The importance of atmospherics in the choice of hypermarkets and supermarkets

Are the atmospheric variables equally relevant for supermarket and hypermarket customers? As a contribution to the customers' choice of the store format, firstly this work aims to determine the perception of differences between hypermarkets and supermarkets in terms of store attributes. Second, it sheds light on the role played by atmospherics in the customers' decision process. This study uses a logit approach to model the probabilistic choice of the customers' store format using atmospheric and other marketing variables as important attributes of the grocery store. The model's estimation is based on personal interviews conducted during the shopping process in urban supermarkets and hypermarkets belonging to the same retail chain. The findings show that although the atmospheric variables are significantly important for both store formats, the customers perceive differently the importance of each retail atmospheric cue and other marketing variables, when buying in a hypermarket or in a supermarket: the choice of buying in hypermarket is explained by the significant importance given to the latent variables named pleasant atmosphere and accessibility and responsiveness; in contrast, the choice of buying in supermarkets is explained by the significant importance given to the latent variable nice decoration and empathy with the staff. The other latent variable designated by other marketing variables is only significantly important in the decision of choosing supermarkets.     

Financial prediction with constrained tail risk

A new class of asymmetric loss functions derived from the least absolute deviations or least squares loss with a constraint on the mean of one tail of the residual error distribution, is introduced for analyzing financial data. Motivated by risk management principles, the primary intent is to provide “cautious” forecasts under uncertainty. The net effect on fitted models is to shape the residuals so that on average only a prespecified proportion of predictions tend to fall above or below a desired threshold. The loss functions are reformulated as objective functions in the context of parameter estimation for linear regression models, and it is demonstrated how optimization can be implemented via linear programming. The method is a competitor of quantile regression, but is more flexible and broader in scope. An application is illustrated on prediction of NDX and SPX index returns data, while controlling the magnitude of a fraction of worst losses.     

Inequality,Nonhomothetic Preferences,and Trade: A Gravity Approach

We construct the first direct classification of goods as luxuries or necessities that is compatible with international trade data. We then use it to test an idea that has not been tested directly in the literature: Countries' income distributions are important determinants of their import demand, and, in particular, of the difference in their import demands of luxuries versus necessities. We interpret this result with the aid of a model in which preferences are nonhomothetic, thus relaxing a long-held and standard—but empirically dubious—assumption in the theory of international trade. Our model is strongly borne out by the results: Imports of luxuries increase with the importing country's inequality, and imports of necessities decrease with it. Our calculations imply that if income distribution in the United States became as equal as in Canada, the United States would import about 9-13% fewer luxury goods and 13-19% more necessities.     

Fiscal adjustments,labour market flexibility and unemployment

Using a panel of 17 countries for 1978–2009, we find that tax-driven consolidations increase unemployment by 0.25 percentage points. Labour market flexibility mitigates this: a one-point rise in the flexibility index reduces youth (long-term) unemployment by 0.6–0.7 (1.8–2.2) percentage points.     

Is there a slowdown in agricultural productivity growth in South America?

This article estimates agricultural productivity growth in 10 South American countries in 1969–2009 with the objective of investigating if the slowdown being measured in other countries is present in the region. Results show that productivity growth accounts for half of the three‐fold increase in agricultural output during this period and that performance is sensitive to R&D investments in the sector. The slowdown found for the 1990s to 2000s in the U.S. and some European economies does not seem to be present yet in South America. The region's total factor productivity (TFP) growth rate increased steadily from 1.07% during the 1970s to 2.29% during the 2000s. Given lags in adoption and the adaptive nature of innovations in these economies, we have yet to see the potential effects in South American agriculture of decreases in R&D in advanced economies.     

Technology development in developing countries: The case of a private R & D institution in Brazil

Research Development (RD) is concerned with the conversion of inventions (i.e. new ideas) into innovations (i.e. new products, processes and services in the market-place). Empirical evidence indicates that the rate of success of RD is small. In the innovation chain of events the scientific or technical accomplishment is but one link, a necessary but not sufficient condition of success. Often the market is the decisive factor.
Many research and development organizations (R & DOs), especially those funded privately, allocate their resources with a strong orientation towards satisfying perceived market needs. If this incentive persists during the R & D work the RD effort will probably be much facilitated.
In the light of the above concepts, the Brazilian R & D and RD experiences are reviewed with practical examples and emphasis on the efforts of Centro de Tecnologia Promon—CTP (Promon Technology Center). CTP works on non-conventional energy, industrial process development and telecommunication product development.
The experience reported is not intended to serve as a general solution to R & D or RD problems in the developing world. The purpose is rather to suggest alternative pathways and to point out the importance of a diversified approach to the tough task of closing the innovation loop.     

Economic design of an chart for short-run production

The aim of this paper is to present an economical design of an X chart for a short-run production. The process mean starts equal to μ₀ (in-control, State I) and in a random time it shifts to μ₁>μ₀ (out-of-control, State II). The monitoring procedure consists of inspecting a single item at every m produced ones. If the measurement of the quality characteristic does not meet the control limits, the process is stopped, adjusted, and additional (r-1) items are inspected retrospectively. The probabilistic model was developed considering only shifts in the process mean. A direct search technique is applied to find the optimum parameters which minimizes the expected cost function. Numerical examples illustrate the proposed procedure.     

Pricing farm-level agricultural insurance: a Bayesian approach

This paper applies Hierarchical Bayesian Models to price farm-level yield insurance contracts. This methodology considers the temporal effect, the spatial dependence and spatio-temporal models. One of the major advantages of this framework is that an estimate of the premium rate is obtained directly from the posterior distribution. These methods were applied to a farm-level data set of soybean in the State of the Paraná (Brazil), for the period between 1994 and 2003. The model selection was based on a posterior predictive criterion. This study improves considerably the estimation of the fair premium rates considering the small number of observations.      

Frontiers of commercial real estate portfolio performance: Are sector-region-efficient diversification strategies a myth or reality?

This paper departs from the traditional optimisation methods used to evaluate portfolio performance. Rather, the Stochastic Frontier Analysis approach is used to econometrically determine the benchmark real estate portfolio frontier and subsequently assess the gains from diversifying real estate portfolios along regional and sectoral dimensions in the UK. Portfolio specific inefficiency measures are obtained which indicate whether a portfolio is efficiently diversified and therefore places on the benchmark frontier and if not, the degree to which performance can be improved is quantified. Portfolio-specific efficiencies average at 85–91%, indicating scope to further improve performance. Further, diversification be it on a sectoral or regional dimension, contributes to significantly lower variability in portfolio efficiencies.