Web 2.0 and opportunities for small businesses

The burst of the dot-com balloon closed the era of Web 1.0. In the process, we observed the creation and disappearance of many small businesses globally. The dynamic and linked web pages provided new pathways to online businesses. However, most of the new online business models still followed the traditional practices of the industrial era which could be characterized by closeness, uniformity, and one-way communication. A new set of new technologies, called Web 2.0, offers new opportunities, blurs the boundaries between online and offline activities, opening a new era with flagships of openness, collaboration, and participation. In this study, by reviewing the properties of Web 2.0, we investigate opportunities for small businesses in the Web 2.0 era. The findings of this study can provide helpful guidelines for small businesses to begin using and leveraging Web 2.0.     

Ubiquitous computing and its effects on small businesses

Much of the previous literature on ubiquitous computing (UbiComp) has been limited to case studies, reporting innovative practices of specific technologies (e.g., RFID) and social issues. There is a general paucity of research on strategic application of UbiComp, especially to small businesses. To address this issue, this study provides a broad overview of the current practices of UbiComp in leading countries and presents possible future directions. Then, the effects of UbiComp on small businesses are discussed. Through a cross-national comparative analysis, we present four strategies to provide some guidance to the countries that are currently considering entering into the UbiComp race.     

Competition between auctions

Even though auctions are capturing an increasing share of commerce, they are typically treated in the theoretical economics literature as isolated. That is, an auction is typically treated as a single seller facing multiple buyers or as a single buyer facing multiple sellers. In this paper, we review the state of the art of competition between auctions. We consider three different types of competition: competition between auctions, competition between formats, and competition between auctioneers vying for auction traffic. We highlight the newest experimental, statistical, and analytical methods in the analysis of competition between auctions.     

Global asymptotic stability of a competitive equilibrium with recursive preferences

Summary. This paper demonstrates global stability of a competitive equilibrium in a multi-sector model of many firms, each of which exhibits constant returns to scale technology, and of infinitely lived consumers, whose preferences are recursive but not necessarily additively separable. In the topology induced by a sup-norm, the dominant diagonal blocks condition (Araujo and Scheinkman (Econometrica 45, 1977)) allows us to apply the implicit function theorem to obtain continuity of the equilibrium path. If a stationary equilibrium is locally asymptotically stable, then the continuity of the equilibrium path and smoothness of a weight function on heterogeneous consumers imply that all equilibrium paths converge to the steady state. The dominant diagonal blocks condition is also shown to be sufficient for the local asymptotic turnpike property. Received: December 13, 1996; revised version: June 2, 1999     

我国民营企业并购的动因研究

我国民营企业的并购活动已初具规模,文章通过对具体案例的研究认为其外在动因主要来自于国有企业改革的深化、市场竞争的全球化和科技成果的产业化,其内在动因则可概括为财务动因、要素动因、竞争动因和治理动因四个方面,并从中总结了我国民营企业并购动因以财务并购为主的特     

Fiscal policy and economic growth: some evidence from China

Review of World Economics - China has experienced profound economic and social changes in recent decades. During this period, China’s fiscal policy framework has been substantially reformed....     

LGB+ identification and donations to Hurricane Irma victims: The role of empathy

Extant literature finds that discrimination promotes empathy towards other people in similar predicaments. We propose that discrimination increases empathy more generally—namely, LGB+ individuals, because of their experience with discrimination in society, which promotes empathy, are more charitable than heterosexual individuals. We recruited 5,131 American respondents of whom 378 identified as LGB+. LGB+ -identifying respondents scored higher on empathy, increasing their monetary donations to victims of Hurricane Irma, relative to heterosexual respondents. Importantly, greater experience with discrimination enhanced LGB+ respondents' empathy and charity. We situate our results within literature that has studied the charitable behaviors of LGB+ individuals. We acknowledge limitations to our study and suggest ideas for further research.     

Empirical Analyses of Extreme Value Models for the South African Mining Index

While the classical normality assumption is simple to implement, it is well known to underestimate the leptokurtic behaviour demonstrated in most financial data. After examining properties of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange Mining Index returns, we propose two extreme value models to fit its negative tail with a higher degree of accuracy. The generalised extreme value distribution (GEVD) is fitted using the block maxima approach, while the generalised Pareto distribution (GPD) is fitted using the peaks‐over‐threshold method. Numerical assessment of value‐at‐risk (VaR) estimates indicates that both GEVD and GPD increasingly outperform the normal distribution as we move further into the lower tail. In addition, GEVD produces lower estimates relative to that of the historical VaR, and GPD provides slightly more conservative estimates for adequate capitalisation.     

The logarithmic vector multiplicative error model: an application to high frequency NYSE stock data

We develop a general form logarithmic vector multiplicative error model (log-vMEM). The log-vMEM improves on existing models in two ways. First, it is a more general form model as it allows the error terms to be cross-dependent and relaxes weak exogeneity restrictions. Second, the log-vMEM specification guarantees that the conditional means are non-negative without any restrictions imposed on the parameters. We further propose a multivariate lognormal distribution and a joint maximum likelihood estimation strategy. The model is applied to high frequency data associated with a number of NYSE-listed stocks. The results reveal empirical support for full interdependence of trading duration, volume and volatility, with the log-vMEM providing a better fit to the data than a competing model. Moreover, we find that unexpected duration and volume dominate observed duration and volume in terms of information content, and that volatility and volatility shocks affect duration in different directions. These results are interpreted with reference to extant microstructure theory.