Online customer experience in e-retailing: implications for web entrepreneurship

Providing consumers with unique experiences and immersing them in original contexts are the goals of web entrepreneurs. Researchers and web entrepreneurs have expressed a particular interest in the online customer experience, agreeing on its importance in creating satisfaction, revisiting intention, e-trust and e-loyalty. This paper explores customer experience in the online retail context. The online customer experience is central in forming customers’ perceptions of expectations of online retailers because this experience is highly personal. However, empirical research on the online customer experience remains scarce. The objectives of this unique study are twofold. The first is to compare the effect of online customer experience on the responses of Romanian and Tunisian customers. The comparative analysis is based on two dimensions of the online customer experience assessment tool. These dimensions are cognitive experiential state (flow) and affective experiential state. The second objective is to examine the contribution of each of these two dimensions in explaining overall perceived value, e-satisfaction, e-trust and repurchase intention in the online context, as well as their effects on web entrepreneurial initiatives. The findings reveal the impact of cultural influences on the constructs embedded in the research framework. The implications for practice relate to the increasing importance of online customer experience in tailoring online marketing campaigns. The implications for web entrepreneurship are clearly emphasised by the pathways from online customer experience to entrepreneurial initiatives. These pathways capture the value of customer-generated content in designing innovative business models.

     

Forest management: Are double or mixed rotations preferable to clear cutting?

We study a particular uneven-aged forest stand management pattern, variations of which are often advocated in practice to mitigate the adverse effects of clear cutting. The forest stand under consideration is similar to a Faustmann stand, with the following difference: rather than being single aged, the forest tract contains trees of two age classes so that it is submitted to a form of selective cutting. Each harvest involves all of the older trees and only a fraction of the younger ones; hence the name mixed rotation. Trees left standing at harvest help stimulate natural regeneration and improve various environmental and amenity characteristics of the forest. We model this effect by using a cost function that varies with respect to the harvest rate of younger trees. We derive the properties that this cost function must exhibit in order some form of mixed rotation to be superior to the conventional single rotation à la Faustmann; we also characterize the mixed rotation in terms of duration and the harvest rate of younger trees, and we compare its properties with Faustmann’s rule.     

The dynamics of privatization, the legal environment and stock market development

In this paper, we examine under which conditions privatization is an effective means to develop local stock markets for a panel of 61 countries over the last twenty four years. By addressing the endogeneity between privatization and stock market development, we show for the 1980-98 period that the initial legal environment is a significant contemporary determinant of stock market development, while privatization is not. When we examine the dynamics of privatization in interaction with the legal environment, we find that privatization has a two-year-lagged effect on stock market development in emerging markets, and a one-year-lagged effect in developed countries. Results for the 1999-2003 period seem to be largely affected by the global crash that followed the Asian crisis.     

Demographic transition,education and economic growth in Tunisia

This paper provides empirical evidence supporting the interaction between fertility, education and economic growth through the underlying mechanism behind that correlation in accordance with Becker's theory. In consistency with the theory, the key explanatory variables in Tunisia's fertility model are real GDP per capita, infant mortality, contraceptive use ratio, and education. As opposed to most empirical works, the present study takes into consideration three educational levels, i.e., primary, secondary and higher. Also unlike most empirical research, this study attempts to analyse the impact of fertility transition on education and economic growth. To deal with too little or incomplete data, time series data for Tunisia are computed over 45 years. A multivariate cointegration analysis is carried out and shows that a long-term triangular relationship exists. A short dynamic run analysis based on the vector correction error model displays results in coherence with and close to those of the long term. Among our key results, education is found to trigger fertility transition both in the short and long run. In addition, education has relatively fostered economic growth but hardly boosted it through its dynamic interaction with fertility. Furthermore, the variance decomposition and the impulse function show that the fertility transition has produced a feedback effect on both education and economic growth.     

Potential Contagion Effects on OECD Countries: A FAVAR Model under Bayesian Framework

This paper studies whether and how US shocks impact the OECD countries in the case of a simulated crisis. Using Bayesian estimation methods we extract constrained factors (global, country and variable type specific) from a sample of 153 economic and financial OECD variables from 1980–2008. These factors are the transmission channels through which national shocks spread to other countries, as in a pandemic. The Bayesian interpretable factors are used to estimate FAVAR models. Our main findings suggest that differences exist in the contagion effects. This implies that no generalizations can be made for OECD countries even of equal economic size and in the same geographic region. In addition, our results show that a large portion of the variance of domestic economic variables is explained by global factors; and that the interest rate shock appears to play an important role in the spillover mechanism from the United States to the rest of the world. More precisely, Australia, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries appear to be most sensitive to the US shocks.     

The governance of risk management: The importance of directors’ independence and financial knowledge

We test the effects of the independence and financial knowledge of directors on risk management and firm value in the gold mining industry. Our original hand‐collected database on directors’ financial education, accounting background, and financial experience allows us to measure the effect of financial knowledge on risk management activities. We show that directors’ financial knowledge increases firm value through the risk management channel. This effect is strengthened by the independence of the directors on the board and on the audit committee. Extending the dimension of education, we show that, following unexpected shocks to gold prices, firms with financially educated directors are more effective in hedging than average firms in the industry. Firms that hedge more also attracts highly educated directors on their board and audit committee. As a policy implication, our results suggest adding the experience and education dimensions to the 2002 Sarbanes–Oxley Act and New York Stock Exchange requirements for better governance.     

ASEAN Plus Three Stock Markets Integration

This paper examines the role played by local and international factors in the international integration process to stock markets worldwide. Using a sample of ASEAN + 3 (Association of South East Asian Nations + China, Korea and Japan) during the period between 2000 and 2014, we identify the main factors that might influence regional integration of stock markets. We propose an advantageous econometric approach based on a conditional version of the Dynamic International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) to explore major sources of time-varying risks. We specifically apply the multivariate BEKK-GARCH process of Cappiello et al. (Journal of Financial Econometrics 25:537–572, 2006) to simultaneously estimate the ICAPM for each country. The study puts in evidence that regional trade openness, regional and world industrial production, dividend yields and commodity prices are among the key determinants of regional integration in the ASEAN + 3 context whatever is the measure of exchange rate risk.

     

Default and liquidity regimes in the bond market during the 2002–2012 period

Using a real‐time random regime shift technique, we identify and discuss two different regimes in the dynamics of credit spreads during 2002–2012: a liquidity regime and a default regime. Both regimes contribute to the patterns observed in credit spreads. The liquidity regime seems to explain the predictive power of credit risk on the 2007–2009 NBER recession, whereas the default regime drives the persistence of credit spreads over the same recession. Our results complement the recent dynamic structural models as well as monetary and credit supply effects models by empirically supporting two important patterns in credit spreads: the persistence and the predictive ability toward economic downturns.     

The (1992) Bonus-Malus System in Tunisia: An Empirical Evaluation

The objective of this study is to assess empirically what impact introduction of the bonus‐malus system (BMS) has had on road safety in Tunisia. The results of the Tunisian experiment are of particular importance since, during the last decade, many European countries decided to eliminate their mandatory bonus‐malus scheme. These results indicate that the BMS reduced the probability of reported accidents for good risks but had no effect on bad risks. Moreover, the reform's overall effect on reported accident rates is not statistically significant, but the exit variable is positive in explaining the number of reported accidents. To avoid any potential selectivity bias, we also made a joint estimate of the reported accident and selection equations. The reform has a positive effect on the exit variable but still does not affect the accidents reported. This indicates that policyholders who switch companies are those attempting to skirt the imposed incentive effects of the new rating policy. Some of the control variables are statistically significant in explaining the number of reported accidents: the vehicle's horsepower, the policyholder's place of residence, and the coverages for which policyholders are underwritten.