Productivity change in Taiwan's farmers' credit unions: a nonparametric risk-adjusted Malmquist approach

This article proposes an extended three‐stage DEA methodology similar to Fried et al. (2002) to improve the measurement of productivity growth when the assumption of free disposability of undesirable output does not apply. A directional distance function is used to construct adjusted Malmquist–Luenberger productivity indexes which simultaneously account for the impacts of undesirable outputs, environmental variables, and statistical noise. Panel data for 263 farmers' credit unions (FCUs) in Taiwan covering the 1998–2000 periods are employed to illustrate the advantages of this method. On average, the productivity of Taiwan's FCUs is found to have deteriorated over the 1998–2000 period. Although an improvement in efficiency has been observed, the major reason for the deterioration is found to be due to the regression of technology.     

Estimation of conditional moment restrictions without assuming parameter identifiability in the implied unconditional moments

A well-known difficulty in estimating conditional moment restrictions is that the parameters of interest need not be globally identified by the implied unconditional moments. In this paper, we propose an approach to constructing a continuum of unconditional moments that can ensure parameter identifiability. These unconditional moments depend on the “instruments” generated from a “generically comprehensively revealing” function, and they are further projected along the exponential Fourier series. The objective function is based on the resulting Fourier coefficients, from which an estimator can be easily computed. A novel feature of our method is that the full continuum of unconditional moments is incorporated into each Fourier coefficient. We show that, when the number of Fourier coefficients in the objective function grows at a proper rate, the proposed estimator is consistent and asymptotically normally distributed. An efficient estimator is also readily obtained via the conventional two-step GMM method. Our simulations confirm that the proposed estimator compares favorably with that of Domínguez and Lobato (2004, Econometrica) in terms of bias, standard error, and mean squared error.     

Innovate to Survive: The Effect of Technology Competition on Corporate Bankruptcy

This paper establishes a strong relation between technology competition and corporate bankruptcy. Using detailed firm‐level patent data, we show that: 1) the capability of firms to innovate predicts future bankruptcies better than the typical measures such as Z‐score and credit rating, 2) technology‐related bankruptcies are less sensitive to the business cycle and industry success, and 3) firms that go bankrupt as a result of technology competition experience larger declines in earnings and stock prices.     

Effects of web site characteristics on customer loyalty in B2B e-commerce: evidence from Taiwan

This study proposes a model to explain how web site characteristics influence customer e-loyalty and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) via relationship quality (trust, satisfaction, and commitment) in business-to-business e-commerce. Three hundred and twelve online services users of the Market Intelligence Center in Taiwan were recruited and structural equation modeling was used to test the research hypotheses. The result indicates that web site characteristics positively influence relationship quality. A follow-up post-analysis showed how five dimensions of the web site characteristics impacted relationship quality. In addition, both trust and satisfaction have a positive direct effect on e-loyalty, but not on positive WOM. Finally, theoretical and managerial implications of the findings were discussed.     

Projected Images of Major Chinese Outbound Destinations

This study aimed to explore the projected images of major outbound destinations based on popular travel magazines in China. Travel articles on Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Taiwan from 2006 to 2008 were content analyzed. Japan was reported on most, and the projected images of the six destinations are dominated by leisure and recreation, and culture, history and art. Correspondence analysis was used to examine relationships between destinations and popular image attributes. The results showed that South Korea and Macau had distinct projected images, whereas Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Vietnam shared many similar image attributes. Practical implications for destination marketing organizations are provided.     

Banking systems,innovations, intellectual property protections,and financial markets: Evidence from China

One unique feature of the emerging economies in Asia is the rich variation in the development of financial systems and technological sectors across different geographical areas. This unbalanced evolution provides us a potentially more powerful setting to investigate the dynamics among banking systems, innovations, intellectual property (IP) protections, and stock market reactions that are especially useful in understanding the policy–finance–innovation nexus in emerging economies. Using newly available data from China, this study confirms the nurturing role of financial systems on innovations, the value-enhancing function of firms' innovative activities, and the lead–lag predictive role of innovations on stock returns, in the context of emerging economies. More importantly, the study documents that stronger provincial IP protections reduce patent piracy and hence enhance local firms' market values.     

Lobbying, corruption and “optimal” tariff

This paper explores how a government officer enacts “optimum” import policy when confronting lobbies on trade policies from both domestic and foreign firms in a transition economy. Two results are found: firstly, if the inducement from the foreign firm on the government officer works, then the optimum tariff is negative, that is, import subsidy. However, this subsidy will turn to a positive tariff rate with the increasing lobbying inducement from domestic firms. Secondly, zero tariff duty is not an optimum choice under most circumstances. Besides, an asymmetric result is that when these two firms’ marginal costs are different, the optimum policy is to levy an import tariff on the one whose marginal cost is relatively small, while the other firm will get an import subsidy.     

The Effect of Organization-Based Self-Esteem and Deindividuation in Protecting Personal Information Privacy

In this research we apply the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to study decisions related to information privacy protection. A TPB-based model was proposed to investigate whether organization-based self-esteem and perceived deindividuation can be employed to measure the strength of the perceived behavioral control construct. In addition, we examined if the addition of a causal path linking subjective norms to attitudes and another causal path linking organization-based self-esteem to subjective norms enhanced our research model's predicting power. Our study shows that information systems (IS) professionals' intentions to protect personal information privacy are influenced by their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived deindividuation, and organization-based self-esteem. It further shows that attitudes are influenced by subjective norms, which, in turn, are influenced by organization-based self-esteem.     

Testing the sufficiency of the theory of planned behavior: a case of customer dissatisfaction responses in restaurants

This study tested the sufficiency of both the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and the extended TPB models by adding the variable of past behavior. In addition, the present study examined the mediating role of the TPB variables on the relationships between past behavior and customers’ intentions to engage in different types of dissatisfaction responses (i.e., voice, negative word-of-mouth communication, and exit). Results of the study demonstrated the strong predictive power of the original TPB mode but the inclusion of past behavior did not significantly improve the predictability of the three dissatisfaction response intentions. Furthermore, the mediating analyses indicated that the influence of past behavior was mediated by TPB variables. In the contexts of negative word-of-mouth communication, the effect of past behavior on intention was mediated by attitude. Meanwhile, both subjective norm and perceived behavioral control mediated the relationship between past behavior and the intention to engage in voice behavior.