香港──内地贸易和香港的工资差距

本文实证研究香港—内地贸易额增加对香港四个行业工资差距的冲击。我们用黑克歇—俄林（Heckscher Ohlin）模型的提法产生假设,并用协整技术检验该假设。关于贸易对工资差异的影响,最近的经济文献进行了热烈的讨论。本实证研究对此是一个有趣的贡献。本文的协整分析支持以下假设：当香港—内地贸易额增加时,香港熟练工人对非熟练工人的工资比显著提高。这样,我们的发现给斯托尔福—萨缪尔森(Stolpher Samuelson)定理增加了一个事实,该定理说：与发展中国家贸易时,发达国家的非熟练工人的实际工资率将更低。     

The Effect of Consumer Perceptions of the Ethics of Retailers on Purchase Behavior and Word-of-Mouth: The Moderating Role of Ethical Beliefs

Journal of Business Ethics - This paper explores how consumers perceive retailer ethics. Based on a review of the marketing and consumer research literature, we conceptualize consumer perceptions...     

Relevance of barriers and facilitators in the use of health technology assessment in Colombia

Objectives: Several studies, mostly from developed countries, have identified barriers and facilitators with regard to the uptake of health technology assessment (HTA). This study elicited, using best-worst scaling (BWS), what HTA experts in Colombia consider to be the most important barriers and facilitators in the use of HTA, and makes a comparison to results from the Netherlands.

Methods: Two object case surveys (one for barriers, one for facilitators) were conducted among 18 experts (policymakers, health professionals, PhD students, senior HTA-researchers) from Colombia. Seven respondents were employees of the national HTA agency Instituto de Evaluación Tecnológica de Salud (IETS). In total, 22 barriers and 19 facilitators were included. In each choice task, participants were asked to choose the most and least important barrier/facilitator from a set of five. Hierarchical Bayes modeling was used to compute the mean relative importance scores (RIS) for each factor, and a subgroup analysis was conducted to assess differences between IETS and non-IETS respondents. The final ranking was further compared to the results from a similar study conducted in the Netherlands.

Results: The three most important barriers (RIS >6.00) were “Inadequate presentation format”, “Absence of policy networks”, and “Insufficient legal support”. The six most important facilitators (RIS >6.00) were “Appropriate timing”, “Clear presentation format”, “Improving longstanding relation”, “Appropriate incentives”, “Sufficient qualified human resources”, and “Availability to relevant HTA research”. The perceived relevance of the barriers and facilitators differed slightly between IETS and non-IETS employees, while the differences between the rankings in Colombia and the Netherlands were substantial.

Conclusion: The study suggests that barriers and facilitators related to technical aspects of processing HTA reports and to the contact and interaction between researchers and policymakers had the greatest importance in Colombia.     

Segmenting Leisure Travelers by Risk Reduction Strategies

This study is an initial attempt in using risk reduction strategies as the basis for segmenting leisure travelers. Results of the study generated insights into the nature of consumer markets and created three segments of travelers who adopted risk reduction strategies in different ways. The three leisure travelers' segments include: socially reliant risk reducers, self-initiated risk reducers, and unconcerned about risk reduction. Travel behaviors and sociodemographics of the three segments were also compared.     

Does the Usability Experienced Performance of Travel Websites in China Meet Users' Expectation?

Despite the increasing use of the Internet in travel and tourism, the issue of usability on travel websites has been largely overlooked in the existing tourism literature in Mainland China (hereafter known as China), one of the world's largest markets for generating and receiving tourists. This paper reports on a study that investigated the perceptions of Internet users in China on China-based travel agency websites (henceforth referred to as travel websites). The expectancy disconfirmation theory was used to compare the expected performance and experienced performance of 24 usability attributes. Empirical results showed significant differences between perceived performance and expected performance for all included attributes.     

A Reappraisal of the Border Effect on Relative Price Volatility

Engel & Rogers (1996) find that crossing the US–Canada border can considerably raise relative price volatility and that exchange rate fluctuations explain about one-third of the volatility increase. Using a decomposition method, this study re-evaluates the border effect. It is shown that cross-country heterogeneity in price volatility can induce a bias in measuring the border effect unless proper adjustment is made to correct it. We further examine the implication of symmetric sampling for the border effect estimation under the decomposition approach. Two conditions governing the strength of the border effect are identified. In particular, the more dissimilar the price shocks are across countries, the greater the border effect will be. Decomposition estimates also suggest that exchange rate fluctuations actually account for a large majority of the border effect.     

Differential Effects of Chinese Women's Sexual Self-Schema on Responses to Sex Appeal in Advertising

Despite the increased use of sex appeal in advertising, little is known about the influence of individual personality differences on responses to sexual information. This study examines the effects of the “sexual self-schema” personality trait on Chinese women's responses to advertisements using sex appeal. Regardless of the type of sexual information used, attitudes toward these advertisements mediate the effect of sexual self-schema on the purchase intentions of women with lower sexual self-schema while this mediating effect was not observed in women with higher sexual self-schema. The theoretical and practical implications of sex appeal in advertising for Chinese women are discussed.     

Recapitalization of Thailand's Banks After the 1997 Crisis: Interpretation and Critique from a Neo-institutional Perspective

The recapitalization of Thailand's banks following the 1997 crisis is interpreted and positively criticized from the perspective of neo-institutional theory. Although a recapitalization scheme was introduced as part of monetary policy in 1998, the statistics and critical reaction on the part of private interests suggest that public resources and administrative action would not suffice to fully and expeditiously fulfill this task. To increase the supply of private capital to the banking sector the authorities can most effectively adopt a neo-institutional philosophy, under which policy credibility in situations of financial distress is enhanced by the clarification of property rights and minimization of opportunities for special-interest action. Neo-institutional theory also suggests that it is possible to expedite overall monetary recovery if the government concentrates on its comparative advantage in supplying the public good of financial stability, and leave commercial banks free to realize private comparative advantage in areas such as restructuring, re-engineering, mergers and competition. To link public and private action in the areas noted above, initiatives can be introduced to cooperatively exploit relative efficiency in obtaining and using information to support decision-making.     

What is the effect of university education on chances to be self-employed in transitional countries?: Instrumental variable analysis of cross-sectional sample of 29 nations

We used a high-quality cross-sectional data set that covers a diverse set of 29 transitional countries, to find the effect of education of probability of people being self-employed using standard probit models and instrumental variable biprobit that address endogeneity. Our findings suggest a negative effect of university education on the propensity of being self-employed. This finding remains the same for the single-stage model (i.e. standard probit) and the instrumental variable model (i.e. biprobit). We found strong endogeneity in the estimation of education effect on the propensity of being self-employed, ignoring which renders estimations biased. Regression models, which do not address endogeneity tend to underestimate the negative effect of the education on the probability of being self-employed in the countries of transition. Researchers should use alternative approaches to reduce endogeneity, such as instrumental variables and longitudinal analysis.