Nonlinear Effects of Dynamic Pricing on Export Performance: A Longitudinal Investigation

The knowledge of dynamic pricing in the international context still lacks sound theoretical underpinnings, and therefore renders few practical guidelines. This study develops a longitudinal framework to examine the nature of dynamic export pricing in exporting context. It shows that dynamic export pricing is a powerful marketing tool for exporting firms that helps them manage demand and react to competitors’ movements. By employing venture-level longitudinal data, first, this study estimates an inverted-U shaped relationship between dynamic export pricing and export performance. Second, this study further investigates the moderating role of two dimensions of export market dynamism – customer dynamism and competitive dynamism – in this inverted-U shaped relationship while simultaneously controlling for endogeneity and unknown firm heterogeneity. This study theorizes and tests two types of moderation effects of the curvilinear relationship, including changes of the shape and shifts of the turning point. The results indicate that both customer dynamism and competitive dynamism significantly moderate the relationship between dynamic export pricing and export performance. Particularly, the shifts of the turning point delineate the fit lines that pinpoint the best dynamic export pricing practice under different customer and competitive dynamism. Third, this study shows that previous actions and outcomes significantly influence the following year’s export performance. The findings indicate the evolutionary effects of the dynamic strategies and thereby provide a better understanding of shaping superior export performance in the long term

The determinants of export performance: a review of the literature 2006-2014

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to synthesize and evaluate recent studies on determinants of export performance. Design/methodology/approach Using a vote-counting technique this paper reviews 124 papers published between 2006 and 2014 to assess the determinants of export performance. Findings The results indicate that significant progress has been made during these nine years and that: (1) numerous new determinants are identified, (2) data quality and statistical biases have received considerable attention, and (3) interaction and indirect relationships are considered. However, at the same time, the research of export performance is still limited by (1) a lack of synthetic theoretical basis, (2) inconsistent empirical test results, and (3) insufficiency in the research framework and statistical methodologies. Originality/value Export performance has received increasing attention over recent decades, but the area is still characterized by fragmentation and diversity hindering theoretical and practical development. This paper integrates the findings of recent studies on export performance and provides further discussion from both theoretical and methodological aspects, and points out the directions for future research

Mind Your Data! Hiding Backdoors in Offline Reinforcement Learning Datasets

A growing body of research works has focused on the Offline Reinforcement Learning (RL) paradigm. Data providers share large pre-collected datasets on which others can train high-quality agents without interacting with the environments. Such an offline RL paradigm has demonstrated effectiveness in many critical tasks, including robot control, autonomous driving, etc. A well-trained agent can be regarded as a software system. However, less attention is paid to investigating the security threats to the offline RL system. In this paper, we focus on a critical security threat: backdoor attacks. Given normal observations, an agent implanted with backdoors takes actions leading to high rewards. However, the same agent takes actions that lead to low rewards if the observations are injected with triggers that can activate the backdoor. In this paper, we propose Baffle (Backdoor Attack for Offline Reinforcement Learning) and evaluate how different Offline RL algorithms react to this attack. Our experiments conducted on four tasks and four offline RL algorithms expose a disquieting fact: none of the existing offline RL algorithms is immune to such a backdoor attack. More specifically, Baffle modifies $10\%$ of the datasets for four tasks (3 robotic controls and 1 autonomous driving). Agents trained on the poisoned datasets perform well in normal settings. However, when triggers are presented, the agents' performance decreases drastically by $63.6\%$, $57.8\%$, $60.8\%$ and $44.7\%$ in the four tasks on average. The backdoor still persists after fine-tuning poisoned agents on clean datasets. We further show that the inserted backdoor is also hard to be detected by a popular defensive method. This paper calls attention to developing more effective protection for the open-source offline RL dataset.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figure

Nonlinear Effects of Dynamic Export Pricing on Export Sales: A Longitudinal Investigation

Little is known in the literature about dynamic export pricing, and particularly how the external environment interacts with a firm’s export pricing decisions and its long-term effect on export sales. Therefore, this study develops a longitudinal framework to examine the quadratic effect of dynamic export pricing and its interaction with customer/competitive turbulence on export sales. By employing product-level longitudinal data, the authors also estimate the lagged effect from past dynamic export pricing and export sales while simultaneously controlling for endogeneity and unknown firm heterogeneity. The results indicate that dynamic export pricing appears to have inverted quadratic effects on export sales; this quadratic relationship is moderated by customer turbulence and competitive turbulence. The authors also focus on the changes of the curve and shifts of the turning point and delineate the fit lines that pinpoint the optimal dynamic export pricing in different export markets. Finally, previous actions and outcomes significantly influence the following year’s export sales, which explains the long-term relationships

The Study on Re Effect Correction for Laminar Wing with High Lift

In the past years, Reynolds number (Re) effect correction is carried out by varied Re experiment. The experiment can obtain double logarithm linear curve between the least drag and Re, and the least drag in flying Re is got by linear exploration. However, Re effect exerts a great influence on transition position for laminar wing with high lift. Therefore, the lift, drag and longitudinal moment can’t be acquired by traditional Re effect correction. In this paper, the transition prediction simulations for laminar wing high lift are carried to obtain unconstrained transition position in different Re by adopting γ-Reθ transition prediction model. An agreement with experiment for transition position is achieved. According to the result of transition perdition and unconstrained transition test, Re effect correction in different height for the data of wind tunnel test is done. This method makes up for the traditional method, which Re effect correction for battle-plane is done for only drag. In present paper, Re effect correction for the lift, drag and longitudinal moment is done to acquire more accurate experimental data to ensure everything in flight

The Study on Re Effect Correction for Laminar Wing with High Lift

In the past years, Reynolds number (Re) effect correction is carried out by varied Re experiment. The experiment can obtain double logarithm linear curve between the least drag and Re, and the least drag in flying Re is got by linear exploration. However, Re effect exerts a great influence on transition position for laminar wing with high lift. Therefore, the lift, drag and longitudinal moment can’t be acquired by traditional Re effect correction. In this paper, the transition prediction simulations for laminar wing high lift are carried to obtain unconstrained transition position in different Re by adopting γ-Reθ transition prediction model. An agreement with experiment for transition position is achieved. According to the result of transition perdition and unconstrained transition test, Re effect correction in different height for the data of wind tunnel test is done. This method makes up for the traditional method, which Re effect correction for battle-plane is done for only drag. In present paper, Re effect correction for the lift, drag and longitudinal moment is done to acquire more accurate experimental data to ensure everything in flight