intangible capital market share and corporate strategy this paper theoretically and empirically identifies the determinants of firm profitability and market share for twelve broadly defined us manufacturing industry groups the effects of advertising research and development and diversification on profitability and market share are econometrically tested for each industry group and corporate strategy implications of the results are considered one major result of the analysis is that research and development r d tends to be much more effective as a means of enhancing firm profitability than advertising and research and development spending decisions are more closely related to the profitability of r d than advertising decisions are related to the profitability of advertising

middlemen as guarantors of quality abstract we analyze an experience good model with producer moral hazard which is based on shapiro quarterly journal of economics 1983 98 659 679 we develop conditions under which a good will be sold through a middleman instead of being sold directly by the producer when selling costs may even be increased by the presence of middlemen middlemen help to alleviate the producer moral hazard problem by dropping a producer s good and lowering her future sales if the good is not of its claimed quality the middleman engages in this policing activity in order to maintain his own reputation as a seller of high quality goods

capacity allocation ordering and pricing decisions in a supply chain with demand and supply uncertainties abstract this paper studies coordinated decisions in a decentralized supply chain that consists of one original equipment manufacturer oem one manufacturer and one distributor and possesses uncertainties at both demand and supply sides these uncertainties emerge respectively from random demand the distributor faces and randomness of capacity with which the oem processes the manufacturer s outsourced quantity sharing supply and demand uncertainty information along the supply chain enables us to develop three models with different coordination efforts the oem and manufacturer coordination the manufacturer and distributor coordination and the oem manufacturer and distributor coordination and quantify the coordinated decisions in these three models our analysis of these coordination models suggests that coordinating with the oem improves the manufacturer s probability of meeting downstream demand and his expected profit yet coordinating with the manufacturer is not necessarily beneficial to the oem when downstream coordination is lacking

endogenous quality differentiation in congested markets firms selling a product with congestion externalities to a heterogeneous population of customers have an incentive to offer differentiated levels of quality in a price competitive market differentiation arises endogenously through the prices chosen by firms in equilibrium firms offer a range of prices which induce an efficiency improving range of quality levels and allow customers to self select their preferred price quality combinations additional results suggest that with many firms in the market the choice of prices dominates the choice of service capacities in determining congestion levels copyright 1991 by blackwell publishing ltd

price advertising and the deterioration of product quality arguments in favour of self enforced bans on advertising by professionals often rely on the stylized fact that advertising can communicate information about price but not about quality this being the case it is argued that allowing professionals to advertise runs the risk that firms will compete vigorously over price at the expense of the quality of their product this paper shows that even if price can communicate no information directly about quality it can do so indirectly because price will be a signal of quality because of this allowing advertising is shown to improve consumer welfare

bonding and nonbonding signals of product quality this article examines the essential role of bonding in most signaling models where quality is subject to moral hazard problems an advertising model in which advertising is a durable asset whose value is reduced by cheating illustrates how the bonding capacity of a signal determines its cost characteristics of the market that govern how well a signal is targeted to relevant consumers and how information about cheating is spread are critical to determining bonding capacity and hence to the choice among potential signals this bonding perspective explains the literature s widely divergent predictions about the conditions necessary for quality signals copyright 1990 by the university of chicago

the labor illusion how operational transparency increases perceived value aubiquitous feature of even the fastest self service technology transactions is the wait conventional wisdom and operations theory suggest that the longer people wait the less satisfied they become we demonstrate that because of what we term the labor illusion when websites engage in operational transparency by signaling that they are exerting effort people can actually prefer websites with longer waits to those that return instantaneous results even when those results are identical in five experiments that simulate service experiences in the domains of online travel and online dating we demonstrate the impact of the labor illusion on service value perceptions demonstrate that perceptions of service provider effort induce feelings of reciprocity that together mediate the link between operational transparency and increased valuation and explore boundary conditions and alternative explanations this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors this paper was accepted by pradeep chintagunta and preyas desai special issue editors

on being honest and behaving honestly abstract this paper deals with markets with asymmetric information where transactions are repeated infinitely it adds to the standard analysis the requirement that the equilibrium be renegotiation proof rp we show that when there are just one buyer and one seller there is no price that supports an rp equilibrium when there are many buyers and sellers the minimum of the price that supports a no cheating rp equilibrium approaches infinity as the probability that an entering firm will find buyers approaches 1 nonetheless the market is saved if the probability that a particular seller is honest is strictly positive the core of honest sellers imposes honest behavior on everybody else

we will be right with you managing customer expectations with vague promises and cheap talk delay announcements informing customers about anticipated service delays are prevalent in service oriented systems how delay announcements can influence customers in service systems is a complex problem that depends on both the dynamics of the underlying queueing system and on the customers strategic behavior we examine this problem of information communication by considering a model in which both the firm and the customers act strategically the firm in choosing its delay announcement while anticipating customer response and the customers in interpreting these announcements and in making the decision about when to join the system and when to balk we characterize the equilibrium language that emerges between the service provider and her customers the analysis of the emerging equilibria provides new and interesting insights into customer firm information sharing we show that even though the information provided to customers is nonverifiable it improves the profits of the firm and the expected utility of the customers the robustness of the results is illustrated via various extensions of the model in particular studying models with incomplete information on the system parameters allows us also to highlight the role of information provision in managing customer expectations regarding the congestion in the system further the information could be as simple as high congestion low congestion announcements or it could be as detailed as the true state of the system we also show that firms may choose to shade some of the truth by using intentional vagueness to lure customers

on sales effort and pricing decisions under alternative risk criteria abstract in the literature different risk criteria are proposed for risk averse decision making but it is often unclear which risk criteria should be used and what their differences may be this study investigates this problem when a risk averse make to order firm decides its pricing and sales effort two factors affecting demand we consider alternative risk criteria commonly used in the literature namely expected utility theory eut mean variance mv mean semideviation ms value at risk var conditional value at risk cvar and loss aversion la we find that all of these criteria lead to similar qualitative behaviors regarding how risk loss averse decisions deviate from risk neutral ones a particularly interesting result is that the form of demand randomness i e additive or multiplicative can completely reverse the effect of risk loss aversion in certain cases we also find that the risk aversion models i e eut mv ms var and cvar are essentially equivalent in inducing the same set of optimal solutions under adverse market states however loss aversion is a mild version of risk aversion in that the la model can only lead to a subset of the solutions generated by other models these results may not be valid for other applications such as the newsvendor pricing problem so we can conclude that the relationship between alternative risk criteria is case sensitive and should be evaluated more carefully

the dissipation of profits by brand name investment and entry when price guarantees quality two previous models of the dissipation of profits generated by the use of quality guaranteeing prices assumed that pro fits were dissipated through investment in brand name capital and ent ry the model of this paper allows both possibilities it is shown th at both types of dissipation will in general occur and that brand n ame investment will dissipate a greater share of profits as the elast icity of consumer response to brand name investment grows larger copyright 1987 by university of chicago press

location costs product quality and implicit franchise contracts abstract in the literature on international trade only little attention has been given to informational asymmetries between firms and consumers with respect to product quality the few economic models that analyze the question of how asymmetric information about product quality might affect trade flows treat product quality as exogeneous in contrast our model takes product quality as an endogeneous variable i e firms can choose the quality they wish to produce in this case location costs can signal product quality under certain conditions and thereby affect international trade flows more specifically intra industry trade in vertically differentiated experience goods can be determined by information asymmetries about product quality

capacity and lead time management when demand for service is seasonal and lead time sensitive in today s competitive business environment quick service with minimal waiting time is an important factor for customers when choosing a service many service organizations guarantee a uniform lead time to all customers in order to gain competitive advantages in the market in selecting a lead time to quote the firm has to take into consideration not only how customers will react to the delivery time guarantee but also whether it has adequate capacity to fulfill the commitment a short lead time can bring both benefits and costs it can increase customer demand but might require a higher capacity level we present a mathematical model and a solution method for determining the optimal quoted lead time and capacity level for a profit maximizing firm with time varying and lead time sensitive demand the firm incurs convex capacity costs and pays lateness penalties whenever the actual lead time exceeds the quoted lead time a few studies have been conducted on the relationship between uniform lead time capacity demand and overall profitability however none of them takes the time variation of demand into account our work differs from previous research in that we explicitly model such a demand pattern

competition and outsourcing with scale economies scale economies are commonplace in operations yet because of analytical challenges relatively little is known about how firms should compete in their presence this paper presents a model of competition between two firms that face scale economies i e each firm s cost per unit of demand is decreasing in demand a general framework is used which incorporates competition between two service providers with price and time sensitive demand a queuing game and competition between two retailers with fixed ordering costs and pricesensitive consumers an economic order quantity game reasonably general conditions are provided under which there exists at most one equilibrium with both firms participating in the market we demonstrate in the context of the queuing game that the lower cost firm in equilibrium may have a higher market share and a higher price an enviable situation we also allow each firm to outsource their production process to a supplier even if the supplier s technology is no better than the firms technology and the supplier is required to establish dedicated capacity so the supplier s scale can be no greater than either firm s scale we show that the firms strictly prefer to outsource we conclude that scale economies provide a strong motivation for outsourcing that has not previously been identified in the literature

setting customer expectation in service delivery an integrated marketing operations perspective service firms have increasingly been competing for market share on the basis of delivery time many firms now choose to set customer expectation by announcing their maximal delivery time customers will be satisfied if their perceived delivery times are shorter than their expectations this gap model of service quality is used in this paper to study how a firm might choose a delivery time commitment to influence its customer expectation and delivery quality in order to maximize its market share a market share model is developed to capture 1 the impact of delivery time commitment and delivery quality on the firm s market share and 2 the impact of the firm s market share and process variability on delivery quality when there is a congestion effect we show that the choice of the delivery time commitment requires a proper balance between the level of service capacity and customer sensitivities to delivery time expectation and delivery quality we prove the existence of nash equilibria in a duopolistic competition and show that this delivery time commitment game is analogous to a prisoners dilemma

improving supplier s situation through supplier cooperation the case of xintang jeans town abstract inferior labor conditions in developing countries have raised western customers awareness of sweatshops developing countries suppliers are facing growing pressure from western clients on ethical issues associated with the production of low cost goods at the expense of worker health safety and welfare inferior working conditions not only adversely affect worker well being but also negatively impact performance and productivity which is detrimental to the entire supply chain in the long run in this paper we consider the case of xintang international jeans and textile city the largest manufacturing base of jeans in china which sought to shed its sweatshop image working closely with the administration of this manufacturing base we applied operations research techniques to analyze local suppliers possible operations strategies based on considerations of price and delivery guarantees two critical dimensions of competition in the apparel and textile industry our analysis highlighted the fact that local suppliers cooperation may be an effective way for improving labor conditions our work has implications for societal improvement in developing countries through better labor conditions and increased cooperation while maintaining a healthy level of competition

what is the role of openness for china s aggregate industrial so2 emission a structural analysis based on the divisia decomposition method abstract having observed the weaknesses in previous structural analyses on the role of environmental kuznets curve ekc the author proposes a detailed analysis using a rich data set of provincial level production and so2 emission intensity of 13 industrial sectors the latter represent more than 98 of the total industrial production in each chinese province for the period 1991 2001 through the use of the log mean divisia index decomposition method the variations in province level industrial so2 emissions with regard to the 1990 baseline level are decomposed into the contribution from three components scale composition and technical effects the following analysis seeks to explain how trade openness affects aggregate industrial so2 emission through its impact on the structural determinants for these three components of region specific environmental variations

discrete choice and variable returns to scale in previous studies of the probabilistic theory of qualitative choice e g marschak 1960 and mcfadden 1974 it has been assumed that an individual chooses among various alternatives with their utility levels independent of the number of individuals who choose each alternative there are however many examples in which the utility of a choice depends on the number of individuals who make the same choice for instance the utility of a given spatial choice may depend upon the number of others who choose neighboring locations neighborhood utility may decrease crowding or it may increase agglomerative economies with population size a second example is the automobile traveler s choice of routes the benefit of one route choice over another due to congestion depends on the number of drivers who choose the same route both of the examples suggested above deal with spatial choices of a particular kind but there are even examples from the more traditional macroeconomic theory one such example is of a product produced under variable returns to scale by a number of different sellers the price that each seller charges will depend upon the number of his customers if a buyer must choose to purchase from only one seller the price paid and thus utility will depend upon the total number of buyers choosing the same seller in all of the examples cited a reasonable model of choice is one that postulates uncertainty about the actual utility of each alternative the point of view is that a chooser s notional utility about each choice is a random variable in this case it is not certain which alternative will be chosen but the chosen alternative is the one with the greatest perceived utility it follows therefore that the probability that a given alternative is chosen is the probability that the utility perceived to be associated with it is larger than the utility perceived to be associated with any other alternative

institutions and economic growth an historical introduction abstract in this essay the interdependence of political and economic institutions is examined against premises in neoclassical theories of economies which maintain that population and savings are the principal determinants of economic growth that institutions matter in the development of economies is the difference in assumptions i examine i look at the institutional frameworks that preceded adoption of the united states constitution and the northwest ordinance in early america i then trace the precedents of these american institutions to the evolution of common law in england where interests unconcerned with the crown coalesced to form competing political units i then contrast england s institutional development with the comparatively centralized enforcement mechanisms of spain to examine the hypothesis that institutional differences produce economic consequences

equilibrium analysis of disaggregate facility choice systems subject to congestion elastic demand this paper considers the impact of congestion on the spatial distribution of customer utilization of service facilities in a stochastic dynamic environment previous research has assumed that the rate of demand for service is independent of the attributes of the facilities we consider the more general case in which facility utilization is determined both by individual facility choice based on the stochastic disaggregate choice mechanism and by the rate of demand for service we develop generalized results for proving that equilibria exist and describe sufficient conditions for the uniqueness and global stability of these equilibria these conditions depend upon the elasticity of demand with respect to the level of congestion at the facilities and on whether customers are congestion averse or are congestion loving finally we examine special cases when these conditions are satisfied

user delay costs and internal pricing for a service facility this paper studies optimal pricing and capacity decisions for a service facility in an environment where users delay cost is important the model assumes a general nonlinear delay cost structure and incorporates the tradeoff between the delay cost and capacity cost we find necessary and sufficient conditions for the optimality of a pricing rule that charges out service resources at their marginal capacity cost we examine the issue of budgetary balance and find that net value maximization entails a budget deficit for the service facility that is the service facility should be evaluated as a deficit center the results provide guidelines under which the optimal magnitude of the deficit can be determined

pricing and capacity decisions for a service facility stability and multiple local optima we consider a model for optimal pricing and capacity for a service facility the problem is formulated as one of optimal design of a single server queueing system in which the design variables are the service rate and the arrival rate equivalently the price charged for admission the model is a variant of one introduced by dewan and mendelson we allow for an upper bound on the arrival rate and consider slightly more general user value functions we show that an optimal solution may not lie in the interior of the feasible region and thus may not be characterized by the first order differential conditions moreover the first order conditions typically have several solutions some of which may be relative minima and produce a negative value of the objective function customer value minus the sum of expected delay cost and capacity cost per unit time we also examine the stability of the equilibrium arrival rate and the convergence of a dynamic adaptive algorithm for finding the optimal service rate in the context of a model in which the distribution of customers value of service is uniform we show that the equilibrium arrival rate is stable if and only if the service rate is above a threshold value which depends on the price charged for admission and the parameters of the uniform distribution of value of service the dynamic adaptive algorithm always converges to a relative maximum of the objective function if the service rate can be adjusted every time the arrival rate changes otherwise the algorithm will start to diverge if and when the service rate ever falls below the threshold value associated with stability of the equilibrium arrival rate

the role of inventory in delivery time competition the paper operationalizes the notion of shortage cost by considering the behavior of customers and competing firms and examines the role of inventory in response time competition we start with a single firm production control model in which customers are characterized by their preferences of price quality and delivery time the optimal production inventory policy and the optimal choice between make to order and make to stock operations are determined in simple newsboy like formulas the basic model is then extended to an n firm market game in which firms compete for orders from the aspect of early delivery one could think of this setting as an oligopoly racing market the analysis shows that competition can breed a demand for produce to stock just as other economic phenomena such as economies of scale uncertainty or seasonality can induce make to stock and that delivery time competition increases the buyer s welfare while decreasing the producer s welfare

pricing production scheduling and delivery time competition this paper studies competition between firms that produce goods or services for customers sensitive to delay time firms compete by setting prices and production rates for each type of customer and by choosing scheduling policies the existence of a competitive equilibrium is proved the competitive equilibrium is well defined whether or not a firm can differentiate between customers based upon physical characteristics because each customer has incentive to truthfully reveal its delay cost further insights are derived in two special cases a unique equilibrium exists for each of the cases in the first case firms are differentiated by cost mean processing time and processing time variability but customers are homogeneous the conclusions include that a faster lower variability and lower cost firm always has a larger market share higher capacity utilization and higher profits however this firm may have higher prices and faster delivery time or lower prices and longer delivery time in the second

total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 1978 this article total factor productivity growth technological progress and technical efficiency change dimensions of productivity change in yugoslavia 1965 78 was reprinted with permission from the december 1982 issue of the economic journal this article proposes a methodology that decomposes total factor productivity change into two distinct elements technological progress and changes in technical efficiency technological progress is defined as the change in the best practice production frontier all other productivity change is attributed to technical efficiency change the article provides a theoretical framework for decomposing total factor productivity growth as well as a specification and estimation of the deterministic frontier production function it employs a programming technique to estimate a flexible functional form of the production frontier the paper then applies this technique to empirical data from yugoslavia of the period from 1965 to 1978 it concludes that for yugoslavia improvements to technical efficiency comprise the dominant contribution to total factor productivity change this agrees with accumulating evidence that in many developing economies productivity gain due to technological mastery of imported technology is substantial

which utilization and service level lead to the maximum eva abstract in this paper a model for evaluating the influence of utilization wip fgi service level and production lead time on eva economic value added is developed in order to link the available logistical key figures with a market perspective and discuss their influence on company value the question answered in this paper is what is the optimal utilization and service level of a production system in order to achieve the maximum possible eva for a company a single product single machine make to order production system with investment dependent machine capacity is modeled the model combines a market share concept based on delivery production lead time and service level with concepts describing the logistical relationships between wip utilization production lead time and service level in addition to the explanatory use of the model it can provide support for strategic decisions concerning investing or divesting machinery the main application of this model is in describing the link between capacity investment and company value comprehensively based on data available from cost accounting in real companies furthermore this paper shows that high flexibility of personnel and machine capacity increases the maximum possible eva of production systems even if this flexibility is linked to additional costs

optimal service speeds in a competitive environment this is a study of the economic behavior of vendors of service in competition a simple model with two competing exponential servers and poisson arrivals is considered each server is free to choose his own service rate at a cost per time unit that is strictly convex and increasing there is a fixed reward to a server for each customer that he serves the model is designed to study one specific aspect of competition namely competition in speed of service as a means for capturing a larger market share in order to maximize long run expected profit per time unit a two person strategic game is formulated and its solutions are characterized depending on the revenue per customer served and on the cost of maintaining service rates the following three situations may arise i a unique symmetric strategic nash equilibrium in which expected waiting time is infinite ii a unique symmetric strategic equilibrium in which expected waiting time is finite and iii several nonsymmetric strategic equilibria with infinite expected waiting time an explicit expression for the market share of each server as a function of the service rates of the two servers is also given

equilibrium pricing and lead time decisions in a competitive industry pricing and lead time are two crucial decisions to a success in today s competitive markets this paper examines the equilibrium pricing and lead time decisions in a duopoly industry consisting of two large and several smaller firms with competition we solve the sufficient karush kuhn tucker kkt optimality conditions for the nash equilibrium solution we characterize the existence and uniqueness of the nash equilibrium solution of pricing and lead time decisions for both homogenous and heterogeneous firms our case study provides important managerial insights about firms behavior under price and lead time competition in a semiconductor manufacturing industry

sources of growth a reconsideration and general equilibrium application to indonesia abstract a computable general equilibrium cge model of indonesia is developed in which total factor productivity growth in manufacturing is endogenously determined productivity growth is conceptualized as human and social capital accumulation mediated by learning and institutional development stimulated by the trade regime these factors are modeled as externalities determined by export growth and capital equipment imports the model is used to analyze the gains deriving from the externalities and subsidies that amplify their effects leading indonesia to acquire korea like institutions sooner the growth and fiscal implications of such counterfactual simulations are analyzed in a realistic general equilibrium framework with a fully articulated public sector

price and lead time decisions in dual channel supply chains abstract manufacturers today are increasingly adopting a dual channel to sell their products i e the traditional retail channel and an online direct channel empirical studies have shown that service quality we focus on the delivery lead time of the direct channel even goes beyond product price as one of the major factors influencing consumer acceptance of the direct channel delivery lead time has significant effects on demand profit and pricing strategy however there is scant literature addressing the decision on the promised delivery lead time of a direct channel and its impact on the manufacturer s and retailer s pricing decisions to fill this gap we examine the optimal decisions of delivery lead time and prices in a centralized and a decentralized dual channel supply chain using the two stage optimization technique and stackelberg game and analyze the impacts of delivery lead time and customer acceptance of a direct channel on the manufacturer s and retailer s pricing behaviours we analytically show that delivery lead time strongly influences the manufacturer s and the retailer s pricing strategies and profits our numerical studies reveal that the difference between the demand transfer ratios in the two channels with respect to delivery lead time and direct sale price customer acceptance of the direct channel and product type have great effects on the lead time and pricing decisions

promised delivery time and capacity games in time based competition we investigate firms competitive behaviors in industries where customers are sensitive to both promised delivery time pdt and quality of service qos measured by the on time delivery rate to study the competition in pdt at the marketing level we construct an oligopoly game with an external qos requirement we show that there exists a unique nash equilibrium and the equilibrium qos exhibits a switching surface structure with respect to capacities to study the competition in capacity at the strategic level we construct a two stage game in which the firms compete in terms of their capacities in stage 1 and in terms of pdt in stage 2 we show the existence of two different types of pure strategy equilibria and characterize them this study provides the following insights an index of time based competitive advantage itca and the first mover advantage determine the positions of the firms in time based competition either the well known prisoner s dilemma or off equilibrium behaviors due to different preferences for equilibria when multiple equilibria exist may lead the firms to overinvest in capacity but no one may gain a competitive advantage a uniform improvement in internal efficiency i e a uniform capacity cost reduction may harm everyone quality differentiation i e going beyond the qos benchmark plays a dual role in time based competition either helping a firm with a larger itca to compete more effectively or helping a firm possibly with a smaller itca to preempt competitors and protect its market advantage this paper was accepted by paul h zipkin operations and supply chain management

technical note an optimal policy for joint dynamic price and lead time quotation for a dynamic joint price and lead time quotation problem with a fairly general demand function we show that the policy consisting of a threshold and a reward maximizing lead time is optimal this policy offers some interesting managerial insights under this policy finding the exact optimal quotation can be accomplished by single variable policy iterations of unimodal value functions

reinforcement learning for joint pricing lead time and scheduling decisions in make to order systems the paper investigates a problem faced by a make to order mto firm that has the ability to reject or accept orders and set prices and lead times to influence demands inventory holding costs for early completed orders tardiness costs for late delivery orders order rejection costs manufacturing variable costs and fixed costs are considered in order to maximize the expected profits in an infinite planning horizon with stochastic demands the firm needs to make decisions from the following aspects which orders to accept or reject the trade off between price and lead time and the potential for increased demand against capacity constraints we model the problem as a semi markov decision problem smdp and develop a reinforcement learning rl based q learning algorithm qla for the problem in addition we build a discrete event simulation model to validate the performance of the qla and compare the experimental results with two benchmark policies the first come first serve fcfs policy and a threshold heuristic policy it is shown that the qla outperforms the existing policies

reputation and uncertainty toward an explanation of quality problems in competitive ldc markets abstract this paper attempts to explain the puzzle of low and variable product qualities in seemingly competitive ldc markets it shows that the cost of overcoming quality moral hazard through seller reputation rises with the rate of interest the rate of seller turnover the amplitude of idiosyncratic cost fluctuations and the relative scarcity of exogenous entry costs since markets with a multiplicity of small producers are more likely to have these characteristics they are more susceptible to suffering from quality problems the model developed here in particular highlights the role of cost variations in impeding the function of reputation in markets with moral hazard and adverse selection the derived conditions for the persistence of quality problems contribute to the explanation of quality differences between similar markets in developed and less developed countries

setting quality expectations when entering a market what should the promise be this paper examines optimal advertised quality actual quality and price for a firm entering a market it develops a two period model where advertised quality influences expectations and hence trial and the gap between actual quality and expectations determines satisfaction which in turn impacts second period sales in such situations a company makes a choice between advertising high quality and getting trial but little repeat and advertising low quality and getting low trial but high repeat results are derived by numerical methods as well as analytically for a special case of the model the model suggests it is optimal to overstate quality when i customers rely relatively less on advertising to form quality expectations and ii customers intrinsic satisfaction with a product is high these results are consistent with deceptive advertising cases at the ftc which showed more deception for unknown firms and for firms whose customers were more satisfied they are also consistent with the decisions made by future managers mbas except that the respondents would advertise higher versus lower quality when advertising was effective

price delivery time guarantees and capacity selection this paper studies the impact of using delivery time guarantees as a competitive strategy in service industries where demands are sensitive to both price and delivery time we assume that delivery reliability is crucial and investment in capacity expansion is plausible in order to maintain a high probability of delivering the time guarantee a mathematical framework is proposed to understand the interrelations among pricing delivery time guarantee and capacity expansion decisions specifically an optimization model is developed to determine the joint optimal selection of these three important decision variables with an objective of maximizing the average net profit we characterize the optimal decisions and study their qualitative behaviors as various parameters change we further present a numerical example to illustrate how the results of our model can be used to provide useful managerial insights for selecting the best competing strategies for firms with different operating characteristics our model and results are also applicable to a make to order manufacturing environment

adjustment growth and income distribution in indonesia during the decade of the 1970s and until 1982 the growth performance of the indonesian economy was very good with gdp growing at 7 2 percent per annum oil exports provided the major engine of growth for the entire economy during that period in addition within agriculture growth was fueled by the boom in paddy production which converted indonesia from the largest rice importing country in the world to virtual self sufficiency by the mid 1980s paddy production increased at an annual rate of 7 1 percent between 1978 80 and 1983 4 the two oil price booms of 1973 and more particularly 1979 fueled a major expansion of the economy which lasted until the crisis the predominant role of the oil sector is clearly revealed by recalling that earnings from crude oil and petroleum products accounted for two thirds of all export earnings one fourth of total gnp and 70 percent of government domestic revenues in 1982 oil prices peaked in 1982 and revenues from this sector started to contract reducing drastically the basis and prospects for economic growth