improving supply chain performance and managing risk under weather related demand uncertainty we consider a manufacturer retailer supply chain for a seasonal product whose demand is weather sensitive the retailer orders from the manufacturer supplier prior to the selling season and then sells to the market we examine how a manufacturer can structure a weather linked rebate to improve his expected profit the proposed class of rebate contracts offers several advantages over many other contract structures including no required verification of leftover inventory and or markdown amounts and no adverse effect on sales effort by the retailer we provide a thorough analysis of the manufacturer s and retailer s decisions in this context we show that the weather linked rebate can take many different forms and this flexibility allows the supplier to design contracts that are pareto improving and or limit his risk in offering the contract and the retailer s risk in accepting it for weather rebates with certain characteristics the manufacturer can fully hedge his risks of offering a weather rebate by paying a risk premium we show how this can be accomplished we also show that the basic structural results extend to settings in which the two parties would like to limit their risk

the pricing of durable exhaustible resources partial or total durability characterizes a large class of exhaustible resources hotelling s r percent rule will apply to a durable resource produced in a competitive market but will not apply if the resource is produced in a monopolistic market however the r percent rule does not mean that price is steadily rising it is shown that in general the competitive market price will fall initially as the stock in circulation increases and later will rise as the stock decreases and eventually depreciates toward zero after production ceases accounting for durability may thus help explain the u shaped long term price profiles observed for many resources 11 references 3 figures

optimal pricing and return policies for perishable commodities this paper considers the pricing decision faced by a producer of a commodity with a short shelf or demand life a hierarchical model is developed and the results of the single period inventory model are used to examine possible pricing and return policies the paper shows that several such policies currently in effect are suboptimal these include those where the manufacturer offers retailers full credit for all unsold goods or where no returns of unsold goods are permitted the paper also demonstrates that a policy whereby a manufacturer offers retailers full credit for a partial return of goods may achieve channel coordination but that the optimal return allowance will be a function of retailer demand therefore such a policy cannot be optimal in a multi retailer environment it is proven however that a pricing and return policy in which a manufacturer offers retailers a partial credit for all unsold goods can achieve channel coordination in a multi retailer environment this article was originally published in marketing science volume 4 issue 2 pages 166 176 in 1985

noninformative trends in natural resource commodity prices u shaped price paths exonerated abstract m j mueller and d r gorin j environ econ manag 12 83 89 1985 claim that the u shaped price paths found in m e slade j environ econ manag 9 122 137 1982a result from a misspecification and disappear when the equation is properly specified to produce their result they rely on a radical shift in technology that is claimed to have occurred in 1920 there is however no evidence of a technology shift in that year instead a gradual adoption of new mining techniques beginning in 1904 is seen in addition to this misspecification they incorrectly locate other exogenous influences such as wars and recessions when corrections are made a radically different picture emerges with the new equation the u shaped price pattern persists and the only exogenous influence that is consistently insignificant is the technology shift

the impact of sharing customer returns information in a supply chain with and without a buyback policy in this paper we examine a single period problem in a supply chain in which a stackelberg manufacturer supplies a product to a retailer who faces customer returns and demand uncertainty we show that the manufacturer incurs a significant profit loss with and without a buyback policy if it fails to account for customer returns in the wholesale price decision under the assumption that the retailer is better informed than the manufacturer on customer returns information we show that without a buyback policy the retailer prefers not to share if the manufacturer overestimates while it prefers to share customer returns information if the manufacturer underestimates this information if the manufacturer offers a buyback policy we have the opposite results we also discuss incentives to share the customer returns information and some of the issues that are raised in sharing this information

the new institutional economics this outstanding book presents new original contributions from some of the world s leading economists including ronald coase douglass c north masahiko aoki oliver e williamson and harold demsetz it demonstrates the extent and depth of the new institutional economics research programme which is having a worldwide impact on the economics profession

justice failure efficiency and equality in business ethics this paper offers the concept of justice failure as a counterpart to the familiar idea of market failure in order to better understand managers ethical obligations this paper takes the market failures approach mfa to business ethics as its point of departure the success of the mfa i argue lies in its close proximity with economic theory particularly in the idea that within a larger scheme of social cooperation markets ought to pursue efficiency and leave the pursuit of equality to the welfare state as a result the core ethical responsibility of business actors is to avoid profiting off of market failure after reviewing this approach i challenge its emphasis on efficiency i argue that just as we note the suboptimal efficiency of actual markets market failure we should also take seriously the suboptimal equality of actual welfare states what i call justice failure taking this idea seriously results in a whole other set of ethical responsibilities for businesses to take into account in addition to market imperfections and regulatory lacunae managers should also avoid profiting from and exacerbating structural inequalities and injustices i offer an outline of the kinds of injustices and inequalities that would have bearing on business ethics and the kinds of ethical responsibilities that this approach suggests that business actors should take into account

ethics in finance and accounting editorial introduction in light of the recent crisis and its aftershocks it becomes crucial to reflect on the relationship between finance and accounting and on how to integrate ethics and efficiency as well as on how to motivate and empower practitioners in the world of finance to commit to justice fairness and enhanced understanding and to improving their personal integrity this article written as an editorial introduction to a special issue includes works related to control measurement and ethical behavior misbehaviors in finances and accounting professionalism in accounting ethical investing and corporate reporting we conclude by suggesting further research for a better integration of technical aspects of accounting and finances into business activity human activity actually and an for understanding of ethics not limited to rules but as a mutual and interdependent system of values human goods virtues and principles

the impact of customer returns on pricing and order decisions abstract in this paper we address the simultaneous determination of price and inventory replenishment when customers return product to the firm we examine cases when the quantity of returned product is a function of both the quantity sold and the price in single and multi period problems with and without uncertainty in demand we derive results for optimal prices and order quantities and discuss how the firm should change price and inventory quantities in order to mitigate the negative effects of returns from customers

channel coordination under price protection midlife returns and end of life returns in dynamic markets this paper examines three channel policies that are used in declining price environments price protection p is a mechanism under which the manufacturer pays the retailer a credit applying to the retailer s unsold inventory when thewholesale price drops during the life cycle midlife returns m allow the retailer to return units partway through the life cycle at some rebate and end of life returns e allow the retailer to return unsold units at the end of the life cycle under decliningretail prices if the wholesale prices and the return rebates are set properly then em i e midlife and end of life returns achieves channel coordination however such a policy may not be implementable because it may require the manufacturer to be worse off as a result of coordination if p is used in addition to em and the terms are set properly then pem guarantees both coordination and a win win outcome if theretail price is constant over time then em is sufficient to guarantee both coordination and a win win outcome

coordinating a decentralized supply chain with customer returns and price dependent stochastic demand using a buyback policy abstract we investigate a decentralized supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer where the retailer simultaneously determines the retail price and order quantity while experiencing customer returns and price dependent stochastic demand we propose an agreement between the manufacturer and the retailer that includes two buyback prices one for unsold inventory and a second for customer returns and show that this type of easy to implement agreement can achieve perfect supply chain coordination and be a win win for both manufacturer and retailer when a complementary profit sharing agreement is included

the contained rivalry requirement and a triple feature program for business ethics this paper proposes a description of the moral obligations of economic agents it will show that a threefold division should be adopted to distinguish moral obligations applying to their interactions in the market obligations applying to their interactions inside business firms and obligations applying to their interactions with agents outside the market competition might be permissible in the first case since markets are special patterns of social interactions called adversarial schemes they produce their benefits when agents try to satisfy exclusive preferences at the expense of others however moral obligations inside the firm and moral obligations outside the market are of a different nature this argument will be developed in the two first parts of this paper in the third part it will outline the relevant strengths of that account in relation with two popular views of economic agents moral obligations the shareholder primacy view and the stakeholder theory

optimal procurement contracts with pre project planning the paper studies procurement contracts with pre project investigations in the presence of adverse selection and moral hazard to model the procurer s problem we extend a standard sequential screening model to endogenous information acquisition with moral hazard the optimal contract displays system atic distortions in information acquisition due to a rent effect adverse selection induces too much infor mation acquisition to prevent cost overruns and too little information acquisition to prevent false project cancellations moral hazard mitigates the distortions related to cost overruns yet exacerbates those related to false negatives the optimal mechanism is a menu of option contracts that achieves the dual goal of providing incentives for information acquisition and truthful information revelation

on measuring natural resource scarcity conclusions concerning trends in natural resource scarcity may depend critically on the choice of scarcity index unfortunately the prevalence of vertical integration in natural resource industries has hindered the use of some otherwise desirable scarcity measures in this paper duality theory is used to derive an econometric procedure for estimating one such measure the shadow price of the resource in situ empirical results for the canadian metal mining industry indicate that resource scarcity as measured by this shadow price has decreased substantially over time

analysis of the impact of price sensitivity factors on the returns policy in coordinating supply chain this paper analyzes the impact of price sensitivity factors on characteristics of returns policy contracts in a single period product supply chain the contract considers stochastic and price dependent demand we present an analytical model and then use numerical methods with the stackelberg game to identify the contract properties we numerically show that a returns policy indeed improves supply chain performance however the benefits earned from the returns policy under price sensitive and variable demand are different for different supply chain partners first when price sensitivity is high profit of the manufacturer decreases with increase in demand variability second when price sensitivity is sufficiently high and demand variability increases the manufacturer has to surrender part of the profits to the retailer in order to continue sales however even after surrendering part of the profits to the retailer the manufacturer still earns profits that are higher than those available in a wholesale price contract last from the perspective of division of channel profits the retailer is always worse off in case of returns policies than in a wholesale price contract therefore to apply this form of incentive in practice managements should consider the impact of price sensitivity on the returns policy and its performance

returns policies between channel partners for durable products many durable products with relatively short selling seasons have been using returns policies between manufacturers and retailers as the contractual protocol for some time recently these sectors have witnessed the growing popularity of peer to peer web based used goods markets as important transaction channels between buyers and sellers given that these two issues are critically linked from both supply and demand perspectives in this paper we study the role that consumer valuation of used products plays in shaping a manufacturer s incentive to offer a returns policy option to a retailer when used goods might be devalued compared to new ones as a result of physical deterioration or obsolescence we do so through a two period dyadic channel framework where the retailer faces uncertain demand for a durable product from a renewable set of customers who are impatient but forward looking the manufacturer on the other hand needs to decide whether or not to offer a returns contract to the retailer we first characterize the necessary and sufficient condition under which a returns contract is the equilibrium strategy as well as the corresponding channel decisions further analysis of this condition reveals that a higher consumer valuation of used products increases the likelihood of a returns contract being the equilibrium strategy this result seems to be robust except when the potential demands for the two periods are quite deterministic and uncorrelated however it contradicts the burgeoning managerial trend to replace returns contracts with price only ones in sectors where used goods are valued relatively highly by the consumers we also discuss how used goods markets affect the equilibrium channel decisions as well as how demand uncertainty and logistics costs associated with returns influence the equilibrium contracting strategy

why is production more volatile than sales theory and evidence on the stockout avoidance motive for inventory holding this paper argues that the macroeconomically interesting features of inventory behavior are well captured by a model in which firms face only demand uncertainty with a nonnegativity constraint on inventories empirical implications of the stockout avoidance model of inventory behavior are derived and then tested on disaggregated automobile industry data the results largely support the model though they suggest a small role for production smoothing as well subsidiary evidence on the relative variance of demand and cost shocks suggests that demand shocks are indeed more important

inventory turnover and product variety abstract retailers face powerful incentives to limit the inventories they stock and this leads them to focus on inventory turn as a performance measure their desire to pare inventory holding costs yields a misalignment of their incentives with those of a supplier seeking to have a broad line of products held we identify the source of the vertical misalignment and demonstrate its impact on product variety we then consider a series of vertical restraints that can potentially correct the problem the analysis is used to explain the otherwise puzzling behavior of suppliers in several recent and significant antitrust matters

demand uncertainty and supplier s returns policies for a multi store style good retailer abstract as demand uncertainty grows in the marketplace a critical issue today in most purchase contract negotiations between an independent retailer of a style good and its supplier is the provision of a returns policy i e a commitment by the supplier to buy back unsold inventory of the good at the end of its selling season management science research on the strategic role and optimal design of returns policies has grown in recent years but so far offers little treatment of how exactly the retailer s optimal order quantity decisions are affected by demand uncertainty and how a supplier s returns policy can influence these decisions employing the traditional newsboy problem modeling framework the authors investigate these issues considering a supplier who faces a retailer with two or more store outlets with normally distributed and possibly correlated demands to facilitate their analyses the authors employ a methodology based on special error function representations of the highly nonlinear objective functions of the retailer and supplier utilizing this approach the authors are able to provide explicit insights into how a the buyer s total order quantity decision is affected by the variability in demand b buyback prices in combination with wholesale prices can influence the buyer s order quantity response to demand uncertainty c demand uncertainty moderates the effects of the buyback and wholesale prices d supplier s optimal combination of actions are affected by demand variability e retailer s and supplier s expected profits behave in response to changes in the supplier s actions under different levels of demand variability

the goals and promise of the sarbanes oxley act the primary goal of the sarbanes oxley act was to fix auditing of u s public companies consistent with its full official name the public company accounting reform and investor protection act of 2002 by consensus auditing had been working poorly and increasingly so the most important and most promising part of sarbanes oxley was the creation of a unique quasi public institution to oversee and regulate auditing the public company accounting oversight board pcaob in controversial section 404 the law also created new disclosure based incentives for firms to spend money on internal controls above increases that would have occurred after the corporate scandals of the early 2000s in exchange for these higher costs which have already fallen substantially sarbanes oxley promises a variety of long term benefits investors will face a lower risk of losses from fraud and theft and benefit from more reliable financial reporting greater transparency and accountability public companies will pay a lower cost of capital and the economy will benefit because of a better allocation of resources and faster growth sarbanes oxley remains a work in progress section 404 in particular was implemented too aggressively but reformers should push for continued improvements in its implementation by pcaob rather than for repeal of the legislation itself

a serial supply chain of newsvendor problem with safety stocks under complete and partial information sharing abstract we consider a supply chain where multiple members are serially connected the decision is to determine the ordering quantity of a member to the next upstream member in the supply chain the basic cost model is similar to the newsvendor problem with additional consideration to safety stock this paper presents optimal approaches for coordination of the supply chain under both complete and partial information sharing in order to maximize the total expected benefit for complete information sharing we develop an optimal coordination algorithm for partial information sharing we propose an optimal coordination algorithm based on the alternating direction method and the diagonal quadratic approximation method a numerical example is discussed to show the optimal convergence of ordering quantities and discuss the properties of the proposed algorithms

revenue sharing and vertical control in the video rental industry revenue sharing contracts in which retailers pay a royalty on sales to their suppliers are now widely used in the video rental industry we show that revenue sharing is valuable in vertically separated industries in which demand is either stochastic unpredictable or variable e g systematically declining downstream inventory is chosen before demand is realized and downstream firms engage in intrabrand competition unlike two part tariffs revenue sharing achieves the first best outcome by softening retail price competition without distorting retailers inventory decisions our theories are also consistent with trends in prices and availability following retailers adoption of revenue sharing contracts

on the origin content and relevance of the market failures approach the view of business ethics that christopher mcmahon calls the implicit morality of the market and joseph heath calls the market failures approach has received a significant amount of recent attention the idea of this view is that we can derive an ethics for market participants by thinking about the point of market activity and asking what the world would have to be like for this point to be realized while this view has been much discussed it is still not well understood this paper seeks to remedy this problem i begin by showing against some recent commentators that mcmahon s view and heath s view are fundamentally the same second i clarify the sense of efficiency at work in the market failures approach finally i argue that in its current form this view has little relevance to the real world of business i conclude by sketching two ways of modifying it to fit our world

the effect of risk aversion on distribution channel contracts implications for return policies the return policy is often used in retailing supply chains however it is controversial in judging their practical value in the literature various theoretical and modeling explanations of why the return policy is used in practice and is preferred by the retailer and manufacturer have been put forth the literature focusing on the channel agents risk attitudes to explain the adoption seems to have led to the conclusion that the two agents preferences for adopting the full return policy over the no return policy are always in conflict and thus the risk attitudes do not explain the adoption of return policy in practice in this paper we reinvestigate this issue we first identify two distinct phases of risk averseness high or low for each of the two agents we show distinct behaviors of how the wholesale price and order size are set in each phase then we show that the full return policy can be preferred over the no return policy by both the agents if both of them are high risk averse this implies that the agents risk attitudes can explain the adoption of return policy this is a new theoretical result which is contrary to the existing understanding in the literature our result highlights the importance and intricacy of channel policies especially when the risk attitudes of agents are considered

the nature of opec and oil price changes abstract recent models of the oil market have continued to employ dominant firm monopoly type assumptions regarding opec behaviour other recent studies have highlighted the importance of the internal behaviour of opec the paper attempts to provide a framework within which these approaches are compatible and which provides a significant role for investment needs as a key variable in determining price changes

shareholders and social responsibility the article presents an analysis and critique of milton friedman s argument that the social responsibility of business is merely to increase its profits the analysis uncovers a central claim that friedman implies but does not explicitly defend namely that the shareholders of a corporation have no duty to direct that corporation s management to exercise social responsibility an argument against this claim is then advanced by way of a convergence strategy whereby multiple influential moral approaches are shown to align themselves against friedman the convergence strategy shows that friedman s position lies on the lonely fringes of western moral thought and that at least some of friedman s professed adherents appear to offer incoherent moral views the convergence strategy is shown to suggest but not entail a stakeholder model of the corporation the article concludes by considering two objections

efficient supply contracts for fashion goods with forecast updating and two production modes we examine the problem of developing supply contracts that encourage proper coordination of forecast information and production decisions between a manufacturer and distributor of high fashion seasonal products operating in a two mode production environment the first production mode is relatively cheap but requires a long lead time while the second is expensive but offers quick turnaround we focus on contracts of the form w1 w2 b wherewi is the wholesale price offered for production modei andb is a return price offered for items left over at the end of the season we find that such a contract can coordinate the manufacturer and distributor to act in the best interest of the channel the pricing conditions needed to ensure an efficient solution vary depending on the degree of demand forecast improvement between periods and the manufacturer s access to forecast information we also examine whether these conditions ensure a pareto optimal solution with respect to two traditional production settings

world coal and uk energy policy a company level perspective abstract as a contribution to the debate about the future of the uk coal industry this paper provides an overview of the corporate structure of the world coal industry detailing company diversification ownership transnationality concentration of production and profitability its main argument which has a strong bearing on coal import policy is that whereas the world coal industry and international trade currently exhibit all the signs of overproduction hypercompetition and declining profitability there is no reason to assume that this is a stable scenario the company structure of the export sector variously indicates a potential for supply disruption cost escalation and informal collusion all of which have implications for the future level of prices particularly as the market tightens once so called marginal producers like the uk are knocked out of the market

the right to return this article studies the allocation of responsibility for unsold inventory provision for which is made in practically every distribution contract the two extreme cases are the consignment contract which allocates all the burden to the manufacturer and the no return contract in which retailers purchase the merchandise outright and assume responsibility for unsold inventory contract choices are shown to vary across countries industries products and types of transactions the article identifies six main factors affecting this choice optimal inventory policy in a stochastic retail demand environment relative advantage in disposing of the unsold inventory optimal risk allocation incentives to invest in promotions and provide services to increase consumer demand information asymmetry and costs associated with the consignment contract per se several testable implications are presented and the choice of contracts in the publishing industry is shown to be consistent with the predictions of the model

price protection in the personal computer industry price protection is a commonly used practice between manufacturers and retailers in the personal computer pc industry motivated by drastic declines of product values during the product life cycle it is a form of rebate given by the manufacturer to the retailer for units unsold at the retailer when the price drops during the product life cycle it is a controversial policy in the pc industry because it is not clear how such a policy benefits the supply chain and its participants we show that price protection is an instrument for channel coordination for products with long manufacturing lead times so the retailer has a single buying opportunity a properly chosen price protection credit coordinates the channel for products with shorter manufacturing lead times so the retailer has two buying opportunities price protection alone cannot guarantee channel coordination when wholesale prices are exoge nous however when the price protection credit is set endogenously together with the wholesale prices channel coordination is restored in the two buying opportunity setting with fixed wholesale prices we show that price protection has two primary impacts 1 shifting sales forward in time and 2 increasing total sales finally we present a simple numerical example that suggests given the current economics of the pc industry that price protection under fixed wholesale prices may benefit the total chain and the retailer but hurt the manufacturer

gas market prospects and relationship with oil prices abstract this paper explains how the international natural gas market is vulnerable because of several specific features and how it will be saturated at least until the year 1990 the share of the gas rent is seen to be the main stake in the negotiations between sellers and buyers the purpose of this paper is to present some elements enabling an understanding of the logic of gas pricing net back method versus parity approach the paper also analyses to what extent the future price of gas will be disconnected from that of crude oil in the same way as coal

an adversarial ethic for business or when sun tzu met the stakeholder in the economic literature on the firm especially in the transaction cost tradition a sharp distinction is drawn between so called market transactions and administered transactions this distinction is of enormous importance for business ethics since market transactions are governed by the competitive logic of the market whereas administered transactions are subject to the cooperative norms that govern collective action in a bureaucracy the widespread failure to distinguish between these two types of transactions and thus to distinguish between adversarial and non adversarial relations has led many business ethicists to develop a uniform moral code yet in market transactions the checks and balances built into the system of commercial exchange are such as to permit more instrumental forms of behavior in administered transactions by contrast these checks and balances are absent and thus the institutional context calls for much greater exercise of moral restraint in this paper i begin the task of developing an adversarial ethic for business according to this view the competitive environment licenses a greater range of self interested behavior but also imposes its own constraints on the strategies that firms may adopt in the pursuit of their interests

the world coal trade a commentary abstract the paper gives an account of the recent history of the world coal trade and discusses the forces which bear upon current and prospective production and prices issues relating to depletion of the coal resource and global environmental impact are also discussed

concepts and measures of natural resource scarcity with a summary of recent trends a general model of resource scarcity is presented from which previous models can be derived as special cases previous models of scarcity are compared and contrasted refining the concept of scarcity and leading to a resolution of current disputes over the appropriate measure of scarcity an update of the original work done by barnett and morse is summarized leading to reconsideration of their original conclusions it is found that energy and forest products experienced increasing scarcity during the 1970s

business ethics and the end of history in corporate law henry hansmann has claimed we have reached the end of history in corporate law organized around the widespread normative consensus that corporate managers should act exclusively in the economic interests of shareholders in this paper i examine hansmann s own argument in support of this view in order to draw out its implications for some of the traditional concerns of business ethicists about corporate social responsibility the centerpiece of hansmann s argument is the claim that ownership of the firm is most naturally exercised by the group able to achieve the lowest agency costs and that homogeneity of interest within the ownership group is the most important factor in achieving lower costs he defends this claim through a study of cooperatives attempting to show that homogeneity is the source of the competitive advantage most often enjoyed by shareholders over other constituency groups such as workers suppliers and customers when it comes to exercising control over the firm some business ethicists impressed by this argument have taken it to be a vindication of milton friedman s claim that profit maximization is the only social responsibility of management i would like to suggest that this conclusion does not follow and that the hansmann argument lends itself to a less minimalist view what i refer to as a market failures approach to business ethics

demand signalling and screening in channels of distribution this paper examines two ways channel members at the manufacturing and retail ends deal with asymmetric information in the context of new product introduction a manufacturer who has private information that demand for a new product will be high can differentiate itself from a manufacturer less confident of demand by undertaking high levels of pre launch advertising and offering a high wholesale price a retailer for its part can screen potentially high demand from potentially low demand products by stipulating a take it or leave it slotting allowance the assumption being that the offer will be accepted only by manufacturers confident of sufficient demand to recover the high initial cost of slotting allowances it is shown that manufacturers prefer to signal demand through advance advertising and wholesale price retailers to screen demand through slotting allowances it is shown that unless advance advertising is sufficiently effective slotting allowances yield higher total channel profits and higher social welfare

returns policy new model introduction and consumer welfare abstract this paper investigates how economic outcomes differ for new model introduction between two extreme contracts outright sales contract and returns policy contract with full credit under the outright sales contract we show that the retailer s incentive to introduce a new model can lead to a reduction of consumer welfare when the retailer is moderately risk averse the primary conclusion from this study is that the returns policy contract resolves this conflict between firms and consumers and that the supply chain introduces the new model only when consumer surplus from the new model is higher than that from the old model

the determination of oil prices 1945 1995 the paper provides a theoretical framework to explain the determination of international oil prices based upon the interaction of supply and demand curves the analysis of components of the framework identifies important characteristics of the global market for crude oil the paper applies the framework to the oil market from 1945 in particular it incorporates key changes in the market to enhance understanding of how the market has been and is working finally the framework is used to explain why oil prices have become more volatile and what issues and questions arise from current oil market behaviour

supply chain performance anomalies fairness concerns under private cost information abstract this work investigates how fairness concerns influence supply chain decision making while examining the effect of private production cost information and touching on issues related to bounded rationality we conduct laboratory work utilizing a supply chain dyad with an upstream supplier feeding a downstream retailer under a simple wholesale price contract we perform human computer h c experiments where human subjects play the role of the supplier paired with the computerized retailer as well as human human h h experiments where human subjects play the role of both supplier and retailer these experiments allow us to isolate other effects like bounded rationality from the effects of fairness concerns on supply chain decision making we find that compared to standard analytical model the bounded rationality slightly reduces overall supply chain profit without changing its distribution between the supplier and the retailer while fairness concerns lead to greater supply chain profits and a more balanced supply chain profit distribution we further illustrate that under private cost information the retailer s fairness concern is suppressed by the lack of reciprocity from not being able to observe her rival s profit information but that the supplier s fairness concern from altruism persists based on our experimental results we modify classical supply chain models to include utility functions that incorporate both bounded rationality and fairness concerns the estimated other regarding coefficients are significantly lower under private information than under public information for the h h experiments and we find no evidence of inequity aversion for the h c experiments

the changing structure of the international oil industry implications for opec this paper examines the changes in international oil market structure observed in the 1980s and early 1990s and assesses possible effects on oil market conditions in the future and implications for opec it focuses on the trend toward a more vertical organization mainly resulting from substantial purchases of downstream assets by state owned oil companies in major oil producing countries while the gulf war prevented greater horizontal concentration of oil reserves it merely interrupted the trend toward vertical concentration in the international oil industry the vertical integration of only some of the opec members will cause a further divergence of goals within the organization resulting in a lower likelihood of opec regaining its former position as an effective cartel if the trend toward greater vertical concentration increases future oil prices will in part be affected by decisions made by vertically integrated firms

the economics of organization the transaction cost approach the transaction cost approach to the study of economic organization regards the transaction as the basic unit of analysis and holds that an understanding of transaction cost economizing is central to the study of organizations applications of this approach require that transactions be dimensionalized and that alternative governance structures be described economizing is accomplished by assigning transactions to governance structures in a discriminating way the approach applies both to the determination of efficient boundaries as between firms and markets and to the organization of internal transactions including the design of employment relations the approach is compared and contrasted with selected parts of the organization theory literature

controlling opportunism in vertical contracting when production precedes sales in a make to stock vertical contracting setting with private contracts when retailers do not observe each other s stocks before choosing their prices an opportunism problem always exist in contract equilibria but public market wide resale price maintenance rpm can restore monopoly power however other widely used tools which do not fall under antitrust scrutiny and require only private bilateral contracts such as buyback contracts also allow the producer to fully exercise his monopoly power we conclude that a more lenient policy toward rpm is unlikely to affect the producer s ability to control opportunism

an optimally viable version of stakeholder theory this article is the final one in a series of four papers investigating the stakeholder approach to running businesses it argues that the optimally viable version of that approach is one in which employees have a co equal status as stakeholders with shareholders the maximum allowed for under stakeholder theory while other groupings only have a minimal status as stakeholders and are generally restricted to just customers suppliers and lenders this version is argued for on the grounds that it both overcomes the implementation problems attendant upon having to serve the interests of a range of groupings and is justified in terms of stakeholder membership being confined to those groupings with a claim on the services of a business in virtue of directly contributing to its economic functioning the ranking of non shareholder stakeholders in the recommended version and in particular the maximal ranking granted to employees is argued to reflect the scale of the various contributions as measured by the degree to which making it exposes those stakeholders to both financial risk and a non financial work related risk peculiar to employees it is concluded that although this is the best available version of the stakeholder approach it may not be the best of all possible ways of running a business

models of resource markets and the explanation of resource price behaviour abstract much of the recent theoretical work in resource economics has been aimed at relaxing the stringent simplifying assumptions of the basic hotelling model in an attempt to better explain observed resource price behaviour this paper surveys the characteristics of exhaustible resource markets that are likely to be important for the development of successful positive models in particular we discuss exploration and its relationship to production and market price the effects of various forms of uncertainty on price behaviour and for some resources the treatment of durability finally we address the question of whether producer behaviour can properly be viewed as that of dynamic optimization this paper should be seen as an attempt to stimulate discussion over research directions and priorities in resource economics

justice and corporate governance new insights from rawlsian social contract and sen s capabilities approach by considering what we identify as a problem inherent in the nature of the firm the risk of abuse of authority we propound the conception of a social contract theory of the firm which is truly rawlsian in its inspiration hence we link the social contract theory of the firm justice at firm s level with the general theory of justice justice at society s level through this path we enter the debate about whether firms can be part of rawlsian theory of justice showing that corporate governance principles enter the basic structure finally we concur with sen s aim to broaden the realm of social justice beyond what he calls the transcendental institutional perfectionism of rawls theory we maintain the contractarian approach to justice but introduce sen s capability concept as an element of the constitutional and post constitutional contract model of institutions with special reference to corporate governance accordingly rights over primary goods and capabilities are constitutionally granted by the basic institutions of society but many capabilities have to be turned into the functionings of many stakeholders through the operation of firms understood as post constitutional institutional domains the constitutional contract on the distribution of primary goods and capabilities should then shape the principles of corporate governance so that at post constitutional level anyone may achieve her his functionings in the corporate domain by exercising such capabilities in the absence of such a condition post constitutional contracts would distort the process that descends from constitutional rights and capabilities toward social outcomes

optimal returns policy for supply chain with e marketplace abstract we study in this paper a supply chain which is integrated by a returns policy in the past owing to a lack of sales channels the returned products would worth very little now with the advance of the e commerce the returned products can be sold with a higher price on the e marketplace in light of this we first investigate the optimal returns policy under the existence of the e marketplace through a mean variance analysis we further study the risk issue associated with the optimal policy extensive simulations are then carried out and the managerial insights are discussed

optimal reverse channel structure for consumer product returns consumers often return a product to a retailer because they learn after purchase that the product does not match as well with preferences as had been expected this is a costly issue for retailers and manufacturers in fact it is estimated that the u s electronics industry alone spent 13 8 billion dollars in 2007 to restock returned products lawton c 2008 the war on returns wall street journal may 8 d1 the bulk of these returns were nondefective items that simply were not what the consumer wanted to eliminate returns and to recoup the cost of handling returns many retailers are adopting the practice of charging restocking fees to consumers as a penalty for making returns this paper employs an analytical model of a bilateral monopoly to examine the impact of reverse channel structure on the equilibrium return policy and profit more specifically we examine how the return penalty is affected by whether returns are salvaged by the manufacturer or by the retailer interestingly we find that the return penalty may be more severe when returns are salvaged by a channel member who derives greater value from a returned unit also the manufacturer may earn greater profit by accepting returns even if the retailer has a more efficient outlet for salvaging units

manufacturer s return policies and retail competition manufacturers returns policies are a common feature in the distribution of many products the obvious rationale for returns policies is insurance practitioners not surprisingly have a different perspective and view returns as a cost of doing business in this paper we study the strategic effect of returns policies on retail competition and highlight its profitability implications for a manufacturer the setting for our research is the distribution of products with uncertain demand limited shelf lives and retail competition our objective is to provide a better understanding of when manufacturers should adopt returns policies the insights are obtained with a model based on the economics of strategy and decision making under uncertainty we show that when retailing is competitive and there is no uncertainty in demand a returns policy subtly induces retailers to compete more intensely the provision of a returns policy reduces retail prices without affecting wholesale prices thereby reducing retailer margins and improving manufacturer profitability the intuition is that with a returns policy cournot like levels of retail stocks cannot be sustained each retailer will order stocks so that it will not be constrained by stocks and so intensifying retail competition when however demand is uncertain and there is a single retailer a returns policy encourages the retailer to over stock and so decreases upstream manufacturer profits while the provision of a returns policy leads to lower retail margins the optimality of returns policy depends on the overall uncertainty and marginal cost a returns policy reduces the dispersion in retail prices between the high and low states of demand and the range of retail prices in the returns case is contained within the range of retail prices for the no returns case in the general setting when there are competing retailers and demand is uncertain there is a trade off for the manufacturer between the benefits more intense retail competition and the costs excessive stocking of a returns policy we find that a manufacturer should accept returns when the marginal production cost is sufficiently low and demand uncertainty is not too great to validate the results of our theory we conduct an empirical test with data from a major u s retailer the tests confirm our prediction that a returns policy intensifies retail competition and reduces retailer margins our theory and empirical test should interest practitioners and researchers in distribution especially those concerned with managing retail competition

equilibrium returns policies in the presence of supplier competition the pioneering pasternack returns policy model analyzed channel coordination with a single supplier catering to a retailer facing stochastic demand for a perishable product with a fixed price and the model showed that giving partial returns of unsold stock to the retailer is the optimal policy for the entire supply chain the result thus begs the question as to why manufacturers of perishable commodities widely accept full returns of unsold stock as the norm we model the environment as one where two capacity constrained manufacturers compete for shelf space with the same retailer and we show that a complete credit returns policy is in fact the only possible equilibrium of the game our results obviate the need for knowing the exact functional form of the demand distribution in order to compute the returns credit as pasternack s results would require from a retailer s standpoint we establish a simple procurement strategy and show that it is optimal the same game with price only contracting has a pure strategy equilibrium when the supplier capacities are below a threshold value and a mixed strategy equilibrium when the supplier capacities cross this threshold but are still so limited that no single supplier can with certainty supply all the quantity demanded

coordinating supply chains with competition capacity allocation in semiconductor manufacturing abstract this paper motivated by the experiences of a major us based semiconductor manufacturer presents an integrated model of incentive problems arising in forecasting and capacity allocation our model involves multiple product managers and multiple manufacturing managers who forecast the means of their respective demand and capacity distributions a central coordinator is responsible for allocating capacities to product lines when these distributions are unknown to the central coordinator and capacity is scarce the managers misrepresent their forecasts a product manager inflates his forecast to gain a greater allocation of the capacity a manufacturing manager deflates his forecast to cover for the uncertainties in production we propose a game theoretic model and design a mechanism a bonus scheme for all managers and an allocation rule to allocate realized capacity to the product managers that elicits truthful reporting by all managers the results herein show that the structure of the truth eliciting bonus schemes is rather simple with easily calculable parameters we also show that large classes of allocation rules including the current allocation practice of the firm are manipulable a bonus is often required for elicitation of truthful information we synthesize the implications of our results for the practitioners

mean variance analysis of a single supplier and retailer supply chain under a returns policy abstract in the literature most of the supply chain coordinating policies target at improving the supply chain s efficiency in terms of expected cost reduction or expected profit improvement however optimizing the expected performance alone cannot guarantee that the realized performance measure will fall within a small neighborhood of its expected value when the corresponding variance is high moreover it ignores the risk aversion of supply chain members which may affect the achievability of channel coordination as a result we carry out in this paper a mean variance mv analysis of supply chains under a returns policy we first propose an mv formulation for a single supplier single retailer supply chain with a newsvendor type of product the objective of each supply chain decision maker is to maximize the expected profit such that the standard deviation of profit is under the decision maker s control we study both the cases with centralized and decentralized supply chains we illustrate how a returns policy can be applied for managing the supply chains to address the issues such as channel coordination and risk control extensive numerical studies are conducted and managerial findings are proposed

vertical price controls with uncertain demand a manufacturer distributes output before knowing demand and thus risks making more than its rivalrous independent retailers can sell at the monopoly price if demand is low retailers may therefore resell more than the joint profit maximizing output anticipating this they will not pay as much for the merchandise ex ante as they would if the manufacturer could commit to preventing rivalry the manufacturer has many options including vertical integration chain outlets restricted output buy backs just in time deliveries and minimum resale prices the article discusses each option s advantages and disadvantages and concludes that all roads lead to resale price maintenance the article closes with an alternative to the dealercartel hypothesis for minimum resale prices

comparative normative optimal behavior in two echelon multiple retailer distribution systems for a single period product abstract several recent papers extended the classical single echelon newsboy model for style goods to two echelons that is one studies the interactive decisions between the manufacturer and the retailer now recognized as two separate entities however these papers assumed that there is only one retailer this paper studies optimal decisions and outcomes pertaining to a system with one manufactory and multiple retail outlets compared are the optima from different market ownership configurations ranging from a fully integrated system a single owner owns the manufactory and all retail outlets to a situation in which all entities are separately owned and the manufacturer charges different retailers different prices differential pricing some of our findings appear counter intuitive e g we show that from the societal point of view enforcing uniform pricing is no more desirable that permitting differential pricing

on sequential commitment in the price dependent newsvendor model abstract we investigate the effect of sequential commitment in the decentralized newsvendor model with price dependent demand sequential commitment allows the self profit maximizing parties to commit to contract parameters e g wholesale price retail price buyback price and order quantity sequentially and alternately and we investigate its effect on the equilibrium profits of the channel and its members sequential commitment introduces more flexibility to contracting in the supply chain and our analysis can provide some insight to channel members who follow a bargaining process to determine the values of contract parameters we show that the introduction of sequential commitment to the price dependent pd newsvendor model with buybacks can significantly improve the manufacturer s and the channel expected profits but it can also decrease the retailer s expected profit finally we demonstrate that with sequential commitment under some conditions the choice of the first mover is endogenized and we identify the unique sequence of commitments by channel members that would arise in equilibrium

the impact of oil company investment on the world coal industry overcapacity and price destabilization 1973 1992 this paper investigates the impact of oil company investments on the world coal industry since the first oil price shock of 1973 it details the scope of these investments both in the usa and elsewhere and demonstrates how they have served to destabilize and depress international coal prices in particular it establishes a novel and robust link between oil company investment in us coal which is sold on the domestic market and the behaviour of us coal export prices

supplier manufacturer coordination in capacitated two stage supply chains abstract manufacture to order is an increasingly popular strategy in commodity electronics and other similar markets where many different product configurations can be produced from common components to succeed in this environment manufacturers need to keep both cost and order fulfillment time low in this article we compare three different mechanisms that a manufacturer whose revenues depend on order delays may use to affect its component supplier s inventory decisions these mechanisms are specifying components inventory level offering a share of the earned revenues to the supplier called simple revenue sharing and offering a two part revenue sharing scheme we show that whereas the first two approaches do not lead to supply chain coordination the two part scheme does we demonstrate with numerical experiments that up to a point the component supplier benefits from having a high utilization of its production facility whereas the manufacturer benefits from having excess production capacity

fossil fuels stock externalities and backstop technology the hotelling exhaustible resource model is extended to include stock pollution and nonpolluting backstop technology it is shown that an optimal energy consumption strategy typically includes a regime in which the two energy sources are consumed simultaneously along this regime fossil fuel consumption decreases and backstop consumption increases together fossil fuel and backstop consumption may form eleven optimal regime combinations a decrease in the backstop price decreases the initial level of optimal emission tax

retail price markup commitment in decentralized supply chains abstract we investigate the operational decisions and resulting profits for a supply chain facing price dependent demand under a policy where there is an ex ante commitment made on the retail price markup we obtain closed form solutions for this policy under the assumption of a multiplicative demand function and we analytically compare its performance with that of a traditional price only policy we compare these results to results obtained when demand follows a linear additive form these formulations are shown to be qualitatively different as the manufacturer s wholesale pricing decision is independent of the retail price markup commitment in the multiplicative case but not when demand is linear additive we demonstrate that the ex ante commitment can lead to pareto improving solutions under linear additive demand but not under the multiplicative demand function we also consider the effect of pricing power in the supply chain by varying who determines the retail price markup

product warranties and double moral hazard this article explores a model of warranties in which moral hazard problems play a key role the goal is to understand the important characteristics of warranties including their provision of incomplete insurance and the relationship between product quality and coverage we analyze a model in which buyers and sellers take actions that affect a product s performance since these actions are not cooperatively determined an incentives problem arises we characterize the optimal warranty contract and undertake comparative statics to determine the predicted correlation of warranty coverage and product quality

the implications of pooled returns policies abstract when selling products with highly uncertain demands and short life cycles it is common for a manufacturer to offer some form of returns policy to entice the distributors to increase their order quantities in this paper we consider a multi item returns policy called pooled or joint returns policy under which the distributor can return any combination of the products up to r percent of the total purchases across all products we analyze the distributor s optimal profit and order quantity under the pooled returns policy and compare these operating characteristics to the case when a single item non pooled returns policy is instituted under the non pooled returns policy the distributor can only return on individual items using item specific return limits we show an intuitive result that the distributor will always achieve a higher profit under the pooled policy however the manufacturer could actually obtain a lower profit under the pooled policy due to a counter intuitive result the distributor may order less under the pooled policy even though the pooled policy offers more flexibility this counter intuitive result motivates us to determine the conditions under which the distributor would order less under the pooled policy finally we develop a heuristic for determining the distributor s optimal order quantities associated with the n product case under the pooled policy

buyback contracts with price dependent demands effects of demand uncertainty chapter 2 examines buyback contracts in a supplier retailer supply chain where the retailer faces a price dependent downward sloping demand curve subject to uncertainty compared with classical research a fundamental difference of this research lies in its analytical examination of the effects of demand uncertainty on the applicability of buyback contracts to this end the research seeks to characterize the buyback contract model in terms of only demand uncertainty level with such a new research perspective some new and interesting findings are obtained for such issues as how demand uncertainty level affects the applicability of buyback practice and how to apply this practice to improve supply chain members own interests or the supply chain system s efficiency the research in this chapter demonstrates that the uncertainty level inherent in market demand can be a critical factor influencing the applicability of supply chain contracts as well as the contract s administrative cost cachon 2003 and the uncertainty type marvel and peck 1995

an economic theory of vertical restraints vertical restraints imposed by manufacturers on the prices locations and sales of retail firms represent a puzzling departure from the simple price mediated exchange of conventional markets in this article we analyze the theoretical basis for these restraints in a setting where retailers inform consumers and are imperfectly competitive and where a manufacturer has some monopoly power we identify three potential externalities affecting retailers decisions these externalities lead to the failure of simple uniform price contracts to coordinate the incentives of retailers with the objective of maximizing combined manufacturer and retailer profits we identify the packages of vertical restraints that are minimally sufficient under various conditions to neutralize the externalities and to achieve the joint profit maximum

contracting over multiple parameters capacity allocation in semiconductor manufacturing abstract this paper is a generalization of mallik and harker mallik s harker p t 2004 coordinating supply chains with competition capacity allocation in semiconductor manufacturing european journal of operational research 159 330 347 that presented an integrated model of incentive problems arising in forecasting and capacity allocation in that model multiple product managers and multiple manufacturing managers forecast the means of their respective demand and capacity distributions and a central coordinator allocates capacities based on these forecasts a mechanism that elicits truthful information from the managers was the main contribution of that paper the objective of this paper is to generalize our previous results to multiple statistics reporting this work assumes that the central coordinator can ask the managers to report multiple statistics mean and variance for example about their respective distributions we propose a game theoretic model and design a mechanism a bonus scheme and an allocation rule that elicits truthful reporting of all statistics by all managers it turns out that the structure of the optimal bonus schemes are rather simple with easily calculable parameters we also show that a large class of allocation rules are manipulable a bonus is often required for elicitation of truthful information we compare our results of multiple statistics reporting with those from mallik and harker 2004 we also characterize under what conditions the reporting of the extra information is of limited use

the impacts of the full returns policy on a supply chain with information asymmetry abstract in contrast to the existing return policies literature assuming that information is symmetrical between the manufacturer and the retailer we study the full returns policy s impact on supply chains with information asymmetry we first study the case that the base level of the demand follows a discrete distribution with two states we find that the retailer benefits from the full returns policy in all circumstances while the manufacturer and the supply chain are better off under some conditions we then consider the situation in which the base level of the demand is a type of ar 1 process

note the role of returns policies in pricing and inventory decisions for catalogue goods manufacturers often use returns policies to encourage retailers to stock and price items more aggressively we focus on the effect that such policies have on both a retailer s and a manufacturer s profits when the retailer must commit prior to the selling season to both a stocking quantity and a price at which to sell an item such a commitment is often necessary for retailers who sell primarily through catalogues

using return policies to elicit retailer information we show that a manufacturer may prefer to offer a return policy when dealing with a retailer who holds advance knowledge about market conditions roughly stated the manufacturer offers a liberal return allowance in lieu of a lower price to satisfy a retailer facing unfavorable market conditions a retailer facing favorable conditions finds this tradeoff unattractive because he is likely to sell the merchandise anyway and thus not make as much use of the generous return terms as a consequence a retailer is less inclined to misstate market conditions by serving as an additional control instrument a returns policy reduces the manufacturer s need to ration cut production

analysis of supply chains with quantity based fixed incentives abstract this paper examines the use of quantity based fixed incentives to coordinate inventory decisions in a decentralized supply chain we consider a two stage supply chain of autonomous supplier and distributor and prove that the optimal ordering policy for the newsvendor distributor under fixed incentives is an s s type policy we further show that external and internal quantity based incentives can restore channel coordination in single period and channel members can benefit through arbitrary splitting of the resulting additional chain profit the single period results are extended to multiple periods and the impact of fixed incentives on the distributor s optimal stocking policy and channel efficiency are examined under three different multi period supplier strategies numerical examples are used to compare the multi period strategies and to provide additional managerial insights the results show that contrary to common belief incentive plans developed and maintained based only on current inventory data perform poorly in long term and that such incentive plans must be periodically updated to enhance their efficiency furthermore we show that high level of incentives designed to push too much inventory downstream of the supply chain can actually reduce the chain s efficiency

the quantity flexibility contract and supplier customer incentives consider a supply chain consisting of two independent agents a supplier e g a manufacturer and its customer e g a retailer the latter in turn serving an uncertain market demand to reconcile manufacturing procurement time lags with a need for timely response to the market such supply chains often must commit resources to production quantities based on forecasted rather than realized demand the customer typically provides a planning forecast of its intended purchase which does not entail commitment benefiting from overproduction while not bearing the immediate costs the customer has incentive to initially overforecast before eventually purchasing a lesser quantity the supplier must in turn anticipate such behavior in its production quantity decision this individually rational behavior results in an inefficient supply chain this paper models the incentives of the two parties identifying causes of inefficiency and suggesting remedies particular attention is given to the quantity flexibility qf contract which couples the customer s commitment to purchase no less than a certain percentage below the forecast with the supplier s guarantee to deliver up to a certain percentage above under certain conditions this method can allocate the costs of market demand uncertainty so as to lead the individually motivated supplier and customer to the systemwide optimal outcome we characterize the implications of qf contracts for the behavior and performance of both parties and the supply chain as a whole

stakeholder theory corporate governance and public management what can the history of state run enterprises teach us in the post enron era this paper raises a challenge for those who assume that corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance naturally go hand in hand the recent spate of corporate scandals in the united states and elsewhere has dramatized once again the severity of the agency problems that may arise between managers and shareholders these scandals remind us that even if we adopt an extremely narrow concept of managerial responsibility such that we recognize no social responsibility beyond the obligation to maximize shareholder value there may still be very serious difficulties associated with the effective institutionalization of this obligation it also suggests that if we broaden managerial responsibility in order to include extensive responsibilities to various other stakeholder groups we may seriously exacerbate these agency problems making it even more difficult to impose effective discipline upon managers hence our central question is a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility institutionally feasible in searching for an answer we revisit the history of public management and in particular the experience of social democratic governments during the 1960s and 1970s and their attempts to impose social responsibility upon the managers of nationalized industries the results of this inquiry are less than encouraging for proponents of corporate social responsibility in fact the history of public sector management presents a number of stark warnings which we would do well to heed if we wish to reconcile robust social responsibility with effective corporate governance

a test of the hotelling valuation principle time series tests of the hotelling r percent rule for natural resource prices have not been strongly supportive but the tests and the data are subject to serious difficulties we propose here an alternative testing strategy based on another but less widely known implication of the hotelling model we test this implication which we call the hotelling valuation principle by regressing the market values of the reserves of a sample of u s domestic oiland gas producing companies on their estimated hotelling values we find that the estimated hotelling values account for a significant portion of the observed variations in market values and that the hotelling measures are better indicators of the market values of petroleum properties than two widely cited publicly available alternative appraisals

hartwick s rule in open economies to sustain constant consumption the hartwick rule prescribes reinvesting all resource rents in reproducible capital this paper shows that the rule does not apply to open economies since the underlying stationary technology assumption is violated when gains from trade are taken into account a correct analog to the hartwick rule for open economies is developed and applied to a model of capital accumulation and resource depletion la regle de hartwick dans les e conomies ouvertes pour maintenir la consommation constante la regle de hartwick prescrit qu il faut reinvestir toutes les rentes des ressources dans du capital reproductible ce me moire montre que la regle ne s applique pas dans le cas d economies ouvertes parce que le postulat d une technologie stationnaire n9est pas satisfait quand on tient compte des gains engendres par le commerce international l auteur developpe une version correcte pour les economies ouvertes dans 1 esprit de la regle de hartwick et l applique a un modele d accumulation de capital et d epuisement des ressources

efficiency and ethically responsible management one common justification for the pursuit of profit by business firms within a market economy is that profit is not an end in itself but a means to more efficiently produce and allocate resources profit in short is a mechanism that serves the market s purpose of producing pareto superior outcomes for society this discussion examines whether such a justification if correct requires business managers to remain attentive to how their firm s operation impacts the market s purpose in particular it is argued that the value of efficiency despite views to the contrary cannot be fully separated from the planning and intentions of business managers as long as those managers direct their firms in an ethically responsible fashion this position is inspired by and serves as a supportive clarification of joseph heath s so called market failures approach to business ethics

an appropriate mechanism of fuels pricing for sustainable development abstract in this work the authors after a brief outlook concerning the markets of main energy commodities propose an alternative mechanism for fuel pricing consisted with a sustainable development technological change and technological pluralism costs and environmental issues are the benchmarks of the discussion developed the two mechanisms here proposed for fuel pricing try to encompass all these aspects stressing the scarcity concern not only under a merely based resource point of view but emphasizing also the technological variable as the first one to take into consideration in fact technology the mean by which resources are transformed into usable services energy forms is strictly linked to its limits above all productivity efficiency and environmental effects and cannot be any more considered only following the classical principles of the lowest cost of utilization without evaluating the other aspects related to the goals of sustainable development widely shared at the international level furthermore taking into consideration that some estimates of petroleum life expectancy calculate about 40 50 yr of consumption at current rates of demand a new mechanism to consider the right value of this resource and consequently all energy commodities is necessary without any pretension of exhaustion of the topic this work seems to be in line with this perspective trying to apply all these principles to price fuels

beware of the watchdog rethinking the normative justification of gatekeeper liability one of the prevailing explanations of the corporate scandals of the enron era and the recent financial crisis is the failure of professional gatekeepers such as auditors corporate lawyers and securities analysts to detect and disrupt corporate misconduct the alleged solution to this failure typically proposed and justified on consequentialist grounds is to impose legal liability on professionals the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the normative foundations of gatekeeper liability in the course of this paper i shall defend the claim that gatekeeper liability may be morally objectionable not only on grounds of fairness but also on consequentialist grounds the expected contribution of this paper is threefold first it systematizes the framing and moral justification of gatekeeping duties second it calls into question the normative underpinnings for targeting intermediaries instead of primary wrongdoers third it anticipates some negative and often overlooked results of gatekeeping strategies in the accounting profession specifically in the realm of clientele selection the expectation gap and auditor compensation

the economics of governance the economics of governance is an effort to implement the study of good order and workable arrangements where good order includes both spontaneous order in the market which is a venerated tradition in economics adam smith 1776 friedrich hayek 1945 kenneth a arrow and gerard debreu 1954 and intentional order of a conscious deliberate purposeful kind chester irving barnard 1938 p 9 also i interpret workable arrangements to mean feasible modes of organization all of which are flawed in comparison with a hypothetical ideal avinash dixit 1996 pp 4 9 the object is to work out the efficiency logic for managing transactions by alternative modes of governance principally spot markets various long term contracts hybrids and hierarchies interest among social scientists economists included in the study and practice of good order and workable arrangements has been steadily growing in contrast with the orthodox lens of choice prices and output supply and demand the economics of governance is a lens of contract construction broadly in the spirit of james buchanan s 2001 p 29 observation that mutuality of advantage from voluntary exchange is the most fundamental of all understandings in economics the economics of governance as herein described is principally an exercise in bilateral private ordering by which i mean that the immediate parties to an exchange are actively involved in the provision of good order and workable arrangements to be sure the need for private ordering varies with the rules of the game as provided by the state distinctions between lawlessness where the state provides limited or unreliable protection for property and contract dixit 2004 and lawfulness where the state undertakes to protect property and enforce contracts in a principled way are pertinent the first of these applies mainly to primitive and transition economies the second is commonly associated with western democracies recourse to private ordering under conditions of lawlessness is altogether understandable given the absence of state support the walter a haas school of business university of california berkeley ca 94720 1900 the paper has benefited from workshop presentations at the university of california berkeley the university of valencia insead fountainebleau and the 2004 annual conference of the international society for new institutional economics an abbreviated version was also given as the horst claus recktenwald lecture at nuremburg on 4 november 2004 comments and suggestions from fred balderston ernesto dalbo avinash dixit robert gibbons witold henisz ian larkin steven tadelis and dean williamson are especially acknowledged 1 lon fuller s 1954 p 477 definition of eunomics as the science theory or study of good order and workable arrangements is very much in the spirit of what i refer to as governance 2 one of the immediate ramifications of insistently comparing feasible alternatives all of which are flawed is that the purported inefficiencies that are ascribed to failures to achieve first best optimality are not dispositive but invite the query as compared with what i return to this issue in section iv 3 excluding corporate governance the numbers of articles that used the word governance during the period 1998 2000 as compared with the period 1977 1979 in selected economics business management sociology organization and political science journals were 60 vs 1 76 vs 4 79 vs 18 and 60 vs 25 where the journals surveyed were the american economic review journal of political economy quarterly journal of economics rand journal of economics and journal of economic perspectives in economics strategic management journal management science academy of management journal and academy of management review in business management administrative science quarterly organization science american journal of sociology american sociological review and annual review of sociology in sociology organization and american political science review political science quarterly journal of politics and political research quarterly in political science combining these four categories articles using the word governance increased from 48 to 275 over this 20 year interval dixit 2004 pp 149 50 reports that the number of web pages that turn up under the search for governance is huge

evaluating stakeholder theory this paper is the third in a series of four that is directed at understanding and assessing stakeholder theory for the purposes of business ethics it addresses the suitability and viability of the theory rejecting objections of a moral and efficiency sort based respectively on claims about property rights and the economic superiority of the alternative stockholder approach but accepting that implementation problems require limiting both the number of groupings admitted to stakeholder status and the degree of responsibility towards them the conclusion looks forward to the construction of a suitably limited version of the stakeholder approach in a fourth paper drawing upon this one and the previous two