Élasticité de la demande de logement au Canada : Nouveaux résultats sur des données désagrégées

L’estimation des élasticités de la demande de logement a été l’objet d’un nombre important d’articles tant au Canada qu’aux États-Unis. Cet intérêt a été entretenu principalement par l’écart des résultats observé d’une étude à l’autre et par la diversité des problèmes économétriques à laquelle conduit ce genre d’estimation. Le présent article, tout en poussant l’investigation un peu plus loin, a l’avantage d’utiliser un échantillon de données individuelles dans les deux plus grandes zones métropolitaines au Canada : Montréal et Toronto. De plus, la spécification du modèle incorpore une variable prix obtenue à partir de l’estimation d’une fonction de prix hédonique.L’article fait d’abord la revue des principaux problèmes économétriques que soulève ce genre d’estimation, et présente ensuite la spécification du modèle finalement retenue aux fins de l’estimateur. Nos résultats montrent que le biais dans l’élasticité-revenu consécutif à l’exclusion de la variable prix dans l’équation de demande est relativement faible par rapport à celui qu’entraînerait une mesure inappropriée du revenu ou encore des dépenses de logement.The estimation of housing demand elasticities was the object of numerous studies in Canada as well as in U.S. Such an interest has been fostered by the econometric problems involved in such estimations and the large variance in the results obtained. The present article has the advantage over many of these previous studies to use a sample of individual households in the two largest metropolitan area in Canada: Montreal and Toronto. Moreover, the specification of the disaggregated demand model includes a price variable obtained from the estimation of an hedonic price equation.Following a review of the main econometric problems raised by such an estimation, the specification of the model used in this study is presented. Our results show that the bias in income elasticity generated by the exclusion of the price variable in the demand equation based on micro data is relatively small and that the use of inappropriate variables as measures of income or housing expenses might have a considerably larger effect

Les limites du discours économique sur la publicité

It is often assumed that the negative impact of advertising is the basis from which economic studies in this area are to be undertaken. The authors state that the evidence supporting such a claim is far from obvious. In fact, the suggestion brought forth is that this assumption may be faulty. Specific areas of inquiry are suggested such as the cost of advertising in relation to marketing and manufacturing costs as well as the impact of advertising on GNP. The authors point out that from a demand analysis perspective, the eternal diseconomies in consumption due to advertising as claimed and condemned by economists, is really the result of the consumer's decision making process in the market place. The economists fail to take into account all of the social and psychological forces which impact on consumer behavior. Finally, the authors state that from a supply analysis orientation, no conclusion link has been found between advertising, industrial concentration and market power

Achieving strategic alignment: a decision-making perspective

Beyond studies related to the importance of strategic alignment between business strategy and IS strategy as well as establishing a number of enablers and inhibitors, there is a paucity of research on how organizations actually achieve strategic alignment. We conceptualize the process of achieving strategic alignment from a decision-making perspective by deductively drawing upon extant literature on strategic alignment and decision-making. Preliminary data collection from two case studies, out of four theoretically selected research sites, followed by data analysis based on analytic induction uncovers evidence in support of the conceptual framework. New insights reveal that the structure of the decision-making process inherent in achieving strategic alignment is shaped by organizational and decisional factors. In addition, the nature of the IT artifact and the availability of slack resources at the organizational level shape the rigor and the due-diligence associated with achieving strategic alignment, potentially suggesting the existence of additional decision-making routines

Les limites du discours économique sur la publicité

It is often assumed that the negative impact of advertising is the basis from which economic studies in this area are to be undertaken. The authors state that the evidence supporting such a claim is far from obvious. In fact, the suggestion brought forth is that this assumption may be faulty. Specific areas of inquiry are suggested such as the cost of advertising in relation to marketing and manufacturing costs as well as the impact of advertising on GNP. The authors point out that from a demand analysis perspective, the eternal diseconomies in consumption due to advertising as claimed and condemned by economists, is really the result of the consumer's decision making process in the market place. The economists fail to take into account all of the social and psychological forces which impact on consumer behavior. Finally, the authors state that from a supply analysis orientation, no conclusion link has been found between advertising, industrial concentration and market power.

Re-examining the Status of IT in IT Research - An Update on Orlikowski and Iacono (2001)

Nearly 10 years ago, Orlikowski and Iacono examined the conceptualization of Information Technology in Information Systems Research (ISR) articles published in 1990s, and found that the majority of these articles were not thoroughly engaged with IT artifact. They proposed that IS researchers should start to theorize about the IT artifact and employ rich conceptualizations of IT. In order to assess the field’s response to Orlikowski and Iacono’s recommendations, and obtain an up-to-date image of the contemporary IS research, we carried out a similar analysis on a recent set of articles, i.e. the full set of papers published in the last three years of ISR, Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), and Journal of the Association for Information Systems (JAIS). Our results reveal no drastic progress in terms of deeper engagement with IT artifact; 30% of the articles in our set are virtually mute about the artifact, and only 10% are employing an ensemble view of IT. Nevertheless, there are informative discrepancies between patterns in our results and those in the original study, and noticeable differences among the three journals. Implications of these findings for future research will be discussed

IT Champions as Agents of Change: a Social Capital Perspective

Beyond studies on IT champion characteristics, there is a paucity of theoretically-based research on the IT championing process. Using an analytic induction strategy, we employ the Social Capital Theory to better understand how IT champions arise in organizations and how they use different sets of tactics to promote an IT implementation. We conducted five case studies, with a total of 87 interviewees. The initial analysis of two cases reveals evidence in support of the conceptual framework that has been deductively constructed based on the social capital and IT championship-related literature. Consistent with analytic induction, a number of new insights have also emerged. Once completed, we expect this study to make several contributions, as it extends our understanding of how different dimensions of social capital are leveraged by IT champions. It also complements existing variance-based models, helping understand better the process by which IT championship-related causal mechanisms occur

Tableau atoms and a new Macdonald positivity conjecture

Retrieved November 2, 2007 from http://xxx.lanl.gov/find/grp_math/1/au:+Morse_J/0/1/0/all/0/1.Let A be the space of symmetric functions and Vk be the subspace spanned by the modified Schur functions {Sy[X/(1 − t)]}1k. We introduce a new family of symmetric polynomials, {A(k) [X; t]}1<k, constructed from sums of tableaux using the charge statistic. We conjecture that the polynomials Ay(k) [X; t] form a basis for Vk and that the Macdonald polynomials indexed by partitions whose first part is not larger than k expand positively in terms of our polynomials. A proof of this conjecture would not only imply the Macdonald positivity conjecture, but would substantially refine it. Our construction of the Ay(k) [X; t] relies on the use of tableaux combinatorics and yields various properties and conjectures on the nature of these polynomials. Another important development following from our investigation is that the Ay(k) [X; t] seem to play the same role for Vk as the Schur functions do for . In particular, this has led us to the discovery of many generalizations of properties held by the Schur functions, such as Pieri and Littlewood-Richardson type coefficients