Managerial and Decision Economics最新文献

Refurbishment plays an important role in realizing circular economy. In this study, consumers' deliberative behavior is incorporated into addressing pricing and blockchain adoption strategies for the refurbisher. The study found that consumer deliberation is favorable to the refurbisher when both refurbishment cost and consumers' perceived quality are high. Meanwhile, under high refurbishment cost and low blockchain cost, adopting blockchain is beneficial regardless of the quality of refurbished products. Otherwise, blockchain should be adopted only when quality exceeds a threshold. Furthermore, impacts of deliberation cost or refurbishment cost on the refurbisher's willingness adopting blockchain may be opposite under different consumers deliberation behaviors. Finally, robustness of conclusions is validated in the extensions.

Despite the widely acknowledged importance of vocational education in fostering social mobility and economic development, research on the impact of industrial clusters on vocational education remains sparse. This study aims to address this gap by examining the influence of industrial clusters on vocational education and the moderating role of the external environment. By collecting 965,123 firm samples, and by applying the fixed effect model and instrumental variable method, we find that industrial clusters positively influence vocational education. This study offers valuable insights for policymakers and educational practitioners, highlighting the importance of aligning vocational education with the dynamics of industrial clusters to enhance regional innovation and economic competitiveness.

A large amount of literature has proved that zodiac year superstition has a significant impact on business behaviors such as risk-taking, investment return, and insurance purchase, but the literature on the relationship between zodiac year and psychological state is still limited. This paper draws on epidemiological strategies to construct its research strategy, using data from China to explore the relationship between zodiac years and individual psychological states. Our findings suggest that their mental state improves when a person's family members enter the zodiac. Our empirical regression reveals the mediating mechanism, with collectivism and family cohesion, which belong to the same traditional Chinese culture as the zodiac year, playing an important role. When family members enter the zodiac year, individuals in the zodiac year will reduce their risk preference due to the vigilance of “misfortune” caused by zodiac year superstition. Under the action of collectivism and family cohesion, risks will also be passed through the generations, resulting in the convergence of risk preferences within the family. On the other hand, due to the essential requirements of collectivism and family cohesion, individuals in the zodiac year will reduce their risk preference. Out of concern for the “unlucky” individuals in zodiacal years, other members will choose to go out less and spend more time together and in each other's company. Interactions between family members make them feel less alone, and their mental state improves. These results suggest that cultural beliefs influence individual mental health through collectivism and family cohesion.

Despite the growing consensus on the positive value of digital transformation (DT) to business model innovation, there remains a lack of a comprehensive understanding about whether this positive influence can be sustainable. Drawing on the corporate behavioral theory and prospect theory, we examine a combination of dual impact mechanisms of DT on business model innovation, emphasizing the moderating role of aspiration performance gaps (APGs). Using a sample of A-share listed firms in China from 2013 to 2022, we show the dark sides of DT and disclose that DT has an inverted U-shaped relationship with business model innovation. Notably, negative APGs exert a stronger moderating effect than positive APGs, accelerating the attainment of peak business model innovation at a lower degree of DT. We also highlight that the inverted U-shaped relationship shows a lower turning point and a larger opening in the Eastern region compared with that in the whole region; large firms tend to experience the shift from the “bright sides” to the “dark sides” earlier than SMEs. This study clarifies the intrinsic mechanisms between DT and business model innovation, offering practical guidance to avoid the pain points of DT and achieve business model innovation.

The present paper establishes a horizontal differentiated-good Cournot duopoly with an inside patent-holding firm (licensor) under general network externalities to examine the superiority of fixed-fee licensing versus royalty licensing. We find that for the licensor, royalty licensing is superior to fixed-fee licensing if the network effect is weak and the degree of product differentiation is low. In addition, both consumer surplus and social welfare are higher under fixed-fee licensing in the presence of network externalities.

This study examines the impact of climate policy uncertainty (CPU) on banks' loan loss provisions. Using a sample of 63 listed commercial banks in China from 2007 to 2022, we find that CPU significantly increases banks' loan loss provisions. Banks with higher financial risk and greater climate risk exposure tend to increase their loan loss provisions in response to CPU. This effect is less pronounced for banks with a higher degree of digital transformation, banks with better ESG performance, banks with green commitment, and banks disclosing more substantial climate information. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the importance of reducing CPU by government and regulators from banks' risk management perspective.

Advanced information technology allows e-tailers to impose personalized pricing based on consumer information. However, consumers generally have an aversion to price discrimination and someone even strategically bypasses the tailored price by identity management. This paper constructs a supply chain with one e-tailer and one manufacturer, in which the e-tailer decides whether to impose personalized pricing or uniform pricing. We will study the pricing strategy of the e-tailer and examine the impacts of personalized pricing on the manufacturer, supply chain, consumers, and social welfare. Our analysis reveals that (i) the e-tailer imposes personalized pricing if there is a low proportion of new consumers and imposes uniform pricing otherwise; (ii) the manufacturer has an incentive to subsidize the e-tailer to implement personalized pricing when the proportion of new consumers is medium; (iii) personalized pricing may benefit new consumers and old consumers who bypass the tailored price via identity management, while it always hurts old consumers who purchase with the tailored price. Additionally, we discuss two different cases: endogenous quality and centralized system, finding that (iv) the manufacturer strategically decreases the (product) quality level when the e-tailer imposes personalized pricing; and (v) channel decentralization diminishes the e-tailer's incentive to impose personalized pricing.

This study builds stylized models to discuss the interaction between product recovery and online selling format in a closed-loop supply chain, which comprises a manufacturer, online platforms, and customers. The manufacturer collects used products from customers, before choosing the product's selling format from the reseller only format, the marketplace only format, and both the reseller and marketplace formats. For each format, the optimal decisions (recovery rate, quantity, and price) are first obtained. Notably, we find that the marketplace format induces the manufacturer to improve the recovery rate. Furthermore, our results indicate that the manufacturer's choice of selling format depends on the saved cost of manufacturing a product using the collected products and the value fraction of customer preference for the marketplace relative to the reseller format. Specifically, if the value fraction is smaller but the saved cost is larger, using both the reseller and marketplace formats is preferred. And, we find that when the manufacturer changes from the reseller only format to both the reseller and marketplace formats, the selling price of the reseller platform decreases. Besides, we make some extensions to show the robustness of our assumptions and provide further guidelines for practitioners in the appendix.