Are we really measuring what we think we're measuring? Assessing attitudes towards destinations with the implicit association test

The study examines individuals' attitudes toward destinations by comparing the results of traditional self‐report surveys with those of the implicit association test (IAT). A total of 84 college students (30 Caucasian, 27 Chinese and 27 Korean) were employed to complete self‐report surveys and computer‐based IATs. The results show that participants' attitudes toward selected destinations (i.e. China and England) vary depending on which of the two different attitude measures is employed. Specifically, it appears that attitudes toward the two countries are not significantly different in self‐report survey, but differences in attitudes are significant in the IAT. This result indicates that greater use of the IAT would enhance our understanding of tourist responses, particularly those related to ability and willingness issues. The implications of the IAT results for tourism destination studies and its relation to explicit measures of attitudes are discussed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimation of Hybrid Phillips Curve: A Source of Conflicting Empirical Results

Recent empirical studies of the hybrid Phillips curve draw conflicting conclusions about the relative role of forward‐looking behavior and the role of marginal cost as the driving force. It is difficult to identify the source of the conflicting results in past studies because of differences in the measure of inflation, the estimation equation, and the instrumental variables. This article presents evidence that a source of the conflict is the use of suboptimal sets of instruments. When the optimum set of instruments is selected by using the L₂‐boosting method from the principal components of a large number of valid instruments, all conflicting conclusions in previous studies vanish. Regardless of the choice of inflation measure and estimation equation, we identify the dominant role of forward‐looking behavior and a significant effect of the real marginal cost on inflation.     

A Study on Designing a Financial Supervisory Institution in Taiwan

This paper investigates world trends in financial supervision, including the separation of treasury and finance and the shift from departmental regulation to functional regulation. Based on the trend toward integration in financial supervision and examination, this paper proposes the adoption of a functional approach to financial supervision and the problems that may occur when we restructure the financial supervisory framework in Taiwan. This paper also discusses various financial supervisory institution models and weighs their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, it advances other issues concerned with the restructuring of the financial supervisory system, including the repositioning of the Central Deposit Insurance Corporation (CDIC), and adjustments in the powers conferred upon the Central Bank to conduct examinations.     

Sequential entry and plant location in oligopolistic competition

Weberian location theory is confined to a single firm framework, and pays very little attention to the interdependence among firms. To fill up this gap, this article incorporates oligopolistic competition into a simple Weberian model to investigate industrial location patterns when firms are shortsighted, enter sequentially, and locate once-and-for-all. It is shown that the location of a new entrant is closer to (farther away from) the market site compared with the existing firms if the industry is characterized by diseconomies (economies) of scale.     

Selectivity,Quality Adjustment and Mean Reversion in the Measurement of House Values*

This paper develops a model of price formation in the housing market which accounts for the non-random selection of those dwellings sold on the market from the stock of existing houses. The model we develop also accounts for changes in the quality of dwellings themselves and tests for mean reversion in individual house prices. The model is applied to a unique body of data representing all dwellings sold in Sweden's largest metropolitan area during the period 1982–1999. The analysis compares house price indices that account for selectivity, quality change and mean reversion with the conventional repeat sales models used to describe the course of metropolitan housing prices. We find that the repeat sales method yields systematically large biased estimates of the value of the housing stock. Our comparison suggests that the more general approach to the estimation of housing prices or housing wealth yields substantially improved estimates of the course of housing prices and housing wealth.     

The Value Relevance of Foreign Income: an Australian, Canadian, and British Comparison

In this paper we examine the value relevance of geographical earnings disclosures for firms listed and domiciled in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. We find that foreign earnings in all three countries are valued differently than domestic earnings. The estimate of the association coefficient for foreign earnings changes with returns is positive in all three countries and statistically larger than the association coefficient for domestic earnings changes in Canada and the United Kingdom. Further tests show that this difference is related to relative growth opportunities of overseas operations to domestic operations. These findings are similar to results for foreign earnings association coefficients for American‐based multinationals found in Bodnar and Weintrop (1997). These results indicate that across countries the market perceives the results of foreign operations as value relevant and suggests that greater emphasis should be placed on the required disclosure of segmental data rather than on the concern that all countries prepare the segmental information using a common GAAP.     

Food tourists’ connectivity through the 5A journey and advocacy: comparison between generations Y and X

ABSTRACT

By adopting the new 5A model of Marketing 4.0, which conceptualizes a consumer-driven paradigm shift in digital marketing, this study empirically investigated food tourists’ connectivity throughout the 5A process (aware, appeal, ask, act, and advocate). Furthermore, we compared the 5A journeys of Generation Y and Generation X. Along the 5A path, both generations indicated the strongest social connectivity in the ask stage. Generation Y showed stronger social connectivity than Generation X, while there was no significant difference in channel connectivity. The social connectivity in the advocate stage was most strongly correlated with that in the act stage. Within each generation, active netizens were more strongly engaged in sharing and positive/negative advocacy. Based on these findings, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications.     

The Effect of Diversification on Tail Risk: Evidence from US Equity Mutual Fund Portfolios

This paper examines the effect of diversification on the tail risk of US equity mutual fund portfolios by utilizing classical higher‐moment measures and robust tail weight measures. Empirical results show that market standard portfolios based on the mean‐variance framework are exposed to greater tail risk than benchmark portfolios are and diversification further intensifies this exposure.