The persistence of real estate cycles

This paper presents a model that attempts to explain the underlying causes of the prolonged cycles observed in real estate markets. In addition, the paper characterizes the features that make some property types more prone to such boom-and-bust behavior. The combination of demand uncertainty, adjustment costs, and construction lags leads to two phenomena that may help explain market persistence. The first phenomenon is the reluctance of owners to adjust occupancy levels, even in the face of large shifts in renter demand. The second phenomenon is the occurrence of periods of sustained overbuilding: the addition of new supply in the face of already high vacancy rates.     

短期事件对旅游的影响:以中国SARS危机为例

通过回顾近年来世界各国发生的短期危机对旅游产生的影响，重点分析2003年的SARS疫情给中国经济特别是旅游业造成的重大损失，讨论了不同的短期危机对旅游的不同影响以及旅游在危机后的不同恢复时间。旅游业对短期危机缺乏足够的防御能力，但通常能较为迅速的走上复苏之路。在这个过程中，适当的危机管理措施和有效的恢复策略是十分重要和不可或缺的。     

Measuring International Harmonization and Standardization

This paper analyses six recent studies dealing with the measurement of international harmonization of financial reporting. Methodological issues and problems relating to the definition and operationalization of terms, sources of data, statistical methods and causation are discussed, and an alternative methodology for measuring harmonization suggested.     

The pricing of U.S. IPOs by seasoned foreign firms

We examine the pricing of U.S. initial public offerings (IPOs) by foreign firms that are already seasoned in their domestic countries. Presumably, these equity offers have less downside risk for investors than typical IPOs since domestic share prices can be used to help establish a preoffer value for the firm's equity. In spite of the presumed diminished downside risk, we find that offers by firms from countries that impose foreign ownership restrictions and capital controls are on average underpriced, experiencing an average first-day return in the United States of 12.7%. This result stems in part from the underwriter's failure to price the issue to fully reflect the postoffer premium that often arises for the U.S. shares. In contrast, offers by firms from countries without ownership restrictions have an average first-day return of 0.0%.     

Evaluation of subsidiary marketing performance: combining process and outcome performance metrics

Issues in evaluating marketing performance and devising appropriate metrics for measurement have taken center stage in marketing thought and practice in recent years. We propose an empirical model that enables a multinational enterprise (MNE) to assess the marketing performance of its subsidiaries, taking into explicit consideration the fact that tactical actions by subsidiaries contribute to the creation of assets that can be harnessed for marketing outcomes. Thus, our model captures the asset creation abilities of marketing expenditures and also takes in to account the environmental differences of the context in which each MNE subsidiary operates. We evaluate comparative, overall, and process-level (creation of market assets and market yield) marketing performance in the context of multi-country operations. This simultaneous examination of marketing process and marketing outcome performance enables a global corporation to gain strategic, operational, and diagnostic insights into the performance of its subsidiaries. Our approach is empirically illustrated with an evaluation of the marketing performance of subsidiaries of a large global corporation.