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 benefits of advance booking discount programs model and analysis consider a retailer who sells perishable seasonal products with uncertain demand due to the short sales season and long replenishment lead times associated with such products the retailer is unable to update demand forecasts by using actual sales data generated from the early part of the season and to respond by replenishing stocks during the season to overcome this limitation we examine the case in which the retailer develops a program called the advance booking discount abd program that entices customers to commit to their orders at a discount price prior to the selling season the time between placement and fulfillment of these precommitted orders provides an opportunity for the retailer to update demand forecasts by utilizing information generated from the precommitted orders and to respond by placing a cost effective order at the beginning of the selling season in this paper we evaluate the benefits of the abd program and characterize the optimal discount price that maximizes the retailer s expected profit

policy debates government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data gripaios p and bishop p 2005 government output and expenditure in uk regions and sub regions an analysis of the new experimental accounts data regional studies 39 805 813 this paper examines the regional and sub regional distribution of uk state spending by analysing new data available from recently published regional government accounts the data indicate wide variations in public spending per head across regions with london being a particular beneficiary the results do not indicate any relationship between gross domestic product per head and public spending and they suggest that in total government spending is doing little to ameliorate regional inequality if the state wishes to pursue an active regional policy it hence needs to consider the regional dimension of all state functions not simply those associated with traditional regional policy

making sense of the competitiveness debate the debate over national competitiveness is marked by some basic misperceptions with few exceptions those who use the term have a crude essentially mercantilist view of world trade in which competition among nations is just like competition between corporations not only do the authors and readers of reports on national competitiveness usually not understand comparative advantage they are unaware of the most basic adding up constraints economists however find it hard to believe that seemingly well informed people can really be this naive and assume that there must be more sophisticated ideas lying behind what they say the rationales offered by economists in turn offer false comfort to the would be sophisticates who like the term competitiveness they believe that they have transcended conventional economic theory when the fact is that they have failed to comprehend it in short the actual level of discussion is lower than any of the participants imagines copyright 1996 by oxford university press

long run welfare effect of energy conservation regulation we investigate the long run effect of energy conservation regulation which forces firms to raise energy saving investment above the cost minimizing level if pigovian tax is imposed additional regulation always harms social welfare under perfect competition while it can improve welfare under imperfect competition our result under imperfect competition holds regardless of whether strategies are strategic substitutes or complements in contrast to direct entry regulation

estimating the benefits of job creation from local investment subsidies this paper reviews the application of project appraisal techniques to analysing the cost effectiveness of local investment subsidies advance factory building cost per job measures are shown to be dependent upon the method of assessing the number of jobs created and the assumptions used in evaluating exchequer as well as social costs and benefits if realistic probabilities are adopted about the likelihood of previously unemployed persons obtaining a job other than in the advance factories then such local investment subsidies are not economically viable in exchequer terms local investment subsidies may be justified on cost benefit grounds but even by this criterion the number of subsidy created relative to subsidy diverted jobs is crucial to the decision

policy review section in this policy review section gerry stoker of the institute of local government studies presents a critical review of the role of urban development corporations udcs in comparing the experience of the udcs consideration is given to the varying nature of the land and property market in each udc area to the relationship with local authorities and other local bodies and the regeneration strategies pursued by the udcs this is followed by an assessment of the impact of the udcs in economic social and political terms in the second article john britton of the university of toronto examines the theoretical case for interventionist public policies to assist the innovation process in small and medium sized enterprises these arguments are supported by a review of the experience of various national support programmes introduced in the uk in particular the manufacturing advisory service introduced in 1978 and the design advisory service launched in 1982

technology and competitiveness this paper reviews the literature on technology and competitiveness first the concept of the international competitiveness of a country and various theoretical approaches on the relationship between trade and growth are discussed then a number of empirical studies of the impact of technology as evidenced by r d patents etc on exports are examined the final section summarizes the evidence and considers the lessons for policy copyright 1996 by oxford university press

investment scale as a signal in industrial assistance schemes with employment objectives the paper examines the implications of asymmetric information for the existence and efficiency of automatic industrial assistance schemes with employment objectives based on uk regional policy experience firms differ in productivities and factor intensities about which the government is uninformed the more capital intensive firms generate few jobs but implement larger project scales and the use of this signal for the design of efficient assistance contracts is analysed the fixed rate investment grant used in uk regional policy is found to be poor performing and is welfare dominated by contracts in the grant amount assistance contracts specifying both the grant amount and rate may be preferred

competition policy in the common market its links with regional policy deacon d 1982 competition policy in the common market its links with regional policy reg studies 16 53 63 this paper examines the possible conflict between competition and regional policy in the common market it suggests that competition policy towards regional aids can have a positive influence on the development of backward regions by limiting aids in less backward regions the community s competition policy towards regional aids is analysed and a comparison of regional problems with budgetary expenditure on regional aid is made the paper concludes that expenditure on regional aids does not always reflect the intensity of regional problems when seen in a community wide extent

optimal ordering policies in response to a discount offer abstract sometimes supplier offers a temporary price discount to increase cash flow or decrease the inventory level of certain items thus the manufacturer may be able to improve the effectiveness of his inventory system by ordering a special quantity at this sale period in this paper economic order quantity eoq models with a discounted price are developed to obtain the optimal ordering policy during the sale period for five different cases a coincidence of sale period with replenishment time b non coincidence of sale period with replenishment time c sale period is longer than a cycle d discounted price as a function of the special ordering quantity and e incremental discount each case has its own characteristics of the sale period and the discounted price the objective is to take the maximum possible advantage from the discounted price by ordering a special quantity during the sale period the optimal ordering policy is obtained by maximizing the difference between the two costs regular eoq cost and special quantity cost during the sale period moreover a comparison of different discount scenarios is developed to sense the effect of different parameters on the ordering policies the annual gain obtained is linearly related to the discount and the on hand remnant inventory numerical analyses are provided to illustrate and testify the values of the optimal special quantity the analysis showed an impressive improvement in the effectiveness of the inventory system when a special order is placed during the sale period the optimal special quantity is driven for each case to visualize real life problems sensitivity analysis is also initiated to study the change in the total savings with respect to the variation of the special optimal quantity

revenue management under joint pricing and capacity allocation competition abstract we investigate joint pricing and capacity allocation decisions of a duopoly each of which competes in selling a fixed amount of substitutable perishable goods in both early discount and regular full fare markets with demand uncertainty upon a firm s stockout unsatisfied demand spillovers to the competitor depending on the substitutability of products offered by the two firms we first show that there exists a pure strategy nash equilibrium for identical firms there exists a unique pure strategy nash equilibrium that is symmetric then we study how firms pricing and capacity allocation decisions depend on operational and market conditions in particular we show that more cut throat competition in the full fare market never leads to a rise in the price and a fall in the protection level simultaneously in the full fare market we demonstrate a similar result of comparative statics for the competition intensity in the discount market in comparison with a monopolist s optimal decision a duopoly equilibrium never results in a situation that definitely benefits the full fare consumers in both dimensions of price and availability finally we examine how the adoption of early discount as practiced in the airline industry may benefit competing firms when one of the two firms first introduces early discount sales we find that there is a free ride effect for the other firm interestingly the free rider can benefit more than the adopter especially with stronger competition

unemployment in britain male unemployment in britain has risen from around 2 per cent in the 1950s to around 17 per cent in 1985 see figure 1 the figures are for male unemployment because there is no consistent series for women 1 even more remarkably unemployment has fallen in only three years out of the last twenty 1973 1978 and 1979 to account for this we need a model that explains both changes in the natural or non accelerating inflation rate of unemployment nairu and deviations from it we use a three equation supply side model centred on the labour market this has two main features the first concerns the determination of employment in the short run the labour demand function that we use cuts through the fruitless debate now raging especially in europe as to whether current unemployment is classical or keynesian according to the classical view employment is too high because real wages are too high according to the keynesian view real wages are not binding and unemployment is high because the product market does not clear with prices too high relative to nominal demand the whole debate is set in the framework of perfect competition yet in perfect competition prices are set by impersonal forces and it is not clear what could possibly stop prices clearing the market it is much more reasonable to think of prices as being set by imperfectly competitive firms existing prices being the best they can think of given the demand they face in this context firms demand for labour will depend on both the real product wage and the level of real aggregate demand this is the demand function we estimate and it conforms both to common sense and to the data however this does not imply that employment can be made to grow without limit by pumping up real demand for in the medium term when price surprises are eliminated our model determines three variables employment real wages and real demand on the basis of three equations an employment equation a price equation and a wage equation thus in the medium term there is a natural level of employment and corresponding to this a natural level of real aggregate demand the second key feature of our model concerns the medium term determination of unemployment in the medium term the planned mark up of wages over prices in wage settlements must be consistent with the mark up of prices over wage costs in employers pricing behaviour for if wage setters try to set real product wages higher than is consistent with employers pricing behaviour this generates ever increasing inflation thus the key to understanding unemployment in the medium term is the behaviour of wage setters if events occur that push them towards too high real wages then unemployment has to rise to offset these influences we shall call these influences wage pressure variables or push factors and they are clearly crucial in understanding unemployment the variables here include the social security system employment protection

unemployment and the inter regional mobility of labour the relationship between unemployment and interregional labor migration in the united kingdom is explored using data from the labour force survey for 1984 and 1977 the authors conclude that the experience of unemployment increases the likelihood of migration and that households in areas of high unemployment are more likely to move they also find that during periods of higher overall unemployment migration propensities are reduced annotation

advance booking discount programs under retail competition we model a situation in which two retailers consider launching an advance booking discount abd program in this program customers are enticed to precommit their orders at a discount price prior to the regular selling season however these precommitted orders are filled during the selling season while the abd program enables the retailers to lock in a portion of the customer demand and use this demand information to develop more accurate forecasts and supply plans the abd price reduces profit margin we analyze the four possible scenarios wherein each of the two firms offer an abd program or not and establish conditions under which the unique equilibrium calls for launching the abd program at both retailers

the effects and policy implications of state aids to industry an economic analysis state aids making eu policy properly reflect geography and subsidiarity the use of state aids to industry is a poorly understood part of competition policy currently the eu commission presumes that state aids distort competition yet it approves 98 of applications often for social or distributional reasons we argue that proper regulation of state aids should focus on two issues the externalities generated and the inefficiencies arising from failures in competition between governments we thus develop a new framework for eu policy and compare its implications with the existing practice of the eu commission timothy besley and paul seabright

uk regional policy an evaluation introduct ion ities in unemployment during the recession of the early 1990s which bit deeply in the southern regions however the convergence of regional unemployment rates uk regional policy has existed at varying levels of intensity for nearly seven decades throughout its conceals persistent spatial disparities in unemployment at a higher level of disaggregation fig 2 shows that existence the overriding objective has been to provide economic help to the country s most heavily depressed those travel to work areas experiencing the highest unemployment rates in 1985 tend to be the same areas or least well ov areas a wide variety of policy measures have been used to create employment and thereby some 10 years later further table 1 shows that the spatial pattern of unemployment at county level has reduce unemployment in the areas with persistently high unemployment this paper has two primary aims remained remarkably stable broad regional aggregates conceal immense spatial disparities in unemployment rstly to identify the major bene ts of regional policy and secondly to investigate ways in which uk regional within regions and these spatial disparities are persistent over time it is this high unemployment persistence that policy can be made more evective and hence more eycient ultimately justi es spatially discriminating policies such as regional policy as a rst step it needs to be established that the uk actually has a regional problem it is easy to demonstrate the paper is organized as follows the next section identi es the major economic and social bene ts of that spatial disparities in unemployment at a broad level have virtually disappeared during the 1990s the regional policy followed by a review of recent government views on the case for regional policy the fourth north south divide that was so evident in the 1980s has been eroded by a substantial convergence in unsection compares two diverent approaches to solving regional problems the rst is a market based approach employment rates this is vividly illustrated in fig 1 which shows the dramatic narrowing of regional disparwhich aims to make local labour markets more exible

an examination of regional interaction and super regions in britain an error correction model approach gray d 2005 an examination of regional interaction and super regions in britain an error correction model approach regional studies 39 619 632 this paper examines spill over effects among regions estimating error correction models of british rates of unemployment and conducting granger causality tests it is found that on a short run basis the west midlands is a leading territory within a closely knit group of surrounding regions the paper draws a distinction between a core and a leading region suggesting the core region the south east is a follower responding to and magnifying economic fluctuations the policy implications are that current regional delineations may not be consistent with the demands of economic coherence at the national level and so is not optimal for the delivery of decentralized spatial economic policy indeed as economic engineering in the high unemployment periphery has consequences for more prosperous areas it may be better not to allow local administrators too m

uk competitiveness policy vs japanese industrial policy it is often claimed that japanese industrial policy targeted high growth or high productivity growth sectors see inter alia johnson i982 carliner i986 nester i99i tyson 1992 it is then argued that because both the targeted industries and the japanese economy have prospered it follows that japanese industrial policy must have been successful hence britain and other advanced nations either are justified in emulating or should hasten to follow the japanese example this raises the question of whether the united kingdom s competitiveness policy is the appropriate response or is a completely different animal the purpose of this paper is to explore the main areas in contention but before doing so it is important to be clear about what one means by industrial and competitiveness policies

using cost observation to regulate firms the paper emphasizes the use of accounting data in regulatory or procurement contracts when the supplier 1 has superior information about the cost of the project and 2 invests in cost reduction the main result states that under risk neutrality the supplier announces an expected cost and is given an incentive contract linear in cost overruns this optimal contract moves toward a fixed price contract as the announced cost decreases an investment choice is then introduced and the use of a rate of return regulation is studied

managing product variety with advance selling and capacity restrictions abstract in this research we analyze the impact of advance selling with price discount on a firms ability to maximize the expected profit the production environment of the firm is characterized by short selling cycle multiple products demand variability and capacity restrictions the advance orders are randomly distributed with the parameters dependent on the discount levels under advance selling the advance orders are used to update the demand forecast of selling season and are delivered at the start of the selling season the problem is modeled as a three stage stochastic non linear programming problem we derive the concavity of the problem under customers willingness to buy in advance our solution methodology comprises the variance reduction technique of antithetic variates that gives credible value of price discount levels for different sets of demand values we also provide sensitivity analysis of the problem parameters to derive insights into the behavior of the expected profit and the benefits due to advance selling under capacity restrictions

rental price and rental duration under retail competition consider a retailer that rents products to customers for a pre specified rental duration by considering the dynamics of uncertain rental demand and return processes we first present a base model that is intended to analyze the impact of rental duration on the stocking level the rental price and the retailer s profit due to the complexity of the base model we develop an approximation scheme to obtain tractable results also we apply the base model to analyze a situation in which a retailer enters a revenue sharing agreement with a distributor moreover we expand our base model to address the issue of competition in rental duration and rental price the analysis of our competitive model in a duopolistic environment suggests that the market equilibrium depends on the market potential and the rental duration sensitivity furthermore we establish conditions under which one firm will charge a lower rental price while the other firm will offer a longer rental duration in equilibrium

inventory competition and allocation in a multi channel distribution system abstract consider a supply chain involving one manufacturer and one independent retailer the manufacturer distributes her product to the end consumer through the independent retailer as well as through her direct channel each of the two channels faces a stochastic demand if one channel is out of stock a fraction of the unsatisfied customers visit the other channel which induces inventory competition between the channels under the scenario described above will the manufacturer ever undercut the retailer s order when the capacity is infinite what are the equilibria of the game how does a capacity constraint affect the equilibrium outcome what is the optimal inventory allocation strategy for the manufacturer using a game theoretic model we seek answers to the above questions both the capacitated and the infinite capacity games are considered we establish the necessary condition for a manufacturer to undercut a retailer s order and show that a manufacturer may deny the retailer of inventory even when the capacity is ample we show that there can be an equilibrium in the capacitated game where a manufacturer might not use the entire capacity and still deny a retailer inventory we also show that a mild capacity constraint may make both parties better off and thereby increase the total supply chain profit we develop a simple yet practical contract called the reverse revenue sharing contract and show that along with a fixed franchise fee this contract can coordinates our decentralized supply chain

assessing the employment effectiveness of small business financing schemes some evidence from israel this paper presents an empirical assessment of the employment effects of two assistance schemes aimed at improving the accessibility of small businesses to capital the first scheme is a revolving loan fund operating in two small towns the second is a capital grant scheme aimed at promoting industrial activity in rural areas empirical data relating to the period 1986 89 is analysed for both schemes

the assessment international competitiveness the concept of international competitiveness as applied to national economies is a popular one politicians businessmen and economists alike re fer to it in day to day discussion when looking at the external export import market share or trade balance performance of different countries indi cators are produced showing changes in or levels of various countries competitiveness e g the relative price or cost indices regularly published by the imf and the oecd or the absolute measures produced by organizations such as the geneva world economic forum and the lausanne institute for management development governments of ten instigate research on the matter as for instance in the case of the 1993 us competitiveness policy council orthe 1995 eu competitiveness advisory group yet it has recently been argued by paul krugman that competitiveness is a meaningless word when applied to national economies and the obsession with competitiveness is both wrong and dangerous krugman 1994 p 44 apositionkrugman forcefully reaffirms in his contribution to this issue of the oxford review of economic policy

from skills revolution to productivity miracle not as easy as it sounds this article surveys the potential impact of skill on productivity it opens with a review of the utility of productivity as a measure of systemic economic performance and then goes on to explore the oft assumed close and strong relationship between skills and productivity the importance of other factors and types of investment is stressed these complementary elements may be at least as important as skill in boosting performance and their absence may negate the impact of public investment in education and training the ability of economic development policy particularly as it relates to the regional development agencies to address skills and economic development is assessed and questions are raised about what type and level of skill might have the largest impact on economic performance in conclusion we discuss the demands that new policy approaches are making upon the machinery and personnel of government

constrained discretion in uk monetary and regional policy mcvittie e and swales j k 2007 constrained discretion in uk monetary and regional policy regional studies 41 h m treasury claims that the notion of constrained discretion which directs the effective operation of uk monetary policy applies equally to other delegated and devolved policies such as the use of regional development agencies in the delivery of english regional policy a transaction cost politics perspective is used to argue that the delegation of responsibility for monetary stabilization raises principal agent issues quite different to those encountered in the delegation of the responsibility for regional regeneration in particular the effectiveness and transparency that characterize present day monetary policy cannot be expected in regional policy further the institutional arrangements that accompany the operation of regional development agencies in england should be critically reviewed mcvittie e et swales j k 2007 la notion de discretion entravee dans les poli

penalizing success in dynamic incentive contracts no good deed goes unpunished we examine optimal dynamic incentive contracts when adverse selection and moral hazard problems are present we find that early success is optimally penalized in the sense that the agent who succeeds early subsequently faces a lower powered incentive contract penalizing success in this manner serves to limit the agent s initial incentive to understate his ability

when is price discrimination profitable we consider a general model of monopoly price discrimination and characterize the conditions under which price discrimination is and is not profitable we show that an important condition for profitable price discrimination is that the percentage change in surplus i e consumers total willingness to pay less the firm s costs associated with a product upgrade is increasing in consumers willingness to pay we refer to this as an increasing percentage differences condition and relate it to many known results in the marketing economics and operations management literatures

the assessment knowledge skills and competitiveness the autumn 1988 issue of the oxford review of economic policy considered the uk s deficiencies in vocational education and training vet it was there that finegold and soskice first popularized the notion of the low skills low quality equilibrium this assessment originally introduces a range of articles which discussed developments in the decade that has passed since then in the same journal issue no 1 1999 it argues that despite massive policy initiatives there has been only limited improvement in the uk s relative vet performance considerable progress has been made in analysis of market failures affecting the supply of skills and in analysis of the possible causes and consequences of low employer demand for skills systems failure the recent competitiveness white paper reflects this improved understanding

monopoly regulation in the presence of consumer demand reduction abstract i study a monopoly regulation in the setting where consumers can engage in demand reducing investments i first show that when the regulator ignores the consumers investments the excess investment occurs next i analyze the case where the regulator takes consumers investments into account and compare the optimal policy under asymmetric information with the first best policy optimal policy results in higher average price higher level of consumer investment but lower prices for efficient firms compared to the first best

optimal resource royalties with unknown and temporally independent extraction cost structures the authors study optimal nonrenewable resource royalty contracts when the extracting agent has private information on costs this is a dynamic incentive problem in which the repeated relationship between the principal and the agent is constrained by initial reserves commitment is limited to one period and costs are intertemporally independent compared with full information extraction information asymmetry shifts production to the future when the optimal contract requires exhaustion in two periods when exhaustion by all types in two periods is not warranted the effect on the terminal period is ambiguous and the output of even the lowest cost firm is always distorted copyright 1995 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

competition and cohesion coherence or conflict eu regional state aid reform post 2006 wishlade f g competition and cohesion coherence or conflict european union regional state aid reform post 2006 regional studies in 2005 the european commission adopted competition policy guidelines regulating national regional aid mirroring european union cohesion policy reforms initially the commission took a hard line outlawing national regional aid except in areas designated by the commission in order to improve cohesion competition and the efficiency of aid spending this was successfully resisted by the member states in favour of a more flexible regime this paper argues that the commission s approach to regional aid reform was flawed and raises wider questions about the relationship between national and european union regional policies and the way in which the european union promotes cohesion competition and competitiveness wishlade f g la competition et la cohesion s agit il de la coherence ou du conflit la reforme europeenne de l aide nationale a finalite regionale depuis 20

dynamic regulation of quality we develop a dynamic regulation model of quality provision where maintenance efforts and quality shocks have a durable impact when the regulator contracts with a sequence of agents asymmetric information can lead to overprovision of quality reflecting a dynamic rent extraction effect when the regulator contracts with a single agent the efficiency of their relationship depends on the regulator s ability to transfer rents across periods hiring a single agent with unlimited liability is socially preferable to hiring a sequence of agents even when no commitment is feasible by contrast shorter franchises are socially preferable if the agent has limited liability

regional selective assistance is the spend enough and is it targeting the right places this article examines the uk regional selective assistance scheme and critically appraises on going reforms these reforms have been triggered by the process of redrawing the map of eligible areas within new european commission competition policy guidelines a recent uk government white paper on competitiveness has also led to significant changes being considered it is argued that while the existing reforms have not fundamentally changed the nature of regional selective assistance they may well be harbingers of more threatening challenges particularly after 2006

the industrial policy of competitiveness a review of recent developments in the uk the article reviews the recent developments in uk competitiveness policy and explores its relationship with industrial policy including regional industrial policy it argues that competitiveness is virtually synonymous with productivity growth but that while four competitiveness white papers of the 1990s potentially broadened the scope of uk industrial policy the shift from sectoral to horizontal measures has in fact helped much reduce the content of this policy the article reviews current industrial policy and expenditure distinguishing between the areas of science and technology small firms and regional policy it argues that industrial policy is now a part of competitiveness policy being closely aligned to the efficiency role of government it finds that while policy has converged on a narrower set of measures the traditional boundaries between the science and technology small firm and regional policy components have become much less clear cut

the demand for industrial development certificates and the effect of regional policy ashcroft b and mcgregor p g 1989 the demand for industrial development certificates and the effect of regional policy reg studies 23 301 314 attempts to estimate the effects of uk regional policy are frequently restricted by lack of data however this paper uses the statistics resulting from the policy of industrial development certificate idc control to construct a space factor demand model of the demand for industrial floorspace the idc data set is viewed as reflecting observations on successive stages of a factor demand model and allowance is made for spatial substitution as well as the more usual factor substitution possibilities the effects of different regional policy instruments are modelled including the transmission mechanism through which idc policy exerts its effect on development areas das the results of estimation appear to provide considerable support for our hypotheses applications for idc and hence demands for floorspace in das are found to increase as national output ris

an analysis of the factors determining the geographical distribution of japanese manufacturing investment in the uk 1984 91 the purpose of this paper is to discover which factors have been important in determining the geographical distribution of japanese manufacturing establishments in the uk during 1984 91 a multivariate statistical analysis is undertaken based on the poisson model to investigate the inter county variation in the number of establishments locating in each uk county during two separate time periods 1984 88 and 1989 91 in addition to examining the influence of variables such as labour costs labour availability and industry mix on the locational choice of japanese firms the statistical analysis attempts to capture the influence of regional policy multivariate regression analysis reveals that the geographical distribution of japanese owned investment in the uk is only statistically associated with a small number of variables the main explanatory variable in the model is whether an area had assisted area status other key explanatory variables are those reflecting an area s industry mix

the effects of an undisclosed regular price and a positive leadtime in a presale mechanism abstract a presale program is popular with manufacturers who wish to reduce the risk posed by uncertain demands we introduce a new price mechanism in which the manufacturer during the presale period does not disclose the exact regular price in the sale period although it is guaranteed to customers to be higher than the presale price as positive leadtime is much overlooked in presale models we analyze the rationality of including one the numerical results in this paper show that both the specific price mechanism and the positive leadtime have significant effects on the manufacturer s policy production quantity presale price regular price the expected profit and customer behaviors the optimal discount rate should be greater than 50 percent this conclusion is consistent with existing results of surveys on saturation points the manufacturer can take advantage of the latest information on demand gathered in the presale period to update their policy and increase their expected profit

advance selling effects of interdependent consumer valuations and seller s capacity we examine the impact of consumer valuation interdependence and capacity on a firm s optimal selling strategies we consider a seller who can offer a single product to consumers twice in advance and in spot consumers choose whether and when to buy but if they buy in advance they are uncertain about their own valuations whether they buy in advance or in spot consumers valuations are realized in the spot period and they may range from fully independent to perfectly correlated creating markets with different characteristics of aggregate demand for the seller facing these consumers the seller chooses a portion of the total capacity to offer in advance and prices in both periods we describe how the optimal strategy and benefits of advance selling depend on the interdependence of consumer valuation as well as capacity level and other market parameters we find that a change in valuation interdependence can lead to dramatically different policies for the seller for example when individual valuations are highly diverse and the consumer population is large the seller must offer a discount during advance selling but may limit the advance sales on the other hand when valuations are highly correlated the seller can charge a premium price during advance selling for the same valuation interdependence the qualitative nature of the optimal strategy changes with available capacity this paper was accepted by martin lariviere operations management

incentives for conservation and quality improvement by public utilities the author examines the design of incentive programs to motivate regulated utilities to supply both basic service e g electricity supply local telephone service and service enhancements e g energy conservation services improved clarity and speed of voice communication the optimal regulatory programs are shown to vary greatly depending upon the information available to the regulator the price of the basic service may optimally be distorted above or below marginal cost to better motivate the supply of the service enhancement policy prescriptions are compared with current programs and proposals to promote energy conservation 35 refs 2 figs

the employment effects of a regional capital subsidy swales j k 1981 the employment effects of a regional capital subsidy reg studies 15 263 273 in this paper neoclassical models are developed to analyse the impact of a proportionate capital subsidy on the level of employment in a perfectly competitive and monopolistic industry in these models the level of output factor inputs product price and factor prices are determined simultaneously in both models the sign on the change in employment depends solely on the elasticity of demand for the product when the models are used to analyse the introduction of a regional subsidy there is a strong presumption that the predicted change in employment will be positive