经济节能车型亮翅2009北美车展

2009年1月11日,美国底特律车展正式开幕.虽然各大汽车厂家目前都在经受经济危机的考验,但在此次国际车展上,都不遗余力地把最新概念车以及最新车型拿出来亮相以吸引眼球.底特律车展正处在世界汽车行业整体转型的关键时间点上,我们可以从这次车展发布的新能源汽车及经济型汽车等看出今后几年乃至十几年的趋势.     

科技住宅点亮未来生活——专访当代节能置业总工程师陈音

近年来,一股清新而强大的风吹进红尘滚滚的中国房地产市场.从国家到各地方,针对房地产行业现存的隐忧,大力度地执行了关于住宅建筑的新标准和具体措施, "建筑四节"--节能、节地、节水、节材,并已成为未来住宅项目的硬性指标.在北京,现已强制执行新建建筑必须达到节能65%.     

Increasing choice satisfaction through goal-based labeling

Business practitioners increasingly seem to believe in the power of goal-based labels (i.e., labels that link assortment items to consumption goals). While previous literature has focused on feature-based approaches to increase choice satisfaction, we introduce goal-based labeling as a consumer-based approach to increase choice satisfaction. Since goal-based labels (e.g., a ??Family Trip?? camera versus a ??Professional?? camera) relate choice alternatives directly to consumption goals, they allow consumers to bypass translating product attributes into goal attainment. Quantitative and qualitative results of an experimental study indicate that novice consumers, but not experts, benefit from goal-based labeling in multiple ways. Novice consumers use goal-based labels as an important cue in their decision making. This can significantly increase their chances at making an optimal choice. Choosing from a goal-based labeled assortment also has a positive effect on the choice satisfaction of novices. Mediation analyses show that a decrease in the choice uncertainty drives the positive effect of goal-based labeling on choice satisfaction. Novices apparently do not blindly follow the labels that are provided but try to understand the link between labels and attributes. Hence, among novices, inaccurately labeled assortments not only result in suboptimal choice but also in higher uncertainty and lower satisfaction. For experts, goal-based labeling is largely irrelevant, as it does not have an effect on their choice satisfaction, nor on their likelihood to make an optimal choice.     

The case of flow and learning revisited

Many business schools are criticized for being ineffective in helping students learn proper management skills and knowledge. Flow theory has been cited as being helpful in many learning environments in that flow experience can enhance student learning. The authors conducted a study of 315 students in an undergraduate operations management (OM) class to assess learning outcomes and flow experience. Results show that student learning performance and flow are related. Implications and suggestions for further research are provided.     

Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms

We examine how multinational firms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and firm-level estimates suggest that more productive French firms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough host countries. Countries with a smaller market potential, higher fixed costs of investment or lower import tariffs tend to have higher cutoff productivities and attract a greater proportion of productive multinationals. This self-selection mechanism remains largely robust when we control for unobserved firm and country heterogeneity and address potential TFP endogeneity.     

Third-country effects on the formation of free trade agreements

The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an increasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics literature has generally examined the formation of FTAs as a function of the participating countries' economic characteristics alone. In this paper, we show both theoretically and empirically that the decision to enter into an FTA is also crucially dependent on the participating countries' existing FTA relationships with third countries. Accounting for the interdependence of FTAs helps to explain a significant fraction of FTA formations that would not otherwise be predicted by countries' economic characteristics.     

Freedom and gross in-migration: an empirical study of the post-great recession experience

Determinants of migration, including policy variables such as tax rates, have been extensively studied by regional scientists over the past several decades. The development of the Economic Freedom of North America Index has allowed researchers to test the relationship between migration patterns and economic freedom, with recent studies finding that net in-migration is positively related to economic freedom. Using a new cross-section measure of economic and personal freedom at the state level, we investigate the relationship between gross in-migration and economic freedom on the one hand and then between gross in-migration and total freedom on the other hand. This empirical study of domestic U.S. migration during the post-Great Recession period finds clear evidence that migrants prefer to move to those states affording higher levels of economic freedom and higher levels of total freedom.     

Regionalism in standards: good or bad for trade?

Abstract.  Regional agreements on standards have been largely ignored by economists and blessed by multilateral trade rules. Using a constructed panel data that identifies the different types of agreements at the industry level, we find that such agreements increase the trade between participating countries but not necessarily with the rest of the world. Harmonization of standards may reduce the exports of excluded countries, especially in markets that have raised the stringency of standards. Mutual recognition agreements are more uniformly trade promoting unless they contain restrictive rules of origin, in which case intra-regional trade increases at the expense of imports from other countries.     

GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSING AND THE INTENSITY OF AGGREGATE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

We develop a theoretical model in which the sophistication of technologies improves over time due to research and development (R&D) undertaken by software developers in two sectors. In the commercial sector, R&D intensity is driven by economic incentives, whereas in the sector using the General Public License (GPL), it is driven by the preference-based labor supply of individuals. A higher amount of GPL labor allocation generates equilibrium effects that adversely affect commercial software development. When the degree of imitation in the GPL sector is relatively higher than in the commercial sector, or the commercial sector has increasing returns of a limited degree, the R&D intensity in the commercial sector would decline by more than any increases in R&D intensity in the GPL sector. Thus, aggregate R&D intensity in the long run would be reduced. Numerical simulation indicates that this outcome pertains under realistic parameter ranges.     

2008路易威登“旅行与旅行者”古董箱展

十七件路易威登古董旅行箱展示了路易威登一百五十多年来坚守的精湛传统手工艺和创新追求。旅行精神始终是路易威登的品牌基石,北京奥运会使得全世界的目光都聚焦中国,选择在此时举办古董旅行箱展别具意义。