This Month from Knowledge@Wharton

Stories this month include "In the Game of Business, Playing Fair
Can Actually Lead to Greater Profits" and "A Great Bargain or a Big
Rip-off? Consumers' Perceptions of Price Fairness in the U.S. and
China"

Plus: Video Podcasts Including Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, Rate
Cuts and the Looming Threat of Inflation
PHILADELPHIA--(Business Wire)--
This past month some of the timely stories from Knowledge@Wharton
, the Wharton School's online
research and business analysis journal include:

In the Game of Business, Playing Fair Can Actually Lead to Greater
Profits

Tune into "The Apprentice," and you get an all-too-common view of
business. Every week, the contestants try to impress Donald Trump by
preening, cajoling and conniving. In this world, toughness is the
measure of every CEO, and the boss glories in firing people and
squeezing every penny out of suppliers. Yet according to John Zhang
and Jagmohan Raju, both Wharton marketing professors, and Tony Haitao
Cui from the University of Minnesota, many people aren't purely
mercenary in their business dealings. They care about fairness -- and
they should, the researchers say, because doing so can maximize their
profits.

here

A Great Bargain or a Big Rip-off? Consumers' Perceptions of Price
Fairness in the U.S. and China

How do consumers react when they discover someone else bought the
same product they did at a cheaper price? Do they feel differently if
that someone else is a friend versus a stranger? Wharton marketing
professor Lisa Bolton and two colleagues explore pricing and fairness
perceptions in a new research paper, and document how attitudes are
different, or in some cases similar, between consumers in China and
those in the United States. The paper is titled, "Culture and
Marketplace Effects on Perceived Price Fairness: China and the USA."

here

When Are Emerging Markets No Longer 'Emerging'?

The term "emerging markets" is now more than 25 years old and has
come to define wide swaths of the world undergoing rapid economic
change. Dozens of countries fall under the label even though they are
evolving at their own pace and with their own twists on economic
development. Now, as many emerging markets show signs of a strong and
growing middle-class population, observers wonder whether the term has
lost some of its meaning. What qualifies a country as "emerging"?
While some say measures based on income or other statistics are
critical factors, others place an increasing emphasis on the way
business is conducted, with rules that are transparent and apply
equally to all participants.

here

Scott Guthrie on Microsoft's Play for Rich Internet Applications

Earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled Silverlight 2, a platform
akin to Adobe's Flash designed to advance the software giant's push
into the arena of rich Internet applications. One week earlier, Adobe
Systems launched its "Adobe Integrated Runtime," which allows web
programmers to move their software out of the browser and onto
the computer's desktop. Both companies hope to establish their
software as the foundation for the next generation of software
development. Spearheading Microsoft's efforts is corporate vice
president Scott Guthrie, who spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about his
company's aspirations for Silverlight and the future of the web.

Biased Expectations: Can Accounting Tools Lead to, Rather than
Prevent, Executive Mistakes?

Accounting techniques like budgeting, sales projections and
financial reporting are supposed to help prevent business failures by
giving managers realistic plans to guide their actions and feedback on
their progress. At least that's the theory. But when Gavin Cassar, a
Wharton accounting professor, tested this idea, he found something
troubling: Some accounting tools not only fail to help businesspeople,
but may actually lead them astray. He analyzes these conclusions in
two separate research papers.

Podcasts:

Jeremy Siegel on Bear Stearns, Rate Cuts and the Looming Threat of
Inflation

Physician and Administrator: How Surgeon Larry Kaiser Navigates
Two Different Worlds

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About Knowledge@Wharton and the Wharton School

Knowledge@Wharton , is a
free biweekly online resource that captures knowledge generated at
Wharton through such channels as research papers, conferences, books,
and interviews with faculty on current business topics, and
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Copyright Business Wire 2008