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Job insecurity has become an important issue for western organizations in the last decade due to uncertain economic conditions, global competition, and the advancement of information technology. In this study, we integrate social exchange theory and rational choice theory to explain employees’ responses to job insecurity in the Chinese context. We distinguish short-term transactional exchange from long-term relational exchange, and argue that joint ventures (JVs) and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are characterized by different kinds of employee-organization exchange. An integrated theoretical framework is developed to explain why workers in these organizations respond differently to job insecurity. A total of 548 supervisor-subordinate dyads in a JV and a SOE in China are used to test the hypotheses derived from our framework. The results of hierarchical regression analysis indicate that the effects of job insecurity on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job performance depend on both organizational types and employees’ trust in their organization.

Machine learning methods are powerful tools for data mining with large noisy databases and give researchers the opportunity to gain new insights into consumer behavior and to improve the performance of marketing operations. To model consumer responses to direct marketing, this study proposes Bayesian networks learned by evolutionary programming. Using a large direct marketing data set, we tested the endogeneity bias in the recency, frequency, monetary value (RFM) variables using the control function approach; compared the results of Bayesian networks with those of neural networks, classification and regression tree (CART), and latent class regression; and applied a tenfold cross-validation. The results suggest that Bayesian networks have distinct advantages over the other methods in accuracy of prediction, transparency of procedures, interpretability of results, and explanatory insight. Our findings lend strong support to Bayesian networks as a robust tool for modeling consumer response and other marketing problems and for assisting management decision making.direct marketing, Bayesian networks, evolutionary programming, machine learning, data mining

Drawing on the resource-based view, this study examines the contingency effects of industry-and firm-level variables on the first-mover advantages and effective follower strategies in an emerging-market context. Using hierarchical regressions, the authors analyze a large data set of foreign investors in China. Contingency models that include the interactions of entry order with the moderating variables have better fit of the data than the main-effect models. Industry growth and competition, firm size, entry mode, resource commitment, and marketing intensity have significant moderating effects on first-mover advantages. After the authors correct for multicollinearity bias using ridge regression, it seems that pioneers still enjoy a small advantage in market share but not in profitability, indicating a trade-off between the two. Furthermore, followers may augment performance by increasing resource commitment and marketing intensity. These findings have significant implications for entry-order strategies and for improving foreign direct investment performance in foreign markets; they also suggest meaningful directions for further research.

This paper takes Becker 4 efficient marriage market hypothesis at face value, and directly confronts it with data from Hong Kong. The theory of optimal assignment is used to develop an empirical model of spouse selection, which resembles a Tobit model. This model can address positive or negative assortative matching as well as marginal product pricing in marriage markets. We also use a computer algorithm to solve the assignment problem for imputed marital output. The degree to which the actual pairing of husbands and wives corresponds to the optimal pairing provides a goodness-ofifit test of the efficient marriage market hypothesis. (JEL C51, C61, C78, J12) This paper takes Gary Becker's theory of marriage seriously. In his seminal paper, Becker [ 19731 proposes an invisible hand theorem for the marriage market. He argues that the competition for spouse leads men and women to be matched in such a way that maximizes the sum total of marital output. Applications of the economic approach to marriage are now commonplace. Becker et al. [I9771 study the effect of imperfect information on divorce. Benham [1974], Scully [1979] and Wong [ 19861 estimate the effect of wife's education on husband's earnings. Grossbard-Shechtman [ 19931 and Rao [ 19931 focus on the effect of sex ratio on (implicit or explicit) bride prices or dowries. The literature, however, has virtually ignored Becker's hypothesis that marriage markets maximize total marital output, i.e., that marriage markets are efficient.Mistakes are no doubt made in marriage decisions. The marriage market is not a text-* We thank Dr. Ira Hammerman for helping us locate a computer algorithm that solves the optimal assignment problem.