Examining the ‘point of frustration’. The think-aloud method applied to online search tasks

By revisiting past research on the think-aloud method; its advantages, drawbacks and aptness for tracing online search processes will be examined. What emerges from this review is the need for more attention to detail so as to generate comparable findings. This is especially crucial as the method lends itself to both quantitative and qualitative data analysis and has been employed in a broad range of fields. Thus, a major concern is to describe in detail the design, procedure and framework of analysis of a qualitative study concerned with information needs of professionals in online search processes. Here, think-aloud protocols were used in combination with questionnaires and qualitative interviews, to examine how engineers and architects solved a search task on the European Union website (www.europa.eu). The protocols provided valuable data for tracing increasing levels of frustration followed by the ‘point of frustration’—when the participants gave up searching.     

服务行业管理中的“心礼”素质

服务礼仪是显现从业人员的道德素质,塑造良好的服务形象的重要窗口.在服务行业管理中,要求从业人员行为有礼,必须要心中有礼;心"礼"通过行"礼",体现服务文明.本文从礼存于"心"、礼化为"心"、礼显于"心"等方面,分析了服务"心礼"的重要性及其实现途径.     

Is public capital productive in Europe?

This paper addresses the issue of whether and by how much public investment or public capital can increase GDP. In comparison with the literature on the subject, we apply many different methodologies to answer these questions. A vector autoregressive (VAR) model (for France, Italy, Germany, the UK and the USA), a panel composed of 6 European countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands) and a regional panel (French regions) are estimated. Public investment is shown to be a significant determinant of output; this is also true for public capital but to a lesser extent than public investment with a VAR methodology. The size of the estimated coefficient is also more realistic than those obtained in the literature. This empirical result confirms that the focus of some economists on safeguarding the level of public investment is not misplaced. The debate on the introduction of a ‘golden rule of public finance’ in the European Monetary Union is legitimate in this respect.     

欧盟一体化对中国经济发展的影响

本文从中欧贸易、中国引进外资及技术方面阐述了欧盟对中国经济的影响,并提出相应的合作策略。     

Testing for convergence of the Okun’s Law coefficient in Europe

Without convergence of macroeconomic parameters representative of the nature of adjustment mechanisms, even a common shock to members of a monetary union can lead to different macroeconomic consequences across the union and, eventually, to the need for more or less co-ordinated specific policies. In this paper, we test for the presence of convergence of the Okun’s Law coefficient (OLC) among several alternative groupings of European economies. The empirical strategy adopted is based on the evaluation of the time path of rolling regression estimates of the OLC for European countries. We then use a testing procedure suggested by Evans [Evans P (1996) J Econ Dynam Control 20:1027–1049] to investigate the convergence, or non-convergence, of the OLC in several groups of European countries by examining how the cross-country variance of the OLC evolves over time in these groups. A hypothesis of medium-term convergence of the OLC is rejected for most of the European country groups examined.      

Time Inconsistency and Free‐Riding in a Monetary Union

In monetary unions, a time inconsistency problem in monetary policy leads to a novel type of free‐rider problem in the setting of non‐monetary policies. The free‐rider problem leads union members to pursue lax non‐monetary policies that induce the monetary authority to generate high inflation. Free‐riding can be mitigated by imposing constraints on non‐monetary policies. Without a time inconsistency problem, the union has no free‐rider problem; then constraints on non‐monetary policies are unnecessary and possibly harmful. This theory is here detailed and applied to several non‐monetary policies: labor market policy, fiscal policy, and bank regulation.     

European monetary arrangements: Implications for the dollar,exchange rate variability and credibility

This paper uses the recent history of the ERM to gain insights into what might happen to exchange rates on the road to EMU. to do this, the paper examines the variability of exchange rates, the transmission of monetary policy between countries, the role of the dollar in ERM exchange rate crises, and ERM members' credibility as measured by the realignment probabilities prior to the September 1992 crisis. We identify two factors that might have contributed to the September 1992 crisis: high German interest rates and weakness of the US dollar. We find that behaviour of exchange rates has changed over time and differs between ERM and non-ERM currencies. We also demonstrate that changes in German short-term interest rates influence interest rates in other ERM countries and vice versa.     

Factors affecting supplier quality performance

The interest among practitioners and researchers in quality management and other factors that may affect quality performance reflects the understanding that a firm's output (i.e., performance) can be only as good as the quality of its inputs. However, studies of the quality management-quality performance relationship have led to mixed results regarding the existence of a positive correlation between the two. The results of a survey of 348 aerospace component manufacturers are examined here to provide new insights into factors that affect supplier quality performance. In this study, the inconsistent association between practice and performance is accounted for by considering the process view of quality management. Process management links quality management with process optimization to address both effectiveness and efficiency concerns. Performance is also affected by transaction-specific investments (asset specificity) in the buyer/supplier relationship that lead to poorer component quality and higher transaction costs. Asset specificity and organizational efficiency at implementing Total Quality Management hold great promise for resolving the mixed practice-performance findings in the quality management literature.     

浅谈如何解决审计机关依法行政中遇到的问题

为进一步维护国家财政经济秩序，促进廉政建设，保障国民经济健康发展。针对目前审计机关依法行政中遇到的主要问题，提出健全和完善审计法律、法规体系，完善法律法规间的对应关系等建议及解决办法，以供审计人员在工作参考。