information processing theory and the multinational enterprise this paper attempts to extend information processing theory so that it can be meaningfully applied to mncs a specific multidimensional framework is developed that can be used to measure the information processing capacities of macro level features of mnc organizational design an applied example transnationalism is used to illustrate how to apply the framework and demonstrate that it can contribute meaningful new insight to this complex organizational problem

macroeconomic uncertainty through the lens of professional forecasters abstractwe analyze the evolution of macroeconomic uncertainty in the united states based on the forecast errors of consensus survey forecasts of various economic indicators comprehensive information contained in the survey forecasts enables us to capture a real time measure of uncertainty surrounding subjective forecasts in a simple framework we jointly model and estimate macroeconomic common and indicator specific uncertainties of four indicators using a factor stochastic volatility model our macroeconomic uncertainty estimates have three major spikes has three major spikes aligned with the 1973 1975 1980 and 2007 2009 recessions while other recessions were characterized by increases in indicator specific uncertainties we also show that the selection of data vintages affects the estimates and relative size of jumps in estimated uncertainty series finally our macroeconomic uncertainty has a persistent negative impact on real economic activity rather than producing wait and see dynamics

do firms free ride on rivals r d expenditure an empirical analysis a system of demand equations given oligopolistic interdependence amon firms is derived and estimated for two four digit sic code industries to explain firms r d behaviour through time the two industries chosen are the perfume cosmetic and toiletries pct industry and the drug industry the industries chosen belong to the same two digit sic code classification called the cchemical and allied products industry but not in the drug industry the introduction of the r d tax credit in 1981 however reduced the tendency to free ride in both industries

the political economy of public subsidies the article presents a model to explain cross national variations in public subsidies the model incorporates demand and supply variables as well as the effects of policy linkages it predicts that public subsidies are higher in small countries where unemployment is high agriculture plays a large role in the economy left wing parties are in power and tariffs and social security transfers are low the findings tend to confirm six of the seven hypotheses the study supports cameron s 1978 assertion that the openness of the economy is a major factor in the expansion of the public economy even though the data do not clearly confirm or disconfirm any specific theoretical framework they are more consistent with the pluralist model with its insistence that political influence varies from issue to issue and that political actors play a major role in the policy process finally the most interesting finding pertains to the role of policy linkages

two illustrations of the quantity theory of money of two central implications of the quantity theory of money that a given change in the rate of change in the quantity of money induces i an equal change in the rate of price inflation and ii an equal change in nominal rates of interest the illustrations were obtained by comparing moving averages of the three variables in question using quarterly u s time series for the period 1953 77 readers may find the results of interest as additional confirmation of the quantity theory as an example of one way in which the quantity theoretic relationships can be uncovered via atheoretical methods from time series which are subject to a variety of other forces or as a measure of the extent to which the inflation and interest rate experience of the postwar period can be understood in terms of purely classical monetary forces the theoretical background of the study is reviewed very briefly as it is familiar material in the next section the data processing methods are described and rationalized in section ii the illustrations

autonomy and procedural justice a framework for evaluating subsidiary strategy using the well supported dimensions of autonomy and procedural justice a four quadrant model of subsidiary strategy is proposed and a four part typology hypothesized partner collaborator militant and vassal subsidiaries a clustering process is used to develop a four group taxonomy that corresponds with the induced model the four groups of subsidiaries are analysed across seven alternative strategic dimensions integration responsiveness coordination configuration market scope product scope and value added scope the external and internal validity of the framework is confirmed and its utility discussed in terms of subsidiary s movement from one strategy state to another

optimal monetary policy in a model of money and credit we investigate the extent to which monetary policy can enhance the functioning of the private credit system specifically we characterize the optimal return on money in the presence of credit arrangements there is a dual role for credit it allows buyers to trade without fiat money and also permits them to borrow against future income however not all traders have access to credit as a result there is a social role for fiat money because it allows agents to self insure against the risk of not being able to use credit in some transactions we consider a nonlinear monetary mechanism that is designed to enhance the credit system an active monetary policy is sufficient for relaxing credit constraints finally we characterize the optimal monetary policy and show that it necessarily entails a positive inflation rate

economics of alliances the lessons for collective action this essay provides an up to date summary of the findings of the literature on the economics of alliances we show that the study of the economics of alliances has played a pivotal role in understanding and applying public good analysis to real world applications we establish that the manner in which alliances address burden sharing and allocative issues is related to strategic doctrines weapon technology perceived threats and membership composition past contributions are evaluated and areas needing further development are identified the theoretical and empirical knowledge gained from the study of alliances is shown to be directly applicable to a wide range of international collectives

effectively conceiving and executing multinationals worldwide strategies this study addresses one of the most compelling questions in the field of international management how can a multinational simultaneously pursue the double ended objective of effectively conceiving and executing its worldwide strategy here we examine the ways in which the dynamics of the strategy making process between head office and subsidiary units influence the multinational s ability to achieve these two objectives specifically we introduce the concept of procedural justice the intellectual root of which is grounded in social psychology and law into the international management and explore the impact of process fairness on multinationals ability to conceive and execute effective worldwide strategies the results of this research are based on a two phase longitudinal study of the decision making dynamics of nineteen multinationals they provide support that the exercise of procedural justice is indeed a powerful way to organize the multinationals strategy making process procedural justice was found to significantly augment multinationals ability to achieve this double ended objective

the redistribution of income in canada this original study challenges the widely held belief that government policies to redistribute income have made canada a more egalitarian state the author bases his conclusions on extensive documentation of the real effect of changes in taxes transfers and government expenditures

the stochastic volatility in mean model empirical evidence from international stock markets in this paper we present an exact maximum likelihood treatment for the estimation of a stochastic volatility in mean svm model based on monte carlo simulation methods the svm model incorporates the unobserved volatility as an explanatory variable in the mean equation the same extension is developed elsewhere for autoregressive conditional heteroscedastic arch models known as the arch in mean arch m model the estimation of arch models is relatively easy compared with that of the stochastic volatility sv model however efficient monte carlo simulation methods for sv models have been developed to overcome some of these problems the details of modifications required for estimating the volatility in mean effect are presented in this paper together with a monte carlo study to investigate the finite sample properties of the svm estimators taking these developments of estimation methods into account we regard sv and svm models as practical alternatives to their arch counterparts and therefore it is of interest to study and compare the two classes of volatility models we present an empirical study of the intertemporal relationship between stock index returns and their volatility for the united kingdom the united states and japan this phenomenon has been discussed in the financial economic literature but has proved hard to find empirically we provide evidence of a negative but weak relationship between returns and contemporaneous volatility which is indirect evidence of a positive relation between the expected components of the return and the volatility process copyright 2002 john wiley sons ltd

economic models of nato abstract the seminal work of olson and zeckhauser 1966 on the economic theory of alliances in particular nato provides the theoretical background for this paper after restating their results on alliance allocation behavior in a formal framework we show that these results may fail in a context with decentralized production of the public defense commodity finally we introduce a simple mechanism which allows the implementation of an efficient allocation characterized by proportional burden sharing and cost monotonicity these results can also be applied to other public goods problems

complementarity free riding and the military expenditures of nato allies abstract this paper examines the major influences of an ally s demand for military expenditures demand equations are estimated for a sample of nato nations using the iterative seemingly unrelated regressions technique evidence is presented indicating that structural changes occured in these equations in the early 1970s this instability is the predicted effect of the doctrine of flexible response adopted by nato during this time period the statistical tests show that the medium sized nuclear powers military expenditures responded identically to income and defense spillins the same held true for the lowland allies

international attention and multinational enterprise performance this study examines the performance consequences of international attention defined as the extent to which headquarters executives in the multinational enterprise mne invest time and effort in activities communications and discussions aimed at improving their understanding of the global marketplace using detailed questionnaire and archival data on 135 mnes our analysis revealed three significant findings first international attention can be operationalized as a meta construct that consists of three interrelated and reinforcing dimensions second international attention has a curvilinear inverted u shape relationship with mne performance third the performance benefits of international attention increase with three categories of moderating factors the international assignment experience of top executives the independence of value adding activities across country locations and the degree of industry dynamism

the impact of strategy on conflict a cross national comparative study of u s and japanese firms an empirical test of 290 u s and 653 japanese managers using the miles and snow typology provides a cross national examination of strategy s impact on conflict results substantially support the study s predictions and indicate that firms should 1 monitor their conflict handling mechanisms 2 emphasize integrative approaches and 3 appropriately use formalization for conflict handling despite a convergence of management practices globally findings indicate that considerable differences still exist between u s and japanese firms

international patterns in military spending my main purpose in this article is to investigate the military spending correlates using international cross sectional data for 1984 this perspective broadly mirrors that of a maizels and m k nissanke who investigated the determinants of military spending for a cross section of developing countries and r p smith who examined a cross section of industrialized countries in contrast my effort embraces both developed and developing countries as well as market and centrally planned economies but distinguishes countries on the more relevant basis of whether they are in conflict and whether they belong to alliances such as the north atlantic treaty organization nato and the warsaw pact an advantage of cross sections such as this is that it makes it possible to distinguish broad patterns in defense spending across the world as a whole a disadvantage is that one cannot infer dynamic behavior from cross sections in which case strategic theories of arms expenditure cannot be investigated satisfactorily 2 the same applies to dynamic versions of the neoclassical theory of military expenditure 3 however international cross sections and national time series are more likely to be complements than substitutes in research in the next section i propose a simple model of military expenditure that is investigated in section iv by cross sectional data for 137 countries the model is based on the premise that military expenditure deters war and departs from previous theoretical efforts in that it applies state preference theory to determine the demand for military spending in section iii i consider other variables that in terms of the model may also affect military spending via its shadow price since the sample consists of cross sectional data i pay particular attention to various specification tests that are usually ignored these suggest that the results are not independent of the method used for normalizing

alternative collective goods models of military alliances theory and empirics i introduction in a seminal article mancur olson and richard zeckhauser 1966 characterized the north atlantic treaty organization nato in the mid 1960s as a group of allies who shared a pure public good in the form of deterrence to qualify as a pure public good a good s benefits must be nonexcludable i e available to all group members once provided and nonrival in consumption i e consumption opportunities associated with a unit of the good do not decline with the number of users pure public goods are characterized by free riding behavior owing to non excludability which permits individuals to partake in the benefits of the good without expending their own scarce resources olson and zeckhauser also demonstrated that a pure public good such as deterrence is associated with an exploitation hypothesis whereby the large agents allies shoulder the payment burdens of the small agents allies using data from 1964 olson and zeckhauser 1966 274 77 established that defense burdens are positively correlated with the economic size of the allies as measured by gross national product gnp over the next twenty five years a large literature has generalized and extended the olson and zeckhauser collective goods theory of alliances van ypersele de strihou 1967 recognized that defense expenditures could generate country specific private benefits e g disaster relief protection of colonies management of domestic unrest along with purely public deterrence with the presence of ally specific benefits the strength of the exploitation hypothesis is attenuated since a small ally might willingly shoulder a relatively large burden provided that this ally views its defense expenditures as possessing a large share of nation specific benefits in a series of articles murdoch sandler and others 1 formulated a joint product model in which the military activity of an ally yields pure public impure public and or private jointly produced outputs or benefits if the benefits derived from the allies military expenditures were from a single purely public good then the joint product model would obviously degenerate to the model of olson and zeckhauser 1966 murdoch and sandler 1984 sandler and forbes 1980 and sandler and murdoch 1990 have shown that the joint product model outperforms the pure public good deterrence model for nato during various time periods in recent years a number of important contributions to the collective good analysis of alliances have appeared these include the inclusion of foreign trade considerations wong 1991 marginal cost differentials among allies mcguire 1990 weber and wiesmeth 1991 leader follower behavior bruce 1990 and median voter considerations dudley and montmarquette 1981 murdoch sandler and hansen 1991 and okamura 1991 mcguire and groth 1985 engineered an econometric procedure for distinguishing between allocative processes e g non cooperative and cooperative within an alliance while subsequent work by sandler and murdoch 1990 operationalized this econometric procedure until now collective good models of alliances have computed alliancewide defense levels by simply summing the allies expenditures however the appropriate manner for aggregating defense efforts among allies may depend on geographical strategic and technological determinants for example the defense efforts of the weakest ally or link along a front may determine the strength of the allies defenses since the enemy s ability to penetrate behind the front hinges on the weakest fortification hirshleifer 1983 in consequence the minimal defense level of the allies and not the sum determines alliance capabilities the purpose of this paper is fivefold first we intend to look at different methods of aggregating allies military expenditures to determine alliancewide defense levels three procedures summation weakest link and best shot are examined

technology shocks in the new keynesian model in the new keynesian model preference cost push and monetary shocks all compete with the real business cycle model s technology shock in driving aggregate fluctuations a version of this model estimated via maximum likelihood points to these other shocks as being more important for explaining the behavior of output inflation and interest rates in the postwar u s data these results weaken the links between the current generation of new keynesian models and the real business cycle models from which they were originally derived they also suggest that federal reserve officials have often faced difficult trade offs in conducting monetary policy

the impact of the volatility of monetary policy shocks this paper studies the impact of the volatility of monetary policy using a structural vector auroregression svar model enriched along two dimensions first it allows for time varying variance of monetary policy shocks via a stochastic volatility specification second it allows a dynamic interaction between the level of the endogenous variables in the var and the time varying volatility the analysis establishes that the nominal interest rate output growth and inflation fall in reaction to an increase in the volatility of monetary policy the analysis also develops a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model enriched with stochastic volatility to monetary policy that generates similar responses and provides a theoretical underpinning of these findings

optimal monetary and fiscal policy with a zero bound on nominal interest rates i characterize optimal monetary and fiscal policy in a stochastic new keynesian model when nominal interest rates may occasionally hit the zero lower bound the benevolent policymaker controls the short term nominal interest rate and the level of government spending under discretionary policy accounting for fiscal stabilization policy eliminates to a large extent the welfare losses associated with the presence of the zero bound under commitment the gains associated with the use of the fiscal policy tool remain modest even though fiscal stabilization policy is part of the optimal policy mix

long memory economic policy uncertainty and forecasting us inflation a bayesian varfima approach abstractwe compare inflation forecasts of a vector autoregressive fractionally integrated moving average varfima model against standard forecasting models u s inflation forecasts improve when controlling for persistence and economic policy uncertainty epu importantly the varfima model comprising of inflation and epu outperforms commonly used inflation forecast models

the demand for military expenditures an international comparison earlier studies have explained inter country variations in the share of gnp devoted to military expenditures by international spillovers and by differences in the threat of attack related to relative incomes in this paper we use the theory of public choice to explain these differences we attempt to measure the importance of both international spillovers and relative incomes along with two other factors the tax price elasticity of demand and economies of scale in the consumption of security we find that international spillovers are significant and positive that the income elasticity of demand is greater than unity that the tax price elasticity of demand explains part of observed inter country differences and that there are considerable economies of scale in the consumption of military spending finally between 1960 and 1975 there was apparently a substantial increase in the value which each country derived from a dollar of military spending by its allies this phenomenon which seems related to the increased importance of deterrent weapons has tended to induce individual alliance members to reduce the share of their national income devoted to defense

the effects of non clearing labor markets on the demand for public spending the median voter model suggests the causal sequence distribution spending bureaucracy whereas the bureaucratic model proposes the chain bureaucracy spending distribution in the presence of labor market distortions and underemployment labor contracts we argue that an initial link must be added to each causal chain namely the excess supply of labor in the private sector empirical estimates of both the median voter and bureaucratic models indicate that inter country differences in per capita public spinding are an increasing function of differences in wage rates

burden sharing in the nato alliance an empirical test of alternative views this paper undertakes an empirical test of two opposing views of interdependencies among members of military alliances the first view associated with olson and zeckhauser argues that the public good aspect of defense induces free riding behavior by smaller alliance members which imposes a disproportionate burden of supporting the alliance on the larger members a second view argues that nato defense activities produce a mix of outputs some of which are not purely public and some of which may be complementary across nations furthermore the nature of the weapons systems and their relative use by alliance members may induce substantial cooperation by allies the test proposed here analyzes the relationship between defense spending shares of nato members and their population and relative wealth shares a simple model is specified and tested using pooled time series cross sectional data the empirical results indicate more support for the cooperative view of ally relationships than the olson zeckhauser non cooperative model

is there an effect of policy related uncertainty on inflation evidence from the united states under trump this study bridges the existing literature on the macroeconomic effects of policy related uncertainty and the literature on inflation dynamics and provide fresh insights on the impacts of policy re

is there an interest rate speculation relationship evidence from g7 in the pre and post 2008 crisis abstractthe article revisits the is lm macroeconomic model by incorporating speculation into the investment function the discussion is supported empirically by using data from the g7 countries to examine the different interest rate regimes in the pre and post 2008 financial crisis the estimation of an anchor interest rate provides a reference rate for the g7 countries the empirical study is extended to examine if the three quantitative easing qe episodes in the u s are growth promoting the article concludes that the maintenance of a high and stable interest rate policy is needed for sustainable growth in the g7 countries

were there regime switches in u s monetary policy working paper 2004 14 june 2004 abstract a multivariate model identifying monetary policy and allowing for simultaneity and regime switching in coefficients and variances is confronted with u s data since 1959 the best fit is with a model that allows time variation in structural disturbance variances only among models that also allow for changes in equation coefficients the best fit is for a model that allows coefficients to change only in the monetary policy rule that model allows switching among three main regimes and one rarely and briefly occurring regime the three main regimes correspond roughly to periods when most observers believe that monetary policy actually differed and the differences in policy behavior are substantively interesting though statistically ill determined the estimates imply monetary targeting was central in the early 80s but was also important sporadically in the 70s the changes in regime were essential neither to the rise in inflation in the 70s nor to its decline in the 80s jel classification e52 e47 c53 key words counterfactuals lucas critique policy rule monetary targeting simultaneity volatility model comparison i the debate over monetary policy change in an influential paper clarida gali and gertler 2000 cgg presented evidence that us monetary policy changed between the 1970 s and the 1980 s indeed that in the 70 s it was drastically worse they found that the policy rule apparently followed in the 70 s was one that when embedded in most stochastic general equilibrium models would imply non uniqueness of the equilibrium and hence vulnerability of the economy to sunspot fluctuations of arbitrarily large size their estimated policy rule for the later period on the other hand eliminated this indeterminacy these results are a possible explanation of the volatile and rising inflation of the 70 s and of its subsequent decline the cgg analysis has two important weaknesses one is that it fails to account for stochastic volatility us macroeconomic variables and particularly the federal funds rate have gone through periods of tranquility and of agitation with forecast error variances varying greatly from period to period ignoring such variation does not lead to inconsistent estimates of model parameters when the forecasting equations themselves are constant but it strongly biases toward a finding of changed parameters tests of the stability of the forecasting equations the other weakness is that the cgg analysis rests on powerful and implausible identifying assumptions they require that we accept that the response of the monetary authority to expected future inflation and output does not depend on the recent history of inflation money growth or output it is hard to understand why this should be so especially in the 70 s when monetarism was a prominent theme in policy debates congress was requiring reports from the fed of projected time paths of monetary aggregates and financial markets were reacting sensitively to weekly money supply numbers the requirement for existence and uniqueness of equilibrium in dynamic models is that the monetary policy rule show a more than unit response of interest rates to the sum of the logs of all nominal variables that appear on the right hand side of the reaction function if we force a particular measure of expected future inflation to proxy for all the nominal variables that actually appear independently in the reaction function we are bound to get distorted conclusions on the one hand because expected future inflation will be a noisy measure of the full set of nominal influences on policy we might get downward bias in our estimates from the usual errorsin variables effect on the other hand to the extent that expected future inflation like most expected future values shows less variation than current nominal variables we could find a mistaken scaling up of coefficients

an econometric technique for comparing median voter and oligarchy choice models of collective action the case of the nato alliance this paper devises an empirical methodology for discriminating between the median voter model and the oligarchy choice model when applied to the collective provision of a public good in particular an empirical methodology is engineered so that a nested test procedure can evaluate competing models the authors apply this methodology to examine the demand for military activities of ten members of the nato alliance a two stage least squares procedure corrected for autocorrelation is used to estimate the demand equations test results vary some allies abide by the median voter model others by the oligarchy model and still others by neither copyright 1991 by mit press

mnc subsidiary channel relationships as extended links implications of global strategies foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations mncs rely on external partners such as channel partners to achieve global objectives we conceptualize the subsidiary s channel partner as an extended link of the mnc s internal network thus the subsidiary s adaptation and execution of the mnc s global strategies should influence the subsidiary s channel relationship and performance building on the strategy environment alignment framework we study the influence of mnc global strategies global efficiency multinational flexibility and worldwide learning on a subsidiary s channel commitment and the moderating influence of the host country environment survey data from german and japanese mncs in the united states indicate the importance of global strategies to a channel relationship for example we find that an emphasis on multinational flexibility is detrimental but worldwide learning benefits the subsidiary s channel commitment we also find that the host country environment plays a contingent role for example a global efficiency strategy is beneficial for channel commitment in a stable environment but detrimental in a dynamic environment our research offers key implications for mncs we suggest that when mncs decide to lay emphases on global strategies the mncs should consider not just their internal subsidiary network but also their extended channel partner links that function in foreign markets

the us monetary performance prior to the 2008 crisis this article uses a structural vector autoregressive svar approach to study the different shocks to the monetary performance in the two decades of the us economy prior to the 2008 financial crisis by using the federal fund rate as a measure of change in the monetary policy this study shows that interest rate expectation is informative about the future movement of federal fund rate and the anticipated monetary policy should be one of the crucial reasons in causing monetary and financial deterioration in the us economy this article discusses a possible conjecture of a low interest rate trap when a persistent and prolonged low interest rate regime led to financial instability

two illustrations of the quantity theory of money breakdowns and revivals by extending his data we document the instability of low frequency regression coefficients that lucas 1980 used to express the quantity theory of money we impute the differences in these regression coefficients to differences in monetary policies across periods a dsge model estimated over a subsample like lucas s implies values of the regression coefficients that confirm lucas s results for his sample period but perturbing monetary policy rule parameters away from the values estimated over lucas s subsample alters the regression coefficients in ways that reproduce their instability over our longer sample jel c51 e23 e31 e43 e51 e52 robert e lucas jr 1980 used near unit slopes of univariate regressions of moving averages of inflation and interest rates on money growth for the united states for the period 1953 1977 to illustrate two central implications of the quantity theory of money that a given change in the rate of change in the quantity of money induces i an equal change in the rate of price inflation and ii an equal change in nominal rates of interest lucas said that those two quantity theoretic propositions

procedural justice strategic decision making and the knowledge economy collective knowledge building is a key strategic task for firms success today but creating and sharing knowledge are intangible activities that can neither be supervised nor forced out of people they happen only when individuals cooperate voluntarily a key challenge facing strategic management is obtaining the voluntary cooperation of individuals as firms formulate and implement their strategic decisions this essay draws on the rich body of procedural justice research to address this critical issue we argue that when people feel their strategic decision making processes are fair they display a high level of voluntary cooperation based on their attitudes of trust and commitment conversely when people feel that the processes are unfair they refuse to cooperate by hoarding ideas and dragging their feet in conceiving and executing strategic decisions we further develop this argument into team performance wherein the attitudinal and behavioral effects of procedural justice are corroborated with theory and initial evidence of their bottom line performance consequences we then build a theory which we call intellectual and emotional recognition theory that can explain why procedural justice invokes the side of human behavior that goes beyond outcome driven self interests and that is so critical in the knowledge economy 1998 john wiley sons ltd

informed speculation with imperfect competition competitive rational expectations models have the unsatisfactory property dubbed the schizophrenia problem by hellwig that each trader takes the equilibrium price as given despite the fact that he influences that price an examination of information aggregation in a non competitive rational expectations model using a nash equilibrium in demand functions shows that the schizophrenia problem is avoided by having each trader take into account the effect his demand has on the equilibrium price given a distribution of private information across traders prices reveal less information than in the competition equilibrium and prices no longer become fully informative in the limit as noise trading vanishes or as traders become risk neutral with small traders the model may become one of monopolistic competition not perfect competition in contrast to the competitive model a reasonable model of endogenous acquisition of costly private information is obtained even when traders are risk neutral

the stochastic volatility in mean model with time varying parameters an application to inflation modeling this article generalizes the popular stochastic volatility in mean model to allow for time varying parameters in the conditional mean the estimation of this extension is nontrival since the volatility appears in both the conditional mean and the conditional variance and its coefficient in the former is time varying we develop an efficient markov chain monte carlo algorithm based on band and sparse matrix algorithms instead of the kalman filter to estimate this more general variant the methodology is illustrated with an application that involves u s u k and germany inflation the estimation results show substantial time variation in the coefficient associated with the volatility highlighting the empirical relevance of the proposed extension moreover in a pseudo out of sample forecasting exercise the proposed variant also forecasts better than various standard benchmarks