Hysteresis in unemployment: Fact or fiction?

A stylized fact of European unemployment dynamics is one of extreme persistence and possible unit root behavior. This has led to a major reconsideration of the natural rate paradigm. We apply the Kalman filter to estimate the natural rate of unemployment for Germany and France. When the moving natural rate model is tested against the alternative of a unit root process, the unit root hypothesis is resoundingly rejected.     

The financial contribution of customer-oriented marketing capability

This article assesses the financial contribution of marketing capability. In contrast with previous research, which conceptualizes marketing capability as the deployment of marketing resources to achieve sales, this study conceives marketing capability as the deployment of marketing resources to achieve the ultimate objectives of customer satisfaction and brand equity (i.e., customer-oriented marketing capability [COMC]). Thus, this research disentangles the dynamic relationships among marketing resources, sales, customer satisfaction, and brand equity through the use of network Data Envelopment Analysis to capture COMC. According to what the value relevance perspective proposes, COMC positively influences the growth of Tobin’s q and improves the growth of analysts’ recommendations. These findings remain robust and consistent with the use of additional measures and methods common to the marketing and financial literatures. Our study provides tools and a framework for analysis for managers to maximize their ability to use marketing strategy to drive performance.     

Can herding improve investment decisions?

Existing models show that herding in decisions can cause significant information loss, inferior information aggregation, and impaired decision making. However, we show that in a multistage decision setting with endogenous information production, herding on the initial decision can actually result in superior aggregate information and improved decisions. This is because the possibility of herding by a follower incentivizes the leader to increase its ex ante information production to an extent that it can dominate the information loss from herding. Examples include decisions to enter new markets, fund R&D, and provide early‐stage venture capital.     

Expatriates of host-country origin: ‘coming home to test the waters’

Expatriates are an integral part of any multinational company's (MNC) staffing strategy. However, the high failure rate of expatriates has forced these firms to look at alternate or complementary staffing strategies. This paper focuses on one such strategy, i.e., transferring people of host-country ethnic origin from parent-country to manage host-country operations. The purpose of this exploratory study is to ascertain whether and how MNCs have used expatriates of host-country origin (EHCO) as a global staffing strategy, in the context of India, and the extent of its success both for the individuals and the organizations concerned.

Based on a survey and in-depth interviews of human resource managers of 15 MNCs with operations in India, the study concludes that EHCOs are more willing to accept expatriate assignments than parent-country nationals (PCNs); however, their success on the assignment depends on the breadth and depth of their experience both in the parent and host country. With regard to their work effectiveness vis-à-vis PCNs, no significant difference was found. Managerial implications of this staffing strategy are explored and future research directions identified.     

Zone-quadratic preference,asymmetry and international reserve accretion in India: An empirical investigation

Empirical estimates of the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) intervention reaction function suggest that the central bank actively intervenes in the foreign exchange market to contain volatility but this intervention is neither continuous nor linear. It is better described by a nonlinear policy reaction function with a target range as opposed to a point target. It responds much more vigorously to appreciating or depreciating pressure outside the target range but the response is much more muted within the range. Moreover, the tolerance band is asymmetric i.e., the RBI responds much more strongly to appreciating pressure than depreciating pressure. Such a policy response in an era of continuous net capital inflows accounts for the large build-up in foreign exchange reserves witnessed in India in the recent past.     

Representing Heterogeneity in Consumer Response Models 1996 Choice Conference Participants

We define sources of heterogeneity in consumer utility functions relatedto individual differences in response tendencies, drivers of utility, formof the consumer utility function, perceptions of attributes, statedependencies, and stochasticity. A variety of alternative modelingapproaches are reviewed that accommodate subsets of these various sourcesincluding clusterwise regression, latent structure models, compounddistributions, random coefficients models, etc. We conclude by defining anumber of promising research areas in this field.     

A framework for communication support in group work with special reference to negotiation systems

Communication is central to all group interactions, including negotiations. Group interfaces can limit or enhance communication flows among participants. Hence, group interface design requires the identification of the communication flows among participants, which in turn requires an identification of the various dimensions of intragroup communication. This article outlines a framework to guide researchers in examining the communication needs of group members in computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW), highlighting its application to the context of negotiation. An analysis of communication flows is provided along four dimensions:concurrency, message, channel andparticipant characteristics. The framework is intended to encourage a detailed focus on key aspects of the group interface, to provide a scheme for categorizing the contributions of empirical work, and to identify factors worthy of empirical scrutiny.An earlier version of this article, A Communication-Based Framework for Group Interfaces in Computer-Supported Collaboration by F. Lim and I. Benbasat, appeared in theProceedings of the 24th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, pp. 610–620.     

Understanding the Opportunistic Approach to Disinflation

One approach to achieving price stability is to undertake a deliberate path to an ultimate goal of low inflation—deliberate disinflation. In contrast an opportunistic strategy for disinflation has gained credence in recent years though on the face of it suboptimal. Our procedure is to seek a set of sufficient conditions under which the opportunistic strategy is optimal for a central bank maximising the preferences of the representative agent. We find that such a sufficient set of conditions consists of adaptiveness in expectations and an asymmetry in the Phillips curve of a specific sort.

     

Trading Portfolios Electronically – An Experimental Approach

This paper focuses on a simple axiom – investors prefer to hold diversified combinations of assets. Arguing that pooling vehicles like mutual funds offer approximate solutions, we propose a portfolio trading mechanism that allows individuals to trade diverse combinations of assets through a single order. Given the complexity of the market mechanism, we construct a prototype of this trading system and test it through a series of laboratory experiments with student subjects. We address the quality of the price discovery process, quality of allocations, and efficiency of the market mechanism. Results from a set of laboratory experiments indicate that the performance of such systems is sensitive to design aspects as well as relative experience of participants.