innovation behaviour and regional indigenous potential meyer krahmer f 1985 innovation behaviour and regional indigenous potential reg studies 19 523 534 this paper has been written in order to present empirical results about some hypotheses not yet very well clarified in innovation oriented regional research the first part relates to one of the assumptions underlying innovation oriented regional policy which is that innovating and non innovating firms have different characteristics with respect to employment product lines and markets in particular the contribution to regional growth made by innovating firms is said to be larger in the second part of the paper the results of a study are presented in which it was attempted to find out empirically the extent of regional differences in indigenous innovation potential in the federal republic of germany reference is made to the innovating firms their performance and behaviour and bottlenecks in innovation as in other recent studies it is confirmed that there exists also in rural regions a sizeab

public research and industrial innovations in germany this paper deals with the effects of publicly funded research at universities polytechnics and federal research labs on industrial innovations in germany we discuss the characteristics of companies that benefit from the findings of public research institutions in questioning 2 300 companies we found that less than one tenth of product or process innovating firms introduced innovations between 1993 and 1995 that would not have been developed without public research these new products amount to approximately 5 percent of all new product sales regressions show that firms own r d support the ability to absorb the findings of public research and turn them into innovations contrary to the widely held opinion that proximity to public research institutions does promote collaboration between firms and public research and increase the amount of received knowledge spillovers we found no higher probability of publicly supported innovations for firms in germany that are located near universities or polytechnics

innovation and regional growth in small high technology firms evidence from britain and the usa oakey r p 1984 innovation and regional growth in small high technology firms evidence from britain and the usa reg studies 18 237 251 this paper examines the varying impact of regional resources on innovation in small high technology firms evidence is drawn from diverse local economies ranging from the development region of scotland through the south east of england to the bay area of california measurement focuses on the key inputs to innovation of research and development and investment capital surprisingly the findings indicate encouraging small firm innovation and growth in scotland an anticipated higher incidence of venture capital funding in the usa is confirmed and quantified with concluding comments on the policy implications resulting from this discrepancy

demand seasonality in retail inventory management abstract we investigate the value of accounting for demand seasonality in inventory control our problem is motivated by discussions with retailers who admitted to not taking perceived seasonality patterns into account in their replenishment systems we consider a single location single item periodic review lost sales inventory problem with seasonal demand in a retail environment customer demand has seasonality with a known season length the lead time is shorter than the review period and orders are placed as multiples of a fixed batch size the cost structure comprises of a fixed cost per order a cost per batch and a unit variable cost to model retail handling costs we consider four different settings which differ in the degree of demand seasonality that is incorporated in the model with or without within review period variations and with or without across review periods variations in each case we calculate the policy which minimizes the long run average cost and compute the optimality gaps of the policies which ignore part or all demand seasonality we find that not accounting for demand seasonality can lead to substantial optimality gaps yet incorporating only some form of demand seasonality does not always lead to cost savings we apply the problem to a real life setting using point of sales data from a european retailer we show that a simple distinction between weekday and weekend sales can lead to major cost reductions without greatly increasing the complexity of the retailer s automatic store ordering system our analysis provides valuable insights on the tradeoff between the complexity of the automatic store ordering system and the benefits of incorporating demand seasonality

on the structure of lost sales inventory models we provide a new approach to the structural analysis of the standard lost sales inventory system this approach is we think easier to work with than the original one we also derive new bounds on the optimal policy then we show that more variable demand leads to higher cost finally we extend the analysis to several important variations of the basic model

why voluntary export restraints are voluntary the paper presents an analysis of the effect upon an oligopolistic equilibrium of introducing a voluntary export restraint ver upon an importing firm a ver set at the free trade level of imports is shown to raise the profits of all firms within the industry the result follows as the imposition of a ver upon a free trade nash price competition forces the domestic firm to become an industry price leader the ver raises industry prices by facilitating collusion and lowers consumer welfare pourquoi les restrictions volontaires d 1 exportation sont volontaires ce memoire presente une analyse des effets de l introduction de restrictions volontaires a l exportation rve sur une entreprise qui importe dans un monde en equilibre oligopolistique on montre que l introduction de rve approximant le niveau des importations en regime de libre echange devrait augmenter les profits de toutes les entreprises dans l industrie cela decoule du fait que l imposition de rve sur un univers de concurrence par les prix a la nash en regime de libre echange force l entreprise domestique a devenir le leader en prix l introduction de rve augmente le niveau des prix de l industrie en facilitant la collusion et de ce fait reduit le niveau de bien etre des consomrnateurs

competition cooperation and innovation organizational arrangements for regimes of rapid technological progress abstract discussions of the link between firm size and innovation are outmoded because the boundaries of the firm have become fuzzy in recent decades strategic alliances constellations of bilateral agreements among firms are increasingly necessary to support innovative activities such alliances can facilitate complex coordination beyond what the price system can accomplish while avoiding the dysfunctional properties sometimes associated with hierarchy antitrust law and competition policy need to recognize that these new organizational forms are often the functional antithesis of cartels though they may have certain structural similarities a more complete understanding of bilateral contracts and agreements ought to reveal when and how cooperation can support rather than impede innovation and competition

optimal policies for a capacitated two echelon inventory system this paper demonstrates optimal policies for capacitated serial multiechelon production inventory systems extending the clark and scarf 1960 model to include installations with production capacity limits we demonstrate that a modified echelon base stock policy is optimal in a two stage system when there is a smaller capacity at the downstream facility this is shown by decomposing the dynamic programming value function into value functions dependent upon individual echelon stock variables we show that the optimal structure holds for both stationary and nonstationary stochastic customer demand finite horizon and infinite horizon results are included under discounted cost and average cost criteria

r d and technology policy in nics as learning processes abstract this paper presents a dynamic learning perspective to research and development activity and to policies promoting these activities and technological development more generally the basic idea is that successful penetration of research and development rd multidisciplinary learning both technoeconomic and managerial organizational and learning which is cumulative through time this is especially so at an early infant phase of diffusion of this process through the economy a dynamic view of externalities and market failures is presented one that provides the basis for a catalytic perspective of technological policy this perspective is based on the distinction between an infant and a mature phase of policy where massive flexible search oriented support in the early phase sets the base for endogenization routinization of r d in the economy and for the possibility of drastic reductions in government support for traditional forms of r d in the later phase

an econometric analysis of price differentials in the eec automobile market the paper investigates the sources of the observed price disparities in the eec automobile market on the basis of an oligopoly model with product differentiation this paper tests and fails to reject the hypothesis that automobile firms segregate national markets in the eec it is found that value added tax differentials and the existence of different import restraints quotas and vers are important contributing factors to price disparities on the contrary transportation cost differentials are not a significant explanatory variable finally the preference for domestic products or national brands is found as an important contributing factor in britain and itlay

an eoq model for perishable products with fixed shelf life under stochastic demand conditions abstract the paper presents a mathematical stochastic model for perishable open dating foods including shortage and outdating costs the demand fluctuations have been taken into account modeling them through a normal distribution and their impact on the storage time has been studied considering the stochastic nature of such a parameter in turn the quantification of perished products has been also addressed determining the probability for a product of remaining in stock beyond the end of its shelf life on the basis of such premises the optimal set of parameters that minimize the total unit cost has been determined a numerical application and a sensitivity analysis show the practical applicability of the proposed model in the context of warehouse management underlining managerial insights

critical number policies for inventory models with periodic data we consider an infinite horizon in problem with stochastic demands where the data vary periodically karlin karlin s 1960a dynamic inventory policy with varying stochastic demands management sci 6 231 258 karlin s 1960b optimal policy for dynamic inventory process with stochastic demands subject to seasonal variations j siam8 611 629 shows that a periodic critical number policy is optimal and presents an algorithm for computing the critical numbers assuming discounted costs here we develop an alternative conceptually simpler approach to these problems the results include a proof of the optimality of such policies for the average cost case and a qualitative description of the behavior of the optimal policy as smoothing fluctuations in the data

parametric replenishment policies for inventory systems with lost sales and fixed order cost in this paper we consider a single item inventory system with lost sales and fixed order cost we numerically illustrate the lack of a clear structure in optimal replenishment policies for such systems however policies with a simple structure are preferred in practical settings examples of replenishment policies with a simple parametric description are the s s policy and the s nq policy besides these known policies in literature we propose a new type of replenishment policy in our modified s s policy we restrict the order size of the standard s s policy to a maximum this policy results in near optimal costs furthermore we derive heuristic procedures to set the inventory control parameters for this new replenishment policy in our first approach we formulate closed form expressions based on power approximations whereas in our second approach we derive an approximation for the steady state inventory distribution as a result the latter approach could be used for inventory systems with different objectives or service level constraints the numerical experiments illustrate that the heuristic procedures result on average in 2 4 percent and 1 8 percent cost increases respectively compared to the optimal replenishment policy therefore we conclude that the heuristic procedures are very effective to set the inventory control parameters

a structuralist perspective on the role of technology in economic growth and development abstract this paper presents an integrated view of what is termed a structuralist perspective to economic growth and development that stands in contrast to the mainstream orthodox or neoclassical view in the structuralist view structural changes are causes of growth rather than outcomes of a process of capital accumulation and of rising per capita incomes moreover the growth process may be punctuated by periods of discrete shifts in resource allocation creative destruction and growth acceleration rather than being smooth throughout structural changes need not be automatic they require a skill specific infrastructure of new capabilities which when established generate new comparative advantages market failures may be pervasive due to problems of human capital accumulation critical mass and discrete choice among alternative growth paths thus in addition to creating a favorable environment for business and assuring through macroeconomic policy adequate investment successful growth may require an adequate industrial and technological policy particularly at nodes of structural change the paper surveys the structuralist insights appearing in the literature starting with the early postwar economic development literature and including recently developed formal models it also proposes a kinked or scalloped aggregate production function as a simple tool for structuralist analysis

the limits of capital transcending the public financer private producer split in industrial r d abstract a near consensus has emerged supporting the public funding of industrial r d as a solution to a host of market failures however the common policy prescription urges government to go no further than minimal market enhancing intervention largely keeping the state to the role of financer of privately conducted r d by focusing on three general issues in the context of industrial r d trust coordination and motivation this article develops an argument for a more expansive government role two models of state intervention are at the center of the analysis public production of r d and state sponsorship of inter firm and inter organizational networks it is argued that both these models have distinct advantages as well as weaknesses in addressing common challenges to industrial r d production informed by the positive experiences of different states that have moved in recent years from high technology industries periphery to the center this article explains how the two models of state intervention address the various problems associated with pure private production it is concluded that while even advanced countries with well developed markets might find it advantageous to actively intervene in industrial r d the two models should especially be considered in cases of economies that suffer from weak market signals low retention of value added functions limited professional capacities and limited institutional thickness and networks

price leadership and discrimination in the european car market this paper explains differences in the price of the same good in different markets in the authors model n producers each play the role of stackelberg leader on their own market and there is one market with no domestic producer the authors show that even without demand differences between markets pretax prices will be higher on markets where there are high cost domestic producers and where taxes are low evidence from the european car market based on time series for individual models supports these results furthermore as the model suggests exchange rate changes are not passed through to car prices copyright 1990 by blackwell publishing ltd

an s 1 s inventory system with emergency orders in this paper we develop an approximate model of an inventory control system in which there exist two options for resupply with one having a shorter lead time we assume that demand and the fixed ordering costs are small relative to the holding cost so that a one for one ordering policy is appropriate we consider a policy for placing emergency orders that uses information about the age of outstanding orders we derive the steady state behavior of this policy and present some computational results

optimal r q inventory policies with poisson demands and lost sales discounted and undiscounted cases abstract we consider a continuous review r q inventory system with poisson demands and at most one order outstanding the replenishment lead time is either constant or exponentially distributed demands not covered immediately from inventory are lost costs include a linear order cost with a fixed cost per order and a fixed cost per unit lost sale as regards inventory holding costs the cost of capital often constitutes a major part this paper focuses on these interest related holding costs in the undiscounted case holding costs are linear and inventory performance is measured by the long run average total cost incurred per unit time in the discounted case the performance measure is the expected present value of the ordering and lost sales costs the cost associated with capital tied up in inventory is accounted for by an appropriate discount rate we formulate an exact model and design a policy iteration algorithm for the discounted case results on the form of an optimal replenishment policy are derived and the model is compared to a previously derived model for the undiscounted case numerical experiments are used to evaluate the difference between the optimal solutions with and without discounting the effect of a stochastic lead time on this difference is also considered by comparing solutions with constant and exponential lead times in general the differences seem to be fairly small but exceptional cases exist when the service level is low

distribution sensitive innovation policies conceptualization and empirical examples abstract innovation is essential to economic growth however it appears that the ways in which we pursue innovation policies generate economic inequities in this paper we explore policies that could be devised and employed with the aim of increasing growth while taking into account economic distribution we call these policies distribution sensitive innovation policies dsip following an exploratory theoretical approach the paper focuses on a specific set of dsip which are focused on particular groups of disadvantaged producers and consumers we first categorize such programs into four types and then employ a comparative approach to analyze existing programs in terms of these types first in our primary case study israel and then using the united states germany and sweden as limited shadow cases to elaborate on the finding from our primary case we conclude by arguing that although these programs are currently driven primarily by a concern for economic efficiency and not distribution they show that our approach utilizing innovation policy to reach dual economic and social policy goals has potential for success

comparison of two periodic review models for stochastic and price sensitive demand environment abstract in this paper we study two periodic review inventory models which primarily differ in terms of how backordering cost is charged time independent backordering tib model where the backordering cost is charged per unit backordered and is independent of the length of time for which backorders persist and the time dependent backordering tdb model where the backordering cost is charged based on the number of backorders as well as the length of time for which they are on the books i e it is charged per unit per unit time our objective is to investigate the impact of these two different backordering cost structures on the optimal decisions of a firm in a stochastic and price sensitive demand environment in order to do so we first develop a general framework where both such costs exist in a profit maximizing context subsequently we analyze two special cases of this general framework with either one of the costs that is tib and tdb models and derive some analytical results regarding the values and behavior of the optimal decisions for both of them we then concentrate on comparing the two models through extensive numerical experiments our investigation demonstrates that the tib model generally results in longer review periods and lower retail prices as far as the base stock level is concerned we show that it can be higher in either setting however the safety stock is considerably lower for the tib model lastly indeed if a firm s backordering cost is indeed time dependent then use of the tib model for making decisions results in significant profit penalty under most market operating conditions specifically for innovative products except when demand uncertainty and or the backordering cost are quite low i e for mature commodity products

enterprise restructuring and embeddedness a policy and systems perspective this paper presents a dynamic analysis of technological and industrial policies directed to business sector restructuring in increasingly knowledge based economies it simultaneously considers policies which are aimed at promoting restructuring directly and policies aimed at influencing the facilitating structure of largely non business institutions and organizations this paper also offers an explicit analysis of the changing portfolio of policies recognizing the complementarity of both incentives and institutional development and the likelihood of having to adopt under a broad set of circumstances a changing portfolio of horizontal and target incentives policies programs copyright 2000 by oxford university press

optimal dynamic reinsurance policies under a generalized denneberg s absolute deviation principle abstract this paper studies the optimal dynamic reinsurance policy for an insurance company whose surplus is modeled by the diffusion approximation of the classical cramer lundberg model we assume the reinsurance premium is calculated according to a proposed mean cvar premium principle which generalizes denneberg s absolute deviation principle and expected value principle moreover we require that both ceded loss and retention functions are non decreasing to rule out moral hazard under the objective of minimizing the ruin probability we obtain the optimal reinsurance policy explicitly and we denote the resulting treaty as the dual excess of loss reinsurance this form of the optimal treaty is new to the literature and lends support to the fact that reinsurance contracts in practice often involve layers it also demonstrates that reinsurance treaties such as the proportional and the standard excess of loss which are typically found to be optimal in the dynamic reinsurance model need not be optimal when we consider a more general optimization model we also consider other generalizations including i allowing the insurer to manage its business through both reinsurance and investment and ii n piecewise mean cvar premium principle in the former case we not only show that the dual excess of loss reinsurance policy remains optimal but also demonstrate that investing in stock can further enhance insurer s financial stability with lower ruin probability for the latter case we establish that the optimal reinsurance treaty can have at most n layers which is also more consistent with practice

employment change in independent owner managed high technology firms in great britain there is a growing volume of literature that points to the potential for small technology based firms to achieve substantial employment growth as a direct consequence of such work this sector of any economy has attracted increasing attention from national and local governments concerned with finding ways of revitalising economically deprived localities and creating employment opportunities this paper provides up to date empirical evidence surrounding the ability of small high technology firms to create additional jobs in great britain in addition key founder and business characteristics are isolated which are significantly associated with employment change in growing high technology firms over the 1986 to 1992 period with respect to factors influencing these high levels of employment growth a high firm size in 1986 was found to act positively on employment growth as was a graduate level education for the key founder on the finance side firms which had access to and used a multiplicity of sources of start up finance tended to grow faster futher on the basis of our results we would suggest and recommend a government policy which at the firm level actively encourages high technology firm start ups who record higher rates of survival than firms in more conventional sectors as well as providing support for existing high technology firms who have already demonstrated the inclination and ability to grow in employment size

asymptotic optimality of order up to policies in lost sales inventory systems we study a single product single location inventory system under periodic review where excess demand is lost and the replenishment lead time is positive the performance measure of interest is the long run average holding cost and lost sales penalty cost for a large class of demand distributions we show that when the lost sales penalty becomes large compared to the holding cost the relative difference between the cost of the optimal policy and the best order up to policy converges to zero for any given cost parameters we establish a bound on this relative difference numerical experiments show that the best order up to policy performs well yielding an average cost that is within 1 5 of the optimal cost when the ratio between the lost sales penalty and the holding cost is 100 we also propose a heuristic order up to level using two newsvendor expressions in our experiments the cost of this order up to policy is 2 52 higher on an average than the best order up to policy

turnpike policies for periodic review inventory model with emergency orders abstract this paper presents a periodic review capacitated lot sizing model with limited backlogging and a possibility of emergency orders the main intention of placing emergency orders is to satisfy the demand as soon as a shortage occurs it is assumed that the demands are independently distributed in successive periods there are two resupply modes available a regular mode and an emergency mode hence no lead time of emergence orders is assumed the purchase price could be high the measure of effectiveness is the total or average per period expected cost which includes holding cost shortage cost and both types of order costs the minimum cost is obtained by considering this system as a discrete time markov decision process we use this model to describe a simple and efficient value function algorithm for finding optimal policies we find propositions on specially structured optimal policies generalizing classical results on s s policies some connections of the turnpike policies and optimal infinite policies are presented computational results are given through numerical examples

structural estimation of the effect of out of stocks we develop a structural demand model that endogenously captures the effect of out of stocks on customer choice by simulating a time varying set of available alternatives our estimation method uses store level data on sales and partial information on product availability our model allows for flexible substitution patterns which are based on utility maximization principles and can accommodate categorical and continuous product characteristics the methodology can be applied to data from multiple markets and in categories with a relatively large number of alternatives slow moving products and frequent out of stocks unlike many existing approaches in addition we illustrate how the model can be used to assist the decisions of a store manager in two ways first we show how to quantify the lost sales induced by out of stock products second we provide insights on the financial consequences of out of stocks and suggest price promotion policies that can be used to help mitigate their negative economic impact which run counter to simple commonly used heuristics

optimal ordering policies for periodic review systems with replenishment cycles in this paper we consider inventory models for periodic review systems with replenishment cycles which consist of a number of periods by replenishment cycles we mean that an order is always placed at the beginning of a cycle we use dynamic programming to formulate both the backorder and lost sales models and propose to charge the holding and shortage costs based on the ending inventory of periods rather than only on the ending inventory of cycles since periods can be made any time units to suit the needs of an application this approach in fact computes the holding cost based on the average inventory of a cycle and the shortage cost in proportion to the duration of shortage for the backorder model and remedies the shortcomings of the heuristic or approximate treatment of such systems hadley and whitin analysis of inventory systems prentice hall englewood cliffs nj 1963 we show that a base stock policy is optimal for the backorder model while the optimal order quantity is a function of the on hand inventory for the lost sales model moreover for the backorder model we develop a simple expression for computing the optimal base stock level for the lost sales model we derive convergence conditions for obtaining the optimal operational parameters

some insights regarding the optimal reorder period in periodic review inventory systems abstract the periodic review inventory system is not only pervasive but also has an extensive literature dealing with various aspects from its theoretical underpinnings through to its performance however the selection of the best review period and its behaviour with respect to basic inventory parameters such as demand and supply variability appears to be poorly understood in this paper we treat the normal and gamma distributions which are probably the two most commonly used distributions of demand over the key protection time interval in a periodic review system we show that the total cost function is not necessarily well behaved as a function of the review period in particular it can be non convex which complicates the determination of the best value of the review interval also we demonstrate and explain how the best review period changes as the values of various parameters are modified some of these changes are initially counterintuitive in nature managerially oriented interpretations should also be helpful to organisations seeking improvement in inventory system performance

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

a periodic review model with serially correlated inventory level dependent demand abstract it has been established that the demand rates of many consumer products are serially correlated and are dependent on the amount of inventory displayed to the customer a periodic review model is developed that considers both of these effects an adaptive base stock policy based on the critical fractile is presented and a solution methodology is developed the effect of this demand pattern on the safety stock requirement is investigated

market stimulating technology policies in developing countries a framework with examples from east asia abstract this paper proposes an analytical framework for technology development based upon evolutionary approaches and drawing upon asian development strategies the analysis rests on the concept of market stimulating technology policies comprising a broad array of policies to promote industrial and technological development some market and others government determined these policies may be functional horizontal or vertical and can be analyzed at three levels national strategic and specific the paper suggests that strategic choices are involved at all stages that cannot be resolved entirely by recourse to free markets

growth oriented smes in unfavourable regional environments vaessen p and keeble d 1995 growth oriented smes in unfavourable regional environments reg studies 29 489 505 in this paper the research focus is on counterfactual cases of growth oriented smes in peripheral regions of britain scotland northern england wales and merseyside these firms are systematically compared to three control groups made up of growth oriented smes in the south east slow growth firms in the periphery and slow growth firms in the south east apart from some performance measures such as profits and exports three key characteristics of the firms are analysed these are the extent of competition in the markets served levels of innovation and r d and work force and labour market characteristics the analysis is conducted for manufacturing firms and professional and business services separately firms of the research group stand out against the other firms in the sample as businesses with a very favourable r d input output ratio and greater propensity for providing a

why has the investment performance of technology specialist european venture capital funds been so poor abstract this paper seeks to identify and model the key parameters which impact on the commercial performance of a specialist technology focused early stage venture capital fund using both input costs and output expected values data provided by a number of specialist independent venture capital firms a spreadsheet model of a 10 year term fund is developed these figures are used to generate internal rate of return irr and net present value npv performance calculations for the investment commitments of both the institutional limited partners and venture capitalist general partner the generically defined model allows the user to address both conceptual and pragmatic questions regarding the relationship between fund structure and performance the model is further developed to determine the effect on fund performance of two venture capital related indirect state support schemes guarantee and leverage options iterative interrogations of the model demonstrate the sensitivity of economic returns to the scale of the investment activity state supported schemes mitigate but do not remove the negative performance consequences of small fund size a fund with under 15 million us 25 million or ecu21 million under management is of increasing economic vulnerability

lost sales problems with stochastic lead times convexity results for base stock policies we consider a single location inventory system with periodic review and stochastic demand it places replenishment orders to raise the inventory position that is inventory on hand plus inventory in transit to exactly s at the beginning of every period the lead time associated with each of these orders is random however the lead time process is such that these orders do not cross demand that cannot be met with inventory available on hand is lost permanently we state and prove some sample path properties of lost sales inventory on hand at the end of a period and inventory position at the end of a period as functions of s the main result is the convexity of the expected discounted sum of holding and lost sales costs as a function of s this result justifies the use of common search procedures or linear programming methods to determine optimal base stock levels for inventory systems with lost sales and stochastic lead times it should be noted that the class of base stock policies is suboptimal for such systems and we are primarily interested in them because of their widespread use

inventory control in a fluctuating demand environment we present an inventory model where the demand rate varies with an underlying state of the world variable this variable can represent economic fluctuations or stages in the product life cycle for example we derive some basic characteristics of optimal policies and develop algorithms for computing them in addition we show that certain monotonicity patterns in the problem data are reflected in the optimal policies

trade restrictions as facilitating practices abstract the effect of quantitative restrictions in oligopolistic markets is shown to depend on whether imports are substitutes or complements for domestic products in the former case they have profound effects even when set at free trade levels because they impede the ability of the foreign firm to compete in the domestic market thereby acting to facilitate collusion and raise prices and profits for this reason tariffs and quotas are fundamentally non equivalent with substitute goods when goods are complements a voluntary export restriction ver at the free trade level has no effect and tariffs and quotas are equivalent

on a multi period supply chain system with supplementary order opportunity abstract this paper considers a supplementary supply order system in a multi period situation in each period the buyer first places an initial order based on the demand prediction he has the opportunity to place a supplementary order with the supplier after the demand of that period is realized the supplier maintains an inventory and decides the quantity to be produced and the quantity to be provided for the supplementary order in each time period we formulate the problem as a multi period inventory game and derive the optimal production and order policies for the supplier and buyer respectively the existence and uniqueness of nash equilibrium is proved in the generalized multi period setting and the closed form nash equilibrium solution is obtained when the parameters are stationary numerical study is performed to reveal more managerial insights we find that the supplementary supply order mechanism if designed properly can effectively improve the multi period supply chain performance

a catalytic and evolutionary approach to horizontal technology policies htps abstract this paper presents an evolutionary framework for horizontal technology policies htps especially market friendly ones involving project based incentives e g rd and they complement the more specific and well known selective and vertical policies aimed at individual sectors and technologies the analysis is conducted within a learning to innovate framework with emphasis on collective organizational learning search and market building the outcome is a technology policy cycle with distinct infant growth and mature phases proactive generation of a critical mass of projects for efficient learning and diffusion of innovation routines becomes the aim of the infant phase while the mature phase of the policy should focus on policy restructuring including drastic reductions in the support of routi projects and enhanced support of more complex types of innovation the paper also emphasizes the importance of a neutrality component in incentives in the infant phase of increasing selectivity and of building policy capabilities for efficient policy design and implementation

the transformation of competitive advantage in east asia an analysis of technological and trade specialisation summary in recent years there has been considerable interest in the relationship between a country s export competitiveness and the role played by technology in strengthening and maintaining competitive advantage a central feature of recent empirical work mainly focused on the oecd countries has rested on examining patterns of export and technological specialization between economies and sectors this paper moves attention away from the advanced industrialized economies to examine the trends for trade and technological specialization among the east asian developing economies in particular two aspects of specialization are examined first to what extent have patterns of competitive advantage changed over time and second to measure the relationship between patterns of trade and technological specialization important differences are found in the patterns of specialization and in the relationship between them among the advanced east asian economies and those catching up

the present status and problems of impact research in technology policy a case study on the federal program for funding research and development personnel in germany abstract the paper illustrates the present status and the problems of impact research through an impact research study of the program of funding research and development personnel in small and meduim sized firms launched by the german federal government this impact analysis study is one of the first of its kind to be conducted in technology policy in the federal republic of germany it is mainly devoted to the following problems acceptance by the firms involved of the funding program relevance of the program to internal decision making processes quantitative and qualitative effects on rd impact on the innovation activities of firms efficient implementation and management of the program impact analyses need to go beyond the framework of a shallow technocratic incidence analysis studying only effects the funding program is assumed to have such solidly based impact analysis is possible only if also the basic aspects underlying the funding programs can be reviewed critically and verified empirically the practical implementation of this criterion is demonstrated by studying the effects of the funding measure on the innovative activities of firms typical problems associated with impact anayses are insufficient access to the data required shortcomings in the evolution of theories and the development of methods weaknesses inherent in the formation of indicators on a sound theoretical basis and with a sufficient degree of operationalization it is shown how far these problems make themselves felt and are partly overcome in this impact analysis in particular the early inclusion of evaluation aspects in the conceptual phase of the funding program has established comparatively favorable conditions for this impact analysis

a periodic review inventory model with two delivery modes fractional lead times and age and period dependent backlogging costs abstract we examine a periodic review inventory model where the buyer has access to a mix of two delivery modes for the quantity it orders in a period these include an emergency delivery mode that delivers instantaneously and a regular delivery mode that delivers within the length of the review period the unmet demand is backordered and charged a backlogging cost that varies with the length of the backlogging time the excess inventory is charged a holding cost the unit costs for the delivery modes could be different we show that the well known base stock policy structure remains optimal for this problem under mild conditions

on the optimal policy structure in serial inventory systems with lost sales we study a periodically reviewed serial inventory system in which excess demand from external customers is lost we derive elementary properties of the vector of optimal order quantities in this system in particular we derive bounds on the sensitivity or more mathematically the derivative of the optimal order quantity at each stage to the vector of the current inventory levels our analysis uses the concept of l natural convexity which was studied in discrete convex analysis and recently used in the study of single stage inventory systems with lost sales we also remark on how our analysis extends to models with capacity constraints and or backordering

the functions of technology infrastructure in a competitive economy abstract governments of industrialized nations play varied but important roles in providing the diverse technology infrastructure that supports a modern competitive economy an understanding of the structure and impacts of these roles as well as efficiency differences among alternative implementation schemes is particularly important at this time as competing industrialized nations are revamping their technology infrastructures in response to major shifts in thescope as well as the content of their growth strategies these shifts in scope can be described as evolutionary changes from single stage to multi stage strategies in that several modes of technology based competition are simultaneously pursued that is whereas an economy may have focused on innovation manufacturing high volume or niche markets etc most if not all of these must be pursued together in the future in order to diversify risk and achieve economies of scope effective implementation of the more complex multi stage growth strategy requires a consensus model of the appropriate functions for infrastructure and its institutions such a consensus model is necessary to efficiently guide strategic planning in both industry and government in particular a conceptual basis is needed for defining the critical interfaces between the government and industry roles including effective long range planning communication and cooperation the required technology infrastructure policy model is derived from a microeconomic model of the typical technology based industry existing national strategies have demonstrated the importance of efficiency at the production and market development stages as well as at the r d stage but the trend is towards promoting simultaneous efficiency at all these stages that is the model and the derived infrastructure functions must cover all stages and interfaces in the technology and related product life cycles

the effectiveness of tax incentives for r d i in developing countries the case of argentina abstract there is increasing interest in developing countries in granting tax incentives in order to encourage private investment in research development and innovation r d i however evidence on the effectiveness of such schemes in achieving policy goals in weak innovation systems contexts is still very scarce this paper aims at narrowing this knowledge gap by focusing on the effects of a tax credit scheme for promoting firm level innovation investment in argentina the analysis applies dynamic panel data techniques to a novel dataset merging several waves of the national innovation survey collected by the national institute of statistics and censuses the results suggest that the elasticity of r d i investment to its user cost of capital is a greater than 1 in absolute terms which implies that the intervention has been effective in increasing firms innovation efforts however effects vary depending on the type of innovation investment being subsidized industrial sector and size of the firm moreover when innovation investment is divided into innovation related capital goods expenditures and only r d the results suggest that the absolute value of the elasticity for the r d component of the innovation investment is less than 1 these heterogeneous effects should be exploited for further policy design

space time patterns of entrepreneurial expectations and performance nijkamp p rouwendal j and van der ede m 1993 space time patterns of entrepreneurial expectations and performance reg studies 27 1 11 economic research in the past decade has paid much attention to the motives of entrepreneurial behaviour in a neo schumpeterian spirit entrepreneurial decisions are by definition characterized by uncertainty regarding future events rational expectations theories have become a major new line of thought in dealing with future uncertainty in the literature we find mainly attempts to estimate indirectly relationships on observable behaviour and strategies which are derived from postulated expectations of decision makers normally such expectations are not directly observed in our paper we have analysed a set of empirical regional micro data on entrepreneurial expectations regarding their future decisions whilst for the same period the observed and realized data are also available this allows for a test between expectations and realizations the paper develops

optimal replenishment for a periodic review inventory system with two supply modes abstract in this paper we study periodic inventory systems with long review periods we develop dynamic programming models for these systems in which regular orders as well as emergency orders can be placed periodically we identify two cases depending on whether or not a fixed cost for placing an emergency order is present we show that if the emergency supply mode can be used there exists a critical inventory level such that if the inventory position at a review epoch falls below this critical level an emergency order is placed we also develop simple procedures for computing the optimal policy parameters in all cases the optimal order up to level is obtained by solving a myopic cost function thus the proposed ordering policies are easy to implement

coordinated replenishment strategies in inventory distribution systems in this paper we study the impact of coordinated replenishment and shipment in inventory distribution systems we analyze a system with multiple retailers and one outside supplier random demand occurs at each retailer and the supplier replenishes all the retailers in traditional inventory models each retailer orders directly from the supplier whenever the need arises we present a new centralized ordering policy that orders for all retailers simultaneously the new policy is equivalent to the introduction of a warehouse with no inventory that is in charge of the ordering allocation and distribution of inventory to the retailers under such a policy orders for some retailers may be postponed or expedited so that they can be batched with other retailers orders which results in savings in ordering and shipping costs in addition to the policy we propose for supplying inventory to the retailers we also consider three other policies that are based on these well known policies in the literature a can order policy b echelon inventory policy and c fixed replenishment interval policy furthermore we create a framework for simultaneously making inventory and transportation decisions by incorporating the transportation costs or limited truck capacities we numerically compare the performance of our proposed policy with these policies to identify the settings in which each policy would perform well

inventory control in a lost sales setting with information about supply lead times abstract supply chain collaboration using advancements in information technology is on the rise and this includes sharing of information between suppliers and buyers in this paper we study the value of information about the development of supply lead times from a buyer s perspective we consider a periodically reviewed single item inventory system in a lost sales setting where at most one order can be outstanding at a time we compare the performance of an inventory model assuming informed lead times to a model assuming uninformed independent and identically distributed lead times we employ the dynamic programming approach to find the best state dependent ordering policy to minimize the expected average total cost per time unit our numerical results show that acquiring information about the development of supply lead times is of value in general the best policy suggested by the model assuming informed lead times causes lower average cost than the model assuming uninformed lead times

mapping public support for innovation a comparison of policy alignment in the uk and france this paper proposes and tests a three dimensional model of public support design as a framework to compare public incentives for innovation in firms through time and across countries and consequently to compare forms of policy alignment of innovation objectives in an economy using data on 149 french and british policy programmes from the early 1980s to 2002 this paper shows that policy makers implement programmes within a different three dimensional design space in order to align several distinctive objectives and consequently strengthen the impact of governmental measures moreover as the objectives of the national players and policy makers evolved the portfolio of innovation policies also evolved in their separate ways nevertheless some similar trends are also observed

the geography of innovation in small and medium sized firms in west germany since the 1980s a more micro economic oriented view has settled the dispute between macro economic theories over the causes of regional development differentiated studies revealed an unequal spatial distribution of r d laboratories and innovating firms and furthermore it was discovered that the innovation behaviour of firms differs between types of regions however these studies still left several questions unanswered

periodic review lost sales inventory models with compound poisson demand and constant lead times of any length in almost all literature on inventory models with lost sales and periodic reviews the lead time is assumed to be either an integer multiple of or less than the review period in a lot of practical settings such restrictions are not satisfied we develop new models allowing constant lead times of any length when demand is compound poisson besides an optimal policy we consider pure and restricted base stock policies under new lead time and cost circumstances based on our numerical results we conclude that the latter policy which imposes a restriction on the maximum order size performs almost as well as the optimal policy we also propose an approximation procedure to determine the base stock levels for both policies with closed form expressions

recent results in measuring innovation output abstract the fraunhofer institut fur systemtechnik und innovationsforschung isi is at present engaged in evaluating a number of technology policy programs designed to promote research development and innovation in small and medium sized firms these studies try to determine the extent to which these programmes have an impact upon the innovative activities of firms in this connection it was also attempted to measure the innovation output the level of innovation of a firm is innovation ouput the level of innovation of a firm is procedure involves a number of problems self assessment of firms in view of insufficient market transparency distortion due to self portraits reflecting the firms own interests we tried to mitigate such distortions by two approaches firstly firms were asked for their technologically new products the term new being applied a to the firm and b to the areas of product application as a result of this two tier procedure firms supplied rather realistic answers secondly supplementary questions were asked about sales figures the competitive technological situation nationally and internationally expenditure on r d patents stages of innovation aims of innovation etc the paper presents the results obtained to date on the innovation output of firms within the framework of an evaluation of the largest programme at present devoted to promoting r d and innovation in small and medium sized firms the results are based on a representative sample of approximately 4 500 small and medium sized firms up to 1 00 employees with r d activities in the federal republic of germany

a multiechelon inventory model with fixed replenishment intervals this paper develops a new model for studying multiechelon inventory systems with stochastic demand for the model we assume that each site in the system orders at preset times according to an order up to policy that delivery times are deterministic and that the demand processes are stochastic with independent increments we introduce a new scheme for allocating stock in short supply which we call virtual allocation and which permits significant tractability we exercise the model on a set of test problems for two echelon systems to get insight into the structure of good policies the primary findings are that both the central warehouse upper echelon and the retail sites lower echelon should hold safety stock but that most of the safety stock should be at the retail sites consequently the central warehouse will stock out with high probability furthermore we show that the virtual allocation rule is near optimal for the set of test problems

pricing to market behaviour in european car markets abstract this paper investigates ptm behaviour in european car markets for a period of great interest 1993 98 taking into account the role of invoicing currency the results indicate that local currency price stability is a strong and pervasive phenomenon across products independently of the invoicing currency the paper offers robustness checks tests and arguments that justify the interpretation of this finding at least in part as evidence of ptm it implies the existence of market segmentation and price discrimination despite the completion of the single market programme on 1 january 1993

myopic solutions of markov decision processes and stochastic games sufficient conditions are presented for a markov decision process to have a myopic optimum and for a stochastic game to possess a myopic equilibrium point an optimum or an equilibrium point is said to be myopic if it can be deduced from an optimum or an equilibrium point of a static optimization problem or a static nash game the principal conditions are a each single period reward is the sum of terms due to the current state and action b each transition probability depends on the action taken but not on the state from which the transition occurs and c an appropriate static optimum or equilibrium point is ad infinitum repeatable these conditions are satisfied by several dynamic oligopoly models and numerous markov decision processes

a continuous review model for an inventory system with two supply modes in this paper we develop an approximate model of an inventory control system in which there exist two options for resupply with one having a shorter lead time because the optimal policy appears to be extremely complex we consider a reasonable extension of the standard q r policy to allow for two different lot sizes q1 and q2 and two different reorder levels r1 and r2 expressions for the expected on hand inventory and the expected backorders are developed and a procedure for determining the policy parameters is given the model is validated by simulation and calculations are included which compare the average annual cost with and without emergency ordering

impacts of government incentives towards industrial innovation an analysis of the federal programme funding r d personnel in the federal republic of germany abstract against a background of deteriorating national and international economic conditions increasing importance is being attached by political administrations to the innovative capacities of small and medium sized firms with respect to the employment situation and to international competitiveness consequently government support of research development and innovation in these companies has taken a marked upward turn since the late seventies both in the federal republic of germany and in other industrialized western countries the actual impacts of some of these programmes are at present under study by the fraunhofer institut fur systemtechnik und innovationsforschung isi this paper is an outline of the results of a study of the largest current programme funding r d and innovation in small and medium sized firms by offering grants towards the costs of r d personnel the impact analysis is being conducted in two rounds the first round of studies which is the subject of this report took place in 1980 1981 and was designed to examine the discernible short term effects and characteristics of the programme the second round is planned for 1983 1984 as a summary of the impacts of the programme over the first five years of its term of effect the subjects of investigation are the quantitative and qualitative changes in r d activities caused by the programme in the firms under study and the contribution the programme can make to strengthen innovative and competitive capabilities the conditions underlying the programme are reviewed critically especially in order to see whether the barriers to innovation and the weak spots assumed did in fact exist in the firms examined the administrative management free rider effects and factors restricting impacts are investigated along with such questions as whether firms located in peripheral regions were reached by the programme to the same extent as firms in conurbation areas furthermore the reasons for non participation of firms are analyzed the example of the federal programme funding r d personnel thus is used in this impact analysis in an attempt to provide empirical data on the significance the range and the limits of such a government instrument promoting r d and innovation in small and medium sized firms

managing inventory with multiple products lags in delivery resource constraints and lost sales a mathematical programming approach this paper develops an order up tos inventory model that is designed to handle multiple items resource constraints lags in delivery and lost sales without sacrificing computational simplicity mild conditions are shown to ensure that the expected average holding cost and the expected average shortage cost are separable convex functions of the order up to levels we develop nonparametric estimates of these costs and use them in conjunction with linear programming to produce what is termed the lp policy the lp policy has two major advantages over traditional methods first it can be computed in complex environments such as the one described above and second it does not require an explicit functional form of demand something that is difficult to specify accurately in practice in two numerical experiments designed so that optimal policies could be computed the lp policy fared well differing from the optimal profit by an average of 2 20 and 1 84 respectively these results compare quite favorably with the errors incurred in traditional methods when a correctly specified distribution uses estimated parameters our findings support the effectiveness of this mathematical programming technique for approximating complex real world inventory control problems

industrial r d as a national policy horizontal technology policies and industry state co evolution in the growth of the israeli software industry the israeli software industry has been an indisputable success since the 1990s this paper utilizes the development of the israeli industry to empirically explore the argument of the horizontal technology policies htp framework on the impact of neutral science and technology policies on industrial development the paper micro analyzes the israeli software industry and compares its unique historical development pattern with other emerging countries it describes 1 the rise of this industry as one outcome of the development of the entire it industry in israel 2 the reasons behind the industry s ability to conduct and focus on intensive rd 3 the industry s success in becoming an integral part of the american financial and it industrial sector it argues that only by understanding the intricate co evolution of state industry relations and the specific htp regime employed in israel can we understand the current behavior conditions business models and capability of the industry therefore the argument is that israel s industrial science and technology developmental agencies did not aim at creating a software industry but rather at the development of novel products r d based industry however the software industry has been significantly influenced throughout its development by the specific system of innovation which these policies fostered thus the paper argues that public policy is one of the main reasons why the industry has focused almost entirely on product r d activities in addition the paper suggests that the state s science and technology industrial policy has propelled the industry into its intimate relationship with the american financial sector 2007 elsevier b v all rights reserved

inventory performance under staggered deliveries and autocorrelated demand production plans often span a whole week or month even when independent production lots are completed every day and service performance is tallied daily such policies are said to use staggered deliveries meaning that the production rate for multiple days are determined at a single point in time assuming autocorrelated demand and linear inventory holding and backlog costs we identify the optimal replenishment policy for order cycles of length p with the addition of a once per cycle audit cost we optimize the order cycle length p via an inverse function approach in addition we characterize periodic inventory costs availability and fill rate as a consequence of staggering deliveries the inventory level becomes cyclically heteroskedastic this manifests itself as ripples in the expected cost and service levels nevertheless the cost optimal replenishment policy achieves a constant availability by using time varying safety stocks this is not the case with suboptimal constant safety stock policies where the availability fluctuates over the cycle

the r q control of a periodic review inventory system with continuous demand and lost sales abstract in this paper we consider a periodic review inventory model with lost sales during a stockout and with the constraint that at most one replenishment order may be outstanding at any time demands in successive review periods are independent identically distributed variables from a continuous distribution the fixed lead time is an integral number of review periods we explore control policies of the r q type that is a replenishment order of size q is placed when the inventory position stock in hand plus stock on order falls to or below the re order level r we use asymptotic renewal theory results to estimate the undershoot of the re order level r and also to estimate the cycle stockholding cost which turns out to take a relatively simple form based on these approximations we set out a policy improvement solution methodology and illustrate this with some numerical examples for which demand is normally distributed these numerical examples suggest that a relatively simple approach based on the economic order quantity can provide results which are very close to optimal