Threat of entry,asymmetric information,and pricing

This paper examines the impact of asymmetric information on incumbent firms' propensity to engage in limit pricing when faced with threat of entry. I draw from information economics to argue that incumbents will use price to respond ex ante to entry in situations characterized by asymmetric information. I suggest two situations in which asymmetric information can arise: when potential entrants are from outside the primary industry and when incumbent firms are members of R&D consortia. I then study pricing in the U.S. cable TV industry to show that pricing patterns of incumbent cable TV systems are consistent with limit pricing when the relationship between the incumbent and potential entrant is characterized by asymmetric information. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Examining Antecedents and Consequences of Brand Personality in the Upper-Upscale Business Hotel Segment

ABSTRACT

Relying on Aaker's (1996 Aaker, D. A. 1996. Building strong brands, New York: Free Press.  [Google Scholar]) dimensions of brand personality, this study investigated the relationships between brand personality and its antecedents and consequences in the upper-upscale business hotel segment. Two dimensions of brand personality––competence and sophistication––were confirmed. User imagery was found to be the strongest predictor of brand personality, while trust had the significant mediating effect on the relationship between brand personality and loyalty. The theoretical and practical implications of this study's findings are included to assist both academicians and practitioners in the lodging industry in enriching their understanding of customers' perceptions of and attitudes toward hotel brand.     

The Antecedents and Consequences of Brand Prestige in Luxury Restaurants

The purpose of this study was to investigate the antecedents and consequences of brand prestige in luxury restaurants. Based on the existing theoretical background, it was proposed that four types of brand-related stimulus form brand experience in consumer memory and thus influence the formation of brand prestige. Through a review of the literature, it was also hypothesized that brand prestige can result in five managerial outcomes: patrons' well-being perception, information costs saved, perceived price fairness, satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Based on the theoretical relationships between the conceptual constructs, a model was proposed and then tested utilizing data collected from 527 luxury restaurant patrons. The results of data analysis indicate that two types of brand-related stimulus (sensory and intellectual) aid in the creation of brand prestige, and can thus help to: enhance patrons' well-being perception; reduce patrons' information searching efforts; and enhance perceived price fairness. As a result, patron satisfaction and positive behavioral intentions can be induced. The critical managerial implications of these findings are then discussed in the latter part of the article.     

人民币汇率变动对我国物价传导效应的分析

本文对汇率传导理论及其效应进行了简要回顾,并在国内外学者研究的基础上,对2005年汇改以来汇率变动对我国价格的传递效应进行实证分析。实证结果表明,汇率变动对国内价格指数存在一定的传递效应,但作用较小,以人民币升值对抗物价上涨并不可行。     

货币供给、通货膨胀和粮食价格波动互动关系研究

在VAR模型和方差分解基础上,利用1997年以来的月度数据,分析货币供应量、通货膨胀和粮食价格之间的关系。结果显示：通货膨胀对粮食价格有显著影响,存在货币供应量、通货膨胀到粮食价格变动这一传导途径,同时发现通货膨胀有较强的自身惯性,通过抑制粮食价格来控制通货膨胀是无效的。     

The multi-market analysis of a housing price transmission model

In this article, we examine dynamic relationships among housing prices from four first-tier cities in China from December 2000 to May 2010 and present an equilibrium model of housing price in multi-markets. By explicitly incorporating and modelling endogenous price series in competing housing markets, our empirical model is able to capture the existence of long-run equilibrium relationships and important short-run dynamics and price structures such as price leadership, price transmission lag and asymmetric price responses. Such multi-market analysis has generalized implications and can easily be applied to analyse the pricing dynamics among other real estate markets in the world. Our major contribution lies in two aspects. First, we employ an Error-Correction Model (ECM) with Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAG) to study the price dynamics in the four largest and key housing markets in China. Second, we uncover a price transmission among these housing markets in China and provide an insightful understanding of price adjustment across markets. The revealed effective price transmission and high correlation among these different markets actually is not a good thing for a stable financial system and for the defence against price bubbles in the housing market.     

Market volatility and the dynamic hedging of multi-commodity price risk

Commodity cash and futures prices experienced a severe boom-and-bust cycle between 2006 and 2009. Increases in commodity price volatility have raised concerns about the usefulness of commodity futures and options as risk management tools. Dynamic hedging strategies have the potential to improve risk management when conditional (co)variances depart significantly from their unconditional, long-run counterparts and may be useful to decision-makers despite their greater complexity and higher transaction costs. We propose a Nonparametric Copula-based Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedastic (NPC-GARCH) approach to estimate time-varying hedge ratios, and evaluate the benefits of dynamic hedging during four sub-periods between 2000 and 2011 using a stylized Texas cattle feedlot management problem. The NPC-GARCH approach allows for a flexible, nonlinear and asymmetric dependence structure between cash and futures prices for different commodities. We find that NPC-GARCH dynamic hedging performs better than either static, GARCH-Dynamic Conditional Correlation (DCC) or GARCH-Baba, Engle, Kraft and Kroner (BEKK) hedging in terms of lower tail risk (expected shortfall), but that there is no significant difference between hedging approaches in terms of portfolio variance reduction.     

Volatility and stock price indexes

The stochastic approach to index numbers has been successfully applied to the estimation of inflation, the world interest rate and international competitiveness.?One distinct advantage of this approach is that it provides the whole distribution of the index, not simply one value. In this article, we extend the stochastic approach to the estimation of a stock market index. We demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify ‘redundant stocks’ that do not contribute significantly to the overall index.?For index tracking purposes, these stocks can be safely excluded.     

The effects of oil price shocks on expenditure category CPI

In this study, we apply a two-block structural vector autoregressive (VAR) model proposed by Kilian and Park (2009) in order to investigate the dynamic effects of changes in oil price on the expenditure category consumer price index (CPI) in the United States and Japan. Our results confirm that each expenditure category price index responded very differently to the same structural shock, and that whether changes in oil price function as a positive stimulus or a negative shock for the individual expenditure category prices also depends on the kind of underlying shock that drives the changes in oil price. Finally, our results also reveal that the manner in which changes in oil price affect each expenditure category price differs between the United States and Japan and these detailed-level differences may lead to aggregate-level differences in the price response of both countries to changes in oil price.     

Price convergence in US cities: a cointegration approach with two structural breaks

This article investigates how the price indices of major cities of the US respond to the shock from a city and from monetary policy. We find that the crisis of Bretton Woods system in 1968 and the oil crisis in 1974 should be incorporated as structural breaks in monetary policy variables and price indices. Using cointegration technique with structural break in our aggregated data, we find that the average half-life is 1.75 years, which is closer to what some of others found in disaggregated data, and that the interest rate is an effective tool for controlling cities’ price in short run.