Can Marketing Help in Tackling Food Waste?: Proposals in Developed Countries

One third of food destined for human consumption is wasted globally, and much of the food waste that comes from high-income or developed countries is caused by poor marketing practices, consumer behavior, and consumption patterns. The present study focuses on developed countries to propose some marketing actions that could help in reducing food waste. A comprehensive analysis was carried out for each marketing variable, to provide a snapshot of actions and proposals that are being developed. Our study highlights the relevance of marketing in contributing to reduce food waste, through the removal of “Buy one, get one free” sales promotions, clarifying date labeling, or raising food waste awareness campaigns. The main contribution of this study is the proposal of marketing actions that help in tacking food waste.     

Why Do Some Households Save So Little? A Rational Explanation

This paper offers an explanation for the puzzle of low wealth holdings among a significant fraction of the elderly. Instead of invoking irrational, nonrational, or nonoptimal behavior to resolve the puzzle, it is shown that widespread low wealth holdings are consistent with a rational life-cycle model of saving with uncertain lifetime and borrowing constraint. When there is uncertainty about the length of life, it is optimal for some individuals to save little and exhaust their wealth early. The characteristics of these individuals are derived. The simulation results support that the model can account for low wealth holdings as well as early terminal wealth depletion. The analysis also rejects the common perception that uncertain lifetime reduces dissaving. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: D11, D91, E21, I12, J14.     

The Federal Student Loan Program: Quantitative implications for college enrollment and default rates

I quantify the effects of alternative student loan policies on college enrollment, borrowing behavior, and default rates in a heterogeneous model of life-cycle earnings and human capital accumulation. I find that the combination of learning ability and initial stock of human capital drives the decision to enroll in college, while parental wealth has minimal effects on enrollment. Repayment flexibility increases enrollment significantly, whereas relaxation of eligibility requirements has little effect on enrollment or default rates. The former policy benefits low-income households, while the latter has negligible effects on these households.     

Primary school students' interests in STEM careers: how conceptions of STEM professionals and gender moderation influence

International Journal of Technology and Design Education - This study assessed elementary school students’ conceptions of STEM professions and its potential influence on STEM career interest,...     

Some Preliminary Findings on Hong Kong Business Cycles

This paper presents some preliminary quantitative findings on the characteristics of business cycles in Hong Kong. The recently developed "approximate bandpass filter" is used to extract the fluctuations at business cycle frequencies (8 to 32 quarters) of macroeconomic time series. Based on the filtered time series, the paper identifies the cyclical turning points, describes the pattern of output fluctuations, and examines the co‐movement of various macroeconomic variables.     

Development and validation of a firm-level vertical and horizontal internationalization metric

The lack of valid and reliable measures of firm-level vertical and horizontal internationalization is impeding the development and testing of hypothesized relationships between these respective dimensions of internationalization and a range of important MNE characteristics, actions, and effects. Through a series of qualitative and quantitative studies using data collected from senior MNE executives (total N?=?3,146), we develop and validate a scale to measure both vertical and horizontal firm-level internationalization. Subscales for each type of internationalization prove to be unidimensional, reliable, temporally stable, and to have predictive, cross-cultural, cross-sectoral, and discriminant validity.     

Multi-stakeholders’ assessment of bike sharing service quality based on DEMATEL–VIKOR method

ABSTRACT

Bike sharing is a sustainable mode of urban transportation. Assessing the perceived service quality is essential to improve the development of bike sharing. Most of the existing research evaluates the service quality of bike sharing only from the perspective of its users. This study assesses the perceived quality gap among four different stakeholders including government regulators, platform operators, bike association and users. First, an evaluation criteria system consisting of sixteen criteria obtained from the five dimensions of tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy is constructed based on a revised service performance model. Thereafter, a hybrid multi-criteria decision-making model that combines Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) with VIsekriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje (VIKOR) is proposed. Then, the model is applied to evaluate the service quality of bike sharing in Xi’an City. Finally, some useful suggestions are given to improve the bike sharing service quality from the perspective of multi-stakeholders.     

Risk and Return: A Revisit Using Expected Returns

This paper uses direct estimates of expected returns to examine the link between standard measures of financial risk and investor return requirements. The results show that systematic risk commands a significant positive risk premium, much larger than found using historical returns as proxies for expectations. Furthermore, there are nonlinearities in the relationship between risk and return. Finally, we show that expected returns and risk premiums in the equity markets change over time and that these changes are related to changes in interest rates on U.S. government obligations.     

PRODUCT QUALITY,REPUTATION, AND MARKET STRUCTURE*

In a repeated game in which firms simultaneously choose price and product quality, but quality is observed only after consumption takes place, equilibria exhibiting high quality may exist in oligopoly markets even when the low‐quality one is a unique equilibrium outcome in monopoly and competitive markets. Oligopolists can sustain high quality through the threat of both a loss of reputation and a breakdown in tacit collusion. While we abstract from other reasons that market structure might affect product quality, we show that the inverted‐U shaped relationship between feasible quality and market structure is robust to several generalizations of the model.