The time-to-maturity pattern of futures price sensitivity to news

This paper examines the effect time-to-maturity has on how sensitive futures prices are to news flows. Unscheduled daily news flows that relate to the underlying asset of a futures contract are related to the daily realized volatility of futures to calculate a price-news sensitivity ratio. The observed pattern follows an inverted U-shape relationship and has a bearing on whether the maturity effect will be noticeable in a futures contract. This paper also shows that by examining the peak-to-maturity of the price sensitivity to news pattern, it is possible to better identify which contracts are more likely to yield higher volatility.     

Mobile payment and online to offline retail business models

Mobile payments are services that use mobile devices to make payments. When digitalization moves across channel boundaries, online to offline channel retail will expand. Online to offline retailing will become the future retail owner stream and retail operators will move from cross-channel or multi-channel to omni-channel. This study investigates a market survey in Taiwan developing a data mining analytics including clustering analysis and association rules based on a snowflake schema database design. The role of mobile payment is determined in terms of new retail payment mechanism that promotes a better consumer purchase experience in an online to offline business environment.     

The Importance of Tax Adjustments When Evaluating Wage Expectations*

Using elicited expectations of future gross salaries, we evaluate characteristics causing German students to make larger or smaller estimation errors. While students seem to underestimate actual salaries by 18 percent, we show that these errors are highly attributable to misconceptions of the progressive income tax. Developing a suitable adjustment procedure, we correct students’ estimates and find that errors decline by 12 percentage points. Conducting regression analyses, we reveal strong connections with students’ age, gender, work experience, secondary school track, and knowledge about student loans. These results change notably if not controlling for students’ misconceptions of the tax system.     

The influence of customer-to-customer interactions on elderly consumers’ satisfaction and social well-being

This study highlights the valuable role the hospitality industry can play in addressing a societal problem by studying how social interactions between elderly consumers and other customers influence the satisfaction and social well-being of the former. The data were collected from 268 elderly consumers in local coffee shops in the United Kingdom using a self-administrated questionnaire. The findings reveal that elderly customers’ interactions with other customers have a direct effect both on customer satisfaction and social well-being. They also show that social interactions with other customers have both direct and indirect effects on the social well-being of elderly customers. The study provides good evidence for how commercial hospitality settings can serve as a space for social exchange that helps to alleviate social isolation.     

How psychological and contextual factors contribute to travelers’ propensity to choose green hotels?

Despite the growing popularity of green hotels, there remains a dearth of research examining travelers’ intentions to choose green hotels. The study addresses this research gap by developing and testing an integrated model of green hotel behavior in an emerging market of India. We use a sequential approach of SEM and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 347 responses collected from Indian travelers to gain a more in-depth understanding of the role of biospheric value, green trust, willingness to pay premium, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control in determining green hotel intentions. The findings show that presence of green trust is a significant and necessary condition for green hotel choice. Additionally, absence of willingness to pay premium, biospheric value, attitude, and subjective norm were found to deter travelers from choosing green hotels. These findings offer unique insights for managers in developing marketing strategies to enhance travelers’ green hotel adoption.     

Sustainable consumption in China: New trends and research interests

China is currently the largest CO₂ emitter in the world and demonstrates one of the highest levels of energy consumption. The sustainable consumption behavior has increased in China, especially in urban cities. Some clear evidence of this includes food purchasing behavior. Recent studies have also suggested that considering full product information transparency, consumers are willing to pay premium prices for products. With this in mind, sustainable consumption must still be facilitated by related policies, regulations, and tools. This study focuses on sustainable consumption behavior in China and collects and analyzes the literature from the last decade (2007–2017) on the topic. In so doing, it highlights new trends and research topics against the background of circular economy development. The method of systematic review is applied. The review is categorized into several main groups: national policies and regulations, the green awareness of consumers, the definition of related concepts, the barriers between sustainable consumption and the circular economy, and the indicators for circular economy assessment in China. Future research directions are discussed. Furthermore, future challenges are addressed from three perspectives: sustainable consumption facilitating the circular economy, “cradle‐to‐cradle” practices, and the link between the European Union and China. This is a fundamental study in the research domain of sustainable consumption behavior. It provides added value that benefits both academic researchers and decision makers. It also sheds light on the further study of sustainable consumption behavior in China from a macroeconomic perspective.     

Between Neoliberal Governance and the Right to the City: Participatory politics in Berlin and Tel Aviv

Based on a comparison of Berlin and Tel Aviv, this article investigates the ways in which ensembles of participatory instruments mediate between neoliberal urban regimes and political agency shaping differentially the meaning of participation and the types of claims that can be advanced. The article gives an overview of the recent history of both cities through the lens of participatory politics. Two in‐depth case studies further examine the relationship between participatory politics and claim making in each setting: the recent conflict over a social center in the district of Friedrichshain‐Kreuzberg in Berlin and the Levinsky tent city of 2011 in Tel Aviv. In the concluding section, the article suggests that, rather than assuming that participatory tools either co‐opt movements or can be appropriated by them, we need to rethink the relationship between participatory tools, rights and recognition, and ask how participatory structures and political agency constitute each other in interwoven dynamics.     

IS FINANCIAL SUPPORT FOR PRIVATE R&D ALWAYS JUSTIFIED? A DISCUSSION BASED ON THE LITERATURE ON GROWTH

Many economists have long held that market failures create a gap between social and private returns to research and development (R&D), thereby limiting private incentives to invest in R&D. However, this common belief that firms significantly underinvest in R&D is increasingly being challenged, leading the rationale behind public support for private R&D to be questioned. In this paper, we attempt to clarify the perspectives of two sources: the theoretical literature on endogenous growth, and its recent developments in integrating a geographical dimension, and the empirical literature that measures the social returns to R&D in relation to the private returns. Ultimately, we are able to clearly distinguish among different types of market failures and compare their relative impact on the gap between the private and social returns to R&D. Two main conclusions are reached. First, systematic firm underinvestment in R&D is not demonstrated. Second, even though instances of underinvestment do occur, they are mainly explained by surplus appropriability problems rather than by knowledge externalities. This suggests the need for a new policy mix that employs more demand‐oriented instruments and is more concentrated on identifying efficient allocations among activities rather than merely increasing global private R&D investment.     

How forestland size affects household profits from timber harvests: A case-study in China’s Southern collective forest area

To improve the economies of scale in forest management and reduce the fragmentation of forestland, the Chinese central government has implemented a collective forest tenure supplementary reform since 2008. This has included a series of policies for motivating transfer of forestlands use rights among households in the country’s Southern Collective Forest Area (SCFA). However, to date there is little evidence that large-scale forest owners can earn more profits from timber harvests than small-scale forest owners in the SCFA. Using data collected from household surveys in the three of the SCFA’s provinces in 2016, this paper examines the return to scale of forestland ownership for timber harvests in this region, and how the scale of forestland ownership affects households’ profits from timber harvests. The results show a constant return to scale in timber harvests in the case provinces in China’s SCFA, that forestland area makes the most important contribution to the output of timber harvests, and that fragmentation of forestland results in lower profits from timber harvests. It appears that a moderate scale of forestland ownership should be identified for increasing the profits from timber harvests. With the rapid urbanization throughout China, an increase in off-farm employment among rural household members has a negative impact on timber harvests in the region. We argue that policymakers should realize the importance of encouraging the forestland transfers and improve the concentration of forestlands in the next stage of forest tenure rights reform in China’s SCFA.     

What lies beneath: Climate change,land expropriation,and zaï agroecological innovations by smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana

Large-scale land acquisitions (LSLAs) are increasing in Ghana amid a weak legal and regulatory framework. This paper explores the impacts of this phenomenon on farmer innovations under recurrent environmental changes. Using a case study of zaï, an indigenous innovative farming practice, the paper makes two interrelated arguments. Firstly, it shows that the pervasive enclosures coerced by the Ghanaian state undermine how indigenous knowledge could be proactively deployed for climate risk management. Secondly, LSLAs produce a social barrier to climate change adaptation, as they lead to heightened uncertainty and apprehension among farmers, which affects decisions on climate risk management. More specifically, land expropriation is an example of how adaptation could be hindered by governance, institutions, and policy at the extra-local scale, including not only existing land use laws, but also the constitutional guarantee of private property. The evidence supporting these arguments come from survey data on 619 plots, 70 in-depth interviews, village-level transect walks, and participant observations. Overall, the paper contributes to emerging debates at the interface of land use policy, climate justice, and sustainable adaptation. Theoretically, it also contributes to understanding State-society relations, as well as the political economy of eminent domain, often justified through discourses of “public benefits.”