Economic relations with the Third World

While foreign policy as well as economic, ideological and purely humanitarian considerations all continue to play a role in economic relations between the CMEA countries and the Third World, a shift in the relative weights of these various aspects has become discernible in recent years. What conclusions can be drawn as to the future behaviour of the CMEA countries towards the developing countries?     

Simon's and Siegel's responses to the 'mixed strategy anomaly': a missed case in the sensitivity of economics to empirical evidence

In some of their papers published in the 1950s, Herbert Simonand Sidney Siegel responded to the so-called mixed strategyanomaly in ways which deserve more attention. They producednot only (i) immediate defences of the economic theory of theirown time, but also (ii) ideas and solutions that have laterturned out to be significant contributions to the developmentof the economic theory of choice and decision-making and theseparation of experimental economics from experimental psychology.These observations suggest that economics can be more responsiveto empirical anomalies than has been assumed. Furthermore, knowledgeof the desirable responsiveness to anomalies can provide meansof avoiding the non-desirable immunity to anomalies.     

“Damocles shadowing”

Since the widening of the fluctuation bands in the European Monetary System in 1993 the previous core countries have pursued a “D-Mark shadowing”. The characteristic feature of this shadowing is the participating countries' willingness to voluntarily return to, and maintain, the old exchange rate parities. Our author analyses this process and its consequences for the planned monetary union.     

The influence of trust perceptions on German tourists’ intention to book a sustainable hotel: a new approach to analysing marketing information

ABSTRACT

This study examined the relationship between German tourists’ trust perceptions and their intention to book a sustainable hotel, pioneering a new quantitative approach to sustainable tourism marketing. Data came from 300 respondents who participated in an online survey. Respondents were given a digital brochure to read containing information about a “fictitious” three-star beach hotel in Portugal, before completing a questionnaire that measured inter alia their intention to book this sustainable hotel. Both individual “general trust” (perception of others’ trustworthiness) and “specific trust” towards the fictitious hotel in the brochure were measured. The survey also evaluated respondents’ perceptions about the usefulness of the information in the brochure. Multiple regression analysis of the data indicated that general trust, trusting the hotel and perceived usefulness of the brochure were positively and significantly related to booking intentions. An interaction between general trust and perceived usefulness was also observed. This means that the higher the perception rate about the brochure's usefulness, the higher general trust was for booking intentions and vice versa. The practical implications of the results suggest that tourists could be motivated to book a hotel if its sustainability attributes and amenities were communicated in a trust inspiring way in marketing material.     

Heterogeneity in Production Structures and Efficiency: An Analysis of the Czech Food Processing Industry

The present study analyses firm heterogeneity and sector‐specific technology. The theoretical model stands on the assumption of maximizing the return on capital and overcomes problems involved in simple profit maximization. The results show that a random parameter model with sector dummies and heteroscedasticity is the most appropriate model specification for distinguishing firm‐level and sector‐level efficiency and heterogeneity. The heterogeneity among firms as well as among sectors was found to be an important characteristic in Czech food processing. This holds for production technology as well as for technical efficiency. Moreover, the decomposition of total variance shows that intrasectoral differences in technologies are much more pronounced than the intersectoral differences. The differences in intrasector heterogeneity also suggest that the food processing industry will be subject to accelerated structural change in the coming years. Moreover, we found that on average the companies highly exploit their production possibilities. However, some companies cannot keep pace with competitors. Because leapfrogging does not appear to be present in selected industries (except for Milling), structural change is expected to occur in such a way that the most successful companies will strengthen their position.     

Does truth win when teams reason strategically?

We study behavior in the race game with the aim of assessing whether teams can create synergies. The race game has the advantage that the optimal strategy depends neither on beliefs about other players nor on distributional or efficiency concerns. Our results reveal that teams not only outperform individuals but that they can also beat the “truth-wins” benchmark. In particular, varying the length of the race game we find that the team advantage increases with the complexity of the game.