foreign wage premium gender and education insights from vietnam household surveys this paper investigates the differential impacts of foreign ownership on wages for different types of workers in terms of educational background and gender in vietnam using the vietnam household living standards surveys of 2002 and 2004 whereas most previous studies have compared wage levels between foreign and domestic sectors using firm level data thus excluding the informal sector one advantage of using the living standards surveys in this paper is that the data allow wage comparison analyses to extend to the informal wage sector a series of mincerian earnings equations and worker specific fixed effects models are estimated several findings emerge first foreign firms pay higher wages relative to their domestic counterparts after controlling for workers personal characteristics second the higher the individual workers levels of education the larger on average are the wage premiums for those who work for foreign firms third longer hours of work in foreign firm jobs relative to working in the informal wage sector are an important component of the wage premium finally unskilled women experience a larger foreign wage premium than unskilled men reflecting the low earning opportunities for women and a higher gender gap in the informal wage sector

efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading we consider bargaining problems between one buyer and one seller for a single object the seller s valuation and the buyer s valuation for the object are assumed to be independent random variables and each individual s valuation is unknown to the other we characterize the set of allocation mechanisms that are bayesian incentive compatible and individually rational and show the general impossibility of ex post efficient mechanisms without outside subsidies for a wide class of problems we show how to compute mechanisms that maximize expected total gains from trade and mechanisms that can maximize a broker s expected profit journal of economic literature classification number 026

pricing and lot sizing polices for perishable goods when the demand depends on selling price displayed stocks and expiration date abstract price is a major factor on the demand based on marketing and economic theory in addition the demand for perishable products also depends on its freshness moreover it is a well known fact that increasing stock display e g fresh fruits vegetables baked goods may encourage consumers to purchase more this paper first proposes an inventory model that stipulates the demand explicitly in a multivariate function of price freshness and displayed stocks it may be profitable to have a closeout sale at a markdown price and always keep on hand displayed stocks fresh and plentiful if the demand is freshness and stock dependent hence the traditional assumption of zero ending inventories is relaxed to a non zero ending inventory as a result the objective is to determine three decision variables i e unit price cycle time and ending inventory level in order to maximize the total profit then it is demonstrated that the total profit is strictly pseudo concave in those three decision variables which reduces the search for solutions to a unique local maximum finally numerical examples to illustrate the theoretical results and to highlight managerial insights are presented

scheduling the production of several items with random demands in a single facility consider the problem of scheduling the production of several items in a single facility that can produce only one item at a time this problem occurs since it is often economic to produce several items in a single facility the objective is to reduce the long run average holding backorder and setup costs we assume that demands are random with constant expected rates we allow backorders and charge holding and backlogging costs at linear time weighted rates items are produced at continuous constant rates setup times and setup costs are item dependent constants these parameters however are independent of the order of setups a real time scheduling tool is developed in three steps first with demands replaced by their expectations we compute an optimal or near optimal target cyclic schedule next we study the problem of scheduling the facility after a single disruption perturbs the inventories the goal is to recover the target cyclic schedule at minimal excess over the average cost of the cyclic schedule we formulate this as a control problem and obtain a linear recovery policy that is optimal for a large configuration of disruptions finally we select safety stocks to minimize the long run average cost of following the target schedule with the recovery policy we show that optimal safety stocks are unique and have the property that in the long run the proportion of time that an item is in stock is the ratio of backorder to holding plus backorder cost we present an example that integrates the cyclic schedule the control policy and the safety stocks

determination of safety stocks for cyclic schedules with stochastic demands abstract this paper considers the problem of scheduling the production of multiple items each with random demand on a single facility we show how the variance in demand during lead time can be estimated and present a model for determination of safety stocks and order up to levels for a fixed cyclic sequence both with and without idle time for systems with idle time we present a control model to make the decision to produce next item in sequence or idle the facility the performance of the model is tested in a simulation study

collusion under asymmetric information when applied to groups the revelation principle postulates a bayesian nash behavior between agents their binding agreements are unenforceable or the principal can prevent them at no cost we analyze instead a mechanism design problem in which the agents can communicate between themselves and collude under asymmetric information we characterize the set of implementable collusion proof contracts both when the principal offers anonymous and nonanonymous contracts after having isolated the nexi and the stakes of collusion we proceed to a normative analysis perform some comparative statics discuss our concept of collusion proofness and provide some insights about transaction costs in side contracting

an eoq model for perishable products with fixed shelf life under stochastic demand conditions abstract the paper presents a mathematical stochastic model for perishable open dating foods including shortage and outdating costs the demand fluctuations have been taken into account modeling them through a normal distribution and their impact on the storage time has been studied considering the stochastic nature of such a parameter in turn the quantification of perished products has been also addressed determining the probability for a product of remaining in stock beyond the end of its shelf life on the basis of such premises the optimal set of parameters that minimize the total unit cost has been determined a numerical application and a sensitivity analysis show the practical applicability of the proposed model in the context of warehouse management underlining managerial insights

information processing and jury decisionmaking abstract we develop a model to explore the information processing function that jury deliberation and its analogues perform the central question we ask is how much better could a jury possibly perform if it optimally used the collective information available to it than if it decides cases by a simple majority vote before any deliberation or information sharing occurs it is shown how the answer depends on a number of considerations including the correlation among jurors observations the jurors assessments of the relative importance of type i and type ii errors compared with society s assessment of those errors and differences in jurors abilities

cyclical schedules vs dynamic sequencing replenishment dynamics and inventory efficiency abstract this paper addresses the efficiency of fixed sequence cyclical scheduling systems relative to that of dynamically sequenced order point methods of production control the criterion for comparison is the aggregate inventory required to achieve a target fill rate taking into account the alternative replenishment dynamics arising under the respective systems a simulation analysis demonstrates that cyclical scheduling may have smaller aggregate inventory requirement when the production process is highly utilized and when this utilization is due to demand for a small number of items having large setup times

economic lot scheduling heuristic for random demands abstract an extension to the economic lot scheduling problem is given for a single machine multi product line under random demands the goal is to find the length of production cycles that minimizes the sum of setup and inventory holding costs per unit of time and satisfies the demand for each product at the required service level first the single product finite replenishment inventory model is extended to the case of random demand then a heuristic procedure uses this extension to determine the production cycles for the multi product case computational results and comparisons with other models are reviewed

modelling labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialising economy this paper investigates labour market responses to trade liberalisation in an industrialising country short and long run responses of employment and wages are examined using a specific factor trade model which underpins the empirical work employment and wage equations are estimated using dynamic panel techniques for importable and exportable sectors in mauritius and for a period covering both the pre and post liberalisation regimes the empirical testing finds some support for the theoretical predictions of differential responses between sectors increases in female participation however appear to have dampened the adjustment burdens of liberalisation on importables there is relatively little evidence available about the effects of trade induced shifts in the composition of demand on inter industry employment and wage levels in developing countries analyses of the factor content of imports and exports suggest that a shift from import substitution is to export promotion ep policies will typically in the case of a developing country expand the more labour intensive industries increase labour demand overall and drive up real wages in the long run but trade liberalisation and increased foreign competition may not only affect the composition of the tradeables goods sector i e the distribution between importables and exportables they may also affect both the efficiency with which all firms use factors including labour and the distribution of output within a sector between more and less efficient firms thus the net long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment will depend upon the balance of structural and efficiency effects which cannot be identified from analyses of the composition of trade alone further we must also recognise that the short and long run effects of trade liberalisation on employment and wages may diverge the divergence depending on the degree of factor mobility and the competitiveness of labour markets the aim of this paper is to model labour market adjustment to trade liberalisation in an industrialisingz country it will do so using panel data evidence for mauritius an economy that has undergone significant trade liberalisation and transformation during the 1980s indeed mauritius is viewed simultaneously as a successful liberaliser and an economy with extensive government intervention in the labour market it provides a valuable test base

a model of expertise we study a model in which perfectly informed experts offer advice to a decision maker whose actions affect the welfare of all experts are biased and thus may wish to pull the decision maker in different directions and to different degrees when the decision maker consults only a single expert the expert withholds substantial information from the decision maker we ask whether this situation is improved by having the decision maker sequentially consult two experts we first show that there is no perfect bayesian equilibrium in which full revelation occurs when both experts are biased in the same direction it is never beneficial to consult both in contrast when experts are biased in opposite directions it is always beneficial to consult both indeed in this case full revelation may be induced in an extended debate by introducing the possibility of rebuttal

cheap talk with two senders and complementary information this paper studies a cheap talk model with two senders having partial and non overlapping private information communicating with an uninformed receiver the two senders private information is complementary in the sense that the marginal impact of one sender s private information on the receiver s ideal action depends on the other sender s private information when the two senders communicate simultaneously their information transmission exhibits strategic complementarity more information transmitted by one sender leads to more information transmitted by the other sender when the two senders have like biases it is always optimal for the receiver to delegate the decision rights to the sender with a smaller bias when two senders have opposing biases simultaneous communication is more likely to dominate delegation

review of inventory systems with deterioration since 2001 abstract this paper presents an up to date review of the advances made in the field of inventory control of perishable items deteriorating inventory the last extensive review on this topic dates back to 2001 goyal s k and giri b c recent trends in modeling of deteriorating inventory european journal of operational research 134 1 16 since then over two hundred articles on this subject have been published in the major journals on inventory control indicating the need for a new review we use the classification of goyal and giri based on shelf life characteristics and demand characteristics contributions are highlighted by discussing main system characteristics including price discounts backordering or lost sales single or multiple items one or two warehouses single or multi echelon average cost or discounted cash flow and payment delay

quasi fixed cyclic production schemes for multiple products with stochastic demand abstract in this paper we present an approach to generate cyclic production schemes for multiple products with stochastic demand to be produced on a single production unit this scheme specifies a fixed and periodic production sequence called a cycle where each product may occur more than once in the sequence in order to stabilize the cycle length alternative control strategies are introduced these strategies keep the cycle length close to a target length by means of adding idle time to the cycle cutting production short or overproduction on basis of the selected control strategy as well as a base stock policy target inventory levels are determined for each production run in the cycle demand can be backlogged but a certain service level is required setup times are sequence dependent and the storage is capacitated employing the developed strategies we investigate the tradeoff between stability of cycle length and total cost induced by the production schedule in a computational study based on both real world data and random test instances

china coming to grips with the new global player this paper analyses china s economic performance in the last 25 years and discusses its prospect for growth in the future exports and investment have been the two driving forces for the high annual gdp growth rates fdi plays an important role however structural issues such as the loss making state owned firms and the fragile banking industry have to be solved monetary policy is complicated by the accumulation of reserves which however provide an insurance for the fragile banking system property rights a crucial element in transforming a communist society are far from being clearly developed major policy issues in the future include the correction of the distorted growth process and of the institutional deficits especially with respect to the rule of law and the lack of democracy

optimal safety stock levels of subassemblies and manufacturing components abstract in order to control the time to market and manufacturing costs companies produce and purchase many parts and components before receiving customer orders consequently demand forecasting is a critical decision process using modular product design and super bills of materials are two effective strategies for developing a reliable demand forecasting process they reduce the probability of stockouts in diversified production contexts furthermore managing and controlling safety stocks for pre assembled modules provide an effective solution to the problem of minimizing the effects of forecast errors this paper develops evaluates and applies innovative cost based analytical models so that the optimal safety stock of modular subassemblies and components in assembly to order and manufacturing to order systems respectively can be rapidly quantified the implementation of the proposed models in two industrial case applications demonstrates that they significantly reduce the safety stock inventory levels and the global logistical cost

an inventory system with demand dependent on both time and price assuming backlogged shortages abstract in this work we analyze an inventory model for items whose demand is a bivariate function of price and time it is supposed that the demand rate multiplicatively combines the effects of a time power function and a price logit function the aim is to maximize the profit per time unit assuming that the inventory cost per time unit is the sum of the holding shortage ordering and purchasing costs an algorithm is developed to find the optimal price the optimal lot size and the optimal replenishment cycle several numerical examples are introduced to illustrate the solution procedure

optimal delegation with multi dimensional decisions this paper investigates optimal communication mechanisms in a framework with a twodimensional policy space and no monetary transfers contrary to the one dimensional setting if the conflicts of interests between the principal and the agent are different on each dimension the optimal mechanism never exhibits any pooling and the agent s ideal policies are never chosen simple delegation sets that trade off inflexible rules and full discretion are no longer optimal but take more complex shapes

global sensitivity analysis in inventory management abstract this paper deals with the sensitivity analysis sa of inventory management models when uncertainty in the input parameters is given full consideration we make use of sobol function and variance decomposition method for determining the most influential parameters on the model output we first illustrate the method by means of an analytical example we provide the expression of the global importance of demand holding costs order costs of the harris economic order quantity eoq formula we then present the global sa of the inventory management model developed by luciano and peccati 1999 capital structure and inventory management the temporary sale problem international journal of production economics 59 169 178 for the economic order quantity estimation in the context of the temporary sale problem we show that by performing global sa in parallel to the modeling process an analyst derives insights not only on the eoq structure when its expression is not analytically known but also on the relevance of modeling choices as the inclusion of financing policies and special orders

the informational effects of competition and collusion in legislative politics we use a mechanism design approach to study the organization of interest groups in an informational model of lobbying interest groups influence the legislature only by communicating private information on their preferences and not by means of monetary transfers interest groups have private information on their ideal points in a one dimensional policy space and may either compete or adopt more collusive behaviors optimal policies result from a trade off between imposing rules which are non responsive to the groups preferences and flexibility that pleases groups better within a strong coalition interest groups credibly share information which facilitates communication of their joint interests helps screening by the legislature and induces flexible policies responsive to the groups joint interests an informativeness effect competing interest groups better transmit information on their individual preferences a screening effect the socially and privately optimal organization of lobbying favors competition between groups only when their preferences are not too congruent with those of the legislature with more congruence a strong coalition is preferred finally within a weak coalition interest groups must design incentive compatible collusive mechanisms to share information such weak coalitions are always inefficient

how much discretion for risk regulators we analyze the regulation of firms that undertake socially risky activities but can reduce the probability of an accident inflicted on third parties by carrying out non verifiable effort congress delegates regulation to an agency although these two bodies may have different preferences toward the industry the optimal level of discretion left to the agency results from the following trade off the agency can tailor discretionary policies to its expert knowledge about potential harm but it implements policies that are too pro industry the agency should be given full discretion when the firm is solvent partial discretion is preferred otherwise we then investigate how this trade off changes as the political and economic landscapes are modified

veto based delegation in a principal agent model with hidden information and no monetary transfers i establish the veto power principle any incentive compatible outcome can be implemented through veto based delegation with an endogenously chosen default decision this result demonstrates the exact nature of commitment powers required by the principal 1 to design the default outcome and 2 to ensure that she has almost no formal control over the agent s decisions

the organization and scope of agents regulating multiproduct industries abstract a mechanism design problem with two dimensional uncertainty is solved to derive the optimal policy for regulating a monopolist with private information about the marginal cost of producing two different goods the paper establishes that informational economies of scope or incentive complementarities arise when one firm produces both goods the regulator should weigh these economies against the benefits of relative performance incentives when choosing between integrated and decentralized organizations unless the marginal costs of the two products are sufficiently positively correlated the optimal ex ante policy gives control of both markets to a single firm journal of economic literature classification number s d82 l22 l51

the own wage elasticity of labor demand a meta regression analysis firms labor demand responses to wage changes are of key interest in empirical research and policy analysis however despite extensive research estimates of labor demand elasticities remain subject to considerable heterogeneity in this paper we conduct a comprehensive meta regression analysis to re assess the empirical literature on labor demand elasticities building on 942 elasticity estimates from 105 different studies we identify sources of variation in the absolute value of this elasticity heterogeneity due to the theoretical and empirical specification of the labor demand model different datasets used or sectors and countries considered explains more than 80 of the variation in the estimates we further find substantial evidence for the presence of publication selection bias as estimates of the own wage elasticity of labor demand are upwardly inflated

eliciting information from a committee abstract the paper addresses the mechanism design problem of eliciting truthful information from a committee of informed experts who collude in their information disclosure strategies it is shown that under fairly general conditions full information disclosure is possible if and only if the induced outcome is pareto undominated for the committee members

the strategic use of capacity slack in the economic lot scheduling problem with random demand growing interest in designing systems with capacity slack as one form of flexibility raises many questions about its use and its usefulness in the framework of the economic lot scheduling problem with stochastic demand we develop on optimization based model that considers capacity slack safety stock and overtime explicitly and has the objective of minimizing the expected cost per unit time of inventory overtime and where applicable setup costs the solution is a continuous time production plan that consists of a time dependent inventory trajectory for each of the parts including the placement of planned idle time in the schedule we consider schedule stability to be desirable because of potential effects on upstream and downstream operations in multistage production settings thus the plan also has certain characteristics that contribute to achieving stability our results on the relative merits of capacity slack and safety stock indicate that capacity slack in the form of planned idle time is

does trade expansion still promote employment in korea according to the heckscher ohlin samuelson hos model trade can be an important source of job gains for developing economies but conversely result in job losses for developed economies empirical research to date however has provided mixed results regarding the direction and size of the employment effects for both developing and developed economies this paper attempts to evaluate the employment implications of trade for korea over the 1975 2000 period korea merits attention because it has successfully transformed itself from a developing to a semi developed economy during this period empirical results show that trade has indeed played an important role in enhancing job opportunities in korea throughout this period but its role as a job creator has diminished since 1985 suggesting that such a role could soon end or even reverse copyright 2008 the author journal compilation 2008 blackwell publishing ltd

optimizing service level and relevant cost for a stochastic multi item cyclic production system a multi item make to order production system in a stochastic environment is analyzed assuming a common cycle production approach the impact of safety stock cycle time demand processing time and setup time on service level and total relevant cost holding setup and backorder cost is determined to illustrate this relationship a trajectory for the service level with respect to the relevant cost holding and setup is presented furthermore algorithms to calculate the cycle time which leads to maximum service level at constant safety stock and to calculate the pair cycle time and safety stock which minimize total relevant cost are introduced

information aggregation in debate who should speak first abstract privately informed individuals speak openly in front of other members of a committee about the desirability of a public decision each individual wishes to appear well informed for any given order of speech committee members may herd by suppressing their true information with individuals of heterogeneous expertise optimizing over the order of speech can improve the extraction of information but not perfectly so it is not always optimal to use the common anti seniority rule whereby experts speak in order of increasing expertise a committee with more able experts may be afflicted by greater herding problems yielding a worse outcome

coordination and the provision of incentives to a common regulated firm abstract this paper considers the problem faced by two regulators in providing incentives to a common privately informed regulated firm under various degrees of coordination in the model the firm exerts effort toward cost reduction and self dealing and incentives can be input based monitoring and output based demanded cost targets full coordination between the regulators leads to the second best allocation a setting in which the regulators do not fully coordinate leads to i higher overall monitoring more aggressive input based incentives and ii higher demanded cost targets i e more lenience in terms of output based incentives as a consequence of i in all possible equilibria the effort toward cost reduction will be smaller when the agent reports to two regulators who do not coordinate i and ii imply that the impact on the effort toward self dealing activities is ambiguous in our leading example self dealing will be larger if the regulators coordinate on monitoring levels but smaller if they choose monitoring levels independently

an approximation to the continuous review inventory model with perishable items and lead times a continuous review perishable inventory model based on approximations to the expected outdating the expected shortage quantity and the expected inventory level is developed to determine a best q r ordering policy under a positive order leadtime when the total expected average cost per unit time is minimized the approximation method is simple and verified by a comparison with the weiss model the results reveal that the mean absolute deviation from the optimal total expected average cost per unit time is only 0 58 this paper also compares the proposed model to the conventional model with no perishability a value is given to the item lifetime indicating when an approximate answer approaches closely to the conventional ordering policy finally a simulation model written in simscript ii 5 is used to validate the approximate results

a tri level optimization model for inventory control with uncertain demand and lead time abstract we propose an inventory control model for an uncapacitated warehouse in a manufacturing facility under demand and lead time uncertainty the objective is to make ordering decisions to minimize the total system cost we introduce a two stage tri level optimization model with a rolling horizon to address the uncertain demand and lead time regardless of their underlying distributions in addition an exact algorithm is designed to solve the model we compare this model in a case study with three decision making strategies optimistic moderate and pessimistic our computational results suggest that the performances of these models are either consistently inferior or highly sensitive to cost parameters such as holding cost and shortage cost whereas the new tri level optimization model almost always results in the lowest total cost in all parameter settings

a century of evolution from harris s basic lot size model survey and research agenda abstract determining the economic lot size has always represented one of the most important issues in production planning this problem has long attracted the attention of researchers and several models have been developed to meet requirements at minimum cost in this paper we explore and discuss the evolution of these models during one hundred years of history starting from the basic model developed by harris in 1913 up to today following harris s work a number of researchers have devised extensions that incorporate additional considerations the evolution of eoq theory strongly reflects the development of industrial systems over the past century here we outline all the research areas faced in the past by conducting a holistic analysis of 219 selected journal papers and trying to give a comprehensive view of past work on the eoq problem finally a new research agenda is proposed and discussed

exports foreign direct investment and employment the case of china everal theories including the vent for surplus thesis smith 1776 and myint 1958 and the staples theory innis 1930 and 1940 and chambers and gordon 1966 have addressed the role of trade in economic development the former suggests that the opening up of the economy to international trade provides an outlet for surplus productive capacity of the country and promotes economic growth the staples theory argues that the production and trade of resource intensive staple products generates linkages and promotes industrialisation these theories were employed to explain the economic development pattern of the regions of recent settlement in the past such as canada and the united states the plantation economies of malaysia and the peasant export economies of ghana and burma a feature of all these economies was their endowments of natural resources and exports of primary commodities whilst the vent for surplus explanation appears to provide an explanation of the development of natural resource based economies could it also explain the growth of a populous country with huge reservoirs of surplus labour such as china it could be argued that models which specifically address the issue of surplus labour such as the development with unlimited supplies of labour model lewis 1954 provide a much more satisfactory explanation of the development of a surplus labour economy such as china than the vent for surplus model there are though subtle differences between the two explanations these differences discussed later suggest that the vent for surplus explanation may be superior to

numerical computation of inventory policies based on the eoq σx value for order point systems abstract this paper examines the numerical computation of two control parameters order size and order point in the well known inventory control model an s q system with a safety stock strategy the aim of the paper is to show that the eoq x value is both sufficient for controlling the system and essential for the economic consequences of using approximations in computations of optimal policies in view of the evidence from a number of studies showing that firms use of statistical inventory control lags far behind academic interest in the area this is also an important aspect the determination of optimal values for the control variables even in this very simple inventory control system is a complex task and therefore not suited to practical implementation where one or more of the following issues are neglected the interdependence of order size and order point the difference between stock on hand and net stock and the excess stockout included in the next period we use the determination of optimal values for the control variables as a framework to evaluate the economic consequences of these approximations applied in pratical inventory control

an eoq model with ramp type demand rate time dependent deterioration rate unit production cost and shortages an order level inventory system for deteriorating items has been developed with demand rate as a ramp type function of time the finite production rate is proportional to the demand rate and deterioration rate is time proportional the unit production cost is inversely proportional to the demand rate the model with no shortage case in inventory is first solved the inventory shortage is discussed next results are illustrated with two numerical examples for two models along with its sensitivity

strategyproof collective choice in economic and political environments this paper surveys some recent results characterizing strategyproof collective choice rules when preferences satisfy conditions that are meaningful in economic or political environments

continuous decisions by a committee median versus average mechanisms abstract a group of strategic agents with diverse private information and interdependent preferences has to take a continuous collective decision i study the design of the decision making procedure from the viewpoint of a utilitarian social planner for uniformly distributed information the implementation of the average report as decision dominates the implementation of the median report when the set of admissible reports is optimally designed this is true for any number of agents and for any degree of interdependence the result extends to a general class of distributions when the number of agents is large

diaspora and development jagdish bhagwati s proposal for a brains tax to be levied on the incomes of the diaspora from developing countries residing in the developed countries and the proceeds to be remitted to the countries of origin of the diaspora is well known in recent years the voluntary contributions or remittances from the diaspora to their countries of origin have often been higher than the aid monies given to these countries it is now increasingly recognised that the diaspora may have an active role to play in the development process of their countries of origin they are not only a source of funds they are also a rich source of skills and know how this paper analyses the potential of the diaspora as agents of change in their countries of origin and argues that the social rate of return to a unit of diaspora investments may be higher than that for a unit of foreign direct investment from non diaspora sources

moving toward markets labor allocation in rural china abstract china s economic reforms have brought rapid growth in rural off farm employment raising questions about the assumption that rural china is labor surplus and has poorly functioning factor markets we investigate this by testing for separability between household labor demand and supply using panel data we find that separability is rejected overall indicating that factor markets remain underdeveloped nonseparability however is associated with labor surplus in some areas and labor shortage in others moreover separability holds where substantial employment opportunities exist in the wider township suggesting that such employment promotes competitive allocation within villages as well as the inter village movement of resources

continuity in mechanism design without transfers we adopt a mechanism design approach to model communication between a principal and a privately informed agent in the context where monetary incentives are not available we provide a simple condition on the distribution of the agent s type which ensures that the optimal mechanism is continuous with strict log concavity of the distribution there exists a unique optimal mechanism that is characterized

the organization of supplier networks effects of delegation and intermediation in a one principal two agent model with adverse selection and collusion among agents we show that delegating to one agent the right to subcontract with the other agent always earns lower profit for the principal compared with centralized contracting delegation to an intermediary is also not in the principal s interest if the agents supply substitutes it can be beneficial if the agents produce complements and the intermediary is well informed

resource allocation in the brain when an individual performs several tasks simultaneously processing resources must be allocated to dierent brain systems to produce energy for neurons to re following the evidence from neuroscience we model the brain as an organization in which a coordinator allocates limited resources to the brain systems responsible for the dierent tasks systems are privately informed about the amount of resources necessary to perform their task and compete to obtain the resources the coordinator arbitrates the demands while satisfying the resource constraint we show that the optimal mechanism is to impose to each system with privately known needs a cap in resources that depends negatively on the amount of resources requested by the other system this allocation can be implemented using a biologically plausible mechanism finally we provide some implications of our theory i performance can be awless for suciently simple tasks ii the dynamic allocation rule exhibits inertia current allocations are increasing in past needs and iii dierent cognitive tasks are performed by dierent systems only if the tasks are suciently important

delegated monitoring versus arm s length contracting abstract this paper analyzes the optimal organization of input suppliers in a procurement context we discuss when a top firm chooses to induce information sharing and active coordination between its suppliers consolidation rather than having them contract at arm s length delegation in designing the organization the firm anticipates that different supplier networks have different costs of inducing information revelation from suppliers when the cost of information sharing varies the optimal organization exhibits various discrete degrees of consolidation there is excessive arm s length contracting compared to the case where the top firm controls this organizational choice itself the paper offers also a methodology to study in a unified framework various organizational forms separately analyzed in the literature

regulating complementary products a comparative institutional analysis optimal regulation subject to informational constraints is analyzed for industries for which production requires complementary inputs an issue for regulatory policy is whether supply in these industries should be bundled or unbundled bundled supply calls for regulation of an integrated industry unbundled supply has each component regulated separately a main result is that unbundling introduces into regulation an additional component of information cost that is similar to double marginalization in the monopoly pricing of complementary products unbundling may be advantageous if it allows sufficient competition in nonmonopoly services but the information cost can exceed the benefits of competition

the stochastic economic lot scheduling problem cyclical base stock policies with idle times in this paper we discuss stochastic economic lot scheduling problems elsp i e settings where several items need to be produced in a common facility with limited capacity under significant uncertainty regarding demands production times setup times or combinations thereof we propose a class of production inventory strategies for stochastic elsps and describe how a strategy which minimizes holding backlogging and setup costs within this class can be effectively determined and evaluated the proposed class of strategies is simple but rich and effective when the facility is assigned to a given item production continues until either a specific target inventory level is reached or a specific production batch has been completed the different items are produced in a given sequence or rotation cycle possibly with idle times inserted between the completion of an item s production batch and the setup for the next item an optimal strategy within the class can be determined and all relevant performance measures can be evaluated in just a few cpu seconds using a 486 based pc we also derive a number of easily computable lower bounds for the optimal cost value and establish a comparison with deterministic elsps

employment responses of skilled and unskilled workers at mexican maquiladoras the effects of external factors summary this paper compares a standard labor demand model to another augmented by the real exchange rate rer when studying the growth of dynamic mexican maquiladoras from 1990 to 2006 the basic question is whether the real value of the peso changes the responses of employment to wages and to capital in the augmented models skilled labor employment becomes very sensitive to its own wages also the user cost of capital has a larger negative impact on skilled employment and a weaker currency has a negative impact on unskilled employment only overall skilled labor benefits relatively more under globalization

lot sizes in a capacity constrained facility a simulation study of stationary stochastic demand abstract this paper considers the scheduling of several different items on a single machine in literature known as the economic lot scheduling problem elsp one of the characteristics of this problem is that the demand rate is deterministic and constant however in a practical situation demand usually varies in this paper we examine if a deterministic model can be used if demand is stationary stochastic a dynamic programming approach from bomberger manage sci 12 11 1966 778 and a heuristic method from segerstedt int j production econom 59 1 3 1999 469 are used to calculate lot sizes for four items the production of these items is simulated with different variations in demand rates our conclusion is that a deterministic model of this kind can be used in a practical situation where the demand rate is stationary stochastic but the models must be complemented by a decision rule which item to produce and when to produce it in our tests the heuristic method and the dynamic programming approach perform rather similarly with respect to costs and inventory levels but the dynamic programming approach results in more backorders when there is small variation in demand rates this study indicates that the model used for determination of lot sizes is of less importance than the decision rule used for identification of the item to produce and when to produce it

optimal inventory policy for a perishable item with demand function sensitive to price and time abstract we formulate a model for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for perishable items with price dependent and time dependent demand the items have a fixed shelf life and the demand rate decreases linearly in the selling price and polynomially over the time after replenishment until it vanishes either at the reservation price or at expiration time we prove that the three variable profit maximization problem can be reduced into a single variable problem in which the variable is the duration of the replenishment period we show that the profit function is strictly pseudo concave and provide means of obtaining the optimal policy three numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the model accompanied by a sensitivity analysis

determination of an order up to policy in the stochastic economic lot scheduling model we consider a production inventory problem with compound renewal item demand the model consists of stockpoints one for each item controlled according to r s policies and one machine which replenishes them the replenishment orders are produced with a fixed rate on the machine with significant setup times and costs which are stochastic and sequence dependent the time between the release and the production of the replenishment order is called the waiting time we develop analytical approximations for the first two moments of this waiting time the order up to levels and the average physical inventory levels for all stockpoints given the target fill rates these analytical approximations allows for a quick evaluation of the waiting time which is important when optimization of the system is considered

the life cycle of regulatory agencies dynamic capture and transaction costs the dynamics of regulation is analysed in a model where regulatory capture comes from the repeated interaction between an interest group and a regulatory agency regulatory institutions offer a framework for this dynamic process they put constraints on the interest group s influence the dynamics of regulation and its long run outcome depend on the political principal s the regulator s and the regulated firm s time preferences and their information some foundations for the transaction costs of side contracting used in the standard literature on collusion are provided those transaction costs are linked to the precise nature of regulatory institutions

nash equilibrium and welfare optimality if is a set of social alternatives a social choice rule scr assigns a subset of a to each potential profile of individuals preferences over a where the subset is interpreted as the set of welfare optima a game form or mechanism implements the social choice rule if for any potential profile of preferences 1 any welfare optimum can arise as a nash equilibrium of the game form implying in particular that a nash equilibrium exists and 2 all nash equilibria are welfare optimal the main result of this paper establishes that any scr that satisfies two properties monotonicity and no veto power can be implemented by a game form if there are three or more individuals the proof is constructive

trust coordination and the industrial organization of political activism we study political activism by several interest groups with private signals when their ideological distance to the policymaker is small a low trust regime prevails agents frequently lobby even when it is unwarranted taking advantage of the cone rmation provided by others activism conversely the policymaker responds only to generalized pressure when ideological distance is large a high trust regime prevails lobbying behavior is disciplined by the potential contradiction from abstainers and the policymaker s response threshold is correspondingly lower within some intermediate range both equilibria coexist we then study the optimal organization of ine uence activities contrasting welfare levels when interest groups act independently and when they coordinate jel d72 d78 d82

the r q control of a periodic review inventory system with continuous demand and lost sales abstract in this paper we consider a periodic review inventory model with lost sales during a stockout and with the constraint that at most one replenishment order may be outstanding at any time demands in successive review periods are independent identically distributed variables from a continuous distribution the fixed lead time is an integral number of review periods we explore control policies of the r q type that is a replenishment order of size q is placed when the inventory position stock in hand plus stock on order falls to or below the re order level r we use asymptotic renewal theory results to estimate the undershoot of the re order level r and also to estimate the cycle stockholding cost which turns out to take a relatively simple form based on these approximations we set out a policy improvement solution methodology and illustrate this with some numerical examples for which demand is normally distributed these numerical examples suggest that a relatively simple approach based on the economic order quantity can provide results which are very close to optimal