Technological content of exports

A large body of literature argues that the characteristics of exports matter for economic growth and development because some goods trigger positive externalities or are subject to increasing returns. Thus, for policy purposes, it is important to know whether a country’s export basket enjoys these productive opportunities. They have been associated with technological content of exports. However, measuring them is not easy. Previous methodologies to account for exports’ technological content used either R&;D data or trade data. The former is used to account for knowledge-intensive activities during the production phase and the latter to identify levels of ‘sophistication’ of exports based on exporting countries’ characteristics. Building on these contributions, this paper combines industry-based and product-based indicators to circumvent some of the shortcomings of the received literature, including the product-industry controversy (i.e. are the actual activities during the production process or the product characteristics what better accounts exports’ technological content?). We use data from Uruguay on direct and indirect R&;D spending from public and private sources and also trade data to build the sophistication index corrected by quality. We contrast our findings with existing methodologies to highlight our contribution.     

The effect of capital requirement regulation on the transmission of monetary policy: evidence from Austria

This paper analyzes the role of banks’ regulatory capitalization in the transmission of monetary policy. We use a confidential dataset for Austrian banks spanning from the first quarter of 1997 to the fourth quarter of 2003. We find evidence that Austrian banks react in an asymmetric way to monetary policy depending on their regulatory excess capitalization, i.e. low capitalized banks react more restrictively to a monetary tightening than their highly capitalized peers.

The creation and use of scorecards in tourism planning: A Spanish example

This paper proposes a preliminary model of a balanced scorecard for tourism destinations, with a specific emphasis on sustainable development. We begin with a review of the perspectives and critical performance variables for the traditional balanced scorecard. We then present empirical work based upon quantitative analysis techniques. A survey was completed by 1531 Spanish municipalities that are oriented towards tourism and have demonstrated interest in management issues. Based on the constructs emerging from this analysis, we then show how the balanced scorecard can be modified to support the strategic planning of tourism destinations. We conclude by discussing the advantages for long-term strategic planning and sustainable tourism management.     

New Service Development and Digitalization: Synergies of Personal Interaction and IT Integration

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the effects of personal interaction and information technology integration (IT integration) on new service development in business-to-business (B2B) service firms' relationships. Personal interaction, IT integration and new service development are latent variables in a structural model tested with LISREL (N = 138). The relationship between personal interaction and IT integration is strong and indicates that both these constructs are drivers for new service development. Although both these constructs represent diverse ways of interacting, they both positively impact new service development. Hence, managers should not expect IT to replace personal interaction to a great extent in B2B-service contexts.     

Eliciting preferences for collectively financed health programmes: the ‘willingness to assign’ approach

Improving public involvement in health system decision making stands as a primary health policy goal. However, still limited guidance is available on how best to elicit preferences for health care programmes. This study examines a contingent choice technique to elicit preferences among health programmes, and named ‘willingness to assign’ (WTAS). WTAS reveals relative (monetary-based) values of a set of competing public programmes under a hypothetical healthcare budget assessment. Experimental evidence is reported from a deliberative empirical study valuing ten health programmes in the context of the Catalan Health Service. Evidence from this experimental study reveals that within the context of multiple programmes, preferences are internally more consistent and slightly less affected by ‘preference reversals’ as compared to values revealed from an adapted technique eliciting the willingness to pay (WTP) extra taxes. Another finding suggests that although programmes promoting health received the higher relative valuation, those promoting other health benefits were valued highly.     

Combining research techniques to improve quality service in hospitality

Hospitality research includes many studies that combine and revisit the quantitative–qualitative debate, and review the arguments for and against using mixed-methods. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the application of qualitative methodologies based on the combination of techniques which also include quantitative elements in addition to those pertaining to qualitative techniques. The research aims to specifically identify the most important managerial factors which, from the point of view of hotel chain executives, serve to improve the quality of the service they provide. The techniques used are concept mapping and qualitative optimization, both of which are qualitative methodologies though they include quantitative elements to overcome the subjectivity deficits typically found in qualitative methodologies. In addition, the combination of both techniques leads to greater precision of the results obtained. Our methodological proposal combines concept mapping with qualitative optimisation, thereby improving the prioritisation and hierarchical ordering of the ideas obtained and structured. Instead of working with each cluster’s average score in terms of importance (as defined within the concept mapping model), our contribution is based on prioritising these based on their distance to the optimal reference. This allows for experts’ evaluations of each idea in terms of its importance to not be strictly quantitative, that is, the experts are not obligated to assign numbers to their evaluations; rather, they can assess ideas based on qualitative labels.     

Risk Judgments in Climbers: The Role of Difficulty,Meteorological Conditions,Confidence and Appropriate Tools

Risk perception among climbers is a factor that can contribute to injury prevention. The purpose of this study was to analyze how expert climbers make judgments about potential risks to their safety. Specifically, we studied how climbers combine the available information on environmental conditions and personal resources in order to arrive at risk judgments. Sixteen distinct scenarios were presented to 134 climbers, and their risk perception related to each situation was recorded. Findings revealed that all variables were highly relevant for determining risk perception. When all variables were present at the same time, confidence was found to minimize the perception of risks caused by environmental conditions, such as difficult climbing. We conclude that an understanding of how expert climbers combine relevant information in order to judge risk can offer ways for them to take more effective preventive measures against injuries, specifically to identify hazards and their combined effects.     

The impact of different kinds of knowledge for the internationalization process of Born Globals in the biotech business

This study explores how different kinds of knowledge of founders and managers at Born Globals are related to the firms’ discovery and exploitation of foreign market opportunities. Based on data from eight biotech Born Globals, we dichotomized Born Globals into two subsets: Born Industrials and Born Academics. The study shows that the founders’ and managers’ different combinations of technological and international knowledge impact the firms’ proactive or reactive behavior in discovering foreign market opportunities. The results indicate that different kinds of Born Globals follow different internationalization processes and that Born Globals, therefore, should not be analyzed as a homogenous group, which has been the common perspective in previous research.