optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons in many industries managers face the problem of selling a given stock of items by a deadline we investigate the problem of dynamically pricing such inventories when demand is price sensitive and stochastic and the firm s objective is to maximize expected revenues examples that fit this framework include retailers selling fashion and seasonal goods and the travel and leisure industry which markets space such as seats on airline flights cabins on vacation cruises and rooms in hotels that become worthless if not sold by a specific time we formulate this problem using intensity control and obtain structural monotonicity results for the optimal intensity resp price as a function of the stock level and the length of the horizon for a particular exponential family of demand functions we find the optimal pricing policy in closed form for general demand functions we find an upper bound on the expected revenue based on analyzing the deterministic version of the problem and use this bound to prove that simple fixed price policies are asymptotically optimal as the volume of expected sales tends to infinity finally we extend our results to the case where demand is compound poisson only a finite number of prices is allowed the demand rate is time varying holding costs are incurred and cash flows are discounted the initial stock is a decision variable and reordering overbooking and random cancellations are allowed

a deterministic inventory model for deteriorating items with stock dependent demand rate abstract a deterministic inventory model is developed by assuming that the demand rate is stock dependent and the items deteriorate at a constant rate the expression for the average net profit over one production run is derived and its optimization with respect to the decision variables q initial stock and t duration of a production cycle is carried out this leads to two highly nonlinear equations which are solved by using a subroutine neqnf in imsl math library in cyber 180 480a computer system the optimal solution so derived is compared with that for the no deterioration 0 case sensitivity of the optimal solution to changes in parameter values is examined several aspects of the functional form for the demand rate are considered in a separate section finally the salient features of the problem and its solution are discussed in brief

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

an economic lot size model with non linear holding cost hinging on time and quantity abstract this paper develops an economic lot size inventory model where the demand rate depends on the stock level and the cumulative holding cost is non linear on both the quantity and the time they are stored more concretely it is supposed that the demand rate is a concave potential function of the inventory level and the holding cost is potential on both time and quantity moreover shortages are not allowed a general procedure to determine the optimal lot size and the maximum inventory profit is developed also some results about the profitability of the inventory system are presented this work extends several inventory models previously considered in the literature finally numerical examples which help us to understand the theoretical results are also given

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

foreign exchange market intervention and expectations the yen dollar exchange rate abstract using press reports and official statistics on central bank intervention in conjunction with options market data we find that central bank intervention had no statistically significant systematic impact on the mean or higher moments of the exchange rate during 1993 2000 we also find that japanese authorities appeared to intervene mainly in response to deviations of the exchange rate from some implicit target levels and to a rise in market uncertainty u s monetary authorities intervened only in cooperation with the japanese authorities

how to set price and quality in a supply chain of virtual products under bi criteria and risk consideration abstract virtual products are characterized by ample production capacity zero lead time and no holding costs we consider a two echelon supply chain of a virtual product consisting of a single manufacturer and a single retailer who face random demand demand depends on both price and quality of the product and its stochastic nature exposes the supply chain members to financial risk each party adopts profit criteria that reflect his or her attitude toward this risk including the use of bi criteria by formulating a model that follows a stackelberg game and using the stochastic dominance property we show that one can analytically obtain equilibrium by assuming certain common structures of the demand function and of the risk attitudes the contribution of this study is fourfold i analyzing multiplicative and additive demand forms and comparing the properties of the decisions under the two forms ii showing that under the multiplicative demand form the pricing strategies are not affected by the parties attitudes toward risk whereas the manufacturer s decision on quality investment is affected by his risk attitude iii showing that under the additive demand form the manufacturer s utility function and the demand uncertainty affect pricing and investment strategies and iv suggesting a method to construct the efficient set of decisions and the non dominated set of profit criterion values

optimal ordering and pricing policies in a single period environment with multivariate demand and markdowns this paper investigates a single period inventory model in which the demand of the product is a deterministic multivariate function of price time and level of inventory models are formulated for the basic pricing case and the case with a price markdown during the season solution methodologies are presented for each case when the pricing decisions are predetermined and when they are decision variables comments on the practical use of this model are presented and sensitivity analysis is conducted on the decision variables and demand parameters

politicians outside earnings and electoral competition this paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians outside earnings in our framework politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings the main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent on outside work is negatively related to the degree of electoral competition we test this hypothesis using a new dataset on outside earnings of members of the german federal assembly and find that politicians facing low competition have substantially higher outside earnings

patterns of political action committee contributions to the 1980 campaigns for the united states house of representatives our most robust findings can be summarized as follows u the spatial location of candidates is important in determining the pattern of campaign contributions many pacs and all pac types except agricultural cooperatives contribute in a manner highly consistent with a simple spatial model there is little giving by an individual pac to candidates at opposite ends of the dimension there is no instance of a pac contributing to incumbents located at each end of the dimension and only to challengers of incumbents in the middle or vice versa contributions against incumbents i e to challengers of incumbents are often spatial mirror images of a pac s giving in favor of incumbents though this statement must be tempered by the fact that the large majority of pacs give relatively little money to challengers few pacs give money to both challenger and incumbent in the same race giving in open seat races is if anything even more spatially consistent than in races where an incumbent is running while many individual pacs exhibit patterns of contributions consistent with the ideological dimension the data for 1980 suggest that there was no particular bias toward one end of the spectrum or the other taking all pacs together essentially eliminates the effect of the location variable in the regressions giving in races with an incumbent on the ballot was overall balanced across the dimension there are however ideological distinctions even among groups as broadly defined as the fec categories for the corporate labor and trade membership health groups the incumbent s location on the ideological dimension is an important explanatory variable even when other factors specific to the incumbent are considered of course ideology matters to nonconnected groups too they just tend to balance each other off in positive money though not in negative on average corporate and trade groups favor conservative incumbents and opponents of liberal incumbents labor pacs do the opposite except for labor pacs party is not an important variable in explaining positive contributions once the incumbent s voting record is taken into account for contributions to challengers however party is significant corporate nonconnected and trade pacs gave to opponents of democrats labor pacs did the opposite the expected closeness of the election is always an important variable both positive money and contributions to challengers increase as the probability of a strong challenge increases this suggests that pacs are sensitive to the potential impact of contributions on electoral outcomes although committee assignments have some importance in explaining campaign contributions by pac categories their net effect is never strong except in the case of cooperatives this is almost certainly because of the diversity of interests represented by pacs in every category except coops which are essentially one giant pac of milk producers we would surmise that competitive forces in the house result in most members having a portfolio of committee assignments that provides maximum advantage vis a vis each member s constituency it would therefore be surprising if overall committee assignments by themselves pointed to significant differences in generating campaign resources being chairman or ranking minority member of a committee has no impact on campaign contributions other things equal seniority as measured by number of consecutive years in office has a complicated role for positive contributions seniority has a nonmonotonic effect with contributions being higher for the most junior and most senior members ceteris paribus than for incumbents with average seniority negative contributions however are not significantly related to seniority

the role of market forces in assuring contractual performance the conditions under which transactors can use the market repeat purchase mechanism of contract enforcement are examined increased price is shown to be a means of assuring contractual performance a necessary and sufficient condition for performance is the existence of price sufficiently above salvageable production costs so that the nonperforming firm loses a discounted steam of rents on future sales which is greater than the wealth increase from nonperformance this will generally imply a market price greater than the perfectly competitive price and rationalize investments in firm specific assets advertising investments thereby become a positive indicator of likely performance

seniority and anti competitive restrictions on the legislative common pool tenure s impact on the overall production of legislation and the concentration of political benefits it is well established that geographic areas benefit in terms of the share of government spending they capture from having a legislator with longer tenure holding constant the tenure of other legislators however the implications of this literature for how the total production of legislation changes if all members gained seniority is less clear increased levels and dispersion of seniority within congress generate a cartel like effect whereby legislators restrict the quantity of legislation enacted and increase the average price of each passed bill the analysis provides a natural experiment to gauge the impacts of the emergence of the congressional committee system

pricing and the news vendor problem a review with extensions in the newsvendor problem a decision maker facing random demand for a perishable product decides how much of it to stock for a single selling period this simple problem with its intuitively appealing solution is a crucial building block of stochastic inventory theory which comprises a vast literature focusing on operational efficiency typically in this literature market parameters such as demand and selling price are exogenous however incorporating these factors into the mode l can provide an excellent vehicle for examining how operational problems interact with marketing issues to influence decision making at the firm level in this paper we examine an extension of the newsvendor problem in which stocking quantity and selling price are set simultaneously we provide a comprehensive review that synthesizes existing results for the single period problem and develop additional results to enrich the existing knowledge base we also review and develop insight into a dynamic inventory extension of this problem and motivate the applicability of such models

analysis of protection and pricing strategies for digital products under uncertain demand abstract we analyze pricing and protection digital rights management strategies in a two echelon supply chain that consists of a manufacturer and a retailer of digital products the demand for the legal non pirated product which depends on both price and monetary investment in protection is assumed to be uncertain three different supply chain models are analyzed manufacturer stackelberg retailer stackelberg and vertical integration we show that the retailer s utility function has no effect on the equilibrium strategies and suggest schemes to find these strategies for any utility function of the manufacturer further results are obtained under assumptions of either a multiplicative or an additive demand model we study the players strategies under different profit criteria reflecting different attitudes toward risk specifically the expectation criterion and the target criterion and for each criterion we obtain the dependence between the pricing and the protection investment we show that there are situations in which the manufacturer can increase his profit by giving up his leadership to the retailer even if the power balance is in his favor

international coordination in the design of macroeconomic policy rules abstract the paper examines international issues that arise in the design and evaluation of macroeconomic policy rules it begins with a theoretical investigation of the effects of fiscal and monetary policy in a two country rational expectations model with staggered wage and price setting and with perfect capital mobility the results indicate that with the appropriate choice of policies and with flexible exchange rates demand shocks need not give rise to international externalities or coordination issues price shocks however do create an externality and this is the focus of the empirical part of the paper using a simple seven country model consisting of canada france germany italy japan the united kingdom and the united states optimal cooperative and non cooperative nash policy rules to minimize the variance of output and inflation in each country are calculated the cooperative policies are computed using standard dynamic stochastic programming techniques and the non cooperative policies are computed using an algorithm developed by finn kydland the central result is that the cooperative policy rules for these countries are more accommodative to inflation than the non cooperative policy rules

the international monetary system an analysis of alternative regimes abstract this is an exercise in the positive economics of alternative monetary regimes the behavior of output and prices is compared using a stochastic specification which allows asymptotic variances to be obtained without difficulty free floating of exchange rates together with national money supply targets is analyzed first with and without the presence of fads in the exchange rate two alternatives for monetary coordination are then considered first is mckinnon s proposal to fix nominal exchange rates and stabilize aggregate monetary growth or average inflation second is williamson s system of target zones for stable real exchange rates complemented by nominal income targets for fiscal policy

current account balance and dollar standard exploring the linkages abstract this paper examines whether the international role of the dollar as main global reserve currency has contributed to persistent current account imbalances to this end we analyse how central banks accumulation of reserve assets affects the current account balance of both reserve accumulating and reserve providing countries based on a simple portfolio balance model we show theoretically that the global demand for reserve assets by central banks may lower the current account balance of the reserve issuing country our panel data analysis over the period 1970 2009 confirms this hypothesis any dollar of provided reserve assets decreases the us current account by more than one dollar on average the demand for dollar reserves has lowered the us current account by 1 2 percentage points relative to gdp the flip side of this effect is a higher current account balance in reserve accumulating countries these novel findings show that the worldwide demand for international reserves has contributed to the buildup of global imbalances

an order level lot size inventory model with inventory level dependent demand and deterioration abstract many inventory models have been developed for various deteriorating items with constant demand rate it is a common experience that for perishable consumer goods the age of inventory has a negative impact on the demand due to the loss of consumer confidence on such product consumers tend to keep off perishable items which have reached closer to their expiry dates this paper describes an inventory model in which the demand is considered as a composite function consisting of a constant component and a variable component which is proportional to the inventory level in the periods when there is a positive inventory buildup the rate of production is considered finite and the decay rate as exponential the total cost function is composed of four cost components of all phases of the cycle backorder replenishment inventory buildup inventory depletion and shortage this cost function is later reduced to a two variable function using boundary relations to determine iteratively the set of values of the variables that resulted in minimum cost per cycle the optimum lot size and order level were then obtained with relations established previously results are demonstrated for an instance of the model

capture and ideology in the economic theory of politics the economic theory of regulation long ago put public interest theories of politics to rest these theories have correctly been viewed as normative wishings rather than explanations of real world phenomena they have been replaced by models of political behavior that are consistent with the rest of microeconomics anthony downs 1957 james buchanan and gordon tullock 1965 george stigler 1971 sam peltzman 1976 recently however debate has arisen over whether some version of a public interest theory of regulation will have to be readmitted to our thinking about actions and results in the political arena what is at issue is the empirical importance of the altruistic publicly interested goals of rational actors in determining legislative and regulatory outcomes james kau and paul rubin 1979 kalt 1981 peltzman 1982 this study assesses the nature and significance of publicly interested objectives in a particular instance of economic policymaking u s senate voting on coal strip mining regulations the existence of such objectives is of course no contradiction of the economic view of human behavior kenneth arrow 1972 gary becker 1974 and may well be rooted in genetic biological history becker 1976 jack hirshleifer 1978 generally however individuals altruistic publicly interested goals have been given little attention this reflects the judgment that such goals are so empirically unimportant as to allow the use of occam s razor in positive models or well founded apprehensions that these goals are unusually difficult to identify measure and analyze notwithstanding the latter problem we find that approaches which confine themselves to a view of political actors as narrowly egocentric maximizers explain and predict legislative outcomes poorly the tracking and dissecting of the determinants of voting on coal strip mining policy suggest that the economic theory of politics has been prematurely closed to a broader conception of political behavior

determinants of the implied shadow exchange rates from a target zone abstract the paper provides a continuous time model of the dynamic behavior of exchange rates and interest rates when exchange rates are managed within a target zone with the possibility of realignments in the case of a realignment the exchange rate jumps to a shadow exchange rate the timing of realignments is modelled by a cox process with an intensity that depends on the location of the exchange rate in the target zone band as well as the distance to the shadow exchange rate we set up an approximate maximum likelihood estimation approach and provide parameter estimates for six erm target zones moreover in the empirical analysis we filter out the shadow exchange rates and investigate which fundamental macroeconomic factors are able to explain the short run and long run behavior of the filtered shadow exchange rates

exact accounting of inventory costs in stochastic periodic review models abstract most stochastic periodic review inventory models calculate inventory costs according to the inventory level at the end of the review cycle however in most cases actual inventory costs accrue at different time points over the course of the cycle suggesting that the outputs of these models might be suboptimal this work proposes a means of overcoming this deficiency by attributing inventory costs to their actual timing formulas are presented for the expected profit and for its corresponding optimality equation in various multi period models that follow complete or partial backlogging with or without spoilage stationary or varying inventory costs within cycle and immediate or postponed revenues we show that the optimality equation of all these model variants is a kind of newsvendor formula with modified demand distribution and cost parameters a simple approximation formula and bounds on the optimal order quantity which are based only on the demand distribution over the entire cycle are presented and combined together into an improved approximation formula numerical examples of a brownian motion demand process demonstrate the benefit of the proposed approximation in comparison to the simple approximation formula

inventory models with inventory level dependent demand a comprehensive review and unifying theory marketing researchers and practitioners have long recognized the demand of many retail items is proportional to the amount of inventory displayed recently two distinct types of inventory control models reflecting this relationship have appeared in the literature models in which the demand rate of an item is a function of the initial inventory level and those in which it is dependent on the instantaneous inventory level we present a comprehensive overview of this literature and demonstrate the equivalence of the two types of models through the use of a simple periodic review model an alternative approach to sensitivity analysis for inventory models with inventory level dependent demand is also presented

financial interdependence and the state international monetary relations at century s end as the twentieth century draws to a close one can find sharply contrasting views among leading scholars on almost every key issue in positive international political economy how strong are international as opposed to domestic influences on policy how important are issues of national security high politics versus economic considerations low politics what role do institutions international and domestic play in influencing and constraining the behavior of governments why is international cooperation rare but not unheard of the list goes on and on

an eoq model for perishable items under stock dependent selling rate and time dependent partial backlogging in the present paper we extend padmanabhan and vrat s model by proposing a time proportional backlogging rate to make the theory more applicable in practice the existence and uniqueness of the solutions of the relevant systems are examined subsequently a numerical example is presented to illustrate the application of developed model

self fulfilling expectations speculative attack and capital controls this paper examines the endogenous implementation of capital controls in the context of a fixed exchange rate regime it is shown that if there exists a nonzero probability that the policymaker s response to a significant decrease in official foreign reserves will be the introduction of controls a speculative attack may occur even when current and expected monetary policy is consistent with a permanently viable control free fixed exchange rate regime consequently capital controls may be the outcome of self fulfilling expectations rather than the result of imprudent economic policies copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

an eoq model with imperfect quality items inspection errors shortage backordering and sales returns abstract in practice the items received in a lot may contain defective items and the screening process to eliminate the defective items may involve both a type i and a type ii error due to the defective items and the inspection errors shortages may sometimes occur in this paper we develop an economic order quantity model with imperfect quality items inspection errors shortage backordering and sales returns a closed form solution is obtained for the optimal order size the maximum shortage level and the optimal order reorder point if shortages are not allowed we adopt the order overlapping scheme proposed by maddah et al 2010 computers and industrial engineering 58 4 691 695 to develop an eoq model to prevent shortages during the screening process numerical examples show the impacts of the defective probability the inspection errors and the holding and backordering costs on the optimal solution

inventory cost rate functions with nonlinear shortage costs this article considers five cost rate models for inventory control each summarizing the expected holding and shortage costs per period as a function of the inventory position all models have linear holding costs and shortage cost coefficients of dimension unit period unit and period the latter two coeficients may be the shadow costs of a fill rate and a ready rate service constraint respectively one of the cost rate models is a new suggestion intended to facilitate modeling of periodic review inventory systems if and only if conditions on the demand process are presented for which the cost rate is quasi convex in the inventory position the typical sufficient condition requires that the cumulative demand distribution be logconcave a condition that is met by most demand distributions commonly used in the inventory literature the results simplify optimization and extend the known optimality of s s and nq r policies to cost structures common in applications and to the presence of typical service constraints as a prerequisite for the study a series of new monotonicity results are derived for compound renewal processes

ideas institutions and american trade policy nowhere is america s hegemonic decline more evident than in changing trade patterns the united states trade balance a measure of the international demand for american goods is suffering historic deficits lowered demand for american goods has led to the under utilization of both labor and capital in a growing number of traditionally competitive american industries conversely americans taste for foreign goods has never been so great japanese cars european steel third world textiles to name a few are as well produced as their american counterparts and arrive on the u s market at a lower cost

eoq with a correlated binomial supply abstract this paper considers a variant of the economic order quantity eoq model under random supply a binomial supply model is adopted where every item received is of imperfect quality with the same probability we study the realistic case where the qualities of items in an order are correlated and draw useful insights the most interesting of which is that correlation decreases the order size several practical correlation patterns are investigated and discussed we also show that several commonly used models in the literature can be represented by an equivalent correlated binomial supply model

celebrating a century of the economic order quantity model in honor of ford whitman harris abstract this writing presents a brief introduction to the papers included in the special issue celebrating a century of the economic order quantity model in honor of ford whitman harris published by the international journal of production economics forty one papers covering an extensive scope of inventory management have been incorporated in this volume from contributing authors from 20 countries located in america asia europe and africa this special issue also provides a basis for new directions in inventory management research

the effectiveness of japanese foreign exchange interventions during 1991 2001 abstract this paper empirically analyzes the effectiveness of japanese intervention policies on the yen us dollar exchange rate over the past decade using actual intervention data this paper suggests that japanese interventions were effective in affecting exchange rate movements when such operations were coordinated with the fed furthermore intervention operations were always associated with an increase in exchange rate volatility

systemic conflict and regional monetary integration the case of europe existing explanations of european monetary integration emphasizing economic interdependence issue linkage institutions and domestic politics take a predominantly regional approach in the international monetary thesis developed here i argue that u s policy disturbances transmitted through the international monetary system created compelling incentives for european states to cooperate on exchange rate and monetary policy i develop a general theory of macroeconomic power based on open economy macroeconomics and show how the exercise of such influence can drive regional monetary integration this article then tests the international thesis with reference to monetary integration within the european union by examining four periods in which the united states acted to stabilize the international monetary system and seven episodes in which it disrupted the system european governments and central banks reduced regional monetary cooperation when the united states supported system stability and strengthened it after each episode of disruption the evidence thus strongly supports the inference that the link is causal

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

a note on an economic lot size model for price dependent demand under quantity and freight discounts abstract in this study we revisit research contributed by burwell et al 1997 international journal of production economics 48 141 155 where an economic lot size model for price dependent demand under quantity and freight discounts was proposed specifically for the cases of mixed discounts in which the quantity discounts are either of the incremental or all units variety and the freight discounts are of the opposite type we first provide counterexamples to show that adopting the existing algorithm to determine overall optimal lot size and selling price may not achieve the goal of maximizing profit we then propose an easy to understand computational algorithm to obtain an exact solution

technical analysis and the effectiveness of central bank intervention abstract using daily data on foreign exchange interventions of both the bundesbank and the fed we provide further evidence that central banks earn profits with interventions and that technical trading rules are unusually profitable on days on which interventions take place we argue that what lies at the root of these seemingly contradictory results is that a intervention profits and trading rule profitability are measured over different horizons and b after interventions exchange rates tend to move contrary to central banks intentions in the short run but in agreement with their intentions in the long run

international transmission of monetary and fiscal policy abstract this paper analyzes the effects of monetary and fiscal expansion on the multiple economies in a dornbusch model and a yaari blanchard model unlike previous literature the paper incorporates union and explicitly solves the n country models the effects of monetary and fiscal expansion outside the union are quite similar to the previous results based on the two country models however the effects of expansion inside the union induce a different dynamic path after the policy changes furthermore the number of union members changes the fluctuations of various endogenous variables

optimal feedback rules in an open economy macromodel with rational expectations this paper outlines procedures for deriving optimal time invariant linear feedback rules in continuous time linear stochastic models under rational expectations it also examines the derivation of optimal simple rules of a similar type these procedures are applied to an open economy model under rational expectations and the consequences of uncertainty about stochastic disturbance structures for policy design are considered the results indicate some preference for price level or nominal income rules rather than a monetary rule for the open economy

can swap line arrangements help solve the triffin dilemma how the recent massive rise in the currency reserves of emerging countries has once again brought the triffin dilemma to the fore albeit different to the past at all the events new tools for the creation of international liquidity emerged during the global financial crisis of 2007 08 including bilateral swap line arrangements bsas these arrangements ultimately constitute a form of lending of last resort therefore for emerging countries they can substitute currency reserves and help resolve the triffin dilemma in this manner the stipulation of bsas by advanced countries although motivated by domestic reasons contributes to international financial stability providing access to these arrangements automatically would contradict the principle of constructive ambiguity and the discretion that should be at the base of the lending of last resort also at the international level

joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items with partial backlogging and time and price dependent demand abstract in this paper a joint pricing and inventory control for non instantaneous deteriorating items is developed we adopt a price and time dependent demand function shortages is allowed and partially backlogged the major objective is to determine the optimal selling price the optimal replenishment schedule and the optimal order quantity simultaneously such that the total profit is maximized we first show that for any given selling price optimal replenishment schedule exists and unique then we show that the total profit is a concave function of price next we present a simple algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we solve a numerical example to illustrate the solution procedure and the algorithm

the effect of risk sensitivity on a supply chain of mobile applications under a consignment contract with revenue sharing and quality investment abstract the paper provides a thorough investigation of the revenue sharing contract format typically used in the mobile applications apps industry the platform provider sets the level of revenue sharing and the app developer determines the investment in quality and the selling price of the app the demand for an app which depends on both price and quality investment is assumed to be uncertain so the risk attitude of the supply chain members has to be considered specifically we focus on how risk sensitive behavior of supply chain members affects chain performance the members equilibrium strategies are analyzed under different attitudes toward risk averse neutral and seeking we show that the retailer s utility function has no effect on the equilibrium strategies and suggest schemes to identify these strategies for any utility function of the developer we find that i the revenue sharing contract circumvents the double marginalization effect associated with vertical competition and therefore yields the best selling price for the customer ii a decentralized supply chain sometimes performs better than a centralized one and iii a risk seeking developer may obtain a higher expected profit than does a risk neutral developer

end of period vs continuous accounting of inventory related costs this paper investigates the effect of using an end of period accounting scheme for inventory related costs when costs actually accrue in continuous time using a simple model we show that i the end of period scheme results in higher than optimal order up to levels and inventory cost if the cost and demand parameters are unchanged and ii it is possible to replicate both the optimal base stock level and its cost by selecting the values of the cost or demand parameters judiciously the cost adjustments often require extreme values and no systematic cost parameter adjustment scheme is robust however we find a systematic adjustment to the demand parameters that serves as a good approximation and is robust we therefore conclude that end of period cost accounting without parameter adjustments is in general inappropriate when costs are incurred continuously but there are adjustments that can make it work well

nuclear learning and u s soviet security regimes the concepts of regimes and learning have been developed in the liberal theory of international relations but their application has been mostly in the area of international political economy u s soviet relations are generally explained solely in terms of realist theory the dichotomy is unfortunate because both strands of theory have something to contribute although the injunctions of an overall regime do not govern the u s soviet security relationship it is possible to identify the injunctions and constraining effects of regimes in subissues of the security relationship in five areas of the nuclear relationship destructive power control problems proliferation arms race stability and deterrent force structure it is possible to identify different degrees of learning and to see how such learning affects and is affected by the development of regimes looking at the u s soviet security relationship in terms of learning and regimes raises new questions and opens a research agenda which helps us to think more broadly about the processes of political change in this area

how many parts to make at once reprinted from factory the magazine of management volume 10 number 2 february 1913 pp 135 136 152 interest on capital tied up in wages material and overhead sets a maximum limit to the quantity of parts which can be profitably manufactured at one time set up costs on the job fix the minimum experience has shown one manager a way to determine the economical size of lots

inventory ordering policies of delayed deteriorating items under permissible delay in payments abstract the existing literature on inventory of deteriorating items considers deterioration to begin as soon as the items are stocked however there are several deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are held in stock some farm produce like potatoes yams and even some fruits and vegetables have this property depletion of these items as soon as they are stocked will depend on demand and when deterioration begins it will depend on both demand and deterioration in this paper we develop a mathematical model on the inventory of deteriorating items that do not start deteriorating immediately they are stocked the model also takes into cognizance the fact that in business activities nowadays customers are given some allowed period within which to settle for the goods supplied to them they can use the accrued money from sales of the supplied goods to earn interest within the allowed period they are charged interest only when they fail to settle the amount they owe the supplier at the end of the allowed period

the rules of the game international money in historical perspective no world central bank issues a separate currency for commerce across national boundaries instead a system of national monies works more or less well in providing a medium of exchange and unit of account for current international transactions as well as a store of value and standard of deferred payment for longer term borrowing and lending how do national governments and banking institutions interact to provide international money for merchants and investors by necessity this monetary interaction changes with time place political circumstances and financial technology to better understand its historical evolution let us follow robert mundell and distinguish between a monetary system and a monetary order

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

should retailers hold a perishable product having different ages the case of a homogeneous market and multiplicative demand model this paper specializes in investigating the common practice of the coexistence of multiple competing perishables each with different age and price all of which are associated with the same product the fundamental postulate investigated by our model is the replacement of the policy of selling a single product age with a policy of selling multiple product ages coexistence of multiple product ages on the shelf is associated with shorter cycle lengths as well as with providing consumers with the option of choosing between a fresher product on average and a cheaper product on average we use a utility corresponding to the factors of price and time we axiomatically assume the coexistence of multiple product ages while posing several propositions which present certain difficulties in preferring this policy with the support of a multiplicative demand with respect to price and time and by assuming that consumers are homogeneous in their preferences we analyze a deterministic version of the problem and derive the optimal pricing policy given any cycle length and any duration for which both types coexist on the shelf we prove that the optimal policy is not to sell multiple product types at all by means of a numerical example we show that the operational mode of the coexistence of multiple product ages reduces the retailer s profit per unit time by at least 15 sensitivity analysis of some of the most influential parameters is introduced the superiority of the single product age operational mode over the competitor mode sharply decreases as the optimal cycle length is approached

the impact of goods and capital market integration on european monetary politics members of the european union eu have long attempted to unify their monetary policies whether by fixing exchange rates or moving toward a single currency the success of these attempts has varied over time and among eu member states this article argues that the degree to which a country is integrated into eu trade and finance has a major impact on its willingness to make the sacrifices necessary to pursue monetary integration especially stability against europe s anchor currency the deutsche mark dm higher levels of intra european trade and investment increase the desirability of stabilizing exchange rates between european countries statistical evidence indicates that greater integration of goods and capital markets is associated with greater success in fixing national exchange rates against the dm this implies that pressures for monetary integration will continue but will vary among countries along with the degree to which they are economically linked to european trade and investment

the advantage of tying one s hands ems discipline and central bank credibility abstract it is often argued that the ems is an effective disciplinary device for inflation prone countries in europe since it forces the respective policy makers to pursue more restrictive monetary policies than they would otherwise it is not clear however why these countries should submit themselves to such discipline this paper argues that to answer this question appropriately one must consider that ems membership brings potentially large credibility gains policy makers in inflation prone countries the reason is that not only it attaches an extra penalty to inflation in terms of real appreciation but makes the public aware that the policy maker is faced with such penalty and thus helps to overcome the inefficiency stemming from the public s mistrust of the authorities

target zones and international policy coordination the contrast between the necessary and sufficient conditions for success abstract this paper distinguishes between the necessary and sufficient conditions for adopting exchange rate target zones for improving macroeconomic performance the necessary conditions are easily satisfied but it is much more difficult to design a targetting system which satisfies the sufficient conditions when the exchange rate is an intermediate target on that criterion the gains may be smaller than previously estimated however target zones have important practical advantage they are effective in promoting stability and as a simple but uncontroversial way of securing the coordination necessary to prevent policy makers adopting inefficient or competitive policies

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

on an eoq model for perishable items under stock dependent selling rate and time dependent partial backlogging by dye and ouyang in 2005 dye and ouyang proposed an eoq model for perishable items under stock dependent selling rate and time dependent partial backlogging and then established the unique optimal solution to the problem when building up inventory is not profitable however they did not provide the optimal solution to the problem when building up inventory is profitable in this note we establish an appropriate model in which building up inventory is profitable and then provide an algorithm to find the optimal solution to the problem a numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed model

production inventory models for a damageable item with variable demands and inventory costs in an imperfect production process in this paper economic production quantity epq models for breakable or deteriorating item are developed with variable demands being dependent on time or on hand stock here rate of production and holding cost are time dependent unit production cost is a function of both production reliability indicator and production rate set up cost is also partially production rate dependent the production process produces some imperfect quantities which are instantly reworked at a cost to bring back those units to the perfect ones the production process ultimately depends on both time and reliability indicator the models are formulated as optimal control problems and the total profit functions with effect of inflation and time value of money are expressed as finite integrals over the finite planning horizon the problems are solved using euler lagrange function based on variational calculus and newton raphson method to determine the optimal production reliability indicator r and then corresponding production rates and total profits in some cases results of the models for deteriorating item are obtained as particular cases from those of breakable item models similarly results of simple epq models without damageability are deduced as particular cases numerical experiments are performed to illustrate the models both numerically and graphically

the discrete time eoq model solution and implications abstract consideration is given to the classical eoq with backorders model where one of its original assumptions is modified instead of being continuous time forms a sequence of indivisible quanta unit periods the implications of this assumption common in the analysis of periodic review policies are explored for deterministic demand modeled as an inventory system under the s t policy long run average cost is derived and it is shown that optimal control involves the solution of a two dimensional non convex integer optimization problem properties are established leading to a solution algorithm which guarantees optimal s and t determination with at most three cost function evaluations it is shown that contrary to intuition the classical eoq optimal cost is not a lower bound for the system studied this is exploited to develop distribution free lower bounds for stochastic periodic review systems together with properties rendering them useful in inventory optimization

an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging abstract in this study we consider a problem of determining the optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand in the model shortages are allowed and the backlogging rate is variable and dependent on the waiting time for the next replenishment the necessary and sufficient conditions of the existence and uniqueness of the optimal solution are shown as the special cases the results for the models with instantaneous or non instantaneous deterioration rate and with or without shortages are derived further we analytically identify the best circumstance among these special cases based on the minimum total relevant cost per unit time sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to major parameters is carried out finally four numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the developed model and the solution procedure

an eoq model for perishable product with special sale and shortage abstract in this paper for the first time an inventory control model to determine the optimal order and shortage quantities of a perishable item when the supplier offers a special sale is developed four possible cases based on decision that the purchaser might make about the first replenishment policy using regular economic order quantity model at reduced price or regular price if he did not take the special order and coincidence of special period length with positive or negative inventory level of the last regular period length during the special period are investigated moreover several useful theorems are suggested through which one can find closed form solution directly when there are integer operators involved in an objective function at the end in order to illustrate the proposed theorems and the solution method some numerical examples are solved and a sensitivity analysis is reported too

u s budget deficits and the european economies resolving the political economy puzzle this paper prepared for the annual meetings of the american economic association discusses how the increases in the u s budget deficits since 1980 have affected the economies of western europe the analysis emphasizes that u s deficits have not only affected these economies directly but have also induced them to adopt more restrictive monetary and fiscal policies than they would otherwise have chosen this induced shift in domestic policies is the primary reason why european governments have pressed for a reduction in the u s budget deficits despite the favorable impact of those deficits on european trade surpluses this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

the limits of international organization systematic failure in the management of international relations contributors to the literature on international organization io have traditionally been overly optimistic about the ability of multilateral management to stabilize in ternational relations and have tended to ignore the destabilizing effects of io while recent revisionist scholarship has acknowledged both the potential for organizational failure and the conditionality of management it has tended to focus on how io fails within specific issue areas and institutions this article offers a typology of the inherent systematic failures of io across issue areas and institutions and thereby seeks to bridge the gaps in our understanding of why many different institutions and managerial schemes have adverse effects it argues that io is prone to failure 1 when it attempts to manage complex tightly coupled systems of relations and issues 2 when it serves as a substitute either for more substantive and long term resolutions to international problems or for responsible domestic or foreign policy 3 when it intensifies international disputes and 4 when it generates moral hazard in offering a general theoretical approach to understanding the destabilizing effects of io the analysis is intended to serve both as a focal point for understanding critical approaches to the study of io and as an alternative rationale for eliminating the excesses of multilateral management

the economic consequences of president mitterrand france under mitterrand jeffrey sachs and charles wyplosz while french economic performance has not conformed to the enthusiastic promises of early 1981 this paper argues that the widely held view that it has been an unmitigated failure is unwarranted first the general deterioration can largely be dated back to the early seventies second the early and unfortunate attempt at a demand led expansion was both moderate in size and quickly reversed finally the post 1983 anti inflationary policies have been successful so that overall the disappointing french performance has been on a par with and in some ways better than the rest of europe but the main theme of the paper is the emphasis on the supply side the analysis is organized around the nairu the threshold rate of unemployment below which inflation rises in an attempt to explain the factors which have led to a continuous rise of the nairu since 1973 the paper focuses on labour costs particularly on the wedge between the costs borne by employers and net take home pay to achieve and sustain a significantly lower level of unemployment labour taxes must be cut thus reducing the wedge and the nairu and there must be a corresponding demand stimulus so that actual unemployment can fall to this level

eoq models for perishable items under stock dependent selling rate this paper presents inventory models for perishable items with stock dependent selling rate the selling rate is assumed to be a function of current inventory level and rate of deterioration is taken to be constant under instantaneous replenishment with zero lead time the model incorporates aspects such as complete partial and no backlogging eoq is determined for maximizing the total profit in each of the situations the models developed are illustrated through numerical examples and sensitivity analysis is reported

the distribution of honoraria income in the u s congress who gets rents in legislatures and why the major conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that low cost suppliers of political favors receive the highest honoraria incomes there is no evidence that being a lawyer acquiring a large number of committee assignments receiving high ratings by labor unions representing a safe district or introducing numerous legislative bills increases one s honoraria income in any significant way the wider dispersal of power reduces the effects of seniority and membership on the finance committee in determining institutional power in the senate hence these variables are only significantly related to honoraria income in the house the smaller the number of suppliers in the senate relative to the house means that senators obtain higher prices for their services as a result business groups are more willing to pay extra a price premium to assure that no shirking occurs

explaining legislators positions on outside income limits voting on honoraria ceilings in the u s senate 1981 1983 this article examines roll call voting by members of the u s senate on three proposals to limit members outside income in the 1980s i find that several factors influenced legislators votes on outside income limits legislation oill first financial self interest was an important constraint on members willingness to support oill members who earned more honoraria were less likely to vote yes but this opposition was neutralized when limits were attached to the compensating mechanism of a pay raise senators from poorer states were generally more likely to support honoraria limits alone but less likely to support limits linked to a pay raise suggesting a responsiveness to constituent interests in both cases finally when oill was linked to a pay raise electoral considerations became prominent in legislators vote decisions with electorally vulnerable members less likely to vote yes

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

a simple test of the thesis that committee jurisdictions shape corporate pac contributions the results presented in the previous section tend to confirm the hypothesis that committee assignments shape the pattern of corporate pac contributions this note corroborates existing research on corporate pacs at a significantly lower level of aggregation than the samples on which existing research has been conducted further because a nonparametric test was used rather than the more standard regressional analysis these results should increase our confidence that the essential institutions of government affect and engender responses by economic agents

financial instability reserves and central bank swap lines in the panic of 2008 in this paper we connect the events of the last twelve months the panic of 2008 as it has been called to the demand for international reserves in previous work we have shown that international reserve demand can be rationalized by a central bank s desire to backstop the broad money supply to avert the possibility of an internal external double drain a bank run combined with capital flight thus simply looking at trade or short term debt as motivations for reserve holdings is insufficient one must also consider the size of the banking system m2 here we show that a country s reserve holdings just before the current crisis relative to their predicted holdings based on these financial motives can significantly predict exchange rate movements of both emerging and advanced countries in 2008 countries with large war chests did not depreciate and some appreciated meanwhile those who held insufficient reserves based on our metric were likely to depreciate current account balances and short term debt levels are not statistically significant predictors of depreciation once reserve levels are taken into account our model s typically high predicted reserve levels provide important context for the unprecedented u s dollar swap lines recently provided to many countries by the federal reserve this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

production planning for a deteriorating item with stochastic demand and consumer choice abstract this paper concerns inventory control of a deteriorating product with non negligible procurement lead time that perishes after a known number of periods demand for fresh products during each period is represented as a random variable with known probability distribution but only a fraction of this demand is satisfied during any given period due to item deterioration we derive the expected profit function for a two period problem with one production opportunity before the selling season begins and a single product type with two period shelf life for the case in which demand during both periods is uniform independent and identically distributed we identify sufficient conditions for the existence of an optimal solution and present a straightforward procedure for obtaining the solution

eu china collaboration in the reform of the international monetary system much ado about nothing he global nancial crisis which began in the united states in 2008 has raised doubtsabout the ef ciency of the current dollar led international monetary system ims twomain structural theories have been put forward to explain the crisis each with their respectivereform solutions on the one hand there is the savings glut theory bernanke 2005 2011 favoured by policymakers in washington and a signi cant part of the economics literature which says that the unsustainable overleveraging in the united states was induced by therecycling of dollar denominated savings of surplus economies especially the east asiancountries including china this constant in ow of large volumes of savings suppressed inter est rates on us debt and thus fostered over consumption and over indebtedness to avoid arepeat the proposed solution is to encourage countries like china to let its currency oat sothat the appropriate market equilibrium can be found and a rebalancing of the global economycan be achieved on the other hand there is the trif n dilemma theory zhou 2009 padoa schioppa 2010 bini smaghi 2011 favoured by policymakers in beijing and a number of high pro leeuropean of cials this argues that the crisis is a product of the structural contradiction asso ciated in any international regime dominated by a national currency as trif n 1960 explained in the era of the bretton woods system when the dollar was still linked to gold there is an inherent aw in the dollar standard to provide the necessary liquidity for the glo bal economy the united states needs to run current account de cits the increase in this de cit however undermines the credibility of the reserve currency while for some timeeconomists thought the trif n dilemma was history because it was only valid for a systemlinked to gold the recent crisis suggests otherwise even in a system where the issuer of themain international currency in this case the united states adopts a exible exchange rate there is a limit to its liquidity provision as current events have shown by increasing its scalde cits and expanding substantially its monetary base the united states risks underminingthe credibility of the dollar as the global reserve currency the solution thus is to nd a mech anism that can restrain us pro igacy in uenced by this second theory policymakers of the brics brazil russia india chinaand south africa and eurozone have openly called for the end to the dollar dominated ims chinese and french of cials have been particularly active in this debate the former presidentof china hu jintao the governor of the people s bank of china pboc zhou xiaochuan and

approximations for the relative outdating of perishable products by combining stochastic modeling simulation and regression modeling abstract in this paper we derive approximations for the expected amount of outdating waste in an inventory system with perishable products periodic review positive lead time fixed case pack sizes and a first in first out withdrawal policy demand is discrete and stochastic demand which is not met from inventory on hand will be lost the approximations can be used to evaluate how the amount of outdating can be reduced by changing the safety stock and or the product and demand characteristics we first derive approximations in an analytical way and then use regression to improve these approximations the final approximation is very fast and performs very well the mean and standard deviation of the approximation error are equal to 0 01 and 0 78 moreover the approximation is applicable in situations with parameter settings which are frequently encountered in practice and for which no other approximations have been derived in the literature before

optimal replenishment policies for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand abstract wu et al 2006 an optimal replenishment policy for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and partial backlogging international journal of production economics 101 369 384 established an inventory model for non instantaneous deteriorating items with stock dependent demand and obtained the optimal replenishment policy in this paper we first amend wu et al s model by changing the objective to maximizing the total profit secondly we set a maximum inventory level in the model to reflect the facts that most retail outlets have limited shelf space thirdly we relax the restriction of zero ending inventory when shortages are not desirable we then establish the theoretical results and provide an algorithm to find the optimal solution finally we present some numerical examples to illustrate the results

real exchange rate overshooting and the output cost of bringing down inflation implementing a gradualist policy of monetary contraction in an open economy with a freely floating exchange rate but with nominal inertia in domestic labor costs can lead to prompt and substantial changes in the nominal and real exchange rate one of the virtues claimed for such exchange rate overshooting however is its immediate effect on the price level and so on domestic wage and price inflation in this paper we show that in a model which is super neutral and has nominal inertia in both the level of labor costs and their trend or core rate of growth this early overshooting of the exchange rate does not succeed in cutting the output costs of reducing steady state inflation those output and unemployment costs which are initially avoided by over valuing the currency have to be paid later when this overvaluation is corrected relative to other policies which achieve the same effect on steady state inflation exchange rate overshooting brings inflation down more quickly this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

international reserves before and after the global crisis is there no end to hoarding we evaluate the impact of the global financial crisis gfc and recent structural changes in the patterns of hoarding international reserves ir we confirm that the determinants of ir hoarding evolve with developments in the global economy during the pre gfc period of 1999 2006 gross saving is associated with higher ir in developing and emerging markets the negative impact of outward direct investment on ir accumulation is consistent with the recent trend of diverting international assets from the international reserve account into tangible foreign assets the joneses effect lends support to the regional rivalry in hoarding ir as a motivation and commodity price volatility induces precautionary buffer hoarding during the 2007 2009 gfc period previously significant variables become insignificant or display the opposite effect probably reflecting the frantic market conditions driven by financial instability nevertheless the propensity to import and gross saving continue to display strong and even larger positive effects on ir holding the results from the 2010 2012 post gfc period are dominated by factors that had been mostly overlooked in earlier decades while the negative effect of swap agreements and the positive effect of gross saving on ir holdings are in line with our expectations we find a change in the link between outward direct investment and ir in the pre and post crisis period the macro prudential policy tends to complement ir accumulation developed countries display different demand behaviors for irs higher gross saving is associated with lower ir holding possibly reflecting high income countries tendency to deploy their savings in the global capital markets the presence of sovereign wealth funds motivates developed countries to hold a lower level of ir our predictive exercise affirms that an emerging market economy with insufficient ir holdings in 2012 tends to experience exchange rate depreciation against the u s dollar when many emerging markets were adjusted to the news of tapering quantitative easing in 2013