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I propose a model of behavior in social interactions where individuals maximize a three-term utility function: a conventional consumption utility term and two “social” terms that capture social preference. One social term is a taste for desert, which is maximized when the individual believes the other person is getting what they deserve. The second social term measures the target individuals’ anger or gratitude from the interaction which is determined by a value function derived from prospect theory. After introducing the model and generating a series of comparative statics results and derived predictions, I report the results of a series of quasi-field experiments on social preferences. I discuss how the model explains several paradoxes of empirical moral philosophy that are less explicable by current economic models of social preference focusing on outcomes and intentions.

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.

The objective of this research is to explore the relationship between brand experience and customer equity (value equity, brand equity, and relationship equity). We examine the impacts of different contact points’ experiences (media contact, physical environment contact, people contact, and product usage contact) and different dimensions of brand experience on customer equity. Further we investigate the possible moderating effects of different brand positioning and strategies – hedonic and utilitarian, on this relationship. The data which are collected via online survey includes 410 observations with brand experience and 83 without brand experience, 493 valid samples in total. We found that positive and strong brand experience is the key factor for building strong customer equity. Although the impacts of all four contact points’ brand experiences are significant, product usage contact has the most powerful influence on customer equity and its individual drivers. The results also indicate that the different brand positioning strategies do have moderating effects. For utilitarian brand, only brand experience at product usage contact point has significant impact on customer equity and its three drivers. For hedonic brand, all four contact points’ experiences have significant relationships with customer equity. Finally, the four experience dimensions (sensory, affective, intellectual, and behavioral) have different impacts on customer equity and its three drivers at different experience contact points.

Airports and urban developments in their vicinity constitute a highly specialized type of agglomeration based on air connectivity that epitomizes the importance of mobility in the modern service economy. However, in a frictionless world of backyard capitalism and perfect competition, such agglomeration of civil aviation services would not have been necessary. Thus, concepts such as imperfect markets, path dependence, and cumulative causation may be alternatively used to explain the spatial aspects of airport developments. Focusing on “second-nature” concentration, the “new geographical economics” (NGE) literature offers a potential theoretical framework that organizes these concepts into a coherent economic framework. This chapter aims to highlight the unique relevance of the NGE approach in developing an economics-based understanding of the spatial distribution of airports. Drawing from the existing NGE knowledge-base, this conceptual chapter explains that the NGE approach can be adopted as a micro-foundation to show how the spatial aspects of airport development, including core-periphery dynamics of regional disparity and parity, can emerge from economic mechanisms. The chapter concludes with potential implications for airport economics and regional policy, along with the discussion of some of the main critiques of the theory.

The effectiveness of corporate governance is a major factor in forecasting firm performance. We examine the relationships among cross-listing, corporate governance and firm performance for a sample of Chinese cross-listed companies. We show that cross-listed firms display higher overall quality of corporate governance compared to non-cross-listed firms. Consequently better corporate governance results in higher operating performance. Our results support the bonding hypothesis of cross-listing. Furthermore, we also illustrate that the cross-listing status encapsulates the higher quality of corporate governance that leads to higher operating performance. When forecasting performance of cross-listing companies, it is therefore important to recognize the substitute effect between cross-listing and corporate governance.

In this chapter, we demonstrate that studying relevant investment information helps reduce individual investors’ disposition effect. It is prevalent that many individual investors in stock market do not form their own opinion about the investments; instead they mimic investment strategies of others. This research shows that the intention of making easy money only worsens the disposition effect. We collect 2,632 individual stock investors through nationwide surveys in Taiwan. Using regression models, we examine the effects of study on reducing investors’ inclination of holding-losers/selling-winners and the disposition effect. The findings show that investors realize losses sooner and significantly reduce the disposition effect if they choose to learn about their investments. The results also demonstrate that if the investors are willing to learn about firms in which they invest, they become more rational about their investment decisions. They are no longer influenced by the sentiment of regret resistance or misperception of the stock trend, which in turn reduces the disposition effect. This study supports that investors make better investment decisions if they perform necessary due diligence prior to investing.

A one-year-ahead price change forecasting model is proposed based on the fundamental analysis to examine the relationship between equity market value and financial performance measures. By including book value and six financial statement items in the valuation model, current firm value can be determined and the estimation error can predict the direction and magnitude of future returns of a given portfolio. The six financial performance measures represent both cash flows – cash flows from operations (CFO), cash flows from investing (CFI), and cash flows from financing (CFF) – as well as net income – R&D expenditures (R&D), operating income (OI), and adjusted nonoperating income (ANOI). This study uses a 10-year sample of the Taiwan information electronic industry (1995–2004 with 2,465 firm-year observations). We find hedge portfolios (consisting of a long position in the most underpriced portfolio and an offsetting short position in the most overpriced portfolio) provide an average annual return of 43%, more than three times the average annual stock return of 12.6%. The result shows the estimation error can be a good stock return predictor; however, the return of hedge portfolios generally decreases as the market matures.

The components of earnings or cash flows have different implications for the assessment of the firm's value. We extend the research for value-relevant fundamentals to examine which financial performance measures convey more information to help investors evaluate the performance and value for firms in different life cycle stages in the high-tech industry. Six financial performance measures are utilized to explain the difference between market value and book value. Cross-sectional data from firms in Taiwanese information electronics industry are used. We find all the six performance measures which are taken from Income Statement and Cash Flow Statement are important value indicators but the relative degrees of value relevance of various performance measures are different across the firm's life cycle stages. The empirical results support that capital markets react to various financial performance measures in different life cycle stages and are reflected on the stock price.