a multiobjective approach to vendor selection abstract purchases from vendors involve significant costs for many firms decisions related to these purchases include the selection of vendors and the determination of order quantities to be placed with the selected vendors such decisions are frequently multiobjective in nature that is they are evaluated by more than one criterion at least 23 criteria for various vendor selection problems have been identified in this article we present a multiobjective approach to systematically analyze the inherent tradeoffs involved in multicriteria vendor selection problems the approach is motivated by and demonstrated with an actual purchasing problem facing a division of a fortune 500 company

a weighted additive fuzzy multiobjective model for the supplier selection problem under price breaks in a supply chain abstract supplier selection is one of the most critical activities of purchasing management in a supply chain because of the key role of supplier s performance on cost quality delivery and service in achieving the objectives of a supply chain supplier selection is a multiple criteria decision making mcdm problem that is affected by several conflicting factors depending on the purchasing situations criteria have varying importance and there is a need to weight criteria in practice for supplier selection problems most of the input information is not known precisely in these cases the theory of fuzzy sets is one of the best tools for handling uncertainty the fuzzy multiobjective model is formulated in such a way as to simultaneously consider the imprecision of information and determine the order quantities to each supplier based on price breaks the problem includes the three objective functions minimizing the net cost minimizing the net rejected items and minimizing the net late deliveries while satisfying capacity and demand requirement constraints in order to solve the problem a fuzzy weighted additive and mixed integer linear programming is developed the model aggregates weighted membership functions of objectives to construct the relevant decision functions in which objectives have different relative importance a numerical example is given to illustrate how the model is applied finally the conclusions and recommendations are presented

the penn balassa samuelson effect through the lens of the dependent economy model abstract the positive correlation between per capita income and cross country price levels is called the penn balassa samuelson effect the most influential explanation of this effect centers around sectoral output productivities as the determinant of the relative price of nontraded goods the interaction between the change in relative prices and the change in per capita income the dynamic pbs effect is less well known this paper extends the turnovsky and sen 1995 model of a small open economy by adding external economies into the production function the model s dynamics accord well with several features of the empirical data on the dynamic pbs effect

financial intermediary coalitions abstract in this article an environment in which the investment opportunities of agents are private information is studied and it is shown that financial intermediaries arise endogenously within that environment it is established that financial intermediaries are part of an efficient arrangement in the sense that they are needed to support the authors private information core allocations these intermediaries which are coalitions of agents exhibit the following characteristics in equilibrium they borrow from and lend to large groups of agents they produce information about investment projects and they issue claims that have different state contingent payoffs than claims issued by ultimate borrowers

understanding social capital in recently restructured urban neighbourhoods two case studies in rotterdam in the major dutch cities social rented housing in post war neighbourhoods has been demolished and largely replaced by more expensive owner occupied and rental housing through residential mobility these measures can trigger substantial population changes this paper studies residents social capital in two recently restructured neighbourhoods in the city of rotterdam it distinguishes between the stayers movers and newcomers in a neighbourhood context social capital refers to the benefit of cursory interactions shared norms trust and collective action of residents survey data show that social capital is not only an asset of long term stayers but that in particular newcomers are relatively rich in social capital factors associated with higher levels of social capital are a higher net income presence of households with children stronger place attachment higher perceived neighbourhood quality homeownership and single family dwellings the expected future length of residence in the area appears

financial intermediation and endogenous growth an endogenous growth model with multiple assets is developed agents who face random future liquidity needs accumulate capital and a liquid but unproductive asset the effects of introducing financial intermediation into this environment are considered conditions are provided under which the introduction of intermediaries shifts the composition of savings toward capital causing intermediation to be growth promoting in addition intermediaries generally reduce socially unnecessary capital liquidation again tending to promote growth

why doesn t technology flow from rich to poor countries what determines the technology that a country adopts while there could be many factors the e ciency of the country s nancial system may play a signi cant role to address this question a dynamic contract model is embedded into a general equilibrium setting with competitive intermediation the ability of an intermediary to monitor and control the cash ows of a rm plays an important role in a rm s decision to adopt a technology can such a theory help to explain the

purchasing raw materials with uncertain fluctuating prices on identifie les differentes etapes de la decision d achat des matieres premieres ainsi que les differentes approches et les aptitudes requises on decrit plusieurs methodes et modeles proposes et appliques aux differentes etapes les aspects importants etant l inadequation des modeles de stocks classiques l application de la programmation lineaire au probleme de melange la prevision des prix a l aide de l econometrie et de l analyse des series temporelles et la prise de decision sequentielle pour l achat au jour le jour

exclusion as urban policy the dutch act on extraordinary measures for urban problems the dutch government introduced the act on extraordinary measures for urban problems in 2006 to bolster local regeneration efforts the act enables local governments to stop specific groups of deprived households from moving into designated neighbourhoods more specifically the act allows local governments to refuse a residence permit to persons who have lived in the metropolitan region for less than six years and who do not receive an income from work pensions or student loans the policy is based on the idea that reducing the influx of poor newcomers improves liveability by providing a temporary relief of the demand for public services and by making neighbourhoods demographically balanced or socially mixed this review examines the socio spatial effects of the act in rotterdam between 2006 and 2013 while the act produces socio demographic changes the state of the living environment in designated areas seems to be worsening rather than improving our findings show that the policy restricts the rights of excluded groups without demonstrably improving safety or liveability the review concludes with a reflection on how the act may signify a broader change in european statecraft and urban policy

bankruptcy and delinquency in a model of unsecured debt this article documents and interprets a fact central to the dynamics of informal consumer debt default we observe that for individuals 60 90 days late on payments i 85 make payments during the next quarter and ii 40 reduce their debt to understand these facts we develop a quantitative model of debt delinquency and bankruptcy our model reproduces the dynamics of delinquency and suggests an interpretation of the data in which lenders frequently reset loan terms for delinquent borrowers typically offering partial debt forgiveness instead of a blanket imposition of the penalty rates most unsecured credit contracts specify

a simulation based evaluation of the cost of cycle time reduction in agere systems wafer fabrication facility a case study abstract with the vast amount of capital invested in the semiconductor industry and the high level of competitiveness semiconductor manufacturers are continuously searching for new methods to gain more market share and increase their profits new technologies are continuously in demand and are pushing the semiconductor manufacturers to seek better market position through constant improvement in their processes and products agere systems is one of the leading companies in the microelectronics industry this paper presents a comprehensive framework for strategic capacity expansion of production equipment at agere systems wafer fabrication facility fab we integrate simulation modeling design of experiments statistical analysis and economic justification tools to aid in this highly complex decision making process we compliment the framework with a particular implementation the procedure involved studying the factors in the fab that significantly impact the cycle times of the four main technologies that are currently in process and will stay in demand for at least the next few years moreover the goal was to quantify the economic impact of reducing cycle times to accomplish the objectives of this research a valid simulation model of the production line of the fab was built the production equipment tool sets that significantly influence production cycle time were identified through factor screening experiments based on these factors several scenarios involving the acquisition of additional tools aimed at cutting down cycle times were identified and the operating characteristics curves were constructed these characteristics curves were used to relate cycle time to production volume capabilities finally an economic analysis was conducted to evaluate the return on investment in additional tools the outcome of the case study was the identification of bottleneck facilities in the fab that have a significant impact on the cycle time of the four technologies in the economic analysis the cost of adding machines to these facilities was compared with the benefits resulting from the increase in production capacities

how good are standard debt contracts stochastic versus nonstochastic monitoring in a costly state verification environment the authors investigate ex ante efficient contracts in an environment in which implementation is costless in this environment standard debt contracts will typically not be optimal optimal contracts may involve defaults even in states in which the borrower is fully able to repay the authors then examine the welfare costs of arbitrarily restricting the set of feasible contracts to standard debt contracts when model parameters are calibrated to realistic values the welfare loss from exogenously imposing this restriction is extremely small thus if implementation costs are actually nontrivial as seems likely standard debt contracts will be very close to optimal copyright 1994 by university of chicago press

supply chain focus dependent supplier selection problem increasing globalization diversity of the product range and increasing customer awareness are making the market s highly competitive thereby forcing different supply chains to adapt to different stimuli on a continuous basis it is also well recognized that overall supply chain focus should be given an overriding priority over the individual goals of the players if one were to improve overall supply chain surplus among all the possible order winners cost and responsiveness seem to be the most significant metrics based on which majority of the supply chains compete with each other supplier selection problem is one of the crucial problems that need to be addressed in configuring a supply chain that could have far reaching ramifications on the total supply chain costs and order winnability our model that considers inventory costs and the supply chain cycle time reduction costs would aid a supply chain manager to make informed decisions with regard to supplier selection problem at any stage dependent upon the priorities attached to supply chain costs and cycle time inventory related costs and responsiveness related costs are the two primary cost elements that are considered in this model we are also making use of a novel dimensionless quantity called the coefficient of inverse responsiveness that not only facilitates the introduction of responsiveness related costs into the model but also improves the scalability and simplifies the analysis and interpretation of the results based on the strategic model developed we offer some very interesting managerial insights with respect to the effect of cost efficient operations and or location and cost of volume related flexibility at a stage on alternate suppliers which in turn affects the overall supply chain performance

costly intermediation and the poverty of nations this article has two goals i to reduce the 7 fold productivity differential required to explain the observed 33 fold income difference between the richest and poorest countries of the world and ii to explain cross country differences in the capital output ratio to achieve the first goal we modify the production function of the standard neoclassical growth model to include public capital whose provision is subject to intermediation costs for the second goal we distort private investment by introducing credit frictions the model quantified using cross country data generates an income gap of 33 with productivity differences of only 3 under the measured variations in public and private capital the required productivity gap declines even further to 2 1 when we introduce a home production sector on the second goal however credit frictions do a poor job of explaining cross country variations in the capital output ratio

financial frictions occupational choice and economic inequality we develop a quantitative theory of entrepreneurship income inequality and nancial frictions disciplined with household data from brazil the theory extends lucas 1978 by modeling heterogeneity in two skills working and managerial skills consistently with the evidence the theory implies three occupational categories workers employers and self employed entrepreneurs we nd that the correlation between working and managerial skills matters importantly for the distribution of earnings across occupations and for the quantitative implications of nancial frictions we also nd

costly monitoring financial intermediation and equilibrium credit rationing abstract this paper establishes a link between equilibrium credit rationing and financial intermediation in a model with asymmetrically informed lenders and borrowers costly monitoring and investment project indivisibilities intermediation is shown to dominate borrowing and lending between individuals and these financial intermediaries exhibit several of the important features of intermediaries as we know them equilibrium interest rates and the aggregate quantity of loans respond quite differently to changes in taste and technology parameters depending on whether or not there is rationing in equilibrium

the voting analytic hierarchy process method for selecting supplier abstract supplier selection has received extensive attention in supply chain management yahya et al j oper res soc 50 1999 916 930 integrate a collaborative purchasing programme where one of the aims is to select suppliers they illustrate a new approach based on the use of saaty s analytic hierarchy process ahp method that was developed to assist in multi criteria decision making problems in order to decide the total ranking of the suppliers we compare the weighted sum of the selection number of rank vote after determining the weights in a selected rank this investigation presents a novel weighting procedure in place of ahp s paired comparison for selecting suppliers it provides a simpler method than ahp that is called voting analytic hierarchy process but which does not lose the systematic approach of deriving the weights to be used and for scoring the performance of suppliers

the permanent effects of innovation on financial depth abstract this paper examines links between innovation in the us intermediating sector and financial deepening from 1872 1929 technical progress is modeled in a credit rationing framework with limited liability as an enhanced ability of intermediaries to monitor loan recipients this allows an innovating lender to earn temporary rents by lowering loan rates and inducing firms with higher repayment prospects to apply rents persist until others adopt the improvement and competition for loanable funds raises the deposit rate subsequent deposits ensure that more funds are channeled to projects of higher average quality the link between the loan deposit spread and financial deepening implied by the model is then examined in an unobservable components framework the finding that permanent reductions of 1 in the spread of new york banks are associated with increases in financial depth that range from 1 7 to nearly 4 is consistent with a role for efficiency improvements in the rapid financial deepening that characterized the pre 1930 us economy

determining safety stock in the presence of stochastic lead time and demand we consider the problem of setting safety stock when both the demand in a period and the lead time are random variables there are two cases to consider in the first case the parameters of the demand and lead time distributions are known in the second case they are unknown and must be estimated for the case of known parameters a standard procedure is presented in the literature in this paper examples are used to show that this procedure can yield results that are far from the desired result a correct procedure is presented when the parameters are unknown it is assumed that a simple exponential smoothing model is used to generate estimates of demand in each period and that a discrete distribution of the lead time can be developed from historical data a correct procedure for setting safety stocks that is based on these two inputs is given for two popular demand models the approach is easily generalized to other models of demand safety stock calculation is simplified when certain normality assumptions are valid simulation results in the appendix indicate when these assumptions about normality are reasonable

financial intermediation business failures and real business cycles in this paper a general equilibrium business cycle model is construct ed that when subjected to real disturbances mimics observed qualita tive comovements among real output money business failures risk pr emia intermediary loans and prices in contrast monetary disturban ces generate cycles that have several inconsistencies with empirical evidence thus providing support for real business cycle theory at th e expense of monetary theories of the business cycle financial inter mediation arises endogenously in the model and intermediation matters for business cycle behavior a credit supply mechanism acts in tande m with an intertemporal substitution effect in propagating stochastic disturbances copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

credit market frictions and their direct effects on u s manufacturing fluctuations abstract in this paper we explore how informational frictions in credit markets directly affect u s manufacturing fluctuations within the context of a dynamic industry model we propose a strategy for identifying intermediation costs related to informational asymmetries between lenders and borrowers the analysis suggests that these costs have been steadily falling over the post war period we also present evidence that changes in the cost of intermediation should directly affect output as opposed to just propagating the effects of other shocks in particular we find that shocks to the cost of intermediation account for a larger share of manufacturing output fluctuations at long horizons than at short horizons

financing development the role of information costs to address how technological progress in nancial intermediation aects the economy a costly state veri cation framework is embedded into the standard growth model the framework has two novel ingredients first rms dier in the risk return combinations that they oer second the e cacy of monitoring depends upon the amount of resources invested in the activity a nancial theory of rm size results undeserving rms are over nanced deserving ones under funded technological advance in intermediation leads to more capital accumulation and a redirection of funds away from unproductive rms toward productive ones quantitative analysis suggests that nance is important for growth

limited enforcement financial intermediation and economic development a quantitative assessment we present a model of economic development where the importance of financial differences caused by limited enforcement can be measured economies where enforcement is poor direct less capital to the production sector and employ less efficient technologies calibrated simulations reveal that the resulting effect on output is large furthermore the model correctly predicts that the average scale of production should rise with the quality of enforcement finally we find that the importance of limited enforcement rises with the importance of capital in production

financial intermediation and delegated monitoring this paper develops a theory of financial intermediation based on minimizing the cost of monitoring information which is useful for resolving incentive problems between borrowers and lenders it presents a characterization of the costs of providing incentives for delegated monitoring by a financial intermediary diversification within an intermediary serves to reduce these costs even in a risk neutral economy the paper presents some more general analysis of the effect of diversification on resolving incentive problems in the environment assumed in the model debt contracts with costly bankruptcy are shown to be optimal the analysis has implications for the portfolio structure and capital structure of intermediaries

the total cost of logistics in supplier selection under conditions of multiple sourcing multiple criteria and capacity constraint abstract little attention is given in the literature to decisions on the appropriate selection of suppliers and on assigning order quantities to these suppliers in the case of multiple sourcing with multiple criteria and with suppliers capacity constraints only a few mathematical programming models to analyse such decisions have been published to date and these have tended to consider only net price as the cost of purchasing although the costs of transportation ordering and storage may be significantly important to the decision in this paper a mixed integer non linear programming model is presented to solve the multiple sourcing problem which takes into account the total cost of logistics including net price storage transportation and ordering costs buyer limitations on budget quality service etc can also be considered in the model an algorithm is proposed to solve the model and the model is illustrated using a numerical example

a new database on the structure and development of the financial sector this article introduces a new database of indicators of financial structure and financial development across countries and over time the database is unique in that it combines a wide variety of indicators that measure the size activity and efficiency of financial intermediaries and markets it improves on previous efforts by presenting data on the public share of commercial banks introducing indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial institutions and constructing measures of the size of bond and primary equity markets this article introduces a new database the first to provide comprehensive measures of the development structure and performance of the financial sector this database is the first to define and construct indicators of the size and activity of nonbank financial intermediaries such as insurance companies pension funds and non deposit money banks it is also the first to include indicators of the size of primary equity markets and primary and secondary bond markets in constructing the database authors carefully deflate measures and match stock and flow variables

competition human capital and income inequality with limited commitment we develop a dynamic general equilibrium model with two sided limited commitment to study how barriers to competition such as re strictions to business start up aect the incentive to accumulate hu man capital we show that a lack of contract enforceability ampli es the eect of barriers to competition on human capital accumulation high barriers reduce the incentive to accumulate human capital by lowering the outside value of skilled workers while low barriers can result in over accumulation of human capital this over accumulation can be socially optimal if there are positive knowledge spillovers a calibration exercise shows that this mechanism can account for signif icant cross country income inequality

globalisation regulation urbanisation the case of the netherlands this paper traces some of the linkages between globalisation and social regulation via the example of the netherlands the paper is in four main sections the first section considers recent debates on globalisation through an attempt to identify key economic processes the second section considers the main objections that have been made to the globalisation thesis and especially its lack of attention to matters of social regulation the third section considers the way in which the dutch economy has been able to become comparatively successful through a judicious blend of globalisation and social regulation the final section of the paper then considers the special role of the randstad in promoting this concordat

dynamic credit relationships in general equilibrium abstract we construct a general equilibrium model with private information in which borrowers and lenders enter into long term dynamic credit relationships each new generation of ex ante identical individuals is divided in equilibrium into workers and entrepreneurs workers save through financial intermediaries in the form of interest bearing deposits and supply labor to entrepreneurs in a competitive labor market entrepreneurs borrow from financial intermediaries to finance projects which produce privately observed sequences of random returns each financial intermediary holds deposits from a large number of workers and operates a portfolio of dynamic contracts with different credit positions we calibrate the model to the u s economy and find that dynamic contracting is very effective at mitigating the effects of private information moreover restricting borrowers and lenders to use static one period contracts with a costly monitoring technology has adverse effects both on the level of aggregate economic activity and on individual welfare unless monitoring costs are very small finally the optimal provision of intertemporal incentives leads to increasing consumption inequality over time within generational cohorts as in u s data

a multi phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design abstract a supply chain is an alliance of independent business processes such as supplier manufacturing and distribution processes that perform the critical functions in the order fulfillment process effective design and management of supply chains assists in production and delivery of a variety of products at low cost high quality and short lead times although the importance of supply chain design is emphasized in the literature few formal decision models have been proposed for this purpose this paper presents a multi phase mathematical programming approach for effective supply chain design more specifically the methodology develops and applies a combination of multi criteria efficiency models based on game theory concepts and linear and integer programming methods model application and insights are detailed through numerical illustrations

financial development growth and the distribution of income a paradigm is presented in which both the extent of financial intermediation and the rate of economic growth are endogenously determined financial intermediation promotes growth because it allows a higher rate of return to be earned on capital and growth in turn provides the means to implement costly financial structures thus financial intermediation and economic growth are inextricably linked in accord with the goldsmith mckinnon shaw view on economic development the model also generates a development cycle reminiscent of the kuznet hypothesis in particular in the transition from a primitive slow growing economy to a developed fast growing one a nation passes through a stage in which the distribution of wealth across the rich and poor widens

a theory of financing constraints and firm dynamics there is widespread evidence supporting the conjecture that borrowing constraints have important implications for firm growth and survival in this paper we model a multiperiod borrowing lending relationship with asymmetric information we show that borrowing constraints emerge as a feature of the optimal long term lending contract and that such constraints relax as the value of the borrower s claim to future cash flows increases we also show that the optimal contract has interesting implications for firm dynamics in agreement with the empirical evidence as age and size increase mean and variance of growth decrease and firm survival increases

communication commitment and growth abstract we study the effect on the growth of an economy of alternative financing opportunities in a stochastic growth model with incentive constraints efficient accumulation mechanisms are designed and computed for economies that differ in their incentive structure we show that when borrowing is subject to information constraints there is a computable efficient transfer mechanism that does not affect capital accumulation and investment patterns even though consumption patterns and the distribution of wealth are affected in contrast enforcement constraints can severely reduce the outside financing opportunities and affect investment patters and economic growth we adapt numerical algorithms for obtaining numerical solutions of these models

the information technology revolution and the stock market evidence since 1968 the ratio of stock market capitalization to gdp has varied by a factor of 5 in 1972 the ratio stood at above unity but by 1974 it had fallen to 0 45 where it stayed for the next decade it then began a steady climb and today it stands above 2 we argue that the it revolution was behind this and moreover that the capitalization gdp ratio is likely to decline and then rise after any major technological shift the three assumptions that deliver the result are

financial capacity and output fluctuations in an economy with multi period financial relationships this paper motivates a financial propagation mechanism in the context of an intertemporal production economy with asymmetric information and with borrowers and lenders who enter multi period financial relationships a key feature is that aggregate output and borrowers financial capacity the maximum overhang of past debt they may feasibly carry are determined jointly much in the spirit of gurley and shaw 1955 expectations of future economic conditions govern financial capacity which in turn may constrain current production especially in bad times a small but persistent shift in aggregate conditions may have a large impact on financial capacity making the framework capable of motivating large endogenous fluctuations in financial constraints understanding how small disturbances can induce large output fluctuations is an on going quest in macroeconomics this paper develops a simple framework in which shifts in aggregate economic fundamentals are amplified through their impact on financial conditions a distinguishing feature is that output and borrowers financial capacity the maximum overhang of past debt they may feasibly carry are determined jointly much in the spirit of gurley and shaw 1955 expectations of future economic conditions govern financial capacity and financial capacity may constrain current production especially in bad times a number of recent papers have resurrected the view that financial factors may play a part in propagating business fluctuations the underlying theories exploit the idea that with asymmetric information between borrowers and lenders agency costs may drive the price of uncollateralized external funds above the price of internal funds in this kind of setting a borrower s financial position is a key determinant of the terms of credit she faces in the aggregate swings in borrower balance sheets over the cycle amplify fluctuations in investment and output essentially by inducing counter cyclical movements in the required premium for external finance this simple mechanism is broadly consistent with informal descriptions of how financial and real variables interacted in the great depression bernanke 1983 and in the postwar business cycles eckstein and sinai 1986 in addition numerous recent panel data studies beginning with fazzari hubbard and peterson 1988 support the notion of a financial investment accelerator mechanism

financial deepening inequality and growth a model based quantitative evaluation we propose a coherent unified approach to the study of the linkages among economic growth financial structure and inequality bringing together disparate theoretical and empirical literature that is we show how to conduct model based quantitative research on transitional paths with analytical and numerical methods we calibrate and make tractable a prototype canonical model and take it to an application namely thailand 1976 96 an emerging market economy in a phase of economic expansion with uneven financial deepening and increasing inequality we look at the expected path generated by the model and conduct robustness experiments because the actual path of the thai economy is imagined here to be just one realization of many possible histories of the model economy we construct a covariance normalized squared error metric of closeness and find the best fit simulation we also construct a confidence region from a set of simulations and formally test the model we broadly replicate the actual data and identify anomalies robert m townsend is a professor at the university of chicago and a consultant at the federal reserve bank of chicago kenichi ueda is an economist at the international monetary fund the views expressed in this paper are those of authors and do not necessarily represent those of the frb chicago the federal reserve system or the imf we thank the national statistics office of thailand for permission to use the ses data we received helpful comments from robin brooks fabio canova marco cagetti larry christiano angus deaton paul evans jess gaspar hyeok jeong ashok mody tomoyuki nakajima hajime takizawa chris udry annette vissing jorgensen and the participants of the nber general equilibrium conference at new york university the conference honoring rolf r mantel in argentina seminars at cornell university grips hitotsubashi university ohio state university oxford university and the imf as well as the imf conference on macroeconomic policy and poverty reduction we are especially indebted to the editors and referees townsend acknowledges financial support from the nsf and nichd we thank natalia ramondo for excellent research assistance

social mixing and the management of disadvantaged neighbourhoods the dutch policy of urban restructuring revisited summary the dutch government currently pursues a comprehensive and ambitious policy of social mixing in disadvantaged neighbourhoods the second section of this paper suggests that it has as yet not been adequately explained why the dutch government pursues this so called restructuring policy the third section develops an approach derived from regulation theory that potentially helps to decipher the forces behind the dutch restructuring policy it is argued that planning practices and discourses should be analysed in relation to the dynamics of the regulatory framework in which they are embedded the remainder of the paper uses this approach to give an alternative account of the dutch restructuring policy suggesting that it represents an attempt to facilitate the social management of disadvantaged neighbourhoods thus it serves to mitigate the social effects of the problematic integration of ethnic minorities and facilitates a national city oriented growth strategy

on finance as a theory of tfp cross industry productivity differences and economic rents we develop a theory of capital market imperfections to study how the ability to enforce contracts affects resource allocation across entrepreneurs of different productivities and across industries with different needs for external financing the theory implies that countries with a poor ability to enforce contracts are characterized by the use of inefficient technologies low aggregate tfp large differences in labor productivity across industries and large employment shares in industries with low productivity these implications are supported by the empirical evidence the theory also suggests that entrepreneurs have a vested interest in maintaining a status quo with low enforcement

appropriate technology and income differences this article studies the relative productivity of skilled to unskilled workers across countries relative productivities are broken down into the human capital embodied in skilled workers and relative physical productivities reflecting production techniques i find that skilled workers from poorer countries embody less human capital and are also relatively less physically productive furthermore results show that production techniques are inappropriate for most low income countries and these countries experience large increases in gdp per capita by increasing the relative physical productivity of skilled to unskilled workers this suggests that there are significant barriers to the adoption of skill complementary technologies

investor protection optimal incentives and economic growth does investor protection foster economic growth to assess the widely held affirmative view we introduce investor protection into a standard overlapping generations model of capital accumulation better investor protection implies better risk sharing because of entrepreneurs risk aversion this results in a larger demand for capital this is the demand effect a second effect the supply effect follows from general equilibrium restrictions better protection i e higher demand increases the interest rate and lowers the income of entrepreneurs decreasing current savings and next period s supply of capital the supply effect is stronger the tighter are the restrictions on capital flows our model thus predicts that the positive effect of investor protection on growth is stronger for countries with lower restrictions cross country data provide support for this prediction as does the detailed examination of the growth experiences of south korea and india

a multicriteria model for assigning new orders to service suppliers abstract this paper describes a multicriteria model developed to support decisions on the assignment of new orders to service suppliers in this case contractors for the construction or renewal of pipeline networks for gas distribution the model comprises two phases i computation of a quota expressed as a percentage of total work orders budget for each supplier ii assignment of each particular order to a supplier selected on the basis of a multi attribute preference index evaluated for each candidate contractor the first phase is executed at the beginning of each year and then reviewed quarterly and the quotas are defined by a two criteria model the prices quoted by the supplier for standard works and the past performance of the constructor given by a performance appraisal system the paper describes the structuring phase of the model as well as the descriptors and corresponding partial value functions used in each stage to perform the evaluation within an additive aggregation framework

the information technology revolution and the stock market technological progress comes in waves the british industrial revolution 1760 1850 ushered in cort s puddling and rolling process for making iron crompton s mule for spinning cotton and the watt steam engine the second industrial revolution 1890 1930 witnessed the rise of electricity the internal combustion engine and the chemical industry the birth of information technology it may herald the start of a third industrial revolution a new technology or product is often developed by the single entrepreneur who initially finds it hard to get funds develop the product and find customers but if the product is good customers eventually line up and investors flock in other firms then move in to make the product and may drive the innovator out or acquire him whether he reaches the initial public offering ipo stage or is acquired by a listed firm though it takes time for the innovator to add value to the stock market indeed the innovation may at first reduce the market s value because some firms usually large or old will cling to old technologies that have lost their momentum figure 1 plots the market value of u s equity relative to gdp this paper argues that a the market declined in the late 1960 s because it felt that the old technologies either had lost their momentum or would give way to it and that b it innovators boosted the stock market s value only in the 1980 s if the stock market provides a forecast of future events then the recent dramatic upswing represents a rosy estimate about growth in future profits for the economy this translates into a forecast of higher output and productivity growth holding other things equal such as capital s share