two warehouse partial backlogging inventory models for deteriorating items under inflation abstract in many real life situations the practical experiences reveal that some but not all customers will wait for backlogged items during a shortage period such as for fashionable commodities or high tech products with short product life cycle the longer the waiting time is the smaller the backlogging rate would be according to such phenomenon taking the backlogging rate into account is necessary thus i here extend the models introduced in yang 2004 two warehouse inventory models for deteriorating items with shortages under inflation european journal of operational research 157 2 344 356 to incorporate partial backlogging and then compare the two two warehouse inventory models based on the minimum cost approach the study shows that the optimal solution not only exists but also is unique and model 2 is still less expensive to operate than model 1 if the factors of partial backlogging and inflationary effect are considered finally some numerical examples for illustration are provided and sensitivity analysis on some parameters is made

optimal ordering for a probabilistic one time discount abstract we develop a model for a one time special purchasing opportunity where there is uncertainty with respect to the materialization of the discounted purchasing offer our model captures the phenomenon of an anticipated future event that may or may not lead to a discounted offer we analyze the model and show that the optimal solution results from a tradeoff between preparing for the special offer and staying with the regular ordering policy we quantify the tradeoff and find that the optimal solution is one of four intuitive policies we present numerical illustrations that provide additional insights on the relationship between the different ordering policies

macroeconomic policies and performance in latin america abstract this paper provides new evidence on macroeconomic policies and results in latin america and the caribbean results are i credibility allows adoption of counter cyclical macroeconomic policies ii accuracy in meeting inflation targets depends on central bank independence and country risk iii intermediate exchange rate er regimes have become less persistent iv er regimes matter for inflation and growth v real er trends are not explained by productivity growth and supply reforms do not resolve real er misalignments vi financial integration has increased significantly vii foreign shocks are a major growth determinant and viii composition of foreign capital inflows matters for growth

accessing modern science policy and institutional options for agricultural biotechnology in developing countries the paper highlights the complexity of the challenge in developing forms of collaboration between a variety of actors in the biotechnology area in developing countries national research systems with diverse capacities in biotechnology international research centers local private research and development companies and advanced research institutes in both industrialized and developing countries case studies are provided from strong programs such as india china and brazil which will be tool developers as well as users programs that are developing an adaptive capacity in biotech to use tools and methods in a large number of countries whose research systems have virtually no capacity in molecular biology each type program presents challenges and opportunities for accessing new technologies based on facilitation of private investments public private partnerships and local capacity to design proprietary technologies working with the consultative group on international agricultural research centers as intermediaries and partners and with regional consortia policy and institutional issues for accessing modern science are then discussed and many of the challenges involve developing strategies in intellectual property management while pubic research organizations will need to develop innovative means of segmenting markets to complement private sector interests

an investigation of the gains from commitment in monetary policy this paper proposes a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi commitment the monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal commitment plans to be tempted to renege on them and to succumb to this temptation with a constant exogenous probability known to the private sector by interpreting this probability as a continuous measure of the lack of credibility of the monetary policy authority we investigate the welfare effect of a marginal increase in credibility our main finding is that in a simple model of the monetary transmission mechanism most of the gains from commitment accrue at relatively low levels of credibility in our benchmark calibration a commitment expected to last for only 6 quarters is enough to bridge 75 of the welfare gap between discretion and commitment this seems to justify the well known concern of monetary policy makers about their credibility even in a world with limited access to commitment technologies

criteria for evaluating purchase quantity decisions in response to future price increases abstract previous research for determining ordering strategies in response to known future price increases has not incorporated the actual cost functions it is shown that when these functions are utilized the optimal strategy depends on the time horizon studied an alternative criterion is offered which incorporates the actual cost comparisons and which provides recommendations consistent with previous research the formulation given provides a general framework for studying ordering strategies based on price changes

dynamic lotsizing with a finite production rate the dynamic lotsizing problem concerns the determination of optimally produced delivered batch quantities when demand which is to be satisfied is distributed over time in different amounts at di

a note on periodic review inventory models with stochastic supplier s visit intervals and fixed ordering cost most periodic review models in the inventory literature have assumed a fixed length of the review periods in this note we extend the work of chiang 2008 and consider backlogged and lost sales periodic review models where the review periods are of a variable length and there is a fixed cost of ordering for replenishment assuming that period lengths are independently and identically distributed we show using an exact method of computing inventory holding costs that an s s policy is optimal for the infinite horizon problem the periodic review policies developed are thus easy to implement the computation shows that if the fixed cost of ordering is small one needs to use the proposed periodic policies

optimal monetary policy in open economies revisited abstract this paper revisits optimal monetary policy in open economies in particular focusing on the noncooperative policy game under local currency pricing in a two country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model we first derive the quadratic loss functions which noncooperative policy makers aim to minimize then we show that noncooperative policy makers face extra trade offs regarding stabilizing real marginal costs induced by deviations from the law of one price under local currency pricing and that optimal monetary policy seeks to stabilize cpi inflation rates and more so under noncooperation than it does under cooperation as a result of the increased number of stabilizing objectives welfare gains from cooperation emerge even when two countries face only technology shocks still gains from cooperation are not large implying that frictions other than nominal rigidities are necessary to strongly recommend cooperation as an important policy framework to increase global welfare

the mirage of fixed exchange rates this paper discusses the profound difficulties of maintaining fixed exchange rates in a world of expanding global capital markets contrary to popular wisdom industrialized country monetary authorities easily have the resources to defend exchange parities against virtually any private speculative attack but if their commitment to use those resources lacks credibility with markets the costs to the broader economy of defending an exchange rate peg can be very high the dynamic interplay between credibility and commitment is illustrated by the 1992 swedish and british crises and the 1994 95 mexican collapse we also discuss the small number of successful fixers

imperfect credibility and robust monetary policy this paper studies the behavior of a central bank that seeks to conduct policy optimally while having imperfect credibility and harboring doubts about its model taking the smets wouters model as the central bank s approximating model the paper s main ndings are as follows first a central bank s credibility can have large consequences for how policy responds to shocks second central banks that have low credibility can bene t from a desire for robustness because this desire motivates the central bank to follow through on policy announcements that would otherwise not be time consistent third even relatively small departures from perfect credibility can produce important declines in policy performance finally as a technical contribution the paper develops a numerical procedure to solve the decision problem facing an imperfectly credible policymaker that seeks robustness

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

the adoption of genetically modified papaya in hawaii and its implications for developing countries 1 abstract as agricultural biotechnology becomes increasingly commercialised numerous constraints limit adoption by developing country producers these include technology access impacts on farmers yields and profits privatisation of research and intellectual property biosafety regulatory frameworks and trade related market restrictions this essay analyses development of the genetically modified papaya and its commercialisation in hawaii as a response to a virulent plant disease papaya ringspot virus results of a survey of hawaiian papaya growers suggest that the unprecedentedly rapid adoption of gm papaya is due to this technology s having addressed many of these key constraints facing growers the implications for developing country adoption of gm varieties are explored

importing credibility through exchange rate pegging this paper employs an optimal taxation framework in order to study the credibility of monetary policy making in an open economy since inflation is in part uncontrollable due to stochastic disturbances the authority s actions cannot be monitored perfectly when the exchange rate floats thus implying that reputational forces may become ineffective in contrast pegging the nominal exchange rate to a low inflation currency allows perfect monitoring because the exchange rate is in principle controllable for this reason exchange rate pegging may import credibility and result in the best reputational equilibrium even though the authority retains the discretion to devalue unexpectedly

exchange rate regime durability and performance in developing versus advanced economies abstract drawing on new data and advances in exchange rate regimes classification we find that countries appear to benefit by having increasingly flexible exchange rate systems as they become richer and more financially developed for developing countries with little exposure to international capital markets pegs are notable for their durability and relatively low inflation in contrast for advanced economies floats are distinctly more durable and also appear to be associated with higher growth for emerging markets our results parallel the baxter and stockman classic exchange regime neutrality result though pegs are the least durable and expose countries to higher risk of crisis

dealing with time inconsistency inflation targeting versus exchange rate targeting adopting a single instead of multiple targets can be an effective way to overcome the classic time inconsistency problem the choice of a single mandate depends on the trade openness and the credibility reduced form empirical results show as central banks become less credible they are more likely to adopt a pegged exchange rate and the tendency to peg depends on trade openness in a model with loose commitment as credibility falls either an inflation target or a pegged exchange rate is more likely to be adopted arelatively closed highly open economywould adopt an inflation target exchange rate peg

an economic order quantity model with a known price increase and partial backordering abstract a constant unit purchase cost is one of the main assumptions in the classic economic order quantity model in practice suppliers sometimes face a known price increase in this paper we develop eoq models with a known price increase and partial backordering under two different assumptions about when the increase will occur we prove the concavity of the extra profit functions for both scenarios if a special order is placed just before the price increases a solution method is proposed and numerical examples are presented

investigating inflation persistence across monetary regimes under inflation targeting estimates of the indexation parameter in hybrid new keynesian phillips curves are either equal to zero or very low in the united kingdom canada sweden and new zealand analogous results hold for the euro area under the european monetary union and for switzerland under the new monetary regime under stable regimes with clearly defined nominal anchors inflation appears to be purely forward looking these results question the notion that the intrinsic inflation persistence found in post wwii u s data is structural in the sense of lucas carnegie rochester conference series on public policy 1 1976 19 46 and suggest that hardwiring inflation persistence in macroeconomic models is potentially misleading

raw material procurement with fluctuating prices abstract increasing global competition and cost pressure force enterprises and supply chains to discover undetected cost saving potentials in particular interfaces to the raw materials market are a promising field for improvement this paper presents a deterministic optimal control approach optimizing the procurement and inventory policy of an enterprise that is processing a raw material when the purchasing price holding cost and the demand rate fluctuate over time applying pontryagin s maximum principle the optimal policy turns out to be of a bang bang type involving impulse and just in time procurement numerical examples illustrate the solutions obtained and compare the optimal policy with simple replenishment strategies

replenish up to inventory control policy with random replenishment intervals abstract the multi period inventory problems have been studied under two main assumptions continuous review assumption where an order can be made at any time depending on inventory position and periodic review assumption where an order can be initiated only at discrete time epochs in this study we analyze a multi period inventory problem that falls under neither of these two assumptions in the case we consider there are periodic replenishments but the replenishment intervals are taken to be i i d random variables this setting represents the real life cases where a supplier visits a retailer with random inter arrival times and the retailer replenishes his inventories based on a replenish up to level inventory control policy we also assume that only a certain fraction of unmet demand is backordered and the rest of it is lost in this setting under general distribution between replenishment epochs we show the concavity of the expected profit function and give the condition that must hold for the optimal replenish up to level we also present the specific solutions and analysis under two different distributions namely uniform and exponential distributions together with some numerical examples

optimal ordering strategies for announced price increases the familiar model for determining the optimal ordering strategy given an announced price increase assumes that the buyer has an opportunity to place an order at the end of the next economic order quantity cycle before the price increase takes effect this paper extends the price increase model by relaxing the requirement on the timing of the price increase specifically we develop optimal ordering strategies for situations where the price increase becomes effective at any future specified time we also calculate savings for alternate ordering strategies

an inventory control model with stochastic review interval and special sale offer abstract periodic review inventory models are widely used in practice especially for inventory systems in which many different items are purchased from the same supplier however most of periodic review models have assumed a fixed length of the review periods in practice it is possible that the review periods are of a random stochastic length this paper presents an inventory control model in the case of random review intervals and special sale offer from the supplier the replenishment interval is assumed to obey from two different distributions namely exponential and uniform distributions also shortages are allowed in the term of partial backordering for this model its convexity condition is discussed and closed form solutions are proposed

monetary policy and welfare in a small open economy this paper analyzes optimal monetary policy in a small open economy featuring monopolistic competition and nominal rigidities it shows that the utility based loss function for this economy can be written as a quadratic expression of domestic inflation output gap and real exchange rate the presence of an internal monopolistic distortion and a terms of trade externality drives optimal policy away from domestic inflation targeting and affects the optimal level of exchange rate volatility when domestic and foreign goods are close substitutes for each other the optimal policy rule implies lower real exchange rate volatility than a domestic inflation targeting regime the reverse is true when the elasticity of substitution between goods is low

note on an eoq model with a temporary sale price a flaw is revealed in the formulation of a fundamental temporary sale price model however its impact is only relatively significant when the amount of the discount is small

evaluation of capital costs in a multi level inventory system by means of the annuity stream principle abstract in this paper some results obtained from applying the annuity stream principle for evaluating capital tied up in inventory and work in progress and presented this principle departs from the cashflows associated with the production inventory processes considered in contrast to traditional procedures by which the inventory value is determined from physical stock evaluated at costs incurred to date in many situations it appears that the traditional procedure will underestimate the amount of capital tied up in production in this paper the two principles are applied to a multi level inventory system and the capital cost expressions and optimal order quantities are compared

evaluating lot sizing strategies under limited time price incentives an efficient lower bound abstract determination of the optimal lot sizing strategy when the vendor offers limited time price incentives such as pre announcement of a price increase that will take effect after a finite time or a price discount that is valid for a limited time is a common problem that has been extensively researched a review of the literature indicates that the mathematical analysis and solution of this problem are quite complex this complexity may deter managers from using the optimal strategy although an optimal lot sizing strategy results in the lowest cost managers generally prefer simple heuristic or rule of thumb strategies that are easy to understand and to implement provided the total relevant cost associated with such strategies compares well with that of the optimal strategy therefore it would be of significant value to managers if the cost associated with the optimal strategy can be deduced easily without recourse to complex mathematical analysis so that the simpler strategies can be quickly and easily evaluated in this paper we present an intuitively appealing and easy to compute method to determine a tight lower bound whose value is very close to the total cost of the optimal strategy we demonstrate through extensive computational analysis the adequacy of our lower bound by comparing it with the total cost associated with an optimal strategy over a wide range of operating parameters thus managers can use it as a surrogate for the cost of the optimal strategy while evaluating heuristic strategies we illustrate the application of our lower bound with numerical examples

trade openness and exchange rate regimes the paper evaluates the net welfare gains of inflation targeting over a fixed exchange rate as a function of a country s trade openness using a multisectoral structural model calibrated to chile for most calibrations with separable preferences net welfare gains are increasing in trade openness the reason is that in more open economies terms of trade shocks which favor inflation targeting become quantitatively more important while price markup shocks in the imperfectly competitive nontradables sector which favor exchange rate targeting become less important the most important exception is heavily indebted countries where net welfare gains are decreasing in trade openness

central bank independence and macroeconomic performance some comparative evidence this note uses information on a sample of sixteen oecd countries to assess the relationship between central bank independence and macroeconomic performance as previous work suggests politically controlled central banks are more likely to pursue policies that lead to high and variable inflation however the authors find little evidence that political control of central bank policy has any impact on measures of the level or variability of growth unemployment or the ex ante real interest rate copyright 1993 by ohio state university press

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

central bank credibility why do we care how do we build it central bank credibility plays a pivotal role in much of the modern literature on monetary policy yet it is difficult to measure or even assess objectively a survey of central bankers was conducted to determine their attitudes on two important issues why credibility matters and how credibility can be built the central bankers answers are compared with the responses of nber affiliated macro and monetary economists the two groups agree much more than they disagree they are particularly united in their evaluations of ways to make a central bank credible assigning high ratings to the central bank s track record and low ratings to theoretical ideas like precommitment and incentive compatible contracts this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

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

exchange rates and monetary policy in emerging market economies this paper investigates the effects of exchange rate regimes and alternative monetary policy rules for an emerging market economy that is subject to a volatile external environment in the form of shocks to world interest rates and the terms of trade in particular we highlight the impact of financial frictions and the degree of exchange rate pass through in determining the relative performance of alternative regimes in stabilizing the economy in the face of external shocks our results are quite sharp when exchange rate pass through is high a policy of non traded goods inflation targeting does best in stabilizing the economy and is better in welfare terms when exchange rate pass through is low however a policy of strict cpi inflation targeting is better in all cases a fixed exchange rate is undesirable in addition financial frictions have no implications for the ranking of alternative policy rules

inflation targeting in emerging economies panel evidence abstract this paper shows there is no evidence that the inflation targeting regime it improves economic performance as measured by the behavior of inflation and output growth in developing countries the control of common time effects results in less negative and less significant it impacts on inflation inflation volatility and output growth volatility than previously found in the literature additionally our analysis shows robust evidence of lower output growth during it adoption on balance although lower long run mean inflation signals that the central banks of emerging economies with inflation targeting are more inflation averse the costs of disinflation have not been lower than under other monetary regimes

transparency reputation and credibility under floating and pegged exchange rates this paper shows that if the cost of importing foreign inflation and real exchange rate shocks are not too high then the equilibrium nominal exchange rate regime for a country with a credibility problem is a peg under which credibility is higher and inflation is lower than under a float this holds true although devaluations of the pegged rate are assumed to be costless the reason is that as realized inflation is not perfectly controllable planned inflation under a float is private information in contrast since the exchange rate can be perfectly controlled pegging resolves the private information problem is more transparent and makes reputation more effective

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

ordering and inventory policies for step changes in the unit item cost a discounted cash flow approach this paper considers the problem of determining the optimal ordering quantities of a purchased item where there are step changes in price either up or down other costs incurred include ordering costs associated with each replenishment and holding costs related to capital tied up in inventory and physical stock holding the net present value npv principle is applied explicit expressions for the development of the optimal order quantities over time are presented it is shown that three cases may be distinguished i when the price change is very small ii when an essential price increase occurs and iii when there is an essential price decrease although the optimal last order quantity before a price increase is similar in magnitude to what has been presented in other articles applying average cost approaches in certain respects this paper offers novel results contradictory to those suggested by other authors analysis shows that the average cost model solutions are first order approximations in the discount rate numerical evaluations of a range of price increases and times to the price increase suggest that with certain important caveats the average cost formulae are likely to be acceptable for most practical situations for the infinite horizon situation

optimal eoq for announced price increases in infinite horizon in this paper we consider an infinite horizon economic order quantity eoq model with single announced price increase with an option of placing a special order just before the price increase takes effect we extend earlier work where it is assumed that the special order is an integral multiple of the new eoq quantity in the process we show that when the assumption of integrality is not valid the earlier approach of minimizing the cost difference over a finite horizon is no longer valid and establish the periodicity of cost difference function next we show that the cesaro limit of the function exists and utilize that to derive the optimal special order quantity we find that the optimal special ordering policy is of s s type

an optimal control of inventory under probablistic replenishment intervals and known price increase abstract the unit purchase price of products may increase or decrease for various reasons which influences the seller s and buyer s inventory control policies this paper develops an inventory control model when replenishment intervals are probabilistic and partial backordering in which an announced price increase happens and the buyer can make a special order before the price increase initiates inventory at the beginning of the period is not equal to zero and can be positive or negative amounts the main aim of this paper is to determine the optimum amount of replenish up to level in special sale offer this model is analyzed in two cases according to the inventory level in which the price increase happens and both cases are formulated to maximize the total saving function for placing a special order or not a closed form solution is obtained for the optimum amount of a special order two special cases with the replenishment intervals following uniform or exponential distributions are studied with sensitivity analysis the results indicate that a buyer can determine the optimal values of the maximum level of inventory and order quantity when the time between two consecutive replenishments is a probabilistic variable and the buyer experiences known price increase for which the total profit is maximized

does inflation targeting make a difference in developing countries we evaluate the treatment effect of inflation targeting in thirteen developing countries that have adopted this policy by the end of 2004 using a variety of propensity score matching methods we show that on average inflation targeting has large and significant effects on lowering both inflation and inflation variability in these thirteen countries however the effectiveness of inflation targeting on lowering inflation is found to be quite heterogeneous the performance of a given inflation targeting regime can be affected by country characteristics such as government s fiscal position central bank s desire to limit the movements of exchange rate its willingness to meet the preconditions of policy adoption and the time length since the policy adoption

does inflation targeting really make a difference evaluating the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries abstract we evaluate the treatment effect of inflation targeting in seven industrial countries that adopted this policy in the 1990s to address the self selection problem of policy adoption we make use of a variety of propensity score matching methods recently developed in the treatment effect literature our results show that inflation targeting has no significant effects on either inflation or inflation variability in these seven countries further evidence from long term nominal interest rates and income velocity of money also supports the window dressing view of inflation targeting

the dynamics of exchange rate regimes fixes floats and flips the impermanence of fixed exchange rates has become a stylized fact in international finance the combination of the mirage view that pegs do not really peg with the fear of floating view that floats do not really float generates the conclusion that exchange rate regimes are in practice unimportant for the behavior of the exchange rate this is consistent with evidence on the irrelevance of exchange rate regimes for general macroeconomic performance recent studies however show that the exchange rate regime matters this can be understood by considering the dynamics of exchange rate regimes we demonstrate that the mirage view is somewhat misleading and incomplete pegs frequently break but many do last also there is a high degree of flipping that is the re formation of pegs that have broken thus a fixed exchange rate today is a good predictor that one will exist in the future we also investigate the quantitative effect of fixed exchange rates while the fear of floating view suggests little actual difference in fixed and floating rates with respect to exchange rate volatility we show that fixed exchange rates exhibit considerably greater bilateral exchange rate stability than flexible rates both today and in the future 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

holding costs under push or pull conditions the impact of the anchor point holding costs are traditionally determined from the investment in physical stock during a cycle an alternative approach instead derives holding costs from net present value npv functions it is known that applying both frameworks to the same system can lead to different holding cost valuations but little explanation has been offered by introducing the anchor point in a model this paper shows for four different systems that traditional holding cost models implicitly assume pull conditions while current npv approaches model push conditions this explains in part the differences between the methods it is shown that the anchor point concept allows the construction of npv models under pull conditions giving results in better correspondence with traditional models the traditional framework is restricted to pull conditions and important considerations could be easily overlooked leading to wrong valuations of holding costs npv seems superior as such considerations are automatically incorporated the application to multi echelon inventory systems provides interesting insights on the roles of echelon stocks and lead times and offers potential for future research

economic replenishment strategies for announced price increases abstract the usual model for determining the optimal replenishment lot size for an announced price increase is the basic eoq model this analysis extends the logic to a composite lot sizing model that can be disaggregated into a family of hybrid models with additional operational flexibility the composite model permits broader diversity and the ability to decompose complexity it provides decision support resourcefulness with its resultant economies

fiscal policy under loose commitment due to time inconsistency or political turnover policymakers promises are not always fulfilled we analyze an optimal fiscal policy problem where the plans made by the benevolent government are periodically revised in this loose commitment setting the properties of labor and capital income taxes are significantly different than under the full commitment and no commitment assumptions because of the occasional reoptimizations the average capital income tax is positive even in the long run also the autocorrelation of taxes is lower their volatility with respect to output increases and the correlation between capital income taxes and output changes sign our method can be used to analyze the plausibility and the importance of commitment in a wide class of dynamic problems

testing the transparency benefits of inflation targeting evidence from private sector forecasts abstract using inflation forecast data for 11 it adoption countries it adoption is found to promote convergence in forecast errors suggesting that it enhances transparency this result which is subjected to several robustness checks and found to be robust supports morris and shin s 2002 contention that better public information is most beneficial for forecasters with bad private information however it does not support their hypothesis that better public information could make private forecasts less accurate

changing locus of agricultural research will the poor benefit from biotechnology and privatization trends over the past decade the locus of agricultural research and development has shifted dramatically from the public to the private multinational sector three interrelated forces are transforming the system for supplying improved agricultural technologies to the world s farmers the first is the strengthened and evolving environment for protecting intellectual property in plant innovations the second is the rapid pace of discovery and growth in importance of molecular biology and genetic engineering finally agricultural input and output trade is becoming more open in nearly all countries these developments have created a powerful new set of incentives for private research investment altering the structure of the public private agricultural research endeavor particularly with respect to crop improvement

the mirage of exchange rate regimes for emerging market countries this paper argues that much of the debate on choosing an exchange rate regime misses the boat it begins by discussing the standard theory of choice between exchange rate regimes and then explores the weaknesses in this theory especially when it is applied to emerging market economies it then discusses a range of institutional traits that might predispose a country to favor either fixed or floating rates and then turns to the converse question of whether the choice of exchange rate regime may favor the development of certain desirable institutional traits the conclusion from the analysis is that the choice of exchange rate regime is likely to be of second order importance to the development of good fiscal financial and monetary institutions in producing macroeconomic success in emerging market countries this suggests that less attention should be focused on the general question whether a floating or a fixed exchange rate is preferable and more on these deeper institutional arrangements a focus on institutional reforms rather than on the exchange rate regime may encourage emerging market countries to be healthier and less prone to the crises that we have seen in recent years

an economic order quantity model with partial backordering and a special sale price abstract a constant unit purchase cost is one of the main assumptions in the classic economic order quantity model in practice suppliers sometimes offer special sale prices to stimulate sales or decrease inventories of certain items in this paper we develop an eoq model with a special sale price and partial backordering we prove the convexity of the cost reduction function if a special order is placed at the special sale price a solution method is proposed and numerical examples are presented