Oppression and resistance: the powerless and the future

Relations between rich and poor (across and within countries) appeared in some questions in Images; there were clear differences between what the powerful and the powerless hoped and expected from the future. This is compared with what actually happened and a deeper analysis is made of ‘power’ as an organizing concept. It turned out that the pessimism associated with powerlessness tended to make better predictions.     

Communication in international business-to-business marketing channels: Does culture matter?

As business-to-business marketing channels become more international in scope, communication in channels occurs among a more diverse set of channel participants from different national cultures. Do such cultural variations influence channel communications and if so, how? This study examines these questions in international business-to-business marketing channels comprised of channel members representing different cultural contexts. The findings show that there is a relationship between culture and channel communication in international channels. This influence stemming from “cultural distance” may have significant implications as business moves into the E-commerce era of Internet-based B2B international channels of distribution.     

Evaluating transport user benefits and social surplus in a transport market—The case of the Norwegian ferries

The article first infers how consumer surplus in a market is linked to revenue under different assumptions about fare elasticity and when using different types of demand functions. This information is added to producer surplus in order to derive social surplus. The method, thus, produces a simple approach for authorities to assess social surplus in a market and its benefits to the users. A modified exponential demand function is applied to calculate consumer surplus and social surplus for 97 ferry services in Norway regulated by the state. The calculations are based on empirical data concerning ferry fare, revenue data at service level and reasonable assumptions about fare point elasticity for services covering different distances.In 2007, these services generated welfare for the users (consumer surplus) and the society (social surplus) amounting to about 5.8 billion NOK and 4.3 billion NOK, respectively. Consumer surplus and social surplus varied considerably amongst the services. Only 3 of the 97 services operate with positive profits and, hence, without subsidies. About 21 of the services contribute negatively to social surplus. Many of these unprofitable services are the only transport alternatives in rural areas and could be argued to continue operation according to politically decided regional measures. Implicitly, maintaining all these 21 services means that the welfare for the people in these areas is valued as up to four times greater than the welfare of the people in the rest of society.     

Optimal investment strategies in an international economy with stochastic interest rates

We investigate how investors should optimally choose to invest in a dynamically complete international market. We find closed-form solutions for the optimal investment strategy and for the wealth loss an investor suffers from not investing internationally. Theoretically, we show that the gain from international investment is due to the speculative investment only, and why it is important for an investor from a large economy to invest in a small economy. In a numerical example we compare the wealth losses investors from Denmark and the U.S. suffer due to home bias.     

An examination of consumers’ cross-shopping behaviour

This study addresses antecedents of cross-shopping behaviour. Five theory-driven hypotheses are derived and tested. The results indicate that impulse buying tendency and perceived time pressure have a statistically significant negative effect on supermarket patronage. Product assortment and price consciousness have a statistically significant negative effect on speciality store patronage, while impulse buying tendency and convenience orientation have a statistically significant positive effect on speciality store patronage. Perceived time pressure has a statistically significant positive effect on meat store patronage. This effect is, however, not statistically significant on seafood store patronage. The findings have managerial implications for both supermarkets and speciality stores.     

Different but Similar: Social Comparison of Travel Motives Among Tourists

Although previous research suggests that people prefer to think of themselves as being authentic (or individualistic) travellers rather than stereotyped tourists, there have been few studies investigating the external validity of such claim. This paper addresses this research gap by investigating tendencies to dissociate the self from typical tourists in terms of travel motivation. Findings suggest that people perceive their own travel motives to be different from those who they perceive as typical tourists and that these tendencies generalize across people involved in different forms of tourism. This paper discusses the results from a social psychological perspective and provides implications for future research and destination management alike. © 2014 The Authors. International Journal of Tourism Research published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consumer Affairs in Rural New Zealand

Recent changes in many areas of Government policy as well as changes in the private sector have had major impacts on the provision of services in rural areas of New Zealand. This report describes the results of a New Zealand survey of 795 rural consumers. The results emphasise how the problems perceived as most important to people in rural areas are essentially linked to fundamental services such as housing, water, communications, and transport. Though this element of basic needs is covered in the consumer policy literature it is not a feature that tends to be emphasised. The survey also gauges some aspects of rural consumers' knowledge of their entitlements under New Zealand consumer law and their familiarity with, and use of, consumer advisory and support services.     

DIFFUSION MODELS FOR EXCHANGE RATES IN A TARGET ZONE

We present two analytically tractable diffusion models for an exchange rate in a target zone. One model generalizes a model proposed by De Jong, Drost, and Werker (2001) to allow asymmetry between the currencies which is often an important feature of data. Estimation of the model parameters by the method of Kessler and Sørensen (1999) using eigenfunctions of the generator is investigated and shown to give well-behaved estimators that are easy to calculate. The method is well suited to the models because the eigenfunctions are known so that explicit estimating functions are obtained, and because the state space is a finite interval, for which it is known that the method can be made arbitrarily efficient by including sufficiently many eigenfunctions. The model fits data on exchange rates in the European Monetary System well. In particular, the asymmetry parameter is significantly different from zero for three out of four currencies. An alternative diffusion model is presented with similarly nice properties, but with different dynamics that allow constant volatility near the boundaries of the target zone. No-arbitrage pricing of derivative assets is considered, and the effect of realignments is briefly discussed.     

Distributional effects of environmental taxes on transportation: evidence from Engel curves in the United States

Indirect taxes on transportation activities that pollute can correct externalities and close the gaps between private and social costs. However, policy makers often find such Pigou taxes difficult to implement because of political resistance due to possibly adverse affects on equity. For this reason it is important to assess the distributional aspects of environmental levies. This article estimates properties of the demand for transportation in parametric and non-parametric analyses of Consumer Expenditure Surveys for the United States and finds patterns in the resulting set of Engel curves. Private transportation using air flights and new cars has Engel elasticity above unity while public transportation via mass transit has Engel elasticity below unity. The findings can be interpreted in an important way since they show that a differentiated scheme of environmental taxes on transportation may function progressively. A Pigou scheme with larger taxes on modes of transportation that pollute more appears to coincide with larger levies on luxury modes preferred by richer households.