A Distance-Based Collective Preorder Integrating the Relative Importance of the Group's Members

In this paper, we propose an aggregation procedure, which includes two steps. In the first one, the group's members elaborate individually a preorder (total or partial) on the alternatives set. These preorders can be obtained, for example, by applying a multicriterion aggregation procedure such as ELECTRE III, PROMETHEE I or II. In the second step, these individual preorders (total or partial) are aggregated into a collective preorder (total or partial). For this purpose, we first built a distance measure between pairs of binary relations in order to quantify the divergence between two preorders. Then we determine, for each pair of alternatives, the relative importance coefficients of the group's members by using a method based on subjective and objective components. These coefficients and the distance measure are finally exploited by an iterative algorithm in order to elaborate a collective preorder synthesizing the individual preorders.     

饭店客户关系管理的价值链研究

本文从我国本土饭店客户关系管理现状出发,借用波特的价值链思想,深入分析饭店客户关系管理中的基本活动和辅助活动,以寻求能切实有效地提高饭店客户关系管理水平的途径。其中,文章提出了饭店客户关系管理的价值链模型,并对客户关系管理的基本活动中的客户价值分析、客户获取、客户保留、客户升级和客户联盟构建等主要环节进行了详细阐述,同时也分析了辅助活动中包括领导、组织结构、人力资源管理、组织文化和信息技术等在内的相关影响因素。     

The risk management implications of using end of day consensus pricing for single name CDS

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - When markets are opaque, market participants rely to a large extent on end-of-day consensus prices published by service providers; such as in the...     

Optimum tariffs and retaliation: How country numbers matter

This paper identifies a new terms-of-trade externality that is exercised through tariff setting. A North-South model of international trade is introduced in which the number of countries in each region can be varied. As the number of countries in one region is increased, each government there competes more aggressively with the others in its region, by lowering its tariff, to attract imports from the other region. In doing so, all countries in a region exert a negative terms-of-trade externality on each other, collectively undermining their own terms of trade and welfare. This externality can increase efficiency if the numbers of countries in both regions are increased simultaneously.     

Public good differentiation and the intensity of tax competition

We show that, in a setting where tax competition promotes efficiency, variation in the extent to which firms can use public goods to reduce costs brings about a reduction in the intensity of tax competition. This in turn brings about a loss of efficiency. In this environment, a ‘minimum tax’ counters the reduction in the intensity of tax competition, thereby enhancing efficiency. ‘Split-the-difference’ tax harmonization also potentially enhances efficiency but would not be agreed upon by governments because it lowers the payoff to at least one of them. This paper also presents an explanation for how traditionally high-tax countries have continued to set taxes at a relatively high rate even as markets have become more integrated.     

Transparency and Regional Integration in the Asia Pacific

We show in this paper that increasing the transparency of the trading environment can be an important complement to traditional liberalisation of tariff and non‐tariff barriers. Our definition of transparency is grounded in a transaction cost analysis. We focus on two dimensions of transparency: predictability (reducing the cost of uncertainty) and simplification (reducing information costs). Using the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member economies as a case study, we construct indices of importer and exporter transparency for the region from a wide range of sources. Our results from a gravity model suggest that improving trade‐related transparency in APEC could hold significant benefits by raising intra‐APEC trade by approximately US$148 billion or 7.5 per cent of baseline trade in the region. Action to improve transparency measures examined could be undertaken in many forms, including within the current APEC framework or future talks on a Free Trade Area in the Asia Pacific.     

Eco-labelling, Competition and Environment: Endogenization of Labelling Criteria

This paper suggests a modelling of the labelling procedure consistent with empirical observations, that allows the endogenous calculation of labelling criteria. The authority in charge of the labelling program chooses the level of labelling criteria so as to maximise the social surplus, anticipating competition between firms in environmental qualities and prices. While accounting simply for the informational role of labels, this model allows to understand observed behavior such as firms’ ignorance of a label, resistance, support or indifference of firms to the labelling program and the decision of the authority not to set up a label. Grateful thanks are due to Jean-Marc Bonnisseau, Antoine Soubeyran, Joan Canton and an anonymous referee for very helpful comments and suggestions.     

Motivations and experiences of Mainland Chinese medical tourists in Hong Kong

Medical tourism has been developing very rapidly in recent years and Hong Kong has emerged as a new medical tourism destination. The purpose of the study is to explore the motivations and experiences of a sample of medical tourists in Hong Kong and hence semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with obstetric patients from Mainland China. The findings indicate that one of the most important reasons for their traveling to give birth in Hong Kong was to avoid China’s ‘One Child’ policy. Variations in staff attitudes were also found among different hospitals and even in the same hospital. The findings also suggest that perceived discrimination by the medical tourists emerges in the form of less favourable service and less information sharing.     

An alteration to BATNEEC

BATNEEC is a regulatory concept which has caused concern both in terms of definition and application. BATNEEC has relied on end of pipe technology to prevent and control pollution, which has tended to ignore the role of managerial techniques, such as waste minimisation. Waste minimisation has been publicised widely as a method of reducing costs and assisting compliance, but no robust methodology has been presented. There is evidence that this weakness has slowed down its use in compliance. HMIP (now the Environment Agency) has recently developed and tested a more robust methodology, the 3Es, which should enable more industrialists to use the concepts of waste minimisation as BATNEEC, thus moving away from the end of the pipe up into the process. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.