Self-service activities and formal or informal market services

Household can provide themselves with services in different ways. Generally a household can produce a service itself, or buy it on a formal or informal market. On an informal market services are sold at a price substantially lower than on a formal market, because of tax evasion by both consumer and producer. This article investigates the choices made by Dutch households with respect to three services: small home repairs, car repair and maintenance, and ladies' hairdressing. The analysis shows that the mode of provision of the services is influenced not only by financial considerations, but also by the ability of the household to engage in home production, skills for and attitudes towards home production and the availability of informal market services in the local area.     

Transfer of training: the role of feedback in supportive social networks

The transfer of training to the workplace often fails to occur. The authors argue that feedback generated within the work environment about the application of newly learned skills in the workplace helps to close the gap between the current performance and the desired goal of full application of what is learned during training. This study takes a social network perspective and explores the role of feedback generated within the social network in fostering motivation‐to‐transfer and the transfer of training. The results show that the number of people providing feedback and the helpfulness of this feedback are positively related to the motivation for and actual transfer of training. The frequency of feedback appears to be negatively related. This study underlines the importance of feedback in turning the workplace into a learning environment fostering the transfer of training. It also suggests the value of adopting a social network perspective.     

永远充满激情地创作

Mjchael Dee，我们的首席创意执行官与我一同参加了此次戛纳广告盛会。我们决定共同参加戛纳盛会的重要原因是要让大家看到DDB China Group一直都对创意有着严谨的态度。紧随此行的另一个计划是：我们已经宣布了一个内部奖励机制，任何获奖部门（包括创意部、客户部以及策划部）都将得到相应的奖励。此次戛纳之旅变得比我们想象中要“亲密”得多——由于广告节期间酒店紧张，我与Michael只能同住一个有两居室的酒店公寓．但就在Martinez旁。地理位置很优越，说起来也算幸运。     

Curbing domestic violence: instantiating C–K theory with formal concept analysis and emergent self-organizing maps

We propose a human-centred process for knowledge discovery from unstructured text that makes use of formal concept analysis and emergent self-organizing maps. The knowledge discovery process is conceptualized and interpreted as successive iterations through the concept–knowledge (C–K) theory design square. To illustrate its effectiveness, we report on a real-life case study of using the process at the Amsterdam–Amstelland police in the Netherlands aimed at distilling concepts to identify domestic violence from the unstructured text in actual police reports. The case study allows us to show how the process was not only able to uncover the nature of a phenomenon such as domestic violence, but also enabled analysts to identify many types of anomaly in the practice of policing. We will illustrate how the insights obtained from this exercise resulted in major improvements in the management of domestic violence cases. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disinflation in a DSGE perspective: Sacrifice ratio or welfare gain ratio?

When used to examine disinflation monetary policies, the current workhorse dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of business cycle fluctuations is able to quantitatively account for the main stylized facts in terms of recessionary effects and sacrifice ratio. We complement the transitional analysis of the short-run costs with a rigorous welfare evaluation and show that, despite the long-lasting economic downturn, disinflation entails non-zero overall welfare gains.     

Innovation type and external knowledge search strategies in KIBS: evidence from Canada

Service Business - Do different types of innovation require distinct kinds of external knowledge search strategies? This paper explores this question using an original innovation survey of 385 KIBS...     

A Tale of Two Countries: Comparing the US and Chinese Housing Markets

The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics - The recent surge in property values in China has been similar to the surge in the U.S before the crash in 2007. This raises concerns about whether...