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Previous research suggests that constructions of legitimacy play a central role in the development of markets, yet little attention has been given to how that legitimacy is constructed through the material practices of market actors. This paper aims to address this gap via an examination of cultural intermediaries in the fine wine market of Shanghai.

An interpretive thematic analysis was carried out on data from 13 semi-structured interviews with fine wine intermediaries based primarily in Shanghai (5 wine writers/educators; 5 sommeliers/retailers; 3 brand representatives).

The dimensions of the legitimation of wine were examined, identifying three key themes: the legitimacy of intermediaries as experts; the legitimacy of a particular mode of wine consumption; the legitimacy of the intermediaries as exemplars for not-yet-legitimate consumers. These findings suggest that cultural intermediaries’ personal, consuming preferences and practices are significant to the formation of a new market, and that they must negotiate potential tensions between interactions with legitimate, not-yet-legitimate and illegitimate consumers.

Limitations with regard to generalizability are discussed with regard to potential future research.

The focus on cultural intermediaries and dimensions of legitimation can be used to examine the case of other emerging markets to anticipate the pathways to institutionalizing new forms of taste and consumption practices.

The paper offers an empirical insight into the market dynamics of distinction in the Shanghai wine market and conceptual insight into the importance of cultural intermediaries as exemplar consumers.

The environmental laws have placed manufacturing concerns in a quandary regarding compliance with the complex and far‐reaching web of regulations which affect practically every aspect of production operations. Although variations from the mandates imposed may result in rather substantial consequences for offenders, many companies do not achieve full compliance for various reasons. If full compliance is possible, reasons for noncompliance must be examined. The relationship between compliance and quality of the manufacturing process or finished product must be explored to determine whether companies might sacrifice compliance for a more efficient process or higher quality product. Moreover, intentional noncompliance for economic benefit may provide companies with an advantage over competitors that spend vast resources to satisfy environmental obligations. This paper addresses the results of a survey completed by over 200 manufacturing firms located primarily in Tennessee to determine effects of compliance with environmental regulations on manufacturing operations.

People who are interested in evaluating and rating microcomputer technology need a single, composite measure which is rich enough to enable comparing machines of widely differing time periods, features and formats. Traditionally, computers are modeled by describing four primary features ‐ their CPU, available memory, and input/output (I/O) capabilities. Applying this general model to portable microcomputers, this paper uses a scoring model methodology to develop a composite measure for the portable microcomputer marketplace and then evaluates the model’s longitudinal performance. The technological scoring model methodology is a very pragmatic and highly subjective technique to derive a relative measure for identifying long‐term technological trends and rating/ranking individual machines one with another. Furthermore, employing the scoring model offers some unique challenges to the technological forecaster. However, the scoring model does seem to be a useful approach (at least for portable microcomputer technology) if used with due caution.

The current state of environmental laws has placed business in a quandary regarding compliance with the myriad regulations directed at everything from the manufacture of new products, substances, or chemicals to the generation and disposal of waste. A variation from the guidelines imposed may result in liability, civil and criminal, for the unwary violator. In addition to possessing knowledge of current regulations affecting operations, managers must also track numerous future changes applicable to their processes in order to avoid missing the effective date of a new requirement. In general, vast resources must be expended in complying with the environmental laws. Perhaps the industry that most feels the sting of the environmental regulations is manufacturing. This paper will address the results of a survey completed by over 200 manufacturing firms located primarily in Tennessee to determine effects of compliance with environmental regulations on business operations.

In this research, hospitals with varying type, size and operational characteristics are grouped into distinct strategic groups. The competitive methods emphasised by these groups are studied. Also, the extent of effective implementation of quality improvement tools is examined. The purpose of this paper is to discuss these issues.

Utilizing a sample of 109 hospitals, cluster analysis is used to accomplish the objective of this study.

Four strategic groups of hospitals were identified. These groups tended to emphasize different competitive methods and quality improvement efforts implementation profiles.

The findings of this study have important implications for the relationship between operational performance and strategic effectiveness in a hospital operational environment.

The findings of this research tend to emphasize the importance of patient's service and satisfaction to strategic effectiveness. Also, the findings stress the importance of clinical effectiveness at the operational level.

This study empirically examines operational and strategic performance‐related issues in a hospital operational environment.

Joon Y. Park is one of the pioneers in developing nonlinear cointegrating regression. Since his initial work with Phillips (Park & Phillips, 2001) in the area, the past two decades have witnessed a surge of interest in modeling nonlinear nonstationarity in macroeconomic and financial time series, including parametric, nonparametric and semiparametric specifications of such models. These developments have provided a framework of econometric estimation and inference for a wide class of nonlinear, nonstationary relationships. In honor of Joon Y. Park, this chapter contributes to this area by exploring nonparametric estimation of functional-coefficient cointegrating regression models where the structural equation errors are serially dependent and the regressor is endogenous. The self-normalized local kernel and local linear estimators are shown to be asymptotic normal and to be pivotal upon an estimation of co-variances. Our new results improve those of Cai et al. (2009) and open up inference by conventional nonparametric method to a wide class of potentially nonlinear cointegrated relations.

COVID-19 vaccinations face a backdrop of widespread mistrust in their safety and effectiveness, specifically via social media platforms which constitute major barriers for the public health sector to manage COVID-19 (and future) pandemics. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of the public's engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations.

Using Netnography, this study explores the public's interactions with vaccine communications by the WHO via Facebook. From WHO posts about the COVID-19 vaccination 23,726 public comments on Facebook were extracted and analyzed.

Building on crisis communication, health and engagement literature, this paper identifies and conceptualizes seven patterns of engagement behavior toward the COVID-19 vaccination and develops the first framework of relationships between these patterns and the extant vaccine attitudes: vaccine acceptance, hesitancy and refusal.

This paper helps policymakers identify and adapt interventions that increase vaccine confidence and tailor public health services communications accordingly.

This research offers the first typology of patterns of engagement behavior toward COVID-19 vaccinations and develops a framework of relationships between these patterns and the existing understanding in health literature. Finally, the study provides data-driven communication recommendations to public health service organizations.

We analyze the sizes of standard cointegration tests applied to data subject to linear interpolation, discovering evidence of substantial size distortions induced by the interpolation. We propose modifications to these tests to effectively eliminate size distortions from such tests conducted on data interpolated from end-of-period sampled low-frequency series. Our results generally do not support linear interpolation when alternatives such as aggregation or mixed-frequency-modified tests are possible.

The discrete Fourier transform (dft) of a fractional process is studied. An exact representation of the dft is given in terms of the component data, leading to the frequency domain form of the model for a fractional process. This representation is particularly useful in analyzing the asymptotic behavior of the dft and periodogram in the nonstationary case when the memory parameter d≥12. Various asymptotic approximations are established including some new hypergeometric function representations that are of independent interest. It is shown that smoothed periodogram spectral estimates remain consistent for frequencies away from the origin in the nonstationary case provided the memory parameter d < 1. When d = 1, the spectral estimates are inconsistent and converge weakly to random variates. Applications of the theory to log periodogram regression and local Whittle estimation of the memory parameter are discussed and some modified versions of these procedures are suggested for nonstationary cases.

We propose that the ambiguity of discourse around a category – rather than being problematic – improves the longevity of that category. This is especially true in the creative industries. Using methods and theories drawn from sociology and art history, we tested this thesis using swing as a case study. Based on three years of archival research we found 70 co-existing definitions of swing and 89 different uses of the term. These multiple meanings enabled various understandings to come in and out of focus over time, contributing to swing’s longevity. Our findings extend to other categories within the creative industries.