China's inter-and intra-industry trade in manufactures with special reference to the market-oriented reform.

Oh, Seung-Yul.Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1992.Includes bibliographical references.Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1Chapter 1-1 --- General scope and the approach --- p.1Chapter 1-2 --- Outline of the study --- p.7Chapter 2. --- THE EXPANSION OF MARKET MECHANISM IN THE CHINESE INDUSTRY --- p.12Chapter 2-1 --- Marketization as the main approach to industrial reform --- p.12Chapter 2-2 --- Expanding markets and market conditions --- p.19Chapter 2-3 --- Price adjustment mechanism in the Chinese industry --- p.38Chapter 2-4 --- Changing behavioral pattern of the industrial enterprise --- p.48Chapter 2-5 --- Concluding remark --- p.59Chapter 3. --- FOREIGN TRADE DECENTRALIZATION IN CHINA --- p.61Chapter 3-1 --- Organizational reform in China's foreign trade system --- p.63Chapter 3-2 --- Reforms in foreign trade planning system --- p.66Chapter 3-3 --- Determination of prices in foreign trade --- p.74Chapter 3-4 --- Changing role of foreign trade in China --- p.80Chapter 3-5 --- Concluding remark --- p.93Chapter 4. --- FACTOR PROPORTIONS THEORY AND INTER-INDUSTRY TRADE IN CHINA --- p.95Chapter 4-1 --- Realization of comparative advantage in China --- p.95Chapter 4-2 --- Extension of Heckscher-Ohlin theorem and implications for empirical testing --- p.100Chapter 4-3 --- Determinants of inter-industry trade in the Chinese industry --- p.107Chapter 4-4 --- Concluding remark --- p.122Chapter 5. --- INTRA-INDUSTRY TRADE IN THE CHINESE INDUSTRY --- p.123Chapter 5-1 --- Background --- p.123Chapter 5-2 --- Theoretical explanations for intra-industry trade --- p.129Chapter 5-3 --- Quantitative significance and patterns of intra-industry trade in China --- p.142Chapter 5-4 --- Sources of intra-industry trade in the Chinese industry --- p.155Chapter 5-5 --- Determinants of intra-industry trade in China --- p.170Chapter 5-6 --- Concluding remark --- p.190Chapter 6. --- THE CONSEQUENCES OF INTER- AND INTRA-INDUSTRY TRADE FOR ADJUSTMENT IN THE CHINESE INDUSTRY --- p.192Chapter 6-1 --- Gains from trade --- p.192Chapter 6-2 --- Cost of adjustment in the Chinese industry --- p.204Chapter 6-3 --- Implications for commercial policy in China --- p.215Chapter 6-4 --- Concluding remark --- p.228Chapter 7. --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.230APPENDICES --- p.236BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.25

An Experimental Study of Warranty Coverage and Dispute Resolution in Competitive Markets

In service and product markets where warranties are offered, disputes over warranty performance frequently occur between buyer and seller. Resolving such disputes in a fair and effective way has become an increasingly important and controversial question in recent years. Some observers have gone so far as to argue that the pervasiveness of such disputes and the inability to resolve them effectively is having a corrosive effect on society.1 This is probably somewhat extreme, but even a less excited perspective suggests that the design of procedures to handle consumer disputes is a matter for serious concern

Multi-agent system for consumer-oriented electronic commerce

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.With the advent of the information superhighway and the exponential growth of the Internet usage, the importance of multi-agent systems is proliferating. The central theme of this thesis is to demonstrate the benefits of adopting multi-agent system (MAS) paradigm to implement consumer oriented electronic commerce system. The discipline of computational science is exploited to provide insights into the behaviour of a model of consumer behaviour that reflect the cognitive notion that the thesis has developed. For this, a multi-agent system computational environment is used to model and investigate the consumer purchase over the Internet. The MAS is developed based on a presented taxonomy, that is most relevant to the thesis application. The thesis also presents a novel approach to negotiation. Results of empirical evaluations provide a strong support that agents using the proposed approach would achieve higher payoff than human subjects. An empirical evaluation for the usability of the prototype system is also presented. Reported results are very encouraging to implement a fieldable system. To complement the perspective for a complete consumer-oriented EC system, the thesis addresses and develops approaches for searching and extracting relevant information. Example experiments are also reported to act as indicators for the effectiveness of the developed approaches

Factors affecting the adoption of online auctions by internet users in Hong Kong

This is an exploratory empirical study with the aim to identify the factors that affect the adoption of online auctions by Internet users in Hong Kong. The frameworks used were the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), TCE (Transaction Cost Economics) and SERVQUAL (Service Quality). It was found that the dimensions that affected the customer’s perceived value of the online auction are benefits, costs, risks and service quality. Data was collected from four pilot focus groups, one online survey and a final focus group. The subjects in the focus groups were 21 undergraduates, whereas the subjects in the online survey were 152 internet users. The results of the pilot focus groups guided the design of the online survey. The results of the survey was analysed using the Kruskal-Wallis test. The final focus group was used to seek explanations to some issues arose from the online survey. It was found that the factors in the benefit dimension were liquidity, enjoyment, and price transparency. The factors in the cost dimension were time, effort, service charge and reputation of the user. The factor in the risk dimension was financial risk. The factors in the service quality dimension were efficiency and system availability. The final focus group revealed that the auctioneer’s role in policing the auction web site was important. For differences among the subjects, it was also found that the adult users consider their reputation in auction website, young adults are worried about financial risks, and female users are more concerned about financial risks than male users. The implications of these differences are discussed. The main academic contribution was the development of a questionnaire and a model which can be used in further research about other forms of auction

USA Power LLC, USA Power Partners, L. L. C., and Spring Canyon Energy, LLC v. Pacificorp : Brief of Appellant

APPEAL FROM THE THIRD JUDICIAL DISTRICT COURT, SALT LAKE COUNTY, STATE OF UTAH, HONORABLE TYRONE E. MEDLE

Negotiations in buyer-seller relationships

This research provides a basis for consideration of the nature of inter-personal interaction between buyers and sellers in a marketing context. It brings together the models of business relationship development and negotiations. Modem businesses recognise that some relationships are more profitable than others. As a result, the focus is now on retention of customers, greater openness and closer relationships between organisations and agreements leading towards more mutually beneficial outcomes between partners. This emphasises the strategic importance of inter-personal relationships and, specifically, negotiation behaviour. Indeed, negotiation in marketing is a core competence which is vital to ensuring the longevity of business relationships. Despite the recognition of this, there is very little research into negotiations in the context of relationship marketing. Existing models of negotiation present a range of approaches from the extremes of the highly adversarial and competitive to integration and solution-building between the parties. Outcome success increases in importance to the negotiating parties as relationships develop into partnerships, and resource investment increases. Interpersonal interaction is characterised by exchange of information across a broad range of issues specific to the dyadic relationship. The process and nature of exchange becomes increasingly integrative. One of the significant features of this work is that of its observation and exploration of real and substantive negotiations between buyers and sellers. In order to examine the nature of interactions, this thesis develops and tests a coding mechanism applicable to real-life negotiations, supported by interview and questionnaire instruments. Negotiations have been categorised into Early, Mid and Partner stages of relational development. The findings of analyses indicate distinct patterns of negotiator behaviour at different stages of relational development. This has implications for the development of marketing theory as well as the behavioural stances adopted by individuals engaging in negotiations. Findings can aid decision-making in developing business relationships and also provide a means of recognising individual negotiator competences. This leads to more effectively targeted preparation and planning for interactions as well as skills training and, ultimately, outcome success

Virtual world commerce adoption (VWCA) : a case study of second life investigating the impacts of perceived affordances, trust, and need satisfaction

Virtual worlds are computer-simulated worlds in which multi-players can simultaneously interact in a rich graphical environment. The development of virtual worlds, along with the massive growth of users, creates opportunities for business organizations. This dissertation involves many studies regarding virtual world adoption in business by virtual consumers. Most of the research in Information Systems (IS) was conducted investigating factors influencing technology adoption, such as ease of use and usefulness, subjective norms and behavioral controls, self-efficacy, performance and effort expectancy, flow, etc. However, most of these research studies focused neither on design aspects related to affordances nor users\u27 goal-oriented behaviors, such as need satisfaction. This dissertation examines the effect of affordances, referring to a property of an object, animal, or environment that affords, or makes available certain actions. Particularly, this dissertation investigates the users\u27 perceived affordance of virtual products and environments, in which business transactions take place. In addition, relationship-based trust and need satisfaction are considered as crucial determinants of virtual world commerce adoption in this dissertation. There are three studies that were conducted in Second Life in this dissertation, which are two preliminary studies and a main study. The preliminary studies use multiple data collection methods, including user interviews, documentation, direct observations, and questionnaire surveys. The results of the preliminary studies suggest that trust, social influence, system security, system quality, and service quality are vital for users when they make purchase decisions. The initial measurement model containing valid and reliable measurement scales of the main research constructs was proposed. The main study, using a revised questionnaire survey from the preliminary studies, was conducted to develop the conceptual framework of Virtual World Commerce Adoption (VWCA). Covariance-based and PLS-based path analyses were employed based on the data obtained from the participants who have different experience levels with online business transactions. The final results show a significant relationship between perceived affordances and intention to purchase products in the virtual world. This relationship is mediated by need satisfaction. However, the mediating effect of relationship-based trust is not significant. This is due to more concern about trust related to technical aspects of the system rather than trust from social exchange process

Automated Service Negotiation Between Autonomous Computational Agents

PhDMulti-agent systems are a new computational approach for solving real world, dynamic and open system problems. Problems are conceptualized as a collection of decentralised autonomous agents that collaborate to reach the overall solution. Because of the agents autonomy, their limited rationality, and the distributed nature of most real world problems, the key issue in multi-agent system research is how to model interactions between agents. Negotiation models have emerged as suitable candidates to solve this interaction problem due to their decentralised nature, emphasis on mutual selection of an action, and the prevalence of negotiation in real social systems. The central problem addressed in this thesis is the design and engineering of a negotiation model for autonomous agents for sharing tasks and/or resources. To solve this problem a negotiation protocol and a set of deliberation mechanisms are presented which together coordinate the actions of a multiple agent system. In more detail, the negotiation protocol constrains the action selection problem solving of the agents through the use of normative rules of interaction. These rules temporally order, according to the agents' roles, communication utterances by specifying both who can say what, as well as when. Specifically, the presented protocol is a repeated, sequential model where offers are iteratively exchanged. Under this protocol, agents are assumed to be fully committed to their utterances and utterances are private between the two agents. The protocol is distributed, symmetric, supports bi and/or multi-agent negotiation as well as distributive and integrative negotiation. In addition to coordinating the agent interactions through normative rules, a set of mechanisms are presented that coordinate the deliberation process of the agents during the ongoing negotiation. Whereas the protocol normatively describes the orderings of actions, the mechanisms describe the possible set of agent strategies in using the protocol. These strategies are captured by a negotiation architecture that is composed of responsive and deliberative decision mechanisms. Decision making with the former mechanism is based on a linear combination of simple functions called tactics, which manipulate the utility of deals. The latter mechanisms are subdivided into trade-off and issue manipulation mechanisms. The trade-off mechanism generates offers that manipulate the value, rather than the overall utility, of the offer. The issue manipulation mechanism aims to increase the likelihood of an agreement by adding and removing issues into the negotiation set. When taken together, these mechanisms represent a continuum of possible decision making capabilities: ranging from behaviours that exhibit greater awareness of environmental resources and less to solution quality, to behaviours that attempt to acquire a given solution quality independently of the resource consumption. The protocol and mechanisms are empirically evaluated and have been applied to real world task distribution problems in the domains of business process management and telecommunication management. The main contribution and novelty of this research are: i) a domain independent computational model of negotiation that agents can use to support a wide variety of decision making strategies, ii) an empirical evaluation of the negotiation model for a given agent architecture in a number of different negotiation environments, and iii) the application of the developed model to a number of target domains. An increased strategy set is needed because the developed protocol is less restrictive and less constrained than the traditional ones, thus supporting development of strategic interaction models that belong more to open systems. Furthermore, because of the combination of the large number of environmental possibilities and the size of the set of possible strategies, the model has been empirically investigated to evaluate the success of strategies in different environments. These experiments have facilitated the development of general guidelines that can be used by designers interested in developing strategic negotiating agents. The developed model is grounded from the requirement considerations from both the business process management and telecommunication application domains. It has also been successfully applied to five other real world scenarios