic long-run strict preference relation iff, for every finite set, every conservative choice sequence converges. If long-run preferences are acyclic, then a unique long-run choice from a compact set is globally stable. If the long-run choice set includes multiple choices, there is a weaker stability property. Under special assumptions these results are extended to cases when the short-run consumption set is endogenous, and when more previous periods affect the present.     

Serving the world's poor,profitably

By stimulating commerce and development at the bottom of the economic pyramid, multi-nationals could radically improve the lives of billions of people and help create a more stable, less dangerous world. Achieving this goal does not require MNCs to spearhead global social-development initiatives for charitable purposes. They need only act in their own self-interest. How? The authors lay out the business case for entering the world's poorest markets. Fully 65% of the world's population earns less than $2,000 per year--that's 4 billion people. But despite the vastness of this market, it remains largely untapped. The reluctance to invest is easy to understand, but it is, by and large, based on outdated assumptions of the developing world. While individual incomes may be low, the aggregate buying power of poor communities is actually quite large, representing a substantial market in many countries for what some might consider luxury goods like satellite television and phone services. Prices, and margins, are often much higher in poor neighborhoods than in their middle-class counterparts. And new technologies are already steadily reducing the effects of corruption, illiteracy, inadequate infrastructure, and other such barriers. Because these markets are in the earliest stages of economic development, revenue growth for multi-nationals entering them can be extremely rapid. MNCs can also lower costs, not only through low-cost labor but by transferring operating efficiencies and innovations developed to serve their existing operations. Certainly, succeeding in such markets requires MNCs to think creatively. The biggest change, though, has to come from executives: Unless business leaders confront their own preconceptions--particularly about the value of high-volume, low-margin businesses--companies are unlikely to master the challenges or reap the rewards of these developing markets.     

Integration planning for technology intensive acquisitions

Rapid technological change, growing technological complexity and shortening product life cycles increasingly force companies to source technologies externally. One means of building up competencies and fostering innovation based on external resources such as knowledge is through the acquisition of technology-based companies. However as literature and practice have shown, technologically motivated and intensive acquisitions are highly vulnerable to failure. One of the main reasons for this value destruction lies in the miscarried and inappropriate integration of the technology-based company after the acquisition.
Based on eight in-depth case studies on technology intensive acquisitions in multi-national technology-based companies this paper aims to identify the main causes of failure in internalizing external knowledge during the integration of technology intensive acquisitions. It was derived that a lack of integrative decision-making, of systemic processes and of a holistic change of both companies during the integration hinders successful knowledge sourcing through acquisitions. Based on these findings, a concept for integration planning which is tailored towards the specific characteristics of technology intensive acquisitions is proposed. This concept is embedded in the acquisition process and encompasses the development of an appropriate integration strategy and the determination, assessment and planning of the required integration projects thus fostering successful knowledge sourcing.     

Attributional influences on consumers' desires to communicate about products

Three studies examined attributional antecedents of selected consumer communications about products. Study One used the critical incident technique to examine the types of attributions consumers make about product performance when they want to complain to or compliment a firm. Studies Two and Three systematically manipulated causal inferences to determine their effects on consumer desire to complain to a firm, compliment a firm, warn against, or recommend a product to other consumers. Results indicate that attributional locus (buyer-related versus seller-related), controllability (under volitional control versus uncontrolled), and stability (fluctuating versus stable) influence consumers' desires to communicate about products.     

民主化比较研究：一些广泛的和局部性的结论

民主化的比较研究已经产生了两类普遍结论:一类几乎一般的适用,一类则仅适用于一定地区内的某些国家。第一类包括良好的经济发展在保证民主持续稳定发展中的作用、政治精英在建立和毁掉民主制度中的重要作用、法治和国家能力对新生民主的质量和巩固发展的重要性等等。第二类是前东欧社会主义国家与拉丁美洲和南欧的民主化的对比:例如民主化与经济转型的关系、从过去的政治经济体制快速或缓慢转型对于巩固新生民主制度的利与弊等。这两类结论对比较政治学者有两个方法论上的启示:一是怎样理解理论的普遍性,二是如何衡量事件的长期性的和直接性的原因哪个更重要。     

Episodes of Exuberance in Housing Markets: In Search of the Smoking Gun

In this paper, we examine changes in the time series properties of three widely used housing market indicators (real house prices, price-to-income ratios, and price-to-rent ratios) for a large set of countries to detect episodes of explosive dynamics. Dating such episodes of exuberance in housing markets provides a timeline as well as empirical content to the narrative connecting housing exuberance to the global 2008 ?09 recession. For our empirical analysis, we employ two recursive univariate unit root tests recently developed by Phillips and Yu (International Economic Review 52(1):201–226, 2011) and Phillips et al. (2015). We also propose a novel extension of the test developed by Phillips et al. (2015) to a panel setting in order to exploit the large cross-sectional dimension of our international dataset. Statistically significant periods of exuberance are found in most countries. Moreover, we find strong evidence of the emergence of an unprecedented period of exuberance in the early 2000s that eventually collapsed around 2006 ?07, preceding the 2008 ?09 global recession. We examine whether macro and financial variables help to predict (in-sample) episodes of exuberance in housing markets. Long-term interest rates, credit growth and global economic conditions are found to be among the best predictors. We conclude that global factors (partly) explain the synchronization of exuberance episodes that we detect in the data in the 2000s.     

Perceptions of service delivery and happiness

An important task for students of development is to monitor progress in bringing basic services to all South Africans, one of the major objectives of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP). This article reports on a subjective indicator study which began in February 1995, nine months after the April 1994 elections. The study, commissioned by Information Update, a Human Sciences Research Council research publication, inquired into personal happiness and assessments of local public services including access to water, education, electricity, health care, roads and transport. Over 5 700 South Africans were polled during 1995 in three nationally representative sample surveys. Secondary data analysis showed that perceived improvements to local services were closely associated with increases in happiness among all sectors of the population, including rural dwellers and the poor. The article discusses the policy implications of this finding for future voting behaviour and efficient local government.