Optimal freeware quality in the presence of network externalities: an evolutionary game theoretical approach

New software products often face difficulty in achieving market penetration. A potential remedy is to offer a freeware version of the software to encourage initial adoption and establish a larger user base for the software, thereby increasing the commercial version's value to adopters in future periods. However, to avoid complete cannibalization of the commercial version, the freeware version's quality must be sufficiently low and the price of the commercial version must not be too high. We model the effect of these two decision variables, price and freeware quality, on the adoption of software using static and evolutionary game theory.     

Canadian nurses under a single-payer system: advantage or disadvantage?

The American nursing community has not wholeheartedly endorsed comprehensive health care system reform because of fear that nursing salaries, wage compression, direct reimbursement, and political power will be negatively affected in a single-payer system. These issues are evaluated under the Canadian health care system (a single-payer system). The source of payment does not appreciably affect these issues.     

Hedge fund index-engineering methodologies: a comparison and demonstration

We examine hedge fund (HF) index construction methodologies, by describing and analysing case studies from two well-known database vendors and evaluating them using numerical examples on the same dataset. Despite the fact that they follow a similar due diligence process, there are great differences in the index engineering practices arising from different quantitative techniques, even for indices in the same HF category. However, those quantitative techniques provide similar results. The differences are rather due to the use of different HF universes and different inclusion criteria. This article is the first to use actual numerical case studies to illustrate and compare how HF index engineering works. Having read it, the reader will have a good understanding of how HF indices are formed.     

职业教育的教学优势

职业教育亦称职业技术教育,是与基础教育、高等教育和成人教育地位平行的四大教育板块之一,是国民教育体系和人力资源开发的重要组成部分,是广大青年打开通向成功成才大门的重要途径,肩负着培养多样化人才、传承技术技能、促进就业创业的重要职责。与普通教育相比,职业教育的教学具有其明显的优势。     

Economic modeling using evolutionary algorithms: the effect of a binary encoding of strategies

We are concerned with evolutionary algorithms that are employed for economic modeling purposes. We focus in particular on evolutionary algorithms that use a binary encoding of strategies. These algorithms, commonly referred to as genetic algorithms, are popular in agent-based computational economics research. In many studies, however, there is no clear reason for the use of a binary encoding of strategies. We therefore examine to what extent the use of such an encoding may influence the results produced by an evolutionary algorithm. It turns out that the use of a binary encoding can have quite significant effects. Since these effects do not have a meaningful economic interpretation, they should be regarded as artifacts. Our findings indicate that in general the use of a binary encoding is undesirable. They also highlight the importance of employing evolutionary algorithms with a sensible economic interpretation.     

Optimal risk adoption: a real options approach

Summary. This study develops a real options approach for analyzing the optimal risk adoption policy in an environment where the adoption means a switch from one stochastic flow representation into another. We establish that increased volatility does not necessarily decelerate investment, as predicted by the standard literature on real options, once the underlying volatility of the state variable is made endogenous. We prove that for a decision maker with a convex (concave) objective function, increased post-adoption volatility increases (decreases) the expected cumulative present value of the post-adoption profit flow, which consequently decreases (increases) the option value of waiting and, therefore, accelerates (decelerates) current investment.Received: 12 October 2001, Revised: 4 December 2002, JEL Classification Numbers: O32, G30, D92, C61. Correspondence to: Luis H.R. AlvarezConstructive comments from an anonymous referee are acknowledged. The financial support from the Foundation for the Promotion of the Actuarial Profession (Aktuaaritoiminnan Kehittämissäätiö) to Luis H. R. Alvarez is gratefully acknowledged. Both authors are grateful for the financial support from The Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation.     

Breaks in the chain of comparative advantage

The chain proposition of comparative advantage states that when factor prices differ between two countries producing many products with two factors, every export of the capital abundant country would be more capital intensive than any of its imports. The present note points out that an economy has the option to break the chain to reach full employment if its factor endowment is not spanned by the production cone of the more intensive products.     

Frames of significance: technological agenda-forming for strategic advantage

Technological innovation is a source of competittive advantage and potential corporate rejuvenation. The problematic issues that managers frame, then devote attention and resurces to solving, constitute the strategic technological agenda of the firm. We propose and elaborate a perceptual frame model by which the agenda may be understood. We use the model to interpret three innovation episodes in divisions of large, multi-divisional corporations. The patterns of framing over time and the issues addressed are particular to each firm. We acknowledge the existence of partial perspectives associated with the vantage points of the various decision-makers and observers, and we suggest that greater owareness of this partiality could lead to a better appreciation of the complexity and implications of ambiguous issues. We suggest that agendas evolve in a broadly 'logical-incremental' way although we question whether sufficient priority is being accorded to extending the new capabilities to emerge from innovation to other areas of the parent coporations.     

Institutions hold consumption on a leash: an evolutionary economic approach to the future of consumption

As first suggested by Keynes (1930), much thinking about the future of consumption starts with claims about future income, technology or demographics, perhaps concocted in a growth model, and then considers what consumption will look like, as a separate question, given those priors. A different approach starts one step further back with inquiry into the type of institutions that would produce such evolutionary growth. You then ask how those same institutions would shape consumption. I argue that the future of consumption depends on income and innovation, which themselves depend on the evolution of institutions. I suggest that this is an evolutionary economic approach to the future of consumption.     

Optimal auditing of social benefit fraud: a case study

Empirical Economics - The aim of this paper is to study the effect of different audit strategies on fraud in one particular social benefit system in Sweden. The efficiency of different audit...     

An advantage of the bargaining set over the core

An example of a market game is described for which the bargaining set seems to be intuitively more acceptable than the (nonempty) core. It also yields more insight into the nature of the competition that may exist among the traders.     

Some issues in the measurement of comparative advantage

This paper examines measurement of ‘revealed comparative advantage’ in the light of recent evidence that such measures appear to yield poor results and of recent theoretical developments. Evidence is presented that the poor performance of these measures is not likely to be attributable to problems predominantly associated with measurement itself. Recent theoretical developments make clearer what can be expected of observed trade flows. A measure, based on theory's ex antepredictions measures. The behaviour of the measure is evaluated for a sample of UK industries in 1979.     

Product quality and the theory of comparative advantage

We develop a simple model to investigate the possibility that two countries that differ significantly in income levels may be unable to gain from trading with each other. We consider two countries with identical preferences and different technologies. There are two types of goods: one homogeneous, and one quality-differentiated. We show that if one country has an absolute advantage in both types of goods, then no trade may be possible between the two countries, despite differences in relative autarky prices.     

代理权争夺利弊探讨

代理权争夺作为公司控制权市场上一种公司控制权转移方式，具有其独特的内涵与鲜明的特点，它在促进社会福利增加、保护中小股东利益、完善公司治理等方面具有重要的积极意义，但也存在可能会诱发管理者的短视行为、代理权争夺中挑战者的道德风险问题较突出、不利于公司战略的长期稳定等弊端。当前，为充分发挥代理权争夺的积极作用，我国必须做好优化上市公司股权结构、完善相关的法律规范等方面的工作。     

Location of vertically linked industries: agglomeration versus comparative advantage

This paper analyses the effects of trade liberalisation on the location of manufacturing firms that are vertically linked and differ in factor intensities. I extend the new economic geography literature, by embedding a model with vertical linkages within a Heckscher-Ohlin framework. I show that lower trade costs can lead to an agglomeration of all upstream and downstream firms in one country, even when they differ in factor intensities. These industrial location patterns do not always lead to factor price convergence; and may result in an increase in returns to both factors in the country where the agglomeration locates.     

Cannibalism and the Optimal Sharing of the North-East Atlantic Cod Stock: a Bioeconomic Model

This paper shows how intra-stock relations such as cannibalism and growth enhancement, determine the economically optimal sharing of a fish resource between heterogeneous harvesting agents. The sharing of resources between different vessel groups is often left for political decision making. Nonetheless, such decisions may have both biological and economic consequences. This becomes quite clear when different harvesting groups exploit different sections (age groups) of a stock that has intra-stock interactions in the form of cannibalism. A two-agent bioeconomic model with cannibalism is developed and used to determine (i) optimal annual harvest sizes (TACs) for cod, and (ii) the optimal proportion of the TAC that should be harvested by the different vessel groups in the fishery. Applying biological and economic data in a numerical procedure, and comparing the results obtained to previous studies, it is shown that intra-stock interactions such as the presence of cannibalism has a significant impact on who should take what proportion of the TAC, and hence, the standing stock size and discounted economic rent achievable. In contrast to other studies, we find that the optimal harvest requires that both trawlers and coastal vessels should harvest the fish resource. In addition, the results indicate that, from a bioeconomic perspective, the existing trawler fleet’s harvest share in the cod fishery is too high. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.