mutual fund misclassification evidence based on style analysis an iterative application of william sharpe s method of style analysis is applied to the classification of equity mutual funds a new methodology for creating purified mutual fund style indexes is used to verify existing classifications results suggest that 9 percent of all equity funds are seriously misclassified and another 31 percent are somewhat misclassified two factors emerge as the most likely reasons for misclassification 1 the ambiguity of the current classification system and 2 competitive pressures in the mutual fund industry and compensation structures that reward relative performance monte carlo simulations on out of sample data show that this misclassification has a significant effect on investors ability to build diversified portfolios of mutual funds

mutual fund performance an analysis of quarterly portfolio holdings this article employs the 1975 84 quarterly holdings of a sample of mutual funds to construct an estimate of their gross returns this sample which is not subject to survivorship bias is used in conjunction with a sample that contains the actual net returns of the mutual funds in addition to allowing the authors to estimate the bias in measured performance that is due to the survival requirement and to estimate total transaction costs the sample is used to test for the existence of abnormal performance the tests indicate that the risk adjusted gross returns of some funds were significantly positive copyright 1989 by the university of chicago

internationalization and specialization in the european automotive components sector implications for the hollowing out thesis sadler d 1999 internationalization and specialization in the european automotive components sector implications for the hollowing out thesis reg studies 33 109 119 this paper explores two questions the geographical conditions associated with an altered relationship between automobile assembly and component firms in europe and the ways in which automotive component firms have restructured their operations on a global basis the first section reviews the interplay between positional balance and spatial reorganization highlighting the significance of the strategies of leading component manufacturers these strategies are reviewed in depth in a subsequent section which pays particular attention to processes of internationalization and specialization a further exploratory section asks whether in the light of these trends a process of hollowing out might be taking place within the european automobile industry it is concluded that important issues to be addressed include the balance between invest

information technology effects on firm performance as measured by tobin s q despite increasing anecdotal evidence that information technology it assets contribute to firm performance and future growth potential of firms the empirical results relating it investments to firm performance measures have been equivocal however the bulk of the studies have relied exclusively on accounting based measures of firm performance which largely tend to ignore it s contribution to performance dimensions such as strategic flexibility and intangible value in this paper we use tobin s q a financial market based measure of firm performance and examine the association between it investments and firm q values after controlling for a variety of industry factors and firm specific variables the results based on data from 1988 1993 indicate that in all of the five years the inclusion of the it expenditure variable in the model increased the variance explained in q significantly the results also showed that for all five years it investments had a significantly positive association with tobin s q value our results are consistent with the notion that it contributes to a firm s future performance potential which a forward looking measure such as the q is better able to capture

impact of information technology capital on firm scope and performance the role of asset characteristics this research draws on transaction cost and resource based theory to examine how information technology it capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope both vertical integration and diversification the analysis suggests that it capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integrated and less diversified and enables firms with broadly valuable assets to be more vertically integrated and more diversified the moderating influence of it capital on the relationship between different types of assets and firms vertical and product market scope is consistent with transaction cost as well as resource based traditions abstract from author

globalisation and unequalisation what can be learned from value chain analysis although many have gained from the process of globalisation there remains a stubbornly large number of people living in absolute poverty and a rise in inequality within and between countries the issue is thus not whether to participate in the global economy but how to do so in a manner which provides for sustainable and equitable income growth this study shows how value chain analysis can be used to chart the growing disjuncture between global economic activity and global income distribution and to provide causal explanations for this outcome in so doing value chain analysis provides valuable insights into policy formulation and implementation

trust in buyer supplier relations the case of the turkish automotive industry while the topic of interorganisational trust is gaining attention in academic literature research on developing countries remains sparse with the premise that certain contextual elements may be more relevant for developing countries we expand on existing models by testing the effect of initial support use of just in time delivery and informal commitment to predict the trust that turkish automotive suppliers have towards their buyers the results support the predictions that soft technologies and informal commitment increase trust

trade and industrial policy on an uneven playing field the case of the deciduous fruit canning industry in south africa the deciduous fruit canning industry dfci is a resource and labor intensive industry with a high trade ratio it offers the prospect of being a significant source of employment and export earnings for a number of southern hemisphere countries which enjoy a considerable comparative advantage market distortions severely constrain this outcome however most importantly a combination of protection and subsidies in the industrially advanced countries in addition as in other sectors globalization is increasingly associated with processes in which value added activities are located in the major markets of the industrialized countries this paper examines the dfci in south africa and explores the consequences of market distortions and the shifting location of profitable activities for both industrial and trade policy in that country

game theoretic methods in general equilibrium analysis list of figures list of authors introduction j f mertens a the core and the bargaining set i general equilibrium and cooperative games basic results e allen s sorin ii core convergence in perfectly competitive economies r m anderson iii economies with atoms j f mertens iv bargaining sets r vohra b the value v the shapley value r j aumann vi value of games with a continuum of players a neyman vii the tu value the non differentiable case j f mertens addendum the shapley value of a perfectly competitive market may not exist f lefevre viii the harsanyi value s hart ix value equivalence theorems the tu and ntu cases s hart x economic applications of the shapley value r j aumann c the cooperative approach to large markets and games xi an axiomatic approach to the equivalence phenomenon p dubey a neyman xii large games and economies with effective small groups m h wooders d the non cooperative approach xiii strategic market games a survey of some results p dubey xiv from nash to walras equilibrium e allen h polemarchakis xv correlated and communication equilibria j f mertens xvi notes on correlated equilibrium and sunspot equilibrium j peck xvii implementation with plain conversation s sorin

sustainable supply chain management a case study of british aerospace bae systems sustainability is viewed as possessing environmental economic and social dimensions the sustainability approaches adopted by individual businesses and the supply chains to which they belong must include these facets these three components of sustainability are collectively termed the triple bottom line or 3bl the idea of a triple bottom line which originated in the 1990s implies attending to the traditional financial aspects of an organisation as well as to the social and environmental criteria the economic aspect of the 3bl refers to profit making and attaining and sustaining competitive advantage through sustainability the environmental dimension involves factors relating to climate change global warming air land and water pollution or preservation and ozone layer depletion the social aspect involves health and safety issues community well being employment opportunities charities cultural sensitivities and requirements and organisational behaviour as global warming climate change and depletion of resources are on a rise alongside greater demand for improvement in business processes economic standards and technology it has become necessary to sustain processes along the value chain in order to contribute to sustainability this paper examines the drivers of sustainability and related key features based on extant literature and a case study an overview is given of the british aerospace bae systems sustainability initiatives and activities on the basis of the bae systems case study two resultant frameworks emerge that display the interdependence of the triple bottom line and the essential elements required for a sustainable supply chain

fund management changes and equity style shifts we examined changes in performance risk and investment style for mutual funds that changed managers during the 1983 91 period results show that funds experiencing a managerial change performed poorly before the change primarily as a result of inferior security selection risk adjusted performance on average improved 200 basis points annually and systematic risk increased significantly after the management change we also classified funds according to their equity effective mix of company sizes and value versus growth more than 65 percent of the funds experienced a shift in investment style after the management change

energy performance contract models for the diffusion of green manufacturing technologies in china a stakeholder analysis from smes perspective abstract small and medium sized enterprises smes are significant to china s emission reduction programme this research aims to improve our understanding of the challenge of diffusing green manufacturing technologies among smes in china specifically this study examines the chinese government s effort to facilitate reduction of energy consumption among smes through energy performance contracts epcs to incentivize domestic manufacturers to adopt energy efficient measures eems in order to reduce demand for energy and corresponding drop in emissions the data is gathered from relevant epc stakeholders in the national motor upgrading demonstration project and its implementation in dongguan city which is based on 30 in depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions using stakeholder analysis this study finds that guaranteed energy savings model is the favorite model in implementation given the gained benefits outweigh committed resources and the control capability overrides possible risks among the two core stakeholders the outcomes of this study may allow the government to have a clear understanding of stakeholder perception of the different epc models used in china so the design and deployment of these mechanisms can be improved

trade policy reform and the competitive response in kwazulu natal province south africa like many other formerly protected economies the liberalization of the external trade regime has placed new competitive pressures on south african enterprises detailed research in over 130 enterprises in the kwazulu natal kzn province of south africa shows the extent to which firms have been able to respond to these new competitive pressures and particularly on their ability to hear and to meet more demanding customers requirements inevitably the response has been varied but there are reasons to be concerned that the pace of adjustment has been suboptimal this reflects imperfections in information markets the challenges poses by the need for new social relations in production and the limited implementation of new supply sided policies designed to compensate firms for the reduction in protective barriers

inter organizational trust and the dynamics of distrust early research on inter organizational trust drew on theories about social ties among individuals for example duration of ties and amount of interaction yet these proved inadequate to explain the diverse arrangements arising in international business dyer and chu s award winning jibs paper demonstrated that trust was best predicted by organizational processes that developed positive expectations of predictability reliability and competence not only within national boundaries but also in cross national relationships this review of recent trust research building on dyer and chu draws attention to six themes 1 new conceptualizations that explore identity roles and rules as foundations of presumptive trust at the organizational level 2 dynamics of trust and distrust over time how violations of trust are interpreted and what affects ease of repair 3 pendulum swings in inter organizational relationships arising from plural governance and alternation between modes but also resulting in the continuous coexistence of positive and negative states 4 the impact of intra organizational conflict and inter organizational coalitions on the establishment and maintenance of trust 5 the relative impact of nation level vs organization level differences in culture as influences on trust and 6 whether intermediate modes of exchange in between transactional and relational modes are unstable transitional hybrids or embody complementarities that yield both value and stability

designing and implementing open book accounting in buyer supplier dyads a framework for supplier selection and motivation abstract though open book accounting oba is a well known practice in supply chain management the lack of guidelines to support managers to implement it effectively has been highlighted in the literature this paper discusses a methodology to support the selection of suppliers with whom to successfully cooperate in oba projects and the identification for each buyer supplier dyad of appropriate incentives to enable cost data disclosure the methodology has been developed using empirical findings from an action research the authors have conducted in close collaboration with an italian manufacturer of modular kitchens and 19 of its suppliers it emerges that the sourcing strategy and the nature of cost data disclosed should drive the buyer s decisions on how to use disclosed account data and how to select the most appropriate set of incentives to encourage suppliers participation in particular the sourcing strategy mainly affects the supplier s reaction to incentives and the uses of cost data shared while the nature of open books agreements primarily influences the buyer s attitude to commit resources to specific suppliers and therefore to activate the more costly incentives these findings have interesting implications for the identification of the suppliers with whom to collaborate in open books programs for the selection of incentives to mitigate suppliers natural reluctance to disclose cost data and for restrictions in the use of disclosed data to ensure that they are not abused within and outside the relation

measuring investment performance in a rational expectations equilibrium model much research has been concerned with evaluating the performance of managed portfolios e g mutual funds and examining whether portfolio managers display in some sense superior performance superior performance would seemingly turn on the possession of superior information that is utilized in managing portfolios in general a fund s asset holdings or portfolio weights might not be observable to an outsider whether they are or not however they are likely to change over time this happens especially when better performance is a result of superior information since managers will change their portfolio composition on obtaining private information since such changes must be taken into account the problem of measuring performance of managed portfolios is inherently different from that of evaluating the performance of individual assets groups of assets or generally portfolios with constant and known composition

determinants of trust in supplier relations evidence from the automotive industry in japan and the united states abstract this study examines the determinants of inter organizational trust by using survey data from over 1000 suppliers in the automotive industry drawing on transaction cost economics game theory and sociological exchange theory we define trust and derive a model of its determinants regression analysis results indicate that determinants of trust are different from determinants of opportunism us japanese differences are found in three respects i the way trust is conceptualised by suppliers is more complex in japan than in the us ii the level of trust is higher in japan than in the us and iii the factors facilitating trust and those attenuating opportunism differ in the us and japan

vertical integration in the u s auto industry a note on the influence of transaction specific assets abstract recent refinements in the theory of the firm suggest that organization form may be sensitive not only to the degree to which assets are specific to a transaction but also to the type of capital employed this paper reports evidence regarding the relative influence of transaction specific investments in physical and human capital on the pattern of vertical integration using new data obtained directly from u s auto manufacturers the results support the proposition that investments in specialized technical know how have a stronger influence than those in specialized physical capital on the decision to integrate production within the firm

improving patent valuations for management purposes validating new indicators by analyzing application rationales abstract this paper analyzes the validity of so far untested indicators of patent value to enhance the quality of patent assessments using indicators at the corporate level the article expands the theory by eliciting patent attorneys filing rationales to maximize profits from protecting intellectual property to inspire the computation of new value indicators including patent full texts then based on a newly compiled data set consisting of 813 ep patents the probability of an opposition against a patent is modeled by established and new value indicators the results show that accelerated examination requests and qualified word counts enhance the quality of existing valuation methods

inter organizational cost management systems the case of the tokyo yokohama kamakura supplier chain abstract japanese firms are opting to blur their organizational boundaries in many ways approaches adopted include sharing research and development projects placing their employees in other firms and the development of inter organizational cost management systems blurring organizational boundaries improves the efficiency of the entire value chain from raw material to customer organizational blurring typically occurs when information that is critical to one firm is possessed by another firm either further up or down the value chain the two or more firms then create relationships that share organizational resources including information the sharing of resources improves both inter and intra organizational coordination a field study analyzing the cost management practices of three japanese firms in the same supplier chain identified the development of inter organizational cost management systems these systems are designed to create downward cost pressures on the entire supplier chain this pressure is achieved through several different mechanisms including target costing systems minimum cost investigations and quality price functionality tradeoffs these mechanisms relieve sales of the responsibility for pressuring manufacturing on cost and allows them to focus on other areas of coordination between the functions the objective of these inter organizational systems is to identify innovative ways to reduce the cost of the products supplied by the chain in theory these mechanisms should result in lower cost products by allowing all of the firms in the chain to share information this sharing leads to better solutions to the cost reduction problem by designing products jointly the firms can try to reach a global minimum cost instead of a series of local minimum costs

industry effects and appropriability measures in the stock market s valuation of r d and patents this paper examines the stock market s valuation of a firm s innovative activity we estimate the market s relative valuation of firms tangible and intangible assets focusing on knowledge capital in the form of accumulated stocks of r d and patents we tried to improve upon our estimates of the stock market s valuation of knowledge capital embodied in such stocks by bringing in measures of the appropriability environment facing a firm from the yale survey on industrial research and development the responses to survey questions about the effectiveness of patents as a mechanism for protecting the returns from innovation turn out to be of some use there is evidence of an interaction between industry level measures of the effectiveness of patents and the market s valuation of a firm s past r d and patenting performance as well as its current r d moves we find no evidence however that other appropriability mechanisms differ enough across industries to leave measurable traces in our data the structure of the yale survey makes it possible to estimate the sampling error in the appropriability measures derived from it this information was used by us in an errors in variables context but with little success in the absence of r d variables our estimates imply that a two standard deviation increase in our index of patent effectiveness would raise the value of a patent held by our average firm from 0 4 million to 1 0 million when r d variables are introduced into the equations the patents variables become insignificant r d expenditures are a better measure of input to the innovative function of firms than patents are of its output but we estimate that the same experiment would induce changes in q of between 10 and 27 percent for the average firm approximately doubling the market s valuation of this kind of capital this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the close but adversarial model of supplier relations in the u s auto industry while cooperative buyer supplier relations are an important source of sustainable competitive advantage noncooperative behavior persists widely this paper tests a model incorporating noncooperative behavior within a context of formal commitment using data from the u s auto industry this close but adversarial model appears to be reasonably well supported by the data suggesting that even within professed cooperative buyer supplier relationships adversarial behavior persists in contrast a small but significant minority of the relationships were found to be characterized by high levels of trust as well as informal commitment the results suggest specific strategies for developing cooperative supplier relations 1998 john wiley sons ltd

trust and inter firm relations in developing and transition economies the role of trust in facilitating economic growth has been highlighted in previous contributions to this journal in order to take this debate forward this article argues 1 that more attention needs to be given to the relationship between sanctions and trust and 2 that it is worth distinguishing between the minimal trust for making markets effective and the extended trust required for deeper kinds of inter firm co operation to work the article goes on to ask why minimal trust is lacking and so hard to construct in the republics of the former soviet union it then examines how extended trust grows or can be made to grow in industrial supply chains and clusters in developing countries

arms race or detente how interfirm alliance announcements change the stock market valuation of rivals most prior event studies find that the announcement of a new alliance is accompanied by a positive stock market response for the partners this result has usually been interpreted as evidence for the prevailing view that alliances are effective vehicles for partners to acquire or access new skills and thus become stronger competitors however partners should also earn positive abnormal returns if alliances are used to shape competitive interactions attenuating competitive intensity industry wide in this study we disentangle these different mechanisms by examining how alliance announcements affect the stock market s evaluation of allying firms rivals if an alliance is expected to make partner firms more competitive this should lead to negative abnormal returns for partners rivals if an alliance is expected to facilitate a reduction in competitive intensity this should lead to positive abnormal returns for rivals results from an event study analysis of research and development alliances in the telecommunications and electronics industries during 1996 2004 provide evidence consistent with competition attenuation in some alliances our research thus challenges the increasingly narrow focus on learning and resource accumulation through alliances and calls for broader consideration of the roles and effects of collaboration both for individual firms and for industry structure

gender diversity in the boardroom and firm financial performance the monitoring role performed by the board of directors is an important corporate governance control mechanism especially in countries where external mechanisms are less well developed the gender composition of the board can affect the quality of this monitoring role and thus the financial performance of the firm this is part of the business case for female participation on boards though arguments may also be framed in terms of ethical considerations while the issue of board gender diversity has attracted growing research interest in recent years most empirical results are based on u s data this article adds to a growing number of non u s studies by investigating the link between the gender diversity of the board and firm financial performance in spain a country which historically has had minimal female participation in the workforce but which has now introduced legislation to improve equality of opportunities we investigate the topic using panel data analysis and find that gender diversity as measured by the percentage of women on the board and by the blau and shannon indices has a positive effect on firm value and that the opposite causal relationship is not significant our study suggests that investors in spain do not penalise firms which increase their female board membership and that greater gender diversity may generate economic gains

a note on countertrade contractual uncertainty and transaction governance in emerging economies this paper develops a conceptual framework for analyzing organizational responses to contractual uncertainty in the context of emerging economies elaborating on hennart s 1989 transaction cost rationale for countertrade we develop a typology of exchange and transaction governance pertinent to the study of emerging economies contract trust and hostage notwithstanding the traditional explanation based on foreign exchange shortage we argue that the persistence of international countertrade illustrates organizational remedies to institutional deficiency in transaction governance

trust between international joint venture partners effects of home countries trust is an important factor in interorganizational relations interorganizational trust in cross border relationships is likely to be influenced by the home countries of both partners using data on 165 international joint ventures ijvs we show that the perceived trustworthiness of an ijv partner is influenced by the general propensity to trust in the trustor s home country moreover the trustworthiness perceived by a focal parent firm is also affected by the home country of the other ijv partner this second effect is mitigated by experience between the partners

local implementation for green manufacturing technology diffusion policy in china from the user firms perspectives abstract in recent years china has started to change its growth strategy to a more sustainable model in response to the limits to growth dilemma specifically the national policy advocates to promote the use of green manufacturing technologies through demonstration projects and to incentivize chinese manufacturers to adopt these green technologies that are also encouraged by local governments these green technologies can increase the economic gains of manufacturers by reducing costs on energy consumption and shift away from selling low margin products however the local authorities often encounter obstacles when implementing policies for promoting these technologies among manufacturing firms this paper explores the factors that affect the decision making of user firms throughout the policy implementation process based on the econometric analysis of the survey for china s electric motors upgrading project in guangdong province this study shows that three key factors are helpful in the local government s effort to implement the national project i e manufacturers awareness the understanding of the energy efficiency technology and the long term macroeconomic benefits in addition encouraging the participation of financial institutions is especially useful for local governments to convince small and medium sized firms these findings are beneficial for local implementation of green manufacturing technology diffusion policies in china and have worldwide policy implication as well

buyer supplier relations in industrial markets when do buyers risk making idiosyncratic investments it is well established that the existence of investments specific to a relationship influences the choice of governance structure including the use of contractual safeguards what is less well understood are the circumstances leading to the creation of those specific assets to begin with this paper explores the industrial buyer s motives to put itself at risk by making investments tangible and intangible which cannot be readily redeployed from one supplier to another using original data from a sample of 388 supply relationships involving all automakers in the u s and japan we examine features of the supply task the supplier and the supply environment which serve as motives to make supplier specific investments we also examine potential factors which facilitate the posting of specific assets as credible commitments to attenuate supplier opportunism we find that specific investments by buyers serve as a mechanism to 1 increase coordination when the manufacturing task is complex 2 buffer the buyer against technological uncertainty and 3 build close relationships when the requisite production skills are scarce the supply market is thin we find more specific investments in supply arrangements that are embedded in a broader business relationship we find fewer supplier specific investments in the japanese context finally we find that buyers focus their investments on lesser known low share component makers perhaps to capitalize on a unique focused supplier capability

getting the incentives right energy performance contracts as a tool for property management by local government energy conservation is a challenging and difficult task because disincentives in the building sector inhibit innovation the municipality of rotterdam experimented with an energy performance contract that aimed to avoid disincentives and replace them with a stimulus for innovation this article investigates whether the design requirements for performance management found in the management literature were fulfilled during the development of the contract and its implementation the outcomes of the experiment show substantial energy conservation around 30 percent the existing incentive structure was changed through the use of a performance management contract and perverse effects that are mentioned in the literature were limited the incentives established between the commissioning party and the contractor triggered better performance and innovation although balancing the responsibilities between the principal and the agent was demanding and time consuming energy performance contracts are a useful piece of the sustainability puzzle but tailor made refinements are necessary

deregulation and restructuring of the global electricity supply industry and its impact upon power plant suppliers abstract this paper analyses the deregulation and restructuring of the global electricity supply industry and its impact upon fuel usage generation technologies and suppliers of power plant deregulation encouraged the growth of new independent power producers whose business requirements transformed the power plant industry the plant suppliers had to develop new capabilities and services to compete in the global market economies of scale and scope became crucial given the cost of developing the new technologies and providing the services required by the operators this led to the global consolidation of the power plant industry because only large integrated power engineering companies had the necessary resources and capabilities to compete in the new global environment

intangible resources tobin s q and sustainability of performance differences this paper tests empirically the hypothesis that the greater the intangibility of a firm s resources the greater the sustainability of its competitive advantage resource intangibility is measured by 1 tobin s q and 2 the predicted value from a hedonic regression of q on several accounting measures of intangibles sustainability is measured by the persistence of firm specific profits using a dynamic panel data regression model i find that intangibles play an effective role in sustaining a firm s competitive advantage as predicted by the resource based view of the firm however the results suggest that intangibles can also lock firms into persistent disadvantages

barriers to increasing energy efficiency evidence from small and medium sized enterprises in china abstract this paper analyzes financial informational and organizational barriers to energy efficiency investments for small and medium sized enterprises smes in china its findings are based on a survey of 480 smes in zhejiang province and complemented by semi structured interviews with enterprises contained in the survey sample responses reveal that only a minority of smes in china actively perform energy saving activities at a significant level the survey data suggest further that informational barriers are the core bottleneck inhibiting energy efficiency improvements in china s sme sector financial and organizational barriers also influence a company s energy saving activities with interview based evidence stronger than statistical evidence the interviews point out three additional barriers to energy saving activities the role of family ownership structures lax enforcement of government regulations and the absence of government support as well as a lack of skilled labor more than 40 of enterprises in the sample declared themselves unaware of energy saving equipment or practices in their respective business area indicating that there are high transaction costs for smes to gather assess and apply information about energy saving potentials and relevant technologies one policy implication of the study is that the chinese government could play a more active role in fostering the dissemination of energy efficiency related information in the sme sector

complementarities between jit purchasing practices an economic analysis based on transaction costs the objective of this paper is to analyse the complementarities and interrelationships between the different jit purchasing practices which have extended in industrial markets in recent years the incorporation of trust as an explicative element in a framework based on transaction costs economics leads us to propose that the success of logistics related jit purchasing practices which fundamentally transform the physical exchange process depends on the implementation of additional practices which transform the way of governing and controlling the relationships and which support and rely on a co operation climate empirical tests carried out over a sample of 148 spanish auto components suppliers confirm this reasoning

risk assessment and profit sharing in business networks abstract nowadays network is the preferred governance form to conduct economic transactions network solution allows to reach flexibility maintaining cost and quality level since network concept refers to a great variety of organizational hybrids it is possible to choose the one that fits better market requirements the new trends in inter organization relationships push towards network solutions companies are interested in relationships with partners and customers to overcome resource dependence to enter too risky market or simply differentiate their business portfolio the proposed research focuses on the network concept aiming at highlighting threats and opportunities to investigate the double nature of the risk concept network structures offer flexibility and higher profit as a consequence and business risk sharing opportunity these two aspects profit and risk are strictly related and have to be considered together to depict a complete scenario this implies that risk assessment and management in network environment cannot neglect profit sharing or in other words that profit sharing mechanisms should use risk as driver in this context our research proposes a methodology to measure risk taking into account network peculiarities risk estimation is a basic step to evaluate the opportunity cost of capital needed to compute the network net present value npv that is assumed as base in the profit sharing process the profit sharing process has been tackled using the shapley value approach that is inspired to the fairness principle while the opportunity cost of capital is assessed using the capital asset pricing model capm

market timing selectivity and mutual fund performance an empirical investigation this article empirically examines market timing and selectivity performance of a sample of mutual funds it uses a very simple regression technique to separate stock selection ability from timing ability this technique first suggested by treynor and mazuy and later refined by bhattacharya and pfleiderer uses a modified security market line approach to produce individual measures of timing and stock selection ability the inputs to the model are only the returns earned on the fund and those earned on the market portfolio the empirical results indicate that at the individual fund level there is some evidence of superior micro and macroforecasting ability on the part of the fund manager copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

globalization and the death of the local firm the automobile components sector in south africa barnes j and kaplinsky r 2000 globalization and the death of the local firm the automobile components sector in south africa reg studies 34 797 812 as in the case of many developing countries south african industry is facing a new competitive environment as trade barriers fall this involves both the need to enter external markets and to cope with new entrants in the domestic market in the case of the south african automobile assembly industry responding to this new global environment has increasingly meant that domestic subsidiaries are being integrated into the global strategic operations of their parent companies this is increasingly leading them to the foreign sourcing of components in part because of perverse and unintended consequences of the motor industry development plan where local production of components is involved there is decreasing space for locally owned component suppliers and almost no space for component suppliers using local technology south african component supplie

towards a sustainable society the status and future of energy performance contracting in china abstract associated with the rapid economic growth last decades have witnessed significant increases of both energy production and energy consumption in china it is also recognized that the air pollutants emissions brought by excessive fossil energy consumptions have caused serious environmental problems it is imperative to save energy and reduce emissions in china as an innovative market mechanism energy performance contracting epc can effectively reduce the energy consumption china has released a series of laws polices regulations and plans that include epc related contents due to the massive demand as well as the facilitation efforts from the governments epc has developed rapidly in china for instance the number of employees the aggregate investment and the total output value of energy service companies increased by 31 8 times 56 times and 73 2 times between 2005 and 2013 the evolution of policy system of epc in china is examined in this study the results show that legal protection policy guidance and fiscal incentives are main measures to promote the development of epc these policies showcase china s efforts on achieving energy conservation enhancing energy efficiency and improving environmental performance by encouraging the implementation of epc however the analysis also reveals some existing issues further development of epc depends on a number of factors such as a complete legal security system a mature market mechanism flexible economic incentives and the specific development plan for epc the experiences gained in china are helpful for promoting the development of epc industry especially in the developing countries

production and costs in the south african motor vehicle industry this study investigates the existence of economies of scale in the south african motor vehicle industry as well as the substitution possibilities between input pairs and the direct and cross price elasticities of demand for the various inputs because of data limitations a translog cost function was estimated for only a three input model corresponding to a homogeneous production function involving capital labour and intermediate goods the issue of the existence of economies of scale in the south african motor vehicle industry is a particularly important one because south africa once again is a member of gatt and a full participant in the international trade arena the null hypothesis of constant returns to scale was rejected at the 0 5 level of significance thus the results of this model are certainly consistent with economies of scale in the south african motor vehicle industry the estimated direct price elasticities were consistent with the hypothesis that during the past two decades capital wa

the determinants of trust in supplier automaker relationships in the us japan and korea we examine the determinants of trust in 453 supplier automaker relationships in the us japan and korea we define trust and derive a model of its determinants drawing upon 1 an embeddedness relationship based perspective 2 a process based perspective and 3 an economic hostage based perspective our findings indicate strong support for the process based perspective in all countries embeddedness was only important in japan and the economic hostage based variable stock ownership was not important in any country

profit rates and intangible capital a central question in industrial organization is why profit rates differ so dramatically across firms and industries one of the many explanations offered for this phenomenon is the failure of conventional accounting methods to adjust for intangible capital stocks i e it is argued that profit rates do not differ dramatically when capital stocks are correctly calculated to include intangible r d and advertising capital to test this hypothesis individual advertising capital stocks are calculated for firms in the toys distilled beverages cosmetics and pharmaceuticals industries and r d stocks are calculated for the pharmaceuticals firms the adjustments do not eliminate the wide dispersion in profit rates copyright 1991 by mit press

mergers and the market for organization capital abstract in this paper mergers are an equilibrium outcome in which acquirers marry targets so as to gain access to their organization capital firms with lower learning costs about the new technology are not necessarily those that manage it best once it is mature since there are gains from trade a market for organization capital can arise through mergers this model generates a merger wave after a shock to technology and is consistent with several other stylized facts on mergers documented in the literature

supply chain management a strategic issue in engineer to order manufacturing abstract the characteristics of engineer to order eto companies are described in terms of their markets products and the internal processes of their organisation these are set in the context of current trends in supply chain management the business processes associated with the procurement and marketing functions and the interactions with other processes are analysed these are compared for a number of different types of eto company the variety of work in eto projects the customised complex products and the underlying uncertainties of markets all indicate that procurement and marketing need to be integrated with other processes particularly tendering and design these characteristics put constraints on the application of established supply chain management methods it is argued that a strategic view of supply chain management in which procurement makes a greater contribution in the tendering and early product development activities has the potential to improve performance