Needed B2B marketing capabilities: Insights from the USA and emerging Latin America

Firms from all parts of the world are expanding operations globally in a turbulent economic context, requiring the understanding of nontraditional markets. Much attention has been focused on China and India, but researchers have neglected Latin America, a region economically as important as Germany, India, Japan, and South Korea. Latin America, as is true of many developed and emerging markets, has a strong presence of industrial ? or business to business (B2B) ? transactions. The configuration and convergence-divergence of marketing capabilities are relevant for the understanding of the globalization phenomenon. This study aims to examine B2B marketing capabilities of firms in Chile, Mexico and Peru (as Latin American countries), seeking conceptual issues in order to comprehend their business perspectives and contribute to the almost nonexistent body of research in this region. How do the results from Latin America compare with the USA? While the study shows directional convergence between Chile and Peru, there also is interesting divergence between all Latin American countries and the USA. The findings offer a portfolio of marketing topics that we believe are worthy of practitioner and academic consideration. We propose a model of convergence-divergence of B2B marketing capabilities across nations and state propositions for hypothesis testing.     

基于Solanum模型的云贵高原大春马铃薯潜在产量研究

[目的]计算云贵高原地区大春马铃薯潜在产量及产量差,分析产生巨大产量差的原因及解决措施。[方法]文章采用由国际马铃薯中心开发的新型植物生长模拟模型Solanum模型与田间试验相结合的方法,更精确地评估马铃薯潜在产量。[结果]云贵高原地区大春马铃薯的产量潜力巨大。云薯401潜在产量为138 t/hm~2,云薯505潜在产量为147 t/hm~2,合作88潜在产量为91.9 t/hm~2,与实际产量之间的产量差(YGM)最大的为云薯505,为117 t/hm~2,与基于FAO农业生态区域法的光温产量潜在模型算法得出的结果相符。与世界范围内已知的马铃薯潜在产量数据相比,云贵高原地区大春马铃薯的潜在产量全球最高。[结论]云贵高原地区大春马铃薯的发展潜力巨大,不同品种的潜在产量存在差异。防控晚疫病,延长生育期以充分利用太阳辐射,提高光合辐射有效利用率(RUE)是提高产量,缩小产量差的关键。     

Anchoring Measurement of the Middle-Income Class to Subjective Evaluation

What constitutes the middle class is hotly debated. Following an income-based approach, a main issue concerns how to fix the income boundaries that define the middle-income tier. This paper offers a novel model-based approach to the use of self-reported class evaluation for identifying those boundaries. The self-declared status responses are modeled using a non-conventional parametrization of an ordered logistic model. In this parametrization, the cut-points of the model are directly interpretable as income boundaries, and the variance of the errors captures the idiosyncratic heterogeneity of the outcome variable. The use of subjective data is exemplified in the estimation of the middle class in Kazakhstan over the period 2003–2015.     

Good students,avid readers: The cost of academic success

The effects of reading habits on academic performances have been carefully investigated, but little is known about the effects of academic achievements on students’ leisure reading. This paper investigates this issue by estimating the effects of academic achievements, proxied by the number of exams passed, on leisure reading, measured by the number of leisure books read in a year. Using an online survey submitted to the students at the University of Bologna, Italy, we adopt a two-step control-function technique to control for endogeneity. The empirical evidence suggests the existence of a negative relationship between students’ academic achievements and the time devoted to leisure reading. This result holds for students of different fields of study and is stronger for male students. The Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition supports the existence of a gender-specific idiosyncratic effect.     

A flexible lattice framework for valuing options on assets paying discrete dividends and variable annuities embedding GMWB riders

In a market where a stochastic interest rate component characterizes asset dynamics, we propose a flexible lattice framework to evaluate and manage options on equities paying discrete dividends and variable annuities presenting some provisions, like a guaranteed minimum withdrawal benefit. The framework is flexible in that it allows to combine financial and demographic risk, to embed in the contract early exercise features, and to choose the dynamics for interest rates and traded assets. A computational problem arises when each dividend (when valuing an option) or withdrawal (when valuing a variable annuity) is paid, because the lattice lacks its recombining structure. The proposed model overcomes this problem associating with each node of the lattice a set of representative values of the underlying asset (when valuing an option) or of the personal subaccount (when valuing a variable annuity) chosen among all the possible ones realized at that node. Extensive numerical experiments confirm the model accuracy and efficiency.

     

Upstream conduct and price authority with competing organizations

We characterize the degree of price authority that competing upstream principals award their downstream agents in a setting where these agents own private information about demand and incur nonverifiable distribution costs. Principals cannot internalize these costs through monetary incentives and design “permission sets” from which agents choose prices. The objective is to understand the forces shaping delegation and the constraints imposed on equilibrium prices. When principals behave noncooperatively, agents are biased toward excessively high prices because they pass on distribution costs to consumers. Hence, the permission set only features a price cap that is more likely to bind as products become closer substitutes, in sectors where distribution is sufficiently costly, and when demand is not too volatile. By contrast, when principals behave cooperatively, the optimal delegation scheme is richer and more complex. Because principals want to charge the monopoly price, the optimal permission set features a price floor when the distribution cost is sufficiently low, it features instead full discretion for moderate values of this cost, and only when it is high enough, a price cap is optimal. Surprisingly, while competition (as captured by stronger product substitutability) hinders delegation in the noncooperative regime, the opposite occurs when principals maximize industry profit.     

Gender preference gaps and voting for redistribution

Experimental Economics - There is substantial evidence that women tend to support different policies and political candidates than men. Many studies also document gender differences in a variety of...     

Bank business models,negative policy rates,and prudential regulation

Annals of Finance - Using data from Italian banks over the period 2011–2017, we study how negative interest rate policy and prudential regulation impact on bank business models. We report...     

The Evolution of Income Composition Inequality in Italy, 1989–2016

We study the evolution of inequality in income composition in terms of capital and labor income in Italy between 1989 and 2016. We document a rise in the share of capital income accruing to the bottom of the distribution, while the top of the distribution increases its share of labor income. This implies a falling degree of income composition inequality in the period considered and a weaker relationship between the functional and personal distribution of income in Italy. This result is robust to various specifications of self-employment income; nonetheless, it hinges crucially on the treatment of rental incomes. While the dynamics of imputed rents has brought about a more equitable distribution of capital incomes across the income distribution, that of actual rents has led to higher concentration of capital incomes at the top in the decade preceding the outbreak of the financial crisis. Finally, we conceptualize a rule of thumb for policy makers seeking to reduce income inequality in the long run.