Do special issues offer something special? An overview of research trends in Telecommunications Policy special issues

This study explores the value of special issues by analyzing the characteristics of special issues of Telecommunications Policy (TP). Specifically, this study examines the status of special issue publications, the characteristics of their articles compared with those of general issues, and the factors affecting article citations. For the analysis, all information on TP articles published from 1976 to 2018 was collected from the Scopus database. A comparative analysis as well as a negative binomial regression were conducted on papers published after 1994, when the first special issue was published. The results show that special issues are distinguished from general issues by various characteristics, such as multinational author collaboration, number of references, keywords, and funding. While general issue papers are more frequently cited in academia, special issue papers show better performance in terms of online captures and social media sharing. Moreover, the smaller number of variables affects the frequency of citations in the case of special issues, revealing that content and format are more influential than author factors.     

Complex Network of Aviation E-Services in the Belt and Road Initiative: A Heuristic Study of Small Data based on Block Modeling

ABSTRACT

The aviation e-service system is an important part of support for business communication in regions covered by Belt and Road initiative. In exploring the role of airline companies in this system, we examine the structure of the network, which consists of airlines interconnections based on small data of individual attributes of aviation companies in aviation e-services, and study these interconnections across different groups using block modeling. The heuristic solution of airline companies in development of international communication and cooperation is further discussed. Among our policy implications for global managers, we suggest the enhancement of cross-regional cooperation among airlines.     

State‐Dependent Forward Guidance and the Problem of Inconsistent Announcements

Forward guidance can be provided as an unconditional promise, i.e. commitment to a specific low policy rate. Alternatively, the promise may include an escape clause, i.e. a condition defining the state of the economy under which the central bank would not keep such a low rate and, instead, it would revert to setting policy under discretion. The escape clause can be expressed as a threshold in terms of a specific variable. The present paper shows that, when such a threshold is expressed in terms of an endogenous variable (e.g. output, inflation), there are cases where it becomes impossible for the central bank to act in a way that is consistent with its promise. Consistency imposes limits on the policy rate that can be set since reverting immediately to the optimal discretionary rate can be incompatible with exceeding the threshold.     

Addressing the sustainable development through sustainable procurement: What factors resist the implementation of sustainable procurement in Pakistan?

Sustainable Public Procurement is an integral part of sustainable development because of ever increasing government expenditures. Most of the developing countries lack the required infrastructure which may support public sector sustainability. The aim of this study is to assess the critical factors which resist the implementation of sustainable procurement in public sector of Pakistan. We used Interpretive Structural Model to investigate and rank the interrelationships among different factors of sustainable procurement. With the help of literature and Likert scale instrument, we found twelve key barriers that resist sustainable procurement implementation. We also examined tender documents of 75 different public sector universities of Pakistan but found absence of sustainability element in the documents. External factors namely government legislation and stakeholders' pressure are found most critical barriers as compared to inter organizational factors. The study is also important to highlight the hurdles in the way of sustainable development. First, the government must introduce rules and regulations to implement the sustainable procurement. Stakeholders and donors must put pressure on organizations for adopting sustainable procurement. Sustainability education should be made mandatory part of curriculum and employees should be given regular training on sustainability. Further, public procurement policies at government and institutional levels are required to be revisited towards a circular economy.     

From rationality to hyperreality: paradigm poker

This paper, following McGoun's (1997) seminal article comparing the economy of financial securities to a hyperreal poker game, argues that finance and accounting researchers should take the “linguistic turn” that has rejuvenated theory and research in many, if not most, of the social science and humanities in recent decades. In general terms, this means following Ludwig Wittgenstein's language game paradigm rather than Karl Popper's scientific deductive hypothesis testing methodology. The paper illustrates this by drawing on some of Jean Baudrillard's' ideas, particularly his concept of hyperreality and his phases of the image theoretic.The paper presents a poststructuralist genealogical analysis of the radical ruptures and reformulation of the meaning attributed to the accounting sign of earnings over the feudal, counterfeit, production, and simulation eras. It concludes that, as with many other signs in contemporary society, the earnings sign no longer has any relationship with, nor does it any longer refer to, any real or intrinsic profit but instead floats ungrounded in today's financial economy.The paper recommends that researchers in finance and accounting adopt paradigms from literary theory, semiotics, linguistics, and semiology rather than continue to rely on economics-based theory, which has lost its power for explaining and predicting happenings in today's financial economy of self-referencing models and images.     

对远期外汇合约信用风险的监管

随着远期外汇合约近几年来在我国的逐步推行,外汇市场活跃的同时也增加了外汇交易的信用风险,。要实现外汇市场的有序开放和稳定发展,就必须对其实行有效的风险管理,这包括交易主体对信用风险的识别,处置和外部监管。     

Diffusion of Products with Limited Supply and Known Expiration Date

In this paper, we provide a model for diffusion of products, which are available in limited quantity until a known expiration date, after which the unsold products have no value. We consider the case of a performing arts company. The model development is built on the foundation of classical product diffusion model by Bass (1969) and the psychological effect known as the scarcity principle (Cialdini, 1985). Our empirical analysis results show that the proposed model can provide significant improvement in prediction of the products characterized by the scarcity effect.     

物流合理配送问题的多阶段建模优化求解方法

简述了现有货物配装问题在实际应用中的缺陷,并针对货物配送问题,提出了多阶段建模优化求解方法,并应用于实例中。实例证明该方法所求得的最优解更具合理性和实际意义。     

林产品市场模型文献综述

关于林产品市场的数量研究开始于上个世纪50年代。早期的研究主要以时间序列数据为主。近几十年来,由于经济理论在林产品市场模型中的应用,模型估计方法的改进,以及详细数据的获得,林产品市场模型越来越完善。文章对近几十年来出现的主要建模方法,及其应用作一回顾,并对这些方法的优缺点作简单的比较。