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What impact did privatization have on employment in Russian industry? Utilizes data collected from a panel of 6,205 civilian manufacturing firms in the Central, Volga, North Caucasus, Northern and Western Siberian regions of Russia to explore in more detail the relationship between changes in ownership and employment in Russian industry between 1992 and 1995. In particular investigates whether change in ownership structure is relatively more important than industry, region, or the competitive position of the firm in explaining variation in the employment response to changing output conditions during the initial stage of Russia’s transition from plan to market.

The purpose of this study is to compare the competition and productivity of the US freight rail transportation industry for the past 41 years (1980 ∼ 2020), which consists of the two periods, before and after the abolishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) in 1995.

This study investigates any relationships between the market concentration index values and labor productivity values in the separate two periods, and how the existence of a regulatory body in the freight transportation market impacted the productivity of the freight rail transportation industry by using a Cobb–Douglas production function on annual financial statement data from the US stock exchange market.

This study found that, after the abolishment of the ICC: (1) the rail industry became less competitive, (2) even if the rail industry had an increasing labor productivity trend, there was a strong negative correlation between the market concentration index and labor productivity and (3) the rail industry’s total factor productivity was decreased.

This study is to find empirical evidence of the effect of the ICC abolishment on the competition and productivity levels in the US freight rail transportation industry using a continuous data set of 41-year financial statements, which is unique compared to previous studies.

Many governments around the world have strategically privatized their ports. The privatized ports try to maximize profits by setting higher charges for port services and attracting transship cargos. This paper shows that such privatization of ports can be complemented by adjusting the number of ports. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to derive the optimal number of ports in cases in which ports serve transship and domestic cargos.

This paper constructs a theoretical model in which ports compete with each other for transship and domestic cargos. In the first stage, the government determines the number of ports. In the second stage, the ports compete with each other in quantity to maximize profits. The authors have derived the optimal number of ports that maximizes national welfare.

The optimal number of ports is expressed as a function of the slope of the demand curve, the slope of the supply curve, and the share of domestic demand relative to total demand for port services. It is shown that the optimal number of ports tends to increase as the share of domestic cargo increases. The optimal number of ports, n*, is given as n*=1/(1−θ), where θ denotes the share of domestic demand in total demand for port services, when the unit cost of port services is constant.

The analysis in the present paper is confined to the case of unilateral intervention by the government of the domestic country. Analyzing interaction among governments via competition policy would offer valuable policy implications.

The results of the current research offer important implications for Korean port policy in the context of maritime industrial changes, in particular, China’s New Silk Road initiative. In particular, the findings of this study suggest that Korea’s investment in ports should be concentrated on ports with competitive advantages.

Relatively scant attention has been paid to the possibility, or need, of strategic privatization being complemented by governmental competition policy. Filling this knowledge gap, the authors have shown that the government can mitigate the negative effects of privatization on domestic consumer surplus by introducing competition in the supply of port services.

In this chapter, we will review the history, deregulation, policy reforms, and airline consolidations and mergers of the Chinese airline industry. The measurement of airline competition in China’s domestic market will also be discussed. Although air deregulation is still ongoing, the Chinese airline industry has become a market-driven business subject to some mild regulations. Then, we will review the impressive development of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China and its effects on the domestic civil aviation market. In general, previous studies have found that the introduction of HSR services has a significant negative impact on airfare and air travel demand in China. The rapidly expanding network of HSR has important policy implications for Chinese airlines.

This study aims to investigate how opening high-speed railways affects the cost of debt financing based on China's background.

Using panel data on Chinese listed firms from 2008 to 2017, this study constructs a quasi-natural experiment and adopts a difference-in-difference model with multiple time periods to empirically examine the relation between the high-speed railway openings and debt financing cost.

Our results show that opening high-speed railways reduces the cost of debt financing, and this negative correlation is more significant in non-state firms, firms with weaker internal control, and firms that hire non-Big Four auditors. Besides, we explore the impact mechanisms and find that opening high-speed railways improves analyst attention, institutional investor participation, and information disclosure quality, which in turn lowers the cost of debt financing.

The results imply that the opening of high-speed railways helps to alleviate the information asymmetry and adverse selection between firms and creditors and ultimately reduces the cost of corporate debt financing.

This paper can inform firms and stakeholders about the impact of opening high-speed railways on debt financing cost: it improves the information environment, reduces the geographical location restrictions of debt financing, ensures the reasonable pricing of corporate debt, and thus promotes the healthy and sound development of the debt market.

This paper provides theoretical support and empirical evidence for the impact of infrastructure construction on the information environment of the debt market in China, which enriches the research on the “high-speed railway economy.” In addition, as an exogenous event, the opening of high-speed railways instantly shortens the time distance between firms and external stakeholders, which gives us a natural environment to conduct empirical research, thus providing a new perspective for financial research on firms' geographical location.

In this chapter, the authors examined expatriates that self-initiate their international work for personal reasons and the factors that affect their departure from an organization. The authors conducted a systematic review of self-initiated expatriation (SIE) and its definitions in order to propose an integrated definition of SIE and model its nomological network. In addition, the authors construct a roadmap for future research directions in the SIE domain. Finally, using a qualitative research design, the authors studied the organizational practices designed to reduce SIE turnover in an exemplary multinational organization. Overall, our contributions are enhanced clarity of the SIE construct and the theorized practice of SIE retention.

The need to make the war effort successful encouraged the government to seek as many ways as possible to mobilise resources. The use of the skills of advertisers was recognised in political circles and during the period of Asquith's premiership Le Bas had a major influence. The greatest campaign was to recruit men for the army.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of employee job satisfaction and affective commitment as perceived by customers on customer perceived value, more specifically its benefits dimensions.

A total of 652 panellists from a large Canadian polling firm self-administer a web-based questionnaire. To measure customer perceived value, a formative index is used which contributes to topical literature through a unique methodology. Hypotheses are tested using a structural equation model.

An analysis of the direct, indirect and total effects confirms the unique positive impact of employee job satisfaction and affective commitment, as perceived by customers, on the emotional, social, relationship and epistemic benefits, as well as on the formative index of customer perceived value.

Customer perceptions of employee attitudes (job satisfaction and affective commitment) represent a unique opportunity for banks to differentiate their value proposition in a hypercompetitive market.

This study is the first to consider customer perceptions of employee job satisfaction and affective commitment in relation to a formative index of customer perceived value and its related benefits dimensions.

Julia Brown, toy buyer for the Hightower Department Stores, has to decide which of three imported stuffed animals will be offered for sale by the 16 Hightower stores during the approaching Christmas shopping season. The case is appropriately used as an introduction to the concepts of least squares and regression analysis. A linear relationship between realized and test-market sales can be used to forecast the sales potential of the three proposed animals, and an explicit treatment of the uncertainty in this forecast is necessary in order to decide how many of each adopted animal to order.