How to give and receive: An exploratory study of charitable hybrids

Most charitable organizations can only rely on appeals to purely philanthropic motivations in attempting to solicit donor contributions. The decision processes exhibited by the targets of charitable solicitations are very different from those the same individuals use in making daily purchase decisions. Although both charitable giving and purchase contexts have been studied extensively, there are numerous organizations that require targeted customers to use a decision process that merges elements of both domains. Charitable hybrids, such as museums and universities, are such organizations, supplementing traditional revenue streams by soliciting charitable contributions, thus evoking a complex consumer decision process. For these firms, giving good service may yield an added benefit of maximizing charitable contributions received. Drawing on both the services and charitable giving literatures, a model of the consumer decision process is developed in this hybrid situation. In an exploratory test of the model, initial evidence is found that both classes of effects have significant influence on donors' intentions to give. However, in charitable giving contexts, organizational identification appears to fill a central role in influencing decision outcomes, which diminishes the role of satisfaction. The findings provide provocative evidence that further research in this setting is warranted. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Using Trade Incentives to Promote Customer Relationships in a Retail Setting

Suppliers and retailers use a variety of techniques designed to motivate salespeople to engage in specific selling behaviors that will provide results that will assist in achieving either the supplier's or retailer's goals. One method that is commonly applied is the sales incentive. This research examines popular forms of incentives to assess the relationships that exist between the incentives offered and salesperson behaviors. The study also examines the types of incentives commonly used by both suppliers and retailers and salesperson perceptions of these incentives. To accomplish this, 95 salespeople working for a major automotive parts company responded to questions designed to assess their attitudes and behaviors toward incentives. The results provide information which may be valuable to manufacturers, retailers, and academicians as they investigate the use of incentive based compensation programs and sales force behavior.     

Identification and estimation of statistical functionals using incomplete data

Incomplete data, due to missing observations or interval measurement of variables, usually cause parameters of interest in applications to be unidentified except under untestable and often controversial assumptions. However, it is often possible to identify sharp bounds on parameters without making untestable assumptions about the process through which data become incomplete. The bounds contain all logically possible values of the parameters and can be estimated consistently by replacing the population distribution of the data with the empirical distribution. This is straightforward in some circumstances but computationally burdensome in others. This paper describes the general problem and presents an empirical illustration.     

An experimental study of costly coordination

This paper reports data for coordination game experiments with random matching. The experimental design is based on changes in an effort-cost parameter, which do not alter the set of Nash equilibria nor do they alter the predictions of adjustment theories based on imitation or best response dynamics. As expected, however, increasing the effort cost lowers effort levels. Maximization of a stochastic potential function, a concept that generalizes risk dominance to continuous games, predicts this reduction in efforts. An error parameter estimated from initial two-person, minimum-effort games is used to predict behavior in other three-person coordination games.     

Consumer Demand and Cost Factors Shape the Global Trade Network in Commodity and Manufactured Foods

Multiple forces operate throughout the global economy and influence the direction, composition, and volume of agri-food trade. The fundamental determinants that impede and foster bilateral trade in two food types, namely staple commodities and manufactured products, are identified using generalized gravity equations. Empirical evidence verified the importance of relative resource endowments and similarities in the structure of partner demand. Other socio-geo-political factors were also found to influence food trade, including the ability of governments to control corruption and curtail disequilibrium in financial markets.
L'économie mondiale est soumise à des forces multiples qui influencent l'orientation, la composition et le volume du commerce agroalimentaire. Les principaux facteurs qui entravent et favorisent le commerce bilatéral de deux types d'aliments, à savoir les matières de base et les produits manufacturés, ont été déterminés à l'aide d'équations de gravité généralisées. L'évidence empirique a vérifié l'importance des dotations relatives en ressources et des similarités dans la structure de la demande d'un partenaire commercial. D'autres facteurs sociaux et géopolitiques, y compris la capacité des gouvernements à combattre la corruption et à réduire le déséquilibre sur les marchés des capitaux, influenceraient aussi le commerce alimentaire.     

Monetary Stabilisation Policy in a Monetary Union: Some Simple Analytics

We do two things in this paper. First, we look at some simple models of monetary decision making in a monetary union and ask how much more variable a country's output and inflation is likely to be if it joins the union. We answer this analytically and then go on to 'calibrate' the simple model. The model has few structural equations, but it is useful in allowing us to examine how the variability of output and inflation are likely to change as key parameters change. Our conclusions on this front are likely to be sensitive to model specification. However, we also identify a second best issue concerning the optimal make–up of the monetary union which is likely to be more robust: namely that only when all members of the union have the same structural parameter values (and shocks are perfectly correlated) will it be optimal for a new member to have these same structural parameter values.     

韦斯顿市的市长职能

首先我要向《技术经济与管理研究》杂志致谢,使我能有机会向贵刊的广大读者介绍作为韦斯顿市市长的主要职能。韦斯顿市政务委员会委员由全体市民选举产生,每届任期四年。每年从31名政务委员会委员中选举产生1名市长。我于2005年5月经选举担任市长一职。韦斯顿市市长的主要职能就是维护城市的历史传统。每周我要在市长夫人的陪同下出席大约10次预定活动,其范围包括会见小学生或向100岁老人登门祝寿,还包括出席展览会等等。我还要举行一些团体招待会,如招待宗教界或政界的重要人士,或紧急事务部的相关人士。除此之外,我还要定期主持召开市政委…     

Price Formation and Market Quality When the Number and Presence of Insiders Is Unknown

In most models of market microstructure tractability requiresthat all market participants know the number (and presence)of competing insiders. I drop this assumption in experimentalasset markets. Outcomes are qualitatively consistent with theoreticalmodels when the number of insiders is disclosed prior to trade.When it is not, insiders use the timing and size of trades interactivelyto hide from the dealers and each other, dealers have difficultyidentifying insider trades, and liquidity patterns do not differas a function of the number of insiders. In general, insiderbehavior has strategic dimensions not admitted in Kyle (1985)and extensions.     

Decoding nonverbal and vocal communications: A laboratory study

This article describes a study in which sales personnel judged the feelings of prospective buyers based upon audio-video tapes illustrating selected combinations of kinesic and vocal cues. Findings revealed significant relationships between the nonverbal cues and perceptions of the prospective buyer's attitude toward a salesperson.