Inviting the Amateurs into the Studio: Understanding How Consumer Engagement in Product Design Creates Value

With consumers increasingly taking on the role of product designer, interesting and important avenues for new research are emerging. This article highlights two broad areas that researchers in both consumer behavior and product design may want to consider: (1) what constitutes consumer design and (2) what factors influence value creation when consumers assume responsibility for some or all of the design task.     

Government Supply of Land in a Dual Market

A dual land market is one in which the government owns a significant portion of developable land while real estate development is done primarily by the private sector. This article examines Singapore's experience with its system of government land supply in a dual market, focusing on its response to market signals as well as the interaction with the significant private supply of land. The example is relevant to the general problem of government sales of valuable assets. The private supply of developable land behaves in line with expectations. The government response to price signals differs only modestly from that of private landowners.     

Not enough money or not enough time to satisfy the Thrifty Food Plan? A cost difference approach for estimating a money–time threshold

Food production at home requires money and time. Food assistance programs focus exclusively on the money cost, while ignoring the time cost. This one-dimensional focus could undermine the effectiveness of food assistance programs. In the spirit of Vickery (1977), this paper uses a cost difference approach to develop a money–time threshold, and several related metrics, to determine whether money or time is the most limiting resource in reaching the Thrifty Food Plan (TFP) target. In our empirical analysis we find that when time is ignored, single headed households spend on average 35% more than required to meet the TFP target. However, when time is included, these households spend on average 40% less than required to meet the TFP target. In addition, we find that when time is ignored, 62% of single headed households on average spend enough money to reach the TFP target, but when time is included, only 13% of single headed households spend enough on average to reach the TFP target. Our empirical results suggest that time is more constraining than money in reaching the TFP target. These results imply that metrics solely focusing on money could severely underestimate the gap between actual expenditures and those required to reach the TFP target.     

旅游地文化空间及其演化机理

旅游活动的文化属性决定了旅游地本质上是为旅游者提供一个文化空间。从旅游地文化的空间研究转向空间的文化研究,并厘清旅游地文化空间的内涵及其演化机理,寻求旅游地的文化发展规律,有助于解决旅游规划与开发中"造文化、造景观"的困境。基于空间生产和景观生态学原理,以及旅游地文化空间的活态性,旅游地文化空间的时间和功能演化是由原居民的生产与生活空间演变为服务于旅游发展的生产与生活空间的过程。旅游地文化空间在形态上,则表现为文化节点、文化轴线、文化场、文化域面等基本空间形态的形成与演化。文化场作为最为重要的空间形态,它是旅游地进行生产、生活与服务的真实场景,体现了人与旅游景观的社会文化关系。     

TESTING FOR MULTIPLE BUBBLES: LIMIT THEORY OF REAL‐TIME DETECTORS

This article provides the limit theory of real‐time dating algorithms for bubble detection that were suggested in Phillips, Wu, and Yu (PWY; International Economic Review 52 [2011], 201–26) and in a companion paper by the present authors (Phillips, Shi, and Yu, 2015; PSY; International Economic Review 56 [2015a], 1099–1134. Bubbles are modeled using mildly explosive bubble episodes that are embedded within longer periods where the data evolve as a stochastic trend, thereby capturing normal market behavior as well as exuberance and collapse. Both the PWY and PSY estimates rely on recursive right‐tailed unit root tests (each with a different recursive algorithm) that may be used in real time to locate the origination and collapse dates of bubbles. Under certain explicit conditions, the moving window detector of PSY is shown to be a consistent dating algorithm even in the presence of multiple bubbles. The other algorithms are consistent detectors for bubbles early in the sample and, under stronger conditions, for subsequent bubbles in some cases. These asymptotic results and accompanying simulations guide the practical implementation of the procedures. They indicate that the PSY moving window detector is more reliable than the PWY strategy, sequential application of the PWY procedure, and the CUSUM procedure.     

An Experimental Study on Dividing Gains through Politics

This article offers experimental evidence to examine an important case in politics where a monopolistic proposer seeks a majority's consent from competitive responders to split the gain. The unique subgame perfect equilibrium prediction is that the side of trade with a monopoly will exploit the side of trade with competition to reap almost all of the gain. Our experimental evidence reveals that while responders do compete with each other to race to the bottom (consistent with the prediction), the monopolistic proposer settles down to offer a ‘fair’ share of the pie to those from whom he or she seeks majority support (contrary to the prediction).     

R&D Collaborations and Product Innovation*

This paper studies the relative impact on product innovation of research and development (R&D) collaborations with universities, suppliers, customers, and competitors. It argues that each type of R&D collaboration differs in terms of the breadth of new knowledge provided to the firm and in the ease of access of this new knowledge, resulting in a different impact on product innovation. As a result, it proposes that R&D collaborations with universities are likely to have the highest impact on product innovation, followed by R&D collaborations with suppliers, customers, and, finally, competitors. These arguments are tested on the R&D collaborations undertaken by a sample of 781 manufacturing firms during 1998–2002. The tests find that R&D collaborations with suppliers have the highest positive impact on product innovation, followed by collaborations with universities. Surprisingly, R&D collaborations with customers do not appear to affect product innovation, and collaborations with competitors appear to harm it. Moreover, the positive influence of R&D collaborations with universities and suppliers is sustained over the long‐term, but the negative influence of R&D collaborations with competitors is, fortunately, short‐lived. These findings indicate that ease of knowledge access, rather than breadth of knowledge, appears to drive the success of R&D collaborations for product innovation. R&D collaborations with suppliers or universities, which are characterized by relatively easy knowledge access, have a positive influence on product innovation, whereas R&D collaborations with customers or competitors, which are characterized by reduced ease in knowledge access, are not related or are even negatively related to product innovation. Moreover, to achieve product innovation with the help of R&D collaborations, it appears that the collaboration must first have mechanisms in place to facilitate the transfer of knowledge; once these are in place, it is better if the partner has a relatively narrow knowledge base. Thus, while R&D collaborations with both suppliers and universities are positively related to product innovation, the narrow knowledge base provided by collaborations with suppliers appears to have a larger positive impact on product innovation than the wider knowledge base provided by collaborations with universities. These arguments and findings are important and novel. The paper is one of the first to theoretically explain and empirically show that various types of collaborations have a differential influence on product innovation. It goes beyond previous literature by providing a theoretical logic for ranking the likely impact of types of collaborations on product innovation. The study also suggests to managers to carefully select the partners for their firms' R&D collaborations. Collaborations with suppliers appear to be the most promising for product innovation, followed by collaborations with universities, whereas collaborations with competitors may be detrimental to product innovation.