Precious metals,oil and the exchange rate: contemporaneous spillovers

We investigate the contemporaneous spillovers among precious metals, crude oil and the US$ exchange rate. We contend that conventional reduced-form vector autoregressive (VAR) models based on lead/lag relations do not fully capture the interactions among these series as these models ignore the contemporaneous effects. Using a Structural VAR model, we identify these contemporaneous spillovers, which are shown to be strong and asymmetric. We further show that not taking into consideration the contemporaneous interactions among these assets leads to inaccurate findings and inevitably to inaccurate interpretations of the causal relations among them.     

Relationship marketing: Back to basics?

Relationship marketing, however defined, has received considerable attention recently. To its advocates, relational exchange between buyer and seller represents a paradigm shift away from the traditional focus on individual transactional exchanges. Critics of relationship marketing argue that the concept is poorly defined and is merely a new way of describing what businesses have been doing for a long time.

This paper recognizes that the need to develop long‐term relationships between an organization and its customers is becoming greater. It is however questioned whether marketing educators are providing students with the abilities to take a mature approach to relationship marketing issues, in line with the changing nature of employers' business. Suggestions for introducing relationship marketing to the undergraduate syllabus are made at a number of levels, from an additional module for an introductory “principles of marketing course” to a multi‐disciplinary degree majoring in relationship marketing.     

Measuring Global Economic Interdependence: A Hierarchical Network Approach

This paper investigates the business cycle co‐movement across countries and regions since 1950 as a measure for quantifying the economic interdependence in the ongoing globalisation process. Our methodological approach is based on analysis of a correlation matrix and the networks it contains. Such an approach summarises the interaction and interdependence of all elements, and it represents a more accurate measure of the global interdependence involved in an economic system. Our results show (1) the dynamics of interdependence has been driven more by synchronisation in regional growth patterns than by the synchronisation of the world economy, and (2) world crisis periods dramatically increase the global co‐movement in the world economy.     

Meta-analysis of consumer's willingness-to-pay premiums for certified wood products

Consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) price premiums for environmentally certified wood products has been frequently estimated using stated preference methods. Estimates of WTP premiums for certified wood products over non-certified options reported in the literature range from 1.0% to 39.3%. This paper describes a meta-analysis used to determine the key factors associated with WTP price premium estimates by examining data from 19 different studies conducted around the world. Results of Bayesian hierarchical models show that frequently purchased wood products and wood products with lower base prices tend to capture higher percentage premiums. Survey administration method was also a statistically significant factor influencing variations in WTP estimates. Results show that conjoint analysis elicited inflated WTP estimates toward certified wood products compared with contingent valuation methods. Reported WTP estimates have increased in recent years. Recommendations to reduce the error of WTP estimates toward certified wood products and improve the validity of experimental studies are provided.     

Charitable organizations' storytelling influence on donors' emotions and intentions

The stories told by charitable organizations are typically designed to take the consumer through different emotional stages. This research probes the view that following exposure to the inciting incident or problem statement in the appeal for a particular charity, the consumer feels negative emotions. These feelings convert into anticipated positive emotions when the consumer is given the opportunity to help the person in need through a donation. Feedback that donors receive from the charitable organization will help to strengthen the emotional pay-off and enhances future donation intentions. The research utilizes an experimental design and data from 319 undergraduate students in a large U.S. university to confirm these hypotheses. Theoretical and managerial implications are then presented.     

Connected transactions and firm value: Evidence from China-affiliated companies

This paper investigates tunneling through related-party transactions (RPT) using a unique dataset of listed Chinese companies in Hong Kong. While prior findings suggest that investors do not seem to systematically discount tunneling firms, we find that firm value (Tobin's q and market-to-book value) is significantly lower for firms undertaking potentially expropriating transactions. In addition, cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) are lower for RPTs with disclosure exemptions and are negatively related to some RPT types. Our results suggest that firms tunnel using RPTs with disclosure exemptions and that disclosure requirements matter for RPTs. These RPTs could signal firms' corporate-governance quality, as investors substantially discount firms that undertake potentially expropriating transactions.     

Governance of flexible mobile service platforms

Development of advanced mobile Internet services requires flexible service platforms. Every service offering needs generic functionalities like security, billing and customer data management. Such functionalities used to be integrated in the mobile network infrastructure but are now offered by competing service platforms. Future service platforms might be offered by operators but can also be embedded in the mobile phone or at the systems of the service providers. Studying flexibility of service platforms requires technological as well as strategic analysis, and should take into account the perspective of multiple stakeholders. Where to locate service platforms is not just a technological matter as it greatly influences flexibility of both service providers and end-users. This paper analyzes how various service platform technologies that are located at operators, mobile phone and service providers influence flexibility. We find that no single service platform offers superior flexibility to both service providers and end-users.     

Reconceptualising loss in retailing: calling time on ‘shrinkage’

For more than 100 years the retail industry has relied primarily upon the term ‘shrinkage’ to define how retail ‘losses’ are understood and controlled. There is, however, little consensus on what types of loss should be included and excluded when this term is used, making most benchmarking exercises difficult to perform with any degree of accuracy. In addition, as retailing becomes ever more complex and demanding, and a greater range of data sources become available, the traditional approaches to understanding and measuring loss in retailing seem increasingly anachronistic. Based upon extensive interviews and focus group discussions with senior retail executives from Europe and the U.S., this article puts forward a framework for developing a more inclusive and broad ranging definition and typology of retail losses, using the umbrella term Total Retail Loss.     

Planning and developing tourism within a public sector quagmire: Lessons from and for small countries

This paper examined public sector tourism in Northern Ireland, a small country on the periphery of Western Europe which is notorious for being over-governed. The authors found that its complex web of public sector tourism bodies created confusion and duplication within the industry. There was a lack of coordination and clear policy guidelines and many of the organisations were suffering from ‘partnership overload’. To make matters worse for Northern Ireland its National Tourism Organisation, faced with a reduced remit and shrinking budget, was not capable of making decisions and providing the strategic leadership that is required to drive the tourism agenda forward. Northern Ireland, and indeed any small country involved in tourism, could learn valuable lessons from Northern Ireland’s Celtic neighbours, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland, countries which have taken action to remove some of their layers of administration and bureaucracy and make public sector tourism more streamlined and manageable.