Stability of the cooperative equilibrium in N-person prisoners' dilemma with sequential moves

Summary. Nishihara [3] showed that N-person prisoners' dilemma has a cooperative Nash equilibrium, if the players decide their actions sequentially in the order determined by Nature under a certain information structure, and if each player's payoffs satisfy a certain inequality. This paper examines the stability of this cooperative equilibrium against two matters: players' slight mistakes and deviations by coalitions. The main results are as follows: (i) if the inequality on each player's payoffs strictly holds, then the cooperative equilibrium is a strictly proper equilibrium; (ii) if N≤3, and if full cooperation is Pareto efficient in N-person prisoners' dilemma, then the cooperative equilibrium is a strong Nash equilibrium; (iii) the cooperative equilibrium is in general a coalition-proof Nash equilibrium. Received: June 23, 1997; revised version: December 2, 1997     

The role of foreign direct investment in the host-country firm selection process: firm-level evidence from Slovenian manufacturing

This paper examines the role of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in firm selection processes in the Slovenian manufacturing sector in the 1994–2003 period. It adopts the firm dynamics framework that allows testing of selection effects directly by assessing the impact of foreign firms’ activity on the probability of exiting of local firms (crowding out). The results show that intra-industry productivity spillover effects offset only a minor part of the competition pressure which results from foreign firm entry, hence incumbent firms experience a drop in their survival probability upon a foreign firm’s entry within a particular industry. This result is driven by foreign firm entry of the greenfield type, as entry through the acquisition of existing firms has no significant effect. The strength of the crowding-out effect decreases with the incumbent firm’s export propensity. There is no significant evidence that inward FDI would stimulate the selection process through backward linkages in the upstream supplying industries, whereas foreign firms’ activity reduces the exit probability of downstream local customers (through forward linkages).     

The relationships among professional competence,job satisfaction and career development confidence for chefs in Taiwan

This study explores the relationship among professional competence, job satisfaction and the career development confidence for chefs, and examines the mediators of job satisfaction for professional competence and career development confidence in Taiwan. The analytical results demonstrate that work attitude was the most influential construct for professional competence, and culinary creativity had the lowest reported ratings. Job selection satisfaction showed higher ranking than current job satisfaction. The structural equation modeling results showed that professional competence significantly affects job satisfaction, and that job satisfaction predicts actual career development confidence. Additionally, job satisfaction mediated the influences of professional competence and career development confidence. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Measurement scale for eco-component of hotel service quality

Growing acknowledgement of the need to achieve more sustainable forms of development has resulted in environmentally conscious tourists who have indicated a dissatisfaction with existing hotel service quality. The objective of this study was to investigate tourists’ ecological expectations referring to the quality of spas and wellness hotel services in order to develop and test a scale for measuring the ‘eco-component,’ a new component of hotel service quality. The findings revealed four dimensions of the eco-component: hotel staff's eco-behaviour; environmentally friendly and healthy equipment; efficient use of energy and water; and bio-food. Tourists also demonstrated a hierarchy of eco-dimensions, with the most important being hotel staff's eco-behaviour and the least important being bio-food. Tourists’ expectations about the level of eco-dimensions differ significantly with respect to their income, nationality, and the hotel certification. However, no significant difference emerged in their expectations due to different educational levels.     

SOA Adoption Phases

The paper argues that attitudes to SOA follow a typical hype cycle from Technological Trigger, Peak of Inflated Expectations, and a Trough of Disillusionment to the more recent realization that SOA is a concept that may offer certain benefits but has several limitations. The main research question studies how the attitude to SOA changes in various phases of the hype cycle, how the SOA implementation cycle and an increase in business process maturity (BPMa) are interconnected and which factors influence the transition between the hype cycle phases. The paper shows that an organization’s success with implementing SOA depends on its ability to match the SOA implementation with an increase in BPMa. The dual purpose of implementing SOA is shown in the first framework: to assure the coherence of IT assets and to assure business/IT alignment. In the second framework, the interconnection of SOA and BPMa and its role in transiting through the hype cycle phases is outlined. The findings are analyzed using a longitudinal case study of a large Slovenian company.     

STABILITY OF THE UTILITY MAXIMIZATION PROBLEM WITH RANDOM ENDOWMENT IN INCOMPLETE MARKETS

We perform a stability analysis for the utility maximization problem in a general semimartingale model where both liquid and illiquid assets (random endowments) are present. Small misspecifications of preferences (as modeled via expected utility), as well as views of the world or the market model (as modeled via subjective probabilities) are considered. Simple sufficient conditions are given for the problem to be well posed, in the sense that the optimal wealth and the marginal utility‐based prices are continuous functionals of preferences and probabilistic views.     

A Further Examination of Appraisal Data and the Potential Bias in Real Estate Return Indexes

Recent articles by Giliberto [2] and Geltner [1] examine the biases inherent in the use of appraisal data in real estate performance measurement. This note takes another look at the direction and magnitude of any bias in holding period returns. Using appraisal data from a commingled real estate fund, we show that in actual application the size of the holding period return bias can be quite small and this bias may have no appreciable effect on real estate return indexes.     

Sale before Completion of Development: Pricing and Strategy

The paper examines the risk-and-return characteristics of a popular development strategy, the presale system (or sale before completion), used in many Asian cities. We model a presale decision in a real-options framework and suggest that the use of presale is primarily for a risk-sharing purpose. That is, developers can reduce bankruptcy and marketing risks by selling (or leasing) their projects before their completion dates. Our model also indicates that, because of the presale system, there is a barrier for new developers to enter into a market, which helps explain the anecdotal observation that most real estate markets in Asian cities are oligopolistic in nature and dominated by large developers.