Statistical Analysis of Choice Experiments and Surveys

Measures of households' past behavior, their expectations with respect to future events and contingencies, and their intentions with respect to future behavior are frequently collected using household surveys. These questions are conceptually difficult. Answering them requires elaborate cognitive and social processes, and often respondents report only their “best” guesses and/or estimates, using more or less sophisticated heuristics. A large body of literature in psychology and survey research shows that as a result, responses to such questions may be severely biased. In this paper, (1) we describe some of the problems that are typically encountered, (2) provide some empirical illustrations of these biases, and (3) develop a framework for conceptualizing survey response behavior and for integrating structural models of response behavior into the statistical analysis of the underlying economic behavior.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47001/1/11002_2005_Article_5884.pd

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUSINESS DEFINITION AND THE LONG-TERM GROWTH OF COMPANIES: IS LEVITT RIGHT?

Theodore Levitt argued that organizational growth can be threatened because firms define their businesses incorrectly. He believed that businesses should be defined in terms of 'needs', not 'products', if they are to survive in the long term. In this paper I investigate the relationship between business definition and the long-term growth of companies in order to prove Levitt's idea. I statistically analyse relationships between past business definitions and financial performance up to the present using 50 Japanese electric/electronics companies. I find that there is a clear relationship between 'functionality' of a business definition and long-term growth in sales and aggregate market value. Copyright 2005 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Intentions

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