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Shows that loan loss expectation plays an important role in determining credit rationing. Shows that the optimal loan size depends on the marginal loan loss, and not on the initial portfolio position of the bank. While an increase in loan administrative costs leads to a larger optimal loan size, restricting the loan size is used to minimize default risks. Also shows that under conditions of uncertainty when default risk is present, and if absolute risk aversion is increasing in wealth, a rise in wealth of the bank will lower the amount of asset to be allocated in risky loans even if credit can be properly priced.

To improve organizational performance and sustain a competitive advantage many Australian businesses have begun to embrace e‐commerce. For example, businesses from the automotive, banking, insurance and retail industries have been able to leverage the benefits of information and communication technologies. Yet, those from the construction industry have been slow, perhaps even reluctant, to implement information and communication technologies to support ecommerce. Thus, this paper aims to determine the barriers that small‐medium sized contractors are experiencing when confronted with the need to implement e‐commerce to sustain their competitiveness. Unstructured interviews were undertaken with managers from 20 small‐medium sized contractors from the State of Victoria in Australia, which had annual turnovers ranging from $1‐50 million. The financial, organizational, technical and human barriers that were identified from findings are presented and discussed. The paper concludes by proposing strategies that small‐medium sized contractors may adopt if they to leverage the benefits of e‐commerce.

Shows that there is a Granger causality relationship between house prices and mortgage flows in Hong Kong where there is a deposit‐rate ceiling and linked exchange rate. While the demand for housing units is distorted by mortgage constraint, any changes of housing demand or house prices will have a feedback on mortgage lending, and thus tend to iron out the housing demand to a level consistent with the short‐run availability of financing. The results strongly suggest that house prices in Hong Kong tend to lead the mortgage flows, not vice versa. Sudden unexpected changes in housing demand may not affect aggregate mortgage availability within a short period of time. However, as an increase in housing demand makes more permanent contributions to house prices, the higher housing prices will be increasingly translated into higher mortgage flows in the long run.

Technical analysis lies on the premiss that short‐term market price at any time is revealed by pattern of prior price movements. Tests empirically the pattern of the real estate prices by employing the ARIMA analysis. Results strongly show that there exist cyclical trends in the office and industrial property prices in Hong Kong. The forecasting method can provide an indication of short‐term market direction, a sense of whether or not the movement will be small or large, and advance warning well ahead of any turning points supplementary to investment strategy. The investor may wish to incorporate forecasts from an ARIMA model into his investment strategy, for timing purposes.

The elements of sales comparison for residential property depend on a package of inherent attributes that are valued by consumers. These attributes can be classified into the following categories: structural, physical, neighbourhood and environmental. A model that incorporates adjustments for floor area, age, views and amenities such as availability of recreational facilities is presented and discussed. A multiple regression analysis with transactions‐based data, using weighted least square to determine the discrete estate‐type induced price effect in the Hong Kong housing market, is also presented. The paper demonstrates how the view of negative housing attributes is capitalised into house prices. Specifically, it is shown that the residential property values are higher for estate‐type housing properties, and lower for dwelling units with a cemetery view.

Office decentralization has been developing rapidly in Hong Kong since the early 1980s. Office tenants relocated their businesses to the Decentralized District (DD) with the benefits of lower rent, higher flexibility of space use and better supporting facilities. This study examines office decentralization in Hong Kong's office market, both the upturn and downturn. It analyzes the vacancy trend of the Grade A office market in Hong Kong: DD versus Central Business District (CBD), based on a Decentralization Index. This study found that the CBD is a more stable office market sector than the non‐CBD. During a market upturn, the Grade A office market in Hong Kong DD has outperformed that in the CBD. However, during a market downturn, the vacancy rate in the DD tends to increase at a greater rate than that in the CBD. The study also found that periods with a sufficiently high index of decentralization generally experienced increases in CBD rent premiums.

Residential price levels in Spain vary broadly among markets. Real estate theory explains that prices depend on market characteristics such as vacancy level, land availability, construction supply elasticity to respond to high or low speed to changes on the demand, as well as potential for economic growth, industrial and services activities located inside urban areas, etc. An analysis of prices in Spanish main cities shows that tensions appear to exist in some of them where economic activity shows different dynamism and price level appears to be independent of it. This paper tries to find evidence of the existing relationship between residential prices and economic and demographic factors that are demand determinants such as wages, migrations and productive structure, among others, to explain price formation in Spanish cities. It uses panel data and GLS methodology applied to 71 main Spanish province capitals and cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants. The results show evidence of determinants of housing prices and how some relationships appear to exist between price levels and families’ waged income as well as with population and productive structure in Spanish cities.

Underpinned by the lens of Contingency Theory (CT), the purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate whether the impact of social media analytics (SMA) on customer satisfaction (CS) is contingent on the characteristics of different external stakeholders, including business partners (i.e. partner diversity), competitors (i.e. localised competition) and customers (i.e. customer engagement).

Using both subjective and objective measures from multiple sources, we collected primary data from 141 hotels operating in Greece and their archival data from TripAdvisor and the Hellenic Chamber of Hotels (HCH) database to test the hypothesised relationships. Data were analysed through structural equation modelling.

This study confirms the positive association between SMA and CS, but it remains subject to the varied characteristics of external stakeholders. We find that an increase in CS due to the implementation of SMA is more pronounced for firms that (1) adopt a selective distribution strategy where a limited number of business partners are chosen for collaboration or (2) operate in a highly competitive local environment. The results further indicate that high level of customer engagement amplifies the moderating effect of partner diversity (when it is low) and localised competition (when it is high) on the SMA–CS relationship.

The study provides novel insights for managers on the need to consider external stakeholder characteristics when implementing SMA to enhance firms' CS, and for researchers on the value of studying SMA implementation from the CT perspective.

In the academic field of business management, several potential theories were established during the last decades to explain companies' decisions, organizational behavior, consumer patterns, and internationalization, among others. As a result, businesses and scholars were able to analyze and decide based on theoretical approaches to explain the current conditions of the market. Secondary research was conducted to collect more than 36 management theories. This chapter aims to develop the most famous theories related to business applied in the international field. The novelty of this chapter relies on the compilation of recognized previous research studies from the academic literature and evidence in international business.