Investment Incentives in Procurement Auctions

This paper investigates firms' incentives to invest in cost reduction in the first price sealed bid auction, a format largely used for procurement. Two central features of the model are that we allow firms to be heterogeneous and that investment is observable. We find that firms will tend to underinvest in cost reduction because they anticipate fiercer head-on competition. Using the second price auction as a benchmark, we also find that the first price auction will elicit less investment from market participants and that this is socially inefficient. These results have implications for market design when investment is important.     

The Essential Features of Technology and Technology Education: A Conceptual Framework for the Development of OBE (Outcomes Based Education) Related Programmes in Technology Education

It appears that programme development in technology education is emerging from an atheoretical perspective. This could be attributed to the absence/neglect of conceptual frameworks (philosophical underpinning) in the development of programmes in technology education. This article explores the role of the content dimension of the 'essential features' of technology and technology education in OBE (Outcomes Based Education) related programme development. An instructional programme was developed using criteria derived from the essential features of technology and technology education. In order to gauge learners' experience, in relation to these essential features, a qualitative case study involving 20 learners was undertaken at a College of Education. Engagement with theprogramme proved to be an empowering experience for the learners who had hitherto not had the opportunity to experience a formal programme in technology education. Although it could not be proved conclusively that cognitive development had occurred, positive inter-dependence,shared responsibility, social skills and enhanced learning were evident. The study has shown that criteria derived from the 'essential features' of technology and technology education could serve as a reliable yardstick to measure the extent of learning in relation to these essential features     

国有企业、金融市场改革与养老保险制度改革的互动效应--中国如何解决老年保障问题?

中国政府非常清楚社会保障所面临的危机，决定寻求解决办法。拟议中的社会保障改革的核心是积累制和整合条块分割的体系，计划为每个工人建立个人退休账户，对养老基金进行有效投资。然而，这种改革受阻于三个关键因素。(1)在向积累制的转化过程中必须支付特制成本；(2)现有的社会保障体系条块分割、分散化管理3(3)已经积累的基金尚未取得高收益，也未分配到最有效率的用途上。     

What do professional forecasters actually predict?

This paper studies what professional forecasters predict. We use spectral analysis and state space modeling to decompose economic time series into trend, business cycle, and irregular components. We examine which components are captured by professional forecasters by regressing their forecasts on the estimated components extracted from both the spectral analysis and the state space model. For both decomposition methods, we find that, in the short run, the Survey of Professional Forecasters can predict almost all of the variation in the time series due to the trend and the business cycle, but that the forecasts contain little or no significant information about the variation in the irregular component.     

“Speculative Influence Network” during financial bubbles: application to Chinese stock markets

We introduce the Speculative Influence Network (SIN) to decipher the causal relationships between sectors (and/or firms) during financial bubbles. The SIN is constructed in two steps. First, we develop a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) of regime-switching between a normal market phase represented by a geometric Brownian motion and a bubble regime represented by the stochastic super-exponential Sornette and Andersen (Int J Mod Phys C 13(2):171–188, 2002) bubble model. The calibration of the HMM provides the probability at each time for a given security to be in the bubble regime. Conditional on two assets being qualified in the bubble regime, we then use the transfer entropy to quantify the influence of the returns of one asset i onto another asset j, from which we introduce the adjacency matrix of the SIN among securities. We apply our technology to the Chinese stock market during the period 2005–2008, during which a normal phase was followed by a spectacular bubble ending in a massive correction. We introduce the Net Speculative Influence Intensity variable as the difference between the transfer entropies from i to j and from j to i, which is used in a series of rank ordered regressions to predict the maximum loss (%MaxLoss) endured during the crash. The sectors that influenced other sectors the most are found to have the largest losses. There is some predictability obtained by using the transfer entropy involving industrial sectors to explain the %MaxLoss of financial institutions but not vice versa. We also show that the bubble state variable calibrated on the Chinese market data corresponds well to the regimes when the market exhibits a strong price acceleration followed by clear change of price regimes. Our results suggest that SIN may contribute significant skill to the development of general linkage-based systemic risks measures and early warning metrics.     

The Dynamics of Self-Esteem and Physical Self: Between Preservation and Adaptation

The aim of this study was to model and characterize the psychologicalprocesses that underlie the dynamics of global self-esteem and physicalself over time. Twice a day for 228 consecutive days, seven participantscompleted a short inventory (PSI-6, Ninot et al., 2001) measuring sixsubjective dimensions: global self-esteem, physical self-worth, physicalcondition, sport competence, physical strength, and attractive body.Each series was modeled by means of ARIMA procedures. The resultsshowed that a simple moving average model provided a satisfactoryaccount for the dynamics of all series. This model suggests that acombination of two opposite processes underlies the dynamics ofself-concept: preservation, which tends to restore the previousvalue after a disturbance, and adaptation, which tends to inflectthe series in the direction of the perturbation.     

Using diffusion models to forecast market size in emerging markets with applications to the Chinese car market

Marketing managers have to forecast the market size and this forecast guides strategic decisions whether to continue exporting, open new factories or expand existing production operations. Forecasting sales and the market size is a challenging task; even more so in emerging markets where data is limited and the market demand is changeable. This research proposes a novel approach that applies diffusion models using car ownership data to forecast car sales. Car ownership data may be easier to access than sales data in emerging markets but marketing managers are more interested in the sales forecast. Researchers propose using diffusion models to forecast the adoption of new products or products which are new to consumers in a market. This research demonstrates that marketing managers can use diffusion models to predict car sales in China where cars are new products to most consumers in this market. Since the majority of car buyers in China are first time buyers, car manufacturers and retailers must also forecast when the market composition will change. This effectively means predicting when first time car buying will start to slow down and repeat/replacement purchase or second hand car purchase will become more important. To forecast both sales and market composition change, marketing managers must choose a robust model. Managers want insights from models that have been tested robustly especially in less stable market conditions. In this context, this study illustrates the value of using a rolling forecast instead of a fixed horizon approach when comparing and choosing which model to use to forecast both sales and market composition change for the Chinese car market.     

“Work is my passion”: The different affective,behavioural, and cognitive consequences of harmonious and obsessive passion toward work

This study applies the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand et al., 2003) to the work setting and examines the relationships between harmonious passion (characterized by a strong but controllable desire to engage in an activity), obsessive passion (characterized by an internal pressure to carry out an activity), and optimal functioning outcomes at work. Harmonious passion associated positively with: mental health; three elements of flow (i.e., concentration, control, and autotelic experience); vitality, and affective commitment. These relationships were partly mediated by satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In contrast, obsessive passion directly and negatively predicted mental health and weakly but positively predicted autotelic experience. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed. Copyright ©2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.