Asymmetric effects of demand uncertainty on intrafirm trade in durable and non‐durable industries

This paper unveils a new empirical regularity regarding the asymmetric patterns of international sourcing modes in the durable and non‐durable industries under uncertainty, and explains the asymmetry based on the traditional lens of the transaction cost economics. Under demand uncertainty, firms face trade‐offs between outsourcing and vertical integration: while outsourcing requires less initial investment and allows easier market entry and exit, vertical integration offers better management and communication systems. In the durable industries, consistent with the transaction cost economics, the relationship between vertical integration and uncertainty is positive. In the nondurable industries, however, such relationship is weaker because inelastic demand and shorter gaps between production and sales mitigate the effect of uncertainty. I show the asymmetric effects of uncertainty based on a simple general equilibrium model and provide consistent empirical evidence using US intrafirm trade and microeconomic uncertainty data.     

Persistent Unemployment and Policy Uncertainty: Numerical Evidence from a New Approach

In the recovery from the United States’ 2009 recession, unemployment has proven resistant to both aggressive fiscal policy and expansionary monetary policy. A possible explanation is the policy cost uncertainty hypothesis. This holds that managers of private firms have been rationally avoiding hiring workers in the years after 2010 because of the risk of higher future costs imposed by government policies. However, such a hypothesis cannot be directly tested in standard models of firm behavior. Thus, to formally test the policy cost uncertainty hypothesis, we use a novel “value functional” or “recursive” model of firm behavior, in which managers maximize the value of the business rather than its profits. Using this approach, we demonstrate that policy cost uncertainty affects the hiring decisions of firms, that the response to policy uncertainty is higher in some industries than others, and that the scale of the firm also affects its sensitivity to policy risk. This approach has potentially broad application within business economics, particularly in evaluating investment and hiring decisions; real options; and other aspects of uncertainty, fixed costs, and managerial flexibility.     

从经济系统的复杂性看现代经济学理论的发展

传统的经济学理论虽然给人类经济发展作出过重大贡献,但随着社会经济的发展日显其局限}生。本文通过对经济学发展吏的回顾,总结了传统西方经济学理论假设的荒谬性和经济学基本理论的局限性;分析了由于具有主动性的人参与到经济系统中而产生的个体的主动性、相互作用的非线性、整体发展的不确定性、信息和信息系统的重要作用等复杂性特．最;介绍了复杂系统科学的发展,分析了复杂系统科学的马克思主义哲学原理;最后探讨了现代经济学理论的发展方向。     

浅谈经济学的本质和教学改革

从斯密“经邦济世”的经济学本质和任务,到当代高度数理化和技术化的“黑板经济学”,主流经济学在追求“价值中立”的过程中丢弃了自身的哲学思想渊源和伦理价值判断.结合我国经济学教学实践中存在的弊病,明确提出教学改革的方向是将黑板经济学和牛奶可乐经济学有机结合起来,而经济学案例教学是两者的融合剂;同时,强调在教学过程应强化经济学的伦理价值教育和增加其他经济学流派的介绍,这有助于构建“学以致用”的中国特色的经济学教学模式.     

Explaining supplier-buyer partnerships: a dynamic game theory approach

Car manufacturers are introducing new purchasing policies in the European automotive industry. Aggregation of parts to form complete prefabricated systems is becoming the prominent way for suppliers to increase their competitiveness. This change implies new organizational arrangements between car manufacturers and suppliers to reflect a new relationship between traditionally adversarial firms. Using a game-theoretic approach, we emphasize, in this paper, that a partnership can only be accomplished, when the present uncertainty between the car manufacturer and the supplier can be drastically reduced. We show through a dynamic game construct and a case study how trust between suppliers and assemblers can be forged.     

服务定义的研究线索和理论界定

服务经济理论滞后于服务业的发展的重要原因之一是缺乏严谨统一的有关服务的理论定义。本文以服务定义的演变为逻辑线索,评析了自古典经济学以来的代表性概念,认为服务是不同经济主体之间通过使用权的让渡获得运动形态的使用价值。并使服务消费者获得消费利益或满足感。服务具有生产与消费的同步性,无形性和不可感知性,差异性和质量的不确定性,不可储存和无法运输性等特征。     

Social welfare, positivism and business ethics

It appears that there is a conflict of values running through business ethics between profits accruing to shareholders and the cost of entrepreneurial activities on wider stakeholders. In the ethics research literature, the multiplicity of normative ethical stances has resulted in much debate but little in the way of consistent policy proposals. There is, by comparison, an extensive literature in positive economics that attempts to resolve value conflicts similar to those faced by business ethicists. In this paper the adoption of positive welfare statements are advocated and the value judgements implicit in economics are used as the starting point. It is argued that there is merit in expressly stating a set of value judgements to demonstrate the intractable nature of finding a social consensus without a positive social welfare function that explicitly weights the values. This paper reviews the arguments surrounding corporate objectives, particularly with regard to ethical considerations and the profit maximisation orthodoxy. This is discussed within the stakeholder-stockholder narrative. A range of ethical positions in the management strategy literature are analysed and discussed. It is argued that the values underpinning business ethics research can be conceived of via a function of social welfare (including an ethical 'auctioneering' model). The paper concludes by suggesting that all ethical positions can be captured by a Bergson-type welfare function.     

Cooperative Agent Systems: Artificial Agents Play the Ultimatum Game

We explore computational approaches for artificial agents to play the ultimatum game. We compare our agents' behavior with that predicted by classical game theory, as well as behavior found in experimental (or behavioral) economics investigations. In particular, we study the following questions: How do artificial agents perform in playing the ultimatum game against fixed rules, dynamic rules, and rotating rules? How do coevolving artificial agents perform? Will learning software agents do better? What is the value of intelligence? What will happen when smart learning agents play against dumb (no-learning) agents? What will be the impact of agent memory size on performance? This exploratory study provides experimental results pertaining to these questions.     

The EMF uncertainty problem related to mobile phones: where do consumers place their trust?

This paper addresses the uncertainty problem, i.e. cases characterized by lack of knowledge or scientific uncertainty. In such situations, it can be hard for consumers to ‘voice’ or practise consumer power. One field characterized by the uncertainty problem is electromagnetic radiation. An explicit goal of this study has been to articulate Norwegian consumers' practices, attitudes and beliefs regarding electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones to public authorities and consumer policy makers. The study was based on 1000 telephone interviews collected in 2008. Today, experts disagree on the potential health effects of radiation from electromagnetic fields (EMF), as well as standards for safe limits of exposure to mobile phones, base stations and wireless telecommunication systems. In addition, complicated technology and extremely rapid product development and diffusion leave consumers' security considerations to their own beliefs and trust. Whether or not electromagnetic radiation from mobile phones constitutes a health hazard will not be addressed in this paper. Rather, it will focus on how consumers react to this situation of uncertainty. The material reveals four main ways in which consumers can solve what we have named the EMF uncertainty problem: the confident and comfortable way, the sceptical and cautious way, the responsible and good citizen way, and finally, the neglecting way. The paper also discusses the precautionary principle related to EMF. Who should be precautionary: the public authorities, the mobile phone industry or the consumers themselves? We believe that a consistent governmental precautionary policy in combination with consumers taking their own precautionary measures is a viable solution. In this way, all consumers would be addressed and aided when navigating this field of uncertainty.     

The Integrative Effect of Electronic Data Processing

Electronic data processing systems have been constructed based on the results of cybernetics and communication theory. They interpret the combination of several constructs as integrated systems that form integrated systems of a higher degree. This corresponds to the way modern economics looks at corporate functions, enterprises, the economy... This fundamental tendency is reflected by the idea that the most important factor in electronic data processing systems is not the speed of operation but the integrative effect. Therefore it is necessary to arrange workflows in a closed control system, under consideration of the most rational path. Thus IDP advances the aims of business organization to a higher level and at the same time provides means for reaching these aims. Reprint of an article from elektronische datenverarbeitung 1(1)1959:14–19. The original summary has been revised by the editorial staff. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Kettner KH (2008) Der Integrationseffekt elektronischer Datenverarbeitung. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: .     

意识形态的制度经济学分析

意识形态不仅是我们这个时代的哲学主题 ,而且也是制度经济学研究的重要课题。意识形态具有政治合法性、团结统一性、价值导向性三个功能 ,并在经济发展中产生了巨大的作用。正确看待意识形态问题 ,对于已经进入WTO、更加融入世界经济大潮中的中国来讲具有重要的意义     

生态视角下网络组织合作的创新模式

组织理论的发展经历了从单纯研究组织到研究组织与环境,再到研究组织与组织间关系阶段。在经济全球化背景下,组织如何同其他组织发展合作关系,获取关键资源并实现创新已经成为决定组织成败的关键。用生态学的隐喻和社会网络理论的方法论对组织间关系进行分析,提出生态网资源配置方式。生态网将具有相同或不同价值体系、功能、属性的组织融为一体,在结点之间的紧密联系与交互的作用下形成价值共享和持续创新,从而具有广阔的应用前景。     

Outlook of World Economy——Sustaining the Recovery

Atier a deep global recession, economic growth has turned positive, as wide-ranging public intervention has supported demand and lowered uncertainty and systemic risk in financial markets.The recovery is expected to be slow, as financial systems remain impaired, support from public policies will gradually have to be withdrawn,and households in economics that suffered asset price busts will continue to rebuild savings while struggling with high unemployment.     

Leadership for Sustainability: An Evolution of Leadership Ability

This article examines the existing confusion over the multiple leadership styles related to successful implementation of corporate social responsibility/sustainability in organisations. The researchers find that the problem is the complex nature of sustainability itself. We posit that organisations are complex adaptive systems operating within wider complex adaptive systems, making the problem of interpreting just in what way an organisation is to be sustainable, an extraordinary demand on leaders. Hence, leadership for sustainability requires leaders of extraordinary abilities. These are leaders who can read and predict through complexity, think through complex problems, engage groups in dynamic adaptive organisational change and have the emotional intelligence to adaptively engage with their own emotions associated with complex problem solving. Leaders and leadership is a key interpreter of how sustainability of the organisation ‘links’ to the wider systems in which the organisation sits, and executing that link well requires unusual leaders and leadership systems.     

Analyzing a quantitative coordination relationship

Coordination is a crucial behavior in cooperative distributed problem solving (CDPS). Analyzing coordination requires an understanding of the interplay between the agents, their problem, and their environment. The core behaviors ofdistributed coordination in CDPS systems are the coherent specification and scheduling of tasks over the set of distributed agents working on sets of interrelated problems. The complexity of, and uncertainty about, the problem interrelationships make distributed task coordination difficult. This article describes a causal model of this process that links the interrelationships, calledcoordination relationships, to the local scheduling constraints of distributed agents. Besides coordination relationships, environmental uncertainty and the lack of infinite computational resources also make distributed coordination difficult.It is not only the presence or absence of a coordination relationship that is important, but its quantitative properties: how likely is it to appear, how significant is its effect, and so on. These aspects determine the usefulness of a particular coordination relationship in the context defined by an environment, a problem to be solved, and an agent architecture. This article discusses the analysis of coordination relationships, using as an example our abstract model for thefacilitates relationship. We detail the derivation and assumptions of this model and apply it to the design of a generalized coordination module that is separate from, and interfaces cleanly with, the local scheduler of a CDPS agent. A set of simulation experiments is described that test our assumptions and design process in the coordination of a group of real-time problem-solving agents.     

分工演进与城市群形成的机理研究

城市群是一个复杂的演化系统,是一种新型的城市体系,突破了中心地理论的解释范畴。古典经济学、新古典经济学、新兴古典经济学关于专业化分工的思想对于城市群的形成具有解释力,专业化分工的深入和分工在空间上的分化是促使城市群成长的根本动因,城市群是企业为降低交易费用,提高交易效率和获取由分工产生的报酬递增的一种空间表现形式。城市群的发展,以其扩大市场规模、降低成本、协调产业布局的功能,进一步促进分工的深化,提高交易效率,推动区域经济的发展。     

Alliance portfolios and shareholder value in post-IPO firms: The moderating roles of portfolio structure and firm-level uncertainty

Using longitudinal data for initial public offering (IPO) firms, we examine the role played by structural differences between different types of alliance portfolios in the relationship between IPO firm alliance portfolios and shareholder returns. We show that because of the different signals they send to the capital market, different types of alliance portfolios affect IPO firm performance differently. Namely, financial markets seem to reward firms whose alliance portfolio is diversified across different types of alliances (a portfolio high in functional diversity), but not those who align their alliance partners into multiple functional points in the value chain (a portfolio high in vertical scope). We also examine the signaling role of alliance portfolios under different IPO firm uncertainty conditions. We note that uncertainty about the IPO firm is not limited to pre-IPO quality uncertainty. Investors also face transition uncertainty, post-IPO uncertainty about the ability of the firm to adapt to the new managerial challenges it faces and succeed post-IPO. We find that these two types of uncertainties moderate alliance portfolio effects in different ways. The beneficial effects of alliance portfolios in mitigating liabilities of newness is of greater importance for firms associated with higher quality uncertainty and for those associated with lower transition uncertainty.     

Disruptive framing in value creation and price setting: Transforming value with strategic frames of reference

Framing in business is frequently found in the digital economy with dramatic and innovative new products and disruptive value propositions. However, framing in business is not an exclusively digital economic strategy. Creating or revising frames of reference, value propositions, and pricing based on either new or newly framed offerings is a basic strategy skill that brings new differential value creation to customers and new price-setting models to firms. In this article, I define framing and explain its influence on managerial cognition as well as its application to value-based marketing and price setting. Using economic value theory and behavioral economics, I propose steps managers and decision makers can take in an effort to achieve framing innovation as a way to leverage the disruptive competitive advantages that flow from strategic frames of reference in the marketplace.     

物流:国内市场一体化的推动力——对物流功能的一种经济学解释

本文认为,物流的功能可以有管理学的描述,也可以有经济学的解释。经济学认为,物流通过竞争性市场能够利用稀缺的资源,实现资源的有效配置,而物流配置资源的过程正是推动国内市场一体化形成的过程。文章提出,这种推动作用主要体现在以下三个方面:一是物流具有聚集—释放效应,这种效应的发挥要依赖市场来实现,同时这种效应的发挥又推动着市场一体化的进程;二是物流的价格选高机制最终导致商品的价格趋于均衡价格,促进国内市场一体化的实现;三是物流具有市场导向型特征,能敏锐地洞察市场竞争及商品价格水平的变化,适时地将商品(产品和要素)移动到需要这些商品的地区,既改变这些地区的生产可能性边界,解决自然禀赋缺乏的困难,又促进这些地区市场化程度的提高。