a time varying model of rational learning abstract this paper presents an analysis of the stability of the rational expectations equilibrium for a version of the cobweb model under time varying learning it is shown that for appropriate values of a stability parameter the agents can learn how to form rational expectations forecasts using kalman filtering estimation techniques

institutional determinants of labor reallocation in transition the transition process differed in the countries of the former soviet union fsu and those of central and eastern europe cee in terms of reallocation of labor real wage employment and output adjustment we sift through the theoretical and empirical literature to find an explanation for these diverging adjustment trajectories and conclude that they can be explained by the fact that the cee countries adopted social policies that upheld wages at the bottom of the distribution forcing the old sector to restructure or collapse while the fsu countries allowed wages to free fall not forcing the hand of the old sector

why is china different from eastern europe perspectives from organization theory we draw from recent work in organization theory to explain the differences in reform strategies between china and eastern europe an experimentation approach was adopted in china whereas a big bang approach was more favored in eastern europe the explanation is based on differences in the organizational structure of central planning u form in eastern europe and m form in china the m form is more flexible because it makes local experiments possible contrary to the u form where this would give rise to major complications in coordination

stabilizing a previously centrally planned economy poland 1990 stabilization in poland guillermo a calvo and fabrizio coricelli we examine the dynamics of the january 1990 stabilization programme in poland focusing on the substantial and sudden collapse in industrial output and inflation persistence we discuss three non mutually exclusive explanations of these phenomena 1 excessive initial stocks of inventories 2 an exogenous fall in household demand and 3 tight credit we conjecture that tight credit was at centre stage it helped to magnify the fall in output and to coordinate such a fall across sectors we base such a conjecture on the existence of substantial credit segmentation and on the underdevelopment of private credit markets the latter may explain the substantial shrinkage of interenterprise credit compounding the initial contraction of bank credit they argue that credit tightness is reflected in firms offering wages below the programme s ceilings especially given that firms are controlled by workers councils this conjecture is further strengthened by the fact that wages increased and even went beyond the programme s ceilings as credit expanded during the year we argue that the wage hike may be the reason why credit expansion did not result in a major output recovery and inflation persisted during the year

effects of a hybrid price stock dependent demand on the optimal solutions of a deteriorating inventory system and trade credit policy on re manufactured product abstract this study contributes to formulate a deteriorating inventory model with a hybrid price stock dependent demand with credit for units in stock period in the presence of trade credit policy by using the discounted cash flow approach on re manufactured products in real life the demand function is not always constant or linear or nonlinear the demand rate of any items goes up and down in the real market due to the sum of two different types of demand this study observes that the demand is depending on price and stock of the product time value of money and trade credit policy the objective of this study is to find optimum cycle time optimum selling price and present profit of all future cash flows the model starts with mathematical formulating and thereafter studies the necessary and sufficient conditions for obtaining the unique optimal solution the theoretical solution procedure and case examples have studied for validation of this model moreover the sensitivity analysis is expressed out with respect to main parameters and managerial application is obtained this study uses the different demand functions of a simple pricing inventory system to find out the maximum profit on re manufactured products

on the dynamics of ethnic fractionalization does fractionalization change over short periods of time if so are there any substantial implications for economic performance to answer such questions we construct a new panel data set with measures of ethnic linguistic and religious fractionalization for 26 former communist countries covering the period from 1989 to 2002 our fractionalization measures show that transition economies became more ethnically homogeneous over such a short period of time although the same did not happen for linguistic and religious diversity in line with the most recent literature there seems to be no effect of exogenous diversity on macroeconomic performance that is on per capita gdp growth however we find that dynamic endogenous ethnic diversity is negatively related to growth although this is still not the case for linguistic and religious diversity these findings are robust to different specifications polarization measures and instrument sets as well as to a composite index of ethnic linguistic religious fractionalization

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

financial liberalization and reversals political and economic determinants what accounts for the dynamics of financial reforms this paper identifies the political regime as one of the main factors focusing on democratization and financial reform it puts forward novel evidence for a u shaped relation across countries and over time for different reform measures and a wide range of estimators partial democracy is a main obstacle to financial reforms and democratization when incomplete may lead to severe financial reform reversals nauro f campos and fabrizio coricelli

a note on optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items with price and stock sensitive demand under permissible delay in payment abstract soni 2013 int j prod econ 146 1 259 268 proposed optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items i e the product starts deteriorating after a period of no deterioration with price and stock sensitive demand with a stock dependent demand it is desirable to have non zero ending inventory due to potential profit resulting from the increased demand however soni 2013 int j prod econ 146 1 259 268 treated those ending inventory as fresh stocks to go through another period of non deterioration again additionally he assumed for simplicity that the replenishment cycle time t must be longer than the period of non deterioration t d i e t t d in reality one should consider all possible replenishment cycle time to maximize the profit in this note we complement the shortcomings of his model by i selling those ending inventory as salvages and ii considering all possible replenishment cycle time which may be shorter than the period of non deterioration with these modifications the repeatability of the replenishment cycle is ensured and the applicability of soni s model is strengthened the numerical examples indicate that the global optimal solution is indeed possible in the case of t t d

winners and losers in russia s economic transition the transition to a market economy has produced a substantial and rapid change in the wage structure in russia household surveys taken before and after the transition indicate that overall wage inequality nearly doubled from 1991 to 1994 and has reached a level higher than that in the united states returns to both measured skills education occupation and unmeasured skills within groups have increased considerably skill premiums across experience groups however have become more compressed and relative wages of older workers have declined in addition female wages have declined relative to male wages across all percentiles of the wage distribution copyright 1998 by american economic association

patterns of transition from plan to market patterns of transition from plan to market martha de melo cevdet denizer and alan gelb hungary s bankruptcy experience 1992 1993 cheryl w gray sabine schlorke and miklos szanyi why and when do governments initiate public enterprise reform jose edgardo campos and hadi salehi esfahani roads land use and deforestation a spatial model applied to belize kenneth m chomitz and david a gray industrial centralization in indonesia j vernon henderson and ari kuncoro guidlines on searching for a dalton improving tax reform an illustration with data from indonesia shlomo yitzhaki and jeffrey d lewis a new data set measuring income inequality klaus deininger and lyn squire

why do firms hide bribes and unofficial activity after communism abstract our survey of private manufacturing firms finds the size of hidden unofficial activity to be much larger in russia and ukraine than in poland slovakia and romania a comparison of cross country averages shows that managers in russia and ukraine face higher effective tax rates worse bureaucratic corruption greater incidence of mafia protection and have less faith in the court system our firm level regressions for the three eastern european countries find that bureaucratic corruption is significantly associated with hiding output

trade reorientation and recovery in transition economies how do we define transition and when can we say that transition to a market economy is complete here we suggest that one way of addressing this issue is to analyse current economic data and ask whether in ignorance of the past we can identify countries in central and eastern europe as being somehow different from comparable western market economies in this paper we focus on international trade and argue that several indicators such as the geographical structure of trade and the undervaluation of the exchange rate cannot distinguish the more advanced countries in central and eastern europe we also seek to explain how the reorientation of trade towards the west has been achieved and in particular assess whether improvements on design and quality are a prerequisite for export expansion copyright 1997 by oxford university press

circumstance and choice the role of initial conditions and policies in transition economies the experience of countries in transition from a planned to a market oriented economy has varied greatly the clearest differences are between the east asian countries china and vietnam and the countries of central and eastern europe cee and the former soviet union fsu china and vietnam have contained inflation and benefited from continued high growth in gdp since the beginning of their reforms while all cee and fsu countries have experienced large declines in output and most have experienced hyperinflation but even in cee and the fsu differences are marked some countries have lost over half of their gdp and growth performance in a number of countries is still poor while others are growing strongly some are still suffering from high inflation while others have successfully reduced annual inflation what determines this divergence of outcomes across transition countries no study so far has analyzed the interaction of all factors including initial conditions political change and reforms in a unified framework including cee the fsu china and vietnam the authors examine these broader interactions but focus first on the role of initial conditions such as initial macroeconomic distortions and differences in economic structure and institutions which have been emphasized less in the literature they find that initial conditions and economic policy jointly determine the large differences in economic performance among the 28 transition economies in the sample initial conditions dominate in explaining inflation but economic liberalization is the most important factor determining differences in growth but reform policy choices are not exogenous they depend in turn on both initial conditions and political reform with political reform the most important determinant of the speed and comprehensiveness of economic liberalization other findings provide additional insight into these relationships results show that liberalization has a negative contemporaneous impact but a stronger positive effect on performance over time the results also show that macroeconomic and structural distortions are negatively related to both policy and performance regarding the former unfavorable initial conditions discourage policy reforms but do not diminish their effectiveness once they are implemented the authors find some evidence that the influence of initial conditions diminishes over time this is in part because many of the initial conditions are themselves modified in the course of transition monetary overhangs are dissipated through inflation industrial overhang is eroded as plants shut down and market memory returns through experience

after state socialism the political origins of transitional recessions transitions from state socialism created a startling range of initial economic outcomes from renewed growth to deep economic crises debates about the causes have largely ignored the political dis

chaotic price behavior in a non linear cobweb model abstract the cobweb model for the evolution of prices is considered with backward bending supply curves and multi valued demand curves these deterministic non linear dynamical systems are shown to exhibit a broad spectrum of complex time behavior including stable periodic cycles of arbitrary order and chaos

productivity across industries and countries time series theory and evidence the authors examine whether convergence in aggregate productivity is also occurring at the industry level in fourteen oecd countries from 1970 to 1987 using both cross section and time series methods they find convergence in some sectors such as services however surprisingly the authors find that convergence does not hold for the manufacturing sector decomposing aggregate convergence into industry productivity gains and changing sectoral shares of output they find the service sector to be responsible for the bulk of cross country convergence to the united states the authors develop a new result on the asymptotic normality of panel unit root estimators to formally test within sector convergence copyright 1996 by mit press

disorganization and financial collapse since the fall of communism the former soviet union experienced a strong output decline and a dramatic increase in arrears and barter we develop a model which explains how these three phenomena are connected we introduce liquidity and credit constraints into a model of disorganization and show how these problems can alleviate the hold up problem we argue further that barter creates a hostage that allows to deal with disorganization when credit enforcement becomes prohibitively costly based on a firm survey in ukraine in 1997 we test how input shortages financial shortages and barter affect output growth of firms

does the welfare state affect individual attitudes toward immigrants evidence across countries abstract this paper analyzes welfare state determinants of individual attitudes toward immigrants within and across countries and their interaction with labor market drivers of preferences we consider two mechanisms through which a redistributive welfare system might adjust as a result of immigration under the first model immigration has a larger impact on high income individuals while under the second one low income individuals are those most affected individual attitudes are consistent with the first welfare state model and with labor market determinants in countries where immigration is unskilled income is negatively correlated with pro immigration preferences while skill is positively correlated with them these relationships are reversed in economies characterized by skilled migration

memory and market stability the case of the cobweb abstract when optimizing agents use their memories in a non linear cobweb model it will be asymptotically stable instability and chaos cannot occur this contrasts with the results when agents are forgetful however short run fluctuations are erratic and sensitive to initial conditions

reform without losers an interpretation of china s dual track approach to transition this paper develops a simple model to analyze the dual track approach to market liberalization as a mechanism for implementing efficient pareto improving economic reform that is reform achieving efficiency without creating losers the approach based on the continued enforcement of the existing plan while simultaneously liberalizing the market can be understood as a method for making implicit lump sum transfers to compensate potential losers of the reform the model highlights the critical roles of enforcement of the plan for achieving pareto improvement and full liberalization of the market track for achieving efficiency we examine how the dual track approach has worked in product and labor market liberalization in china

business cycle convergence in emu a first look at the second moment we analyse the dynamics of the standard deviation of demand and supply shocks as well as of the demand component of gdp across countries in the european monetary union emu this analysis allows us to evaluate the patterns of cyclical comovement in emu and compare them the cyclical performance of the new members of the eu and other oecd countries we make use of sigma convergence methods to identify synchronization patterns in business cycles the eurozone has converged to a stable lower level of dispersion across business cycles during the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s the new eu members have also experienced a strong pattern of convergence from 1998 to 2005 when a strong divergence trend appears an enlargement of the emu to 22 members would not significantly decrease its optimality as a currency area there is evidence for some europe specific characteristics as compared to global comovements in business cycles authors abstract

the finnish great depression from russia with love during the period 1991 93 finland experienced the deepest economic downturn in an industrialized country since the 1930s we argue that the collapse of the finnish trade with the soviet union in and of itself resulted in a large contraction of the economy and a costly restructuring of the manufacturing sector similar to the transition suffered by countries in eastern europe finland and these transition countries show almost identical u shaped dynamics of output in the early 1990s yet as a western democracy with fully developed capital markets and well functioning legal and political institutions finland faced none of the large institutional adjustments experienced in the formerly centrally planned economies thus by studying the finnish experience we can isolate the adjustment costs due solely to the collapse of trade from the other burdens of adjustment borne by transition economies we develop and calibrate a multisector dynamic general equilibrium model of the finnish economy and show that the collapse of soviet finnish trade can indeed go a long way in explaining finland s great depression

the process of socialist economic transformation in this paper we consider the reform process in those central and east european countries that have made the decision to move from a more or a less planned socialist system to a private market economy one in which private ownership predominates and most resources are allocated through markets because the reform process is both complex and intertwined with political factors especially the shift towards representative democracy and because there are substantial differences among the reforming countries no single detailed road map can guide the way to the new systems rather the paper sets out general considerations that provide a framework for reform and relates the choices to some initial conditions of the various reforming countries the framework applies also to the soviet union or in the event of its disintegration to its successor states as they move to market systems

how to reform a planned economy lessons from china the countries of eastern europe and the former soviet union have been flooded with advice from the west on how to liberalize their planned econo mies this advice is unfortunately offered in an empirical vacuum no one knows how these econo mies will react to the proposed liberalization meas ures there exists however a neglected source of information china offers a long time series of data over a decade s worth on the effects of reforms on a planned economy china s reforms were gradual but their cumulative effect has been large and they have been remarkably successful china s experiments provide some practical les sons on what kinds of reforms can work elsewhere the dominant school of thought among economists favours the big bang policy of reforming quickly and according to a comprehensive plan partial reforms in this view are useless they will be negated by the remnants of the planning system the proponents of big bang reform have been influential with poland czechoslovakia and rus sia announcing plans for a rapid transition to capi talism

irregular growth cycles this paper uses the familiar neoclassical theory of capital accumulation to show how complex behavior can emerge from quite simple economic structures indeed when sufficient nonlinearities and a production lag are present the interaction alone of the propensity to save and the productivity of capital can lead to growth cycles that exhibit a wandering sawtooth pattern not unlike those observed in reality these fluctuations need not converge to a cycle of any regular periodicity so they are not quasi periodic because such chaotic trajectories are unstable errors of estimation in parameters or initial conditions however tiny will accumulate rapidly into substantial errors of forecast moreover periods of erratic cycling can be interspersed with periods of more or less stable growth evidently the future behavior of a model solution cannot be anticipated from its patterns in the past a situation that seems to mimic experience apparent structural change and unpredictability is explained in the present theory by a deterministic single equation model random shocks play no role so the reader can visualize just what it is we are are talking about a noteworthy simulation is presented in figure 1 for gnp in a growth model that is described below in section iii a period of relatively rapid growth is followed by a period of cycles then remarkably for a considerable time about twenty periods apparently steady state growth occurs wandering cycles however emerge another brief period close to the steady state appears again toward the end of the series i establish conditions of savings and productivity that lead to results of this kind this analysis makes use of the mathematical theory of chaos which in the form exploited here originated in the work of edward lorenz a formal definition of chaos and sufficient conditions for chaotic trajectories were provided in a seminal paper by t y li and james yorke a survey of these related contributions is found in yorke and evelyn yorke this theory was introduced into economics by jess benhabib and myself 1981 where we showed that sequences of rational choices can be erratic when preferences depend on experience in a certain way by michael stutzer who provides a detailed analysis of trygve haavelmo s growth model by benhabib and myself 1980 in an application of the overlapping generations model and in my forthcoming study of the classical growth model

stabilization and growth in transition economies the early experience this paper analyzes the growth and stabilization experience in 26 transition economies in eastern europe the former soviet union and mongolia for the period 1989 1994 inflation rates have declined significantly in most countries following an inflation stabilization program growth resumes after stabilization occurs typically with a lag of about two years reducing inflation thus appears to be a precondition for growth an econometric analysis of the short run determinants of inflation and growth illustrates the key roles of fixed exchange rates improved fiscal balances and structural reforms in spurring growth and lowering inflation and confirms that inflation stabilization programs have been beneficial for growth even after controlling for structural reforms

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

credit markets credibility and economic transformation this paper focuses on the special role that capital markets play in the transformation of centrally planned economies into well functioning market economies we demonstrate that underdeveloped credit markets inhibit the effectiveness of price reform monetary and credit policies and trade liberalization we explore various ways to overcome the difficulties associated with the underdeveloped credit markets in this regard we examine the implications of cleaning the balance sheets of enterprises and banks from nonperforming loans as well as ways to enhance credibility the paper concludes with a brief discussion of sequencing of economic reform measures

shadow economies size causes and consequences using various methods the size of the shadow economy in 76 developing transition and oecd countries is estimated average size varies from 12 percent of gdp for oecd countries to 23 percent for transition countries and 39 percent for developing countries increasing taxation and social security contributions combined with rising state regulations are driving forces for the increase of the shadow economy especially in oecd countries according to some findings corruption has a positive impact on the size of the shadow economy and a growing shadow economy has a negative effect on official gdp growth

the determinants of asset stripping theory and evidence from the transition economies abstract during the transition from plan to market managers and politicians succeeded in maintaining control of large parts of the stock of socialist physical capital despite the obvious importance of this phenomenon there have been no efforts to model measure and investigate this process empirically this paper tries to fill this gap by putting forward theory and econometric evidence we argue that asset stripping is driven by the interplay between the firm s potential profitability and its ability to influence law enforcement our econometric results for about 950 firms in five transition economies provide support for this argument

reform in eastern europe how can the new governments of eastern europe succeed in moving from centrally planned to freemarket economies this incisive report identifies and describes the major policy choices to be made and discusses what will work and what will not reform in eastern europe provides a comprehensive easily read statement of reform policy that stands in the mainstream of modern western economics based on their experience with stabilization policies in other countries the authors show how eastern europe can reduce unemployment during the painful adjustment process create effective and socially acceptable mechanisms to subject enterprises to market discipline and replace barter trade under cmea with market based international trade

structural analysis of manufacturer pricing in the presence of a strategic retailer consumer goods manufacturers usually sell their brands to consumers through common independent retailers theoretical research on such channel structures has analyzed the optimal behavior of channel members under alternative assumptions of manufacturer retailer interaction vertical strategic interaction research in empirical industrial organization has focused on analyzing the competitive interactions between manufacturers horizontal strategic interaction decision support systems have made various assumptions about retailer pricing rules e g constant markup category profit maximization the appropriateness of such assumptions about strategic behavior for any specific market however is an empirical question this paper therefore empirically infers 1 the vertical strategic interaction vsi between manufacturers and retailer 2 the horizontal strategic interaction hsi between manufacturers simultaneously with the vsi and 3 the pricing rule used by a retailer the approach is particularly appealing because it can be used with widely available scanner data where there is no information on wholesale prices researchers usually have no access to wholesale prices even manufacturers who have access to their own wholesale prices usually have limited information on competitors wholesale prices in the absence of wholesale prices we derive formulae for wholesale prices using game theoretic solution techniques under the specific assumptions of vertical and horizontal strategic interaction and retailer pricing rules we then embed the formulae for wholesale prices into the estimation equations while our empirical illustration is using scanner data without wholesale prices the model itself can be applied when wholesale prices are available early research on the inference of hsi among manufacturers in setting wholesale prices using scanner data e g kadiyali et al 1996 1999 made the simplifying assumption that retailers charge a constant margin this assumption enabled them to infer wholesale prices and analyze competitive interactions between manufacturers in this paper we show that this model is econometrically identical to a model that measures retail price coordination across brands hence the inferred cooperation among manufacturers could be exaggerated by the coordinated pricing category management done by the retailer we find empirical support for this argument this highlights the need to properly model and infer vsi simultaneously to accurately estimate the hsi when using data at the retail level functional forms of demand have been evaluated in terms of the fit of the model to sales data but recent theoretical research on channels lee and staelin 1997 tyagi 1999 has shown that the functional form has serious implications for strategic behavior such as retail passthrough while the logit and linear model implies equilibrium passthrough of less than 100 lee and staelin call this vertical strategic substitute vss the multiplicative model implies optimal passthrough of greater than 100 vertical strategic complement vsc because passthrough rates on promotions have been found to be below or above 100 chevalier and curhan 1976 armstrong 1991 we empirically test the appropriateness of the logit vss and the multiplicative vsc functional form for the data we perform our analysis in the yogurt and peanut butter categories for the two biggest stores in a local market we found that the vss implications of the logit fit the data better than the multiplicative model we also find that for both categories the best fitting model is one in which 1 the retailer maximizes category profits 2 the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg and 3 manufacturer pricing hsi is tacitly collusive the fact that the retailer maximizes category profits is consistent with theoretical expectations the inference that the vsi is manufacturer stackelberg reflects the institutional reality of the timing of the game retailers set their retail prices after manufacturers set their wholesale prices note that in the stores and product categories that we analyze the two manufacturers own the dominant brands with combined market shares of about 82 in the yogurt market and 65 in the peanut butter market the result is also consistent with a balance of power argument in the literature the finding that manufacturer pricing is tacitly collusive is consistent with the argument that firms involved in long term competition in concentrated markets can achieve tacit collusion managers use decision support systems for promotion planning that routinely make assumptions about vsi hsi and the functional form the results from our analysis are of substantive import in judging the appropriateness of assumptions made in such decision support systems

optimal ordering and pricing policy for demand functions that are separable into price and inventory age abstract we formulate and analyze two models for determining the optimal pricing order quantity and replenishment period for items whose demand function is separable into components of price and inventory age the first model assumes a multiplicative demand function we provide conditions which are satisfied by most common price dependent demand functions to reduce the three variable profit maximization problem into a single variable problem which can be solved using an efficient line search method next we show that a genuine additive model cannot exist and instead suggest and analyze a pseudo additive model however this model is more limited than the multiplicative model in its ability to incorporate various combinations of price and inventory age effects and reduction of the maximization problem into a single variable problem is more complicated except in the case of a linear price effect which is further analyzed for both models we show that the optimal solution satisfies the first order condition for equilibrium under a monopoly with a modification that includes inventory holding costs we solve numerical examples to illustrate the solution procedures

fiscal constraints and the speed of transition abstract this paper develops a model of the process of reallocation of resources from a declining state sector to an expanding private sector the transition is shown to be costly in that it entails unemployment and a deterioration of the fiscal balance the interaction of fiscal constraints with the transition process is examined it is shown that fiscal constraints may induce the government to maintain the state sector slowing the speed of transition and could jeopardize the eventual outcome of the process of restructuring

federalism and the soft budget constraint the government s incentives to bail out inefficient projects are determined by the trade off between political benefits and economic costs the latter depending on the decentralization of government two effects of federalism are derived first fiscal competition among local governments under factor mobility increases the opportunity costs of bailout and thus serves as a commitment device the competition effect second monetary centralization together with fiscal decentralization induces a conflict of interests and thus may harden budget constraints and reduce inflation the checks and balance effect the authors analysis is used to interpret china s recent experience of transition to a market economy copyright 1998 by american economic association

an elasticity approach to the newsvendor with price sensitive demand we introduce a measure of elasticity of stochastic demand called the elasticity of the lost sales rate which offers a unifying perspective on the well known newsvendor with pricing problem this new concept provides a framework to characterize structural results for coordinated and uncoordinated pricing and inventory strategies concavity and submodularity of the profit function as well as sensitivity properties of the optimal inventory and price policies are characterized by monotonicity conditions or bounds on the elasticity of the lost sales rate these elasticity conditions are satisfied by most relevant demand models in the marketing and operations literature our results unify and complement previous work on price setting newsvendor models and provide a new tool for researchers modeling stochastic price sensitive demand in other contexts

returns to acquirers of privatizing financial services firms an international examination abstract while the literature reports improved performance for privatizing firms banking markets are different many privatizing financial services firms face unique problems such as an overhang of problem loans and weak credit cultures and legal systems we investigate the returns to successful bidders in privatization acquisitions of financial services firms examine short horizon performance and test whether such acquisitions result in a change in risk for the bidding firm our results show that the cumulative abnormal returns to shareholders of bidding firms are positive perhaps reflecting initial optimism that the foreign firm acquiring the privatizing firm would share in the success associated with privatization bidders also experience an increase in their total risk following the acquisition

non linearities and partial analysis abstract this paper argues that where there are non linearities the fundamental postulate of partial analysis the principle of the negligibility of indirect effects may be undermined any feedback effects however seemingly negligible may have profound implications

the optimal speed of transition a general equilibrium analysis we present a benchmark model for the optimal speed of transition from a state owned to a private market economy based on the consumption savings decision in a closed economy we abstract from frictions to focus on the macroeconomic conditions for accumulation of private capital and closure or restructuring of state owned enterprises it is shown that hard budget constraints compensate for too slow speed of enterprise closure but that an excess speed of closure may slow down transition because of output contraction effects this will especially be the case if such a deviation occurs at early stages of transition

financial system size in transition economies the effect of legal origin gorton and winton 1998 link the size of the banking system in transition economies to financial stability we provide empirical evidence consistent with their notion that the size of the financial system will be smaller in these countries this effect holds even after controlling for the effect of rule of law and or legal origin and other relevant variables transition economy status thus adds additional explanatory power to traditional law and finance explanations of financial development classification of transition economies by legal origin reveals that russian legal origin has a strong negative effect on financial development regression analysis shows claims on the private sector gross domestic product gdp to be 46 to 60 percentage points lower in the countries of the former soviet union and 23 to 39 percentage points lower in non soviet transition economies compared to countries of english legal origin there is a positive relation between claims on the private sector and the rule of law for a broad cross section of countries

the soviet economic decline soviet growth from 1960 to 1989 was the worst in the world after we control for investment and human capital the relative performance worsens over time there is some evidence that the burden of defense spending modestly contributed to the soviet debacle the declining soviet growth rate from 1950 to 1987 can be accounted for by a declining marginal product of capital with a constant rate of growth of total factor productivity the soviet reliance on extensive growth rising capital to output ratios was no greater than that of market economies such as japan and the republic of korea but a low elasticity of substitution between capital and labor implied especially acute diminishing returns to capital compared with the case in market economies copyright 1995 by oxford university press

growth in transition what we know what we don t and what we should abstract this essay surveys macroeconomic issues that marked the transition from planned to market economy in central and eastern european and former soviet union countries we first establish stylized facts of the transition so far we then critically survey the theoretical literature on transition discussing explanations for the initial output fall and mediumterm issues such as optimal speed of transition disorganization institutions and sectoral reallocation as source of output dynamics we review the empirical literature to assess how well it translates the theoretical models and explains the stylized facts we conclude with suggestions for future research

development aid and growth in transition countries empirical studies normally analyze diverse and heterogeneous groups of countries producing very mixed evidence on the effectiveness of development aid in promoting growth we focus on whether aid promotes economic growth in transitional economies we find that aid on average has had a positive impact on growth for this specific group of countries this result is robust to samples estimators and the use of alternate instruments to address endogeneity aid effectiveness is not conditional on good policy and there is little evidence of non linear growth effects arising from aid

optimal policy for an inventory system with backlogging and all units discounts application to the composite lot size model this paper examines an inventory model with full backlogging and all units quantity discounts the practical scenario of a salesperson offering compensation to a client so as not to lose the sale is considered the cost of a backorder thus includes both a fixed cost and a further cost which is proportional to the length of time the said backorder exists a first algorithm is developed to determine the optimal policy while some extensions to this algorithm are obtained that include additional conditions on the model in particular the well known composite lot size model developed by tersine is solved incorporating a new stockout cost and a new all units discount numerical examples are provided to illustrate the application of the algorithms

optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items with price and stock sensitive demand under permissible delay in payment abstract this study is motivated by the paper of chang et al international journal of production economics 123 2010 62 68 we extend their inventory model from two aspects 1 the demand rate as multivariate function of price and level of inventory 2 delay in payment is permissible under these assumptions we first formulated a mathematical model and then some useful theoretical results have been derived to characterize the optimal solutions for non zero and zero ending inventory system numerical examples are presented to illustrate the theoretical results the sensitivity analysis of a suitable example is performed and some managerial insights are proposed our analysis revels that it is more beneficial to keep higher inventory level hoping to stimulate more demand even if it results in non zero ending inventory

structural adjustment and international trade in eastern europe the case of poland poland andrew berg and jeffrey sachs the polish economic programme is important not only in its own right hut as a key example of the benefits and possible costs of a rapid movement to convertibility this paper proposes an analytical framework and new estimates of the costs and benefits the framework shows that convertibility revolves around the relationship of two nominal variables the money supply and the nominal exchange rate return to convertibility is achieved not mainly through a real depreciation but through a nominal depreciation which helps to bring the overall price level back into line with nominal aggregate demand and particularly with the money supply the new estimates show that the costs a drop in living standards and output are less than commonly believed given the extreme inflationary conditions in 1989 and the shock following the disintegration of cmea trade the loss of output was not caused in any important way by the rapid move to free trade

redistribution in a decentralized economy growth and inflation in china under reform despite expanding at an annual rate of nearly 9 percent china s economy has exhibited a marked cyclical pattern periods of rapid growth accompanied by accelerating inflation are followed by contractions during which both growth and inflation fall a widening gap also emerged between the output contribution of the state sector and its share of investment and employment in this paper we offer a consistent explanation for this behavior that reflects several key institutional features of china s economic reform i economic decentralization ii the government s commitment to the state sector and iii the credit plan and credit control

the classical soviet type economy nature of the system and implications for reform i t is increasingly apparent that the traditional soviet type command economy is a catastrophic failure despite the touted statistical gains of real socialism during the last 40 years we now understand that these gains were largely a statistical illusion fostered by mismeasurement faulty methodology systemic incentives for exaggeration and ideologically and politically motivated distortion winiecki 1988 ericson 1990 moreover the economic system of real socialism in each of these states has imposed large negative social political ecological and personal externalities significant economic reform is now generally accepted as an imperative i am however convinced that successful economic reform of the soviet type economy will require a more comprehensive attack than hitherto attempted to understand the immense difficulties facing radical reform in the soviet union and eastern europe one needs to perceive the soviet type economy as a coherent whole a true system with its own inherent logic necessary components and natural interaction of those components it like any other economic system is as much an organism as a mechanism tending to counteract forces impinging frorn outside and to equilibrate the natural forces and tendencies that arise within it the logic and natural equilibrium of a command economy differ qualitatively and significantly from that of a largely private enterprise market economy hence reforms of a soviet type economy that are consistent with the basic nature of the system survive without altering the qualitative characteristics of

equilibrium exchange rates in transition economies taking stock of the issues in this paper we present an overview of a number of issues relating to the equilibrium exchange rates of transition economies of the former soviet bloc in particular we present a critical overview of the various methods available for calculating equilibrium exchange rates and discuss how useful they are likely to be for the transition economies amongst our findings is the result that the trend appreciation usually observed for the exchange rates of these economies is affected by factors other than the usual balassa samuelson effect such as the behaviour of the real exchange rate of the open sector and regulated prices we then consider three main sources of uncertainty relating to the implementation of an equilibrium exchange rate model namely differences in the theoretical underpinnings differences in the econometric estimation techniques and differences relating to the time series and cross sectional dimensions of the data the ensuing three dimensional space of real misalignments is probably a useful tool in determining the direction of a possible misalignment rather than its precise size copyright blackwell publishers ltd 2006

the composition of public expenditure and economic growth abstract noting that the literature has focused on the link between the level of public expenditure and growth we derive conditions under which a change in the composition of expenditure leads to a higher steady state growth rate of the economy the conditions depend not just on the physical productivity of the different components of public expenditure but also on the initial shares using data from 43 developing countries over 20 years we show that an increase in the share of current expenditure has positive and statistically significant growth effects by contrast the relationship between the capital component of public expenditure and per capita growth is negative thus seemingly productive expenditures when used in excess could become unproductive these results imply that developing country governments have been misallocating public expenditures in favor of capital expenditures at the expense of current expenditures

productivity of public spending sectoral allocation choices and economic growth the authors examine the composition of public spending and its implications for economic growth they use a translog production function by treating gross domestic product as the output and labor private capital and several types of public sector capital stocks as the inputs using time series data for 25 countries for 1965 84 the production functions of all but four countries exhibited increasing returns to scale the highest output elasticity was for human resource development capital followed by private capital and labor output elasticity of infrastructure capital was found to be relatively small with the exception of latin american countries where it exhibited relatively high values military capital had negative output elasticity in slightly more than half of the cases considered the results suggest that reshaping public spending priorities in favor of human resource development and away from military spending would positively stimulate world economic renewal

value of disruption information in an eoq environment abstract we consider an infinite horizon continuous review inventory model with deterministic stationary demand where supply is subject to disruption the supply process alternates between two states randomly one in which it functions normally on period and one in which it is disrupted off period in this setting we seek the value of disruption information which enables the buyer to place disruption orders at the beginning of off periods utilizing renewal theory we derive the total expected cost and characterize the optimal regular order up to level together with the order up to level for disruption orders we also conduct an extensive numerical analysis and compare the results with the model with no opportunity of disruption orders we observe that if the shortage cost is relatively high and the disruption risk is significant in terms of duration and or frequency placing a disruption order reduces the expected total cost significantly

reforms and confidence abstract we examine the choice of economic reforms when policymakers have present biased preferences and can choose to discard information maintain confidence to mitigate distortions from excess discounting the decisions of policymakers and firms are shown to be interdependent confident policymakers carry out welfare improving reforms more often which increases the probability that firms will invest in restructuring while policymakers in different countries can be equally irrational the consequences of bounded rationality are less severe in economies with beneficial initial conditions we also examine how present biased preferences influence the choice between big bang versus gradualist reform strategies our findings help explain differences in economic reform success in various countries

the ussr before the fall how poor and why this essay appraises the scholarly findings on the level of consumption and output in the ussr compared with that in the west such aggregative calculations are onerous for any country and not very surprisingly have encountered particular difficulty where such a strange society as soviet communism has been in question predictably the results have been controversial but properly viewed they still provide illuminating perspective on the extraordinary events that have lately transpired in the ussr