Self-enforcing capital tax coordination

Capital tax competition is known to result in inefficiently low tax rates and an undersupply of public goods. The provision of public goods and with it the welfare of all countries can be enhanced via tax coordination. Based on the standard Zodrow-Mieszkowski-Wilson tax-competition model this paper analyzes the conditions under which tax coordination by a group of countries is self-enforcing. In our analytical framework, there always exists a rather small stable tax coalition. For some subset of the parameter space the grand coalition is stable, even if the total number of countries is large. If the stable coalition is small, it is not very effective in mitigating the inefficiency of the non-cooperative Nash equilibrium. The ineffectiveness is increasing in the total number of countries.     

不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购策略研究

在提前订购和延时采购两种情景下,分别考虑最大化期望收益和最小化违约概率两种决策目标,对受资金约束零售商的最优采购量和相匹配的融资策略进行分析,结果表明,相比于以最大化期望收益为决策目标,以最小化违约概率为决策目标的零售商在提前订购中将奉行"保守"的采购量和融资策略（仅耗尽自有资金量采购而不融资）,而在延时采购中采取"激进"的采购量和融资策略（与最大化期望收益下一致）;在此基础上,对不同决策目标下受资金约束零售商的最优采购时机问题进行研究发现,在最大化期望收益下,零售商的最优采购时机由产品采购成本、市场容量均值、市场容量方差、自有资金量、银行贷款利率等多个参数共同决定,而在最小化违约概率下,零售商将始终选择延时采购。     

The Multilevel Nature of Customer Experience Research: An Integrative Review and Research Agenda

Over the last three decades, customer experience (CE) has developed from a burgeoning concept to a widely recognized phenomenon in terms of both research and practice. To account for the complexity of consumption decisions, the CE literature encompasses both the rational information processing approach to consumer decision‐making and the experiential approach, which includes emotions, feelings and sub‐consciousness. The authors classify and examine CE research on two levels. Studies on static CE analyze experiences during touchpoints at one point in time, while studies on dynamic CE assess how experiences evolve over time. Furthermore, both static and dynamic CE research take place from two distinct theoretical perspectives: the organization and the consumer. As both theoretical perspectives essentially deal with the same phenomenon – the organizational perspective with the creation of CEs and the consumer perspective with the perception of customer experiences – there is potential for a productive symbiosis between them. The authors propose that connecting insights from both perspectives can contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes a CE for consumers and how firms can effectively manage it. First, the authors discuss the development of CE and argue that it has evolved into a broad and fragmented ‘umbrella construct’. Second, after distinguishing and defining static and dynamic CE, they systematically evaluate the state of knowledge in both the organizational and consumer perspectives. Finally, they develop an agenda for future research that integrates the consumer perspective into organizational CE research.     

Scheduling with interjob communication on parallel processors

Consider a scheduling problem in which a set of tasks needs to be scheduled on m parallel processors. Each task \(T_i\) consists of a set of jobs with interjob communication demands, represented by a weighted, undirected graph \(G_i\). The processors are assumed to be interconnected by a shared communication channel, which can be used by jobs to communicate among each other while being processed in parallel. In each time step, the scheduler assigns jobs to the processors and allows any processed job to use a certain capacity of the channel in order to satisfy (parts of) its communication demands to adjacent jobs processed in the same step. The goal is to find a schedule with minimum length in which the communication demands of all jobs are satisfied. We show that this problem is NP-hard in the strong sense even if the number of processors is constant and the underlying graph is a single path or a forest with arbitrary constant maximum degree. Consequently, we design and analyze approximation algorithms with asymptotic approximation ratio \(\min \{1.8, 1.5 \frac{m}{m-1}\}+1\) if the underlying graph G, the union of the \(G_i\), is a forest. For general graphs it is \(\min \left\{ 1.8, \frac{1.5m}{m-1}\right\} \cdot \left( \text {arb}(G) + \frac{5}{3}\right) \), where \(\text {arb}(G)\) denotes the arboricity of G.     

Southern assumptions: normalizing racialized structures at a university in the Deep South

Informed by critical race theory (CRT), we examine how African-American and white college students, at a predominantly white, structurally diverse, Southern US university, understand their cross-racial experiences. Black–white interactions are understood within the context of the so-called ‘post-racial’ environment, against the backdrop of high-profile cases of racial injustice, and within the added context of the historical legacy of slavery and Jim Crow segregation in the rural Southern United States. Our study suggests that many students, regardless of race, recognized the persistence of racial segregation, especially in nightlife and campus Greek letter organizations (GLOs). African-American students were the most vocal and troubled by this division. Unexpectedly, however, students appeared to take for granted that in the American South, racism is persistent and indestructible. Building on Bell’s (1991) notion of racial realism and Bonilla-Silva’s (2013) notion of naturalization, we expand the view that racism is inherent or related to individual preference, to place and time, with a construct we term southern assumptions. Southern assumptions are the mechanisms in which participants connect collective historical racism in the south to the race problems of today.     

Exploring the Impact of Personal and Partner Traits on Sexuality: Sexual Excitation,Sexual Inhibition,and Big Five Predict Sexual Function in Couples

Sexual difficulties are common among women and men and are associated with various mental and physical health problems. Although psychological traits are known to impact sexual attitudes and behavior, sexuality- and personality-related traits have not been jointly investigated to assess their relevance for sexual functioning in couples. The aim of this study was to investigate how psychological traits of two partners influence women’s and men’s sexual function. Data from 964 couples, representative of the adult population in Germany, were analyzed. Sexual function was assessed with the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and the International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF). Sexuality-related traits were measured with the Sexual Excitation/Sexual Inhibition Inventory for Women and Men (SESII-W/M). Personality was measured with self-report and partner-rating versions of the Big Five Inventory (BFI). Sexual excitation was a positive and sexual inhibition was a negative predictor of sexual function in both genders. Women whose partners were sexually inhibited reported lower sexual function. Conscientious individuals reported better sexual function. Women whose partners were more conscientious also had better sexual function. Assessing partner-related factors may be helpful to identify predisposing and maintaining factors of sexual dysfunctions, especially in women.