Optimal retail sales strategies for old and new products in monopoly and horizontal competition scenarios

Advances in technology have made product updates more frequent and allowed consumers to choose different versions of the same product based on their preferences. It is crucial for retailers to understand how to formulate optimal sales strategies based on those different consumer preferences. To this end, we develop game models that consider the heterogeneity of consumer preferences under both monopoly and horizontal competition scenarios and perform the sensitivity analysis to examine the impact of consumer proportions and consumer preferences on retailers’ sales strategies. The results show that (i) regardless of competition or monopoly status, the original retailer can always maximize profit by setting prices based on the market share of traditional consumers, as long as the retailer sells both new and old versions of the product; (ii) the greater the competitive advantage of the competitor, the more advantageous the hybrid sales mode; (iii) if the price of the old product is below a certain threshold, there will be a positive profit for the original retailer when selling both the old and new products; and (iv) when consumer acceptance of competing retailers is lower, entering the retail market is not a good choice for competing retailers.     

A novel hybrid model for tourist volume forecasting incorporating search engine data

The precise prediction of tourism demand has long presented a challenge for both tourism professionals and academics. Tourist volume forecasting is a nonlinear problem, support vector regression (SVR) can approximate a nonlinear system with enough precision, but parameters tuning has always been an obstacle to developing SVR with good generalization potential. Furthermore, previous research mainly used historical observations of tourism demand as the inputs of SVR. This study introduces an approach that hybridizes SVR with the Bat algorithm (BA), namely BA-SVR, to forecast tourist volume by incorporating search engine data. In this model, BA is used to adjust the SVR parameters. To validate our proposed approach, tourist volume data for China’s Hainan province from August 2008 to October 2015 were used in conjunction with corresponding search engine data as numerical examples. The 12-month simulation forecasts indicate that the BA-SVR is an effective method that can outperform its traditional counterparts.     

DDS+PLL组合系统及实例

本文介绍了DDS PLL系统的实现方案和特点,指出了设计DDS PLL系统的注意事项,并通过实例证明DDS PLL系统能够实现较高的频谱质量,具有一定的实用价值。     

中低增长与日本经济发展新时期

2002~2006年及今后的景气恢复与发展,标志着日本已经进入一个以中低增长为特征的新的经济发展时期,而形成这一阶段特征的重要根源则在于日本混在的经济.产业.企业结构。为推进这一时期的持续发展,必须解决伴随"少子老龄化"的深层次经济结构问题。从认识混在结构和提高劳动生产率.工资入手,则是解决问题的关键所在。     

Managing Multiple Institutional Logics and the Use of Accounting: Insights from a German Higher Education Institution

This paper examines the use of accounting in managing the co-existence of different institutional logics in a German higher education institution (HEI), and its impact on the HEI. The study is of particular interest as the HEI analyzed pursued its own corporatization through a re-organization from a state into a foundation university. We show that this corporatization through the adoption of new public management related ideas leads to institutional complexity arising from the co-existence of extant state and emergent business logics. Our study suggests that HEIs may deploy particular accounting practices shaped by business logic only superficially, so as to satisfy stakeholders such as governmental authorities in order to enhance their legitimacy following a self-imposed reform, while the operation of the HEI remains rooted in state logic. Specifically, the findings suggest that in the case of actual changes to the budgetary process arising through the corporatization and an emergent logic, failure to replace abandoned accounting practices shaped by a previously dominant logic with equivalent practices adhering to either extant or emerging logic(s), may put the organization at risk. Overall, our study contributes to a better understanding of the dangers of an organizational response to institutional complexity, referred to as reactive decoupling, in the management of institutional complexity and points to its negative impact on organizations' hybridization capability.     

Valuation of an early exercise defined benefit underpin hybrid pension

In this paper, we consider three types of embedded options in pension benefit design. The first is the Florida second election (FSE) option, which has been offered to public employees in the state of Florida since 2002. The state runs both defined contribution (DC) and defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Employees who initially join the DC plan have the option to convert to the (DB) plan at a time of their choosing. The cost of the switch is assessed in terms of the ABO (Accrued Benefit Obligation), which is the expected present value of the accrued DB pension at the time of the switch. If the ABO is greater than the DC account, the employee is required to fund the difference. The second is the DB Underpin option, also known as a ‘floor offset’ or a ‘Greater-of-benefit’ plan, under which the employee participates in a DC plan, but with a guaranteed minimum benefit based on a traditional DB formula. The third option can be considered a variation on each of the first two. We remove the requirement from the FSE option for employees to fund any shortfall at the switching date. The resulting plan is similar to the DB underpin, but with the possibility of early exercise. We adopt an arbitrage-free pricing methodology to value each option. We analyse and value the optimal switching strategy for the employee by constructing an exercise frontier, and we illustrate numerically the difference between the FSE, DB Underpin and Early Exercise DB Underpin options.     

Online social construction of Taiwan's rural image: Comparison between Taiwanese self-representation and Chinese perception

Rurality is well-known to be over-idealised and romanticised as a result of the rural idyll in mass media. As online media evolves, diverse messages and images disseminated potentially reinforce inhabitants' mindset and influence outsider perceptions. In contrast to tourism websites that adopt only a single perspective, this study uses a web-content mining approach to examine Taiwan's rural image. A total of 3034 articles, including 2398 from online media in Taiwan and 636 from China on WeChat, related to rural Taiwan were collected and analysed. The results demonstrated that Taiwanese rurality as represented in local media is based on collective memories of the past and the harsh face of modern rural living mingled with idealised lifestyle concepts. Differences were also observed between the two local media: One presented a richly diverse rurality, whereas the other featured various topical reports about peasant resistance. Rurality from an outsider perspective evoked a picturesque Taiwan countryside instead of inhabitants' real lives. This study concluded that hybrid ideological influences, including urbancentric and market-oriented standpoints, a rural complex based on rural identity, the tension between Chinese and Western cultures, and the cross-strait relationship between Taiwan and China, influenced the construction of Taiwanese rural images.     

Preference for bid time in hybrid auctioned IPOs: Evidence from China

Using comprehensive bidding data of 783 Chinese IPOs from June 2009 to November 2012, we investigate institutions’ preference for bid time in hybrid auctions. We find that (1) earlier bids are associated with higher pricing errors, which is more pronounced in IPOs with greater uncertainty; (2) the bid prices of earlier bids tend to be aggressively high; (3) earlier bids are associated with fewer bid shares and allocations; (4) bidders submitting earlier bids (hereafter, earlier bidders) have inferior profits; and (5) earlier bidders show persistence in bid time. Overall, the empirical results remain robust after controlling for unobserved bidder-underwriter relationships and indicate that earlier bidders tend to be less informed. Our findings reveal and highlight the effect of bid time on identifying informative bids in hybrid auctions.     

Can information confusion caused by the financing model of new economy companies be eliminated?

New economy companies often use convertible and redeemable preferred shares with equity and debt characteristics as financing tools to reduce risk during their early stages of growth. According to relevant accounting standards, such preferred shares should be classified as financial liabilities and measured at fair value, with changes in fair value recognized in profit or loss. This can lead to confusing financial information: the better a company’s development prospects, the higher its redemption or conversion price and loss, which can result in a large negative net asset value. A successful initial public offering, however, could offset large losses and negative net asset value. Following the development of accounting standards, this article thoroughly analyzes various proposals to modify relevant accounting standards and eliminate confusing information. This article also proposes possible problems and solutions as a reference for accounting standard setters and the various stakeholders in new economy companies.     

基于ARIMA—SVM组合模型的我国农产品价格预测研究

为准确把握国内农产品价格波动规律,提高农产品价格预测精度,构建农产品价格自回归移动平均与支持向量机（ARIMA—SVM）组合预测模型,以ARIMA模型揭示农产品价格线性变动规律,以SVM模型揭示非线性变动规律,并结合1999—2011年我国农产品价格指数月度数据,使用组合模型和ARIMA、SVM单个模型对农产品价格进行预测。预测结果显示：组合模型比单个ARIMA、SVM模型预测精度高,能够提高农产品价格预测的准确性,是一种有效的农产品价格预测模型。