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Textiles are a ubiquitous part of human life. By combining them with electronics to create electronic textile systems, new application fields emerge. In this paper, technology and applications of light-emitting textile systems are presented: a fabric substrate is described for electronic textile with robust interwoven connections between the conductive yarns in it. The fabric robustness, as a function of the electrical reliability of its conductive yarn connections, is shown to hold over large deformations. This fabric is then used to create a light-emitting diode (LED) based photonic textile display. Finally, we will show an example of an application that could make use of such a photonic textile system.

If rational individuals pay the full costs of their decisions about food intake and exercise, economists, policy makers, and public health officials should treat the obesity epidemic as a matter of indifference. In this paper, we show that, as long as insurance premiums are not risk rated for obesity, health insurance coverage systematically shields those covered from the full costs of physical inactivity and overeating. Since the obese consume significantly more medical resources than the non-obese, but pay the same health insurance premiums, they impose a negative externality on normal weight individuals in their insurance pool.

To estimate the size of this externality, we develop a model of weight loss and health insurance under two regimes – (1) underwriting on weight is allowed and (2) underwriting on weight is not allowed. We show that under regime (1), there is no obesity externality. Under regime (2), where there is an obesity externality, all plan participants face inefficient incentives to undertake unpleasant dieting and exercise. These reduced incentives lead to inefficient increases in bodyweight, and reduced social welfare.

Using data on medical expenditures and bodyweight from the National Health and Interview Survey and the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we estimate that, in a health plan with a coinsurance rate of 17.5%, the obesity externality imposes a welfare cost of about $150 per capita. Our results also indicate that the welfare loss can be reduced by technological change that lowers the pecuniary and non-pecuniary costs of losing weight, and also by increasing the coinsurance rate.

This study aims to model and test the relationships between corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate reputation, customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions.

A total of 451 complete questionnaires were obtained from randomly approached ethnic Chinese leisure tourists. Following a two-step approach, a measurement model was estimated and then a structural model analyzed to test proposed hypotheses.

CSR and reputation significantly impacted customer satisfaction, which, in turn, affected repurchase and word-of-mouth intentions. Customer satisfaction fully mediated the relationship between CSR and behavioral intentions in addition to corporate reputation.

The study considered only a limited number of lodging customers in a specific geographic area in China. Additional investigation across hospitality business types and cultures is needed.

Investments in CSR activities in a Chinese hospitality consumption context can contribute to customer satisfaction and ultimately contribute positively to customer future behaviors.

This study provides insights into the role that CSR may play for domestic Chinese hospitality customers. Little attention has been paid to the importance of corporate reputation in a tourism/hospitality context. This study contributes in helping to close this gap. Finally, this study embeds customer satisfaction within a framework of antecedents and consequences in an integrated causal model.

Leveraging signalling theory and institutional environment theory, this study aims to examine how the entrepreneurial orientation of emerging market firms impacts initial public offering (IPO) performance.

The authors conduct regression analysis based on archival data from 312 firms’ IPOs in India.

The results in the Indian context suggest it differs from IPO performance in developed markets. In an emerging market context, the findings suggest that only competitive aggressiveness is valued by investors in IPOs. The findings further show that proactiveness and autonomy negatively influence IPO underpricing.

The research propositions imply that, owing to institutional voids in emerging markets, investors’ risk propensity and, hence, rewarding a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation differ from those in developed markets.

Extant literature has given limited attention to the dynamics of entrepreneurial orientation and the effect of each dimension of entrepreneurial orientation on IPO performance in emerging markets.

This study aims to model collaborative product development (CPD) among a focal firm (FF) and a fairness-concerned external partner (EP). The model is used to explore the impact of fairness concerns on revenue distributing contract and innovation efforts. The study also examines the role of follow-up sales in product development decisions.

A sequential game-theoretic model is developed to analyze product development decisions between the two parties, where participants exert innovation efforts to promote the product value and a revenue-sharing contract is used to distribute the revenue.

Fairness concern of EP has significant impacts on decisions. FF has incentives to change the contract in that fairness concerns might decrease his profit. Conditions and results change when the contract is endogenously decided. First, FF tends to develop the product independently. Second, FF may share a smaller revenue fraction with EP, as FF relies more on his own efforts during CPD. Third, FF cannot benefit from fairness concerns, as his profit is not higher than that in the benchmark. Finally, the existence of follow-up sales does not change FF’s decision about whether to collaborate with EP.

This study incorporates fairness preference into CPD decisions. Besides, a new concept of fairness called “effort-related fairness” is proposed.

The present study is aimed at understanding the survival strategies of Subsistence-type Rural Independent retailers, henceforth called SRIs, in the Bottom-of-the-Pyramid (BoP) markets of developing economies through a qualitative study. SRIs constitute a pivotal channel of distribution of goods to BoP consumers living in the rural areas of developing economies. A process of long interviews was chosen for data gathering to allow SRIs to go into details to allow them to expound upon their beliefs, life-situations, and societal norms. Narratives were collected verbatim from SRIs. The concept of socio-economic embeddedness is used as the central concept to interpret and connect the elements, discerned from the narratives, into a conceptual framework. The aforesaid theory combines the neo-classical economic concept of utility maximization with behavioral economics and economic sociology. The analysis of the narratives is interpretive against the identified elements of the concept of economic embeddedness. The survival strategies of SRIs seem to stem from sociological, psychological, and utility-maximizing behaviors. The elements of SRIs’ responses to its environment provide valuable insights into their purchase motivations.

Signals, e.g. information released by firms about new products attract the attention and scrutiny of customers, competitors and other stakeholders. In product management, an important area of research focuses on the economic value of such signals. However, extant studies consider valuation effects of product signals independently, and largely ignore how the value of a product signal at launch depends upon prior preannouncements. This study aims to investigate how the dependence of new product development (NPD) signals on past preannouncements affects firms’ security prices.

The study develops a conceptual model that draws upon information asymmetry theories, i.e. signaling and agency theory to hypothesize the effect of firms’ product introduction announcements on security prices given two antecedent preannouncement types (costless and costly signals). Hypotheses are tested by conducting an event study analysis on a sample of 149 matched observations (product introduction announcement preceded by a certain type of preannouncement).

Empirical results confirm the hypothesis that positive valuation effects are observed during product launch that is preceded by initial costless product signaling. In contrast, for ex ante costly product signaling, launch events are not diagnostic enough to affect value. Since organizations’ NPD communications can revise investors’ prior beliefs, they need to be understood in more detail and managed strategically.

Valuation metrics can be noisy with a potential to influence information events. In addition, product introduction signals may be deployed more frequently in certain fast-paced industries, e.g. hi-tech.

Managers can incorporate signal dependence in product communications. For example, in costless ex ante product signaling situations, initial economic loss may be recovered through launch announcements. Furthermore, when costly signals have been used earlier, firms may economize on promotion costs during launch.

Past research has focused on assessing the economic value of new product signals independently, i.e. as discrete events. Absent is an examination of valuation effects due to the dependence of launch signals on prior preannouncements. This paper addresses the dependence gap, and empirical results show that even if firms do not deploy product signals ex ante, value can be created through ex post launch announcements.

This paper examines the effect of overconfident yield forecasting (optimism bias) on crop insurance coverage level choices across both yield and revenue insurance.

This study simulates a representative producer’s preferred coverage level for both yield and revenue insurance under three potential models of decision-making and four potential manifestations of overconfident yield forecasting. The study then uses this framework to examine how coverage level choices change as overconfidence increases (decreases).

As overconfidence increases, producers prefer lower levels of crop insurance coverage than they would otherwise prefer, with extreme overconfidence inducing farmers to buy no insurance at all. While overconfidence affects cross-coverage demand for revenue and yield insurance similarly, this effect is more pronounced for yield insurance. Cross-coverage level demand for revenue insurance is relatively stable across changes in the correlation between prices and yields.

This research has important implications for crop insurance subsidy design and crop insurance demand modeling.

There is a growing body of literature suggesting that producers are overconfident with regard to their future yield risk and that this bias reduces their willingness to pay for risk management tools such as crop insurance. This is the first study to look at how such overconfidence affects cross-coverage level demand for crop insurance.

To study the perception of dividends by the professional investor, for whom mutual fund managers are a proxy. The main line of research in dividends is based on using market data that are fit, ex post, to a cherished hypothesis. It is believed, however, that such data cannot measure motivation which is the underlying force behind generating market data. An understanding of motivation will give us more insight into the dividend paradox (why shareholders love dividends) than just the surface reality one can glean from market data.

Using a survey instrument, the method of analysis (not methodology) is factor analysis and hierarchical grouping that uncovers three distinct groups of professional investors re their attitude towards dividend. This categorization clearly shows that the dividends are perceived differently by the groups found here. Thus, research in dividends cannot follow a traditional route in which the phenomenon is treated as universal, or something similar to a natural occurrence.

Three groups from the more traditional: the more growth‐oriented, aggressive; and a middle‐of‐the‐road group are posited. Although there are some uniformly accepted tenets across the groups, nevertheless, the more traditional group attributes far more importance to dividends than the growth‐oriented group. The latter group perceives dividends as something needed to pacify the shareholder. It is also concluded that none of the academic hypotheses contrived to explain dividend behavior can be supported by empirical evidence. The interesting result is, nevertheless, that the ex post group performance is not significantly different between each possible pairing of the three groups.

As all empirical research goes, results cannot be all‐conclusive, because of time and participation in the sample. This fact alone should not grind to a halt all empirical work. This work is part of a segment of three different studies examining the perception of dividends by corporate managers, and across countries. The next logical step is obviously studying the perception of dividends by the non‐professional investor.

This kind of work was almost never done. This is a first, because unfortunately traditional research that dominates most finance journals does not believe that motivation counts. First, because it satisfies one's desire to better understand the dividend puzzle. But it should be of interest to all who want to study the dividend decision in the firm, and why shareholders love dividends, something entirely not rational as far as economic rationality goes.