基于实物期权的企业信息化多项目投资决策研究

企业投资信息化项目不同于一般的项目,信息化项目具有高度的不确定性、收益的无形性和延迟性等特点,传统的投资决策评价方法面对不确定性很高的信息化项目无法作出科学的判断,无法赋予投资者更多的灵活性。由于企业信息化项目投资及其产生的效益的不确定性具有许多实物期权的特点,因此,将运用实物期权方法来解决企业信息化多项目投资决策风险控制问题。     

商业地产类绿色建筑投资时机研究

商业地产类绿色建筑是节能减排的重要投资领域,与普通建筑相比,其需要的投资大,也具备风险大、回报高的特点。应用实物期权理论,构建了商业地产类绿色建筑的投资决策模型,分析了影响开发商投资时机的重要因素,利用数值模拟和以重庆市某地产项目为例,对模型进行了检验,并对政府推广绿色建筑提出了政策性建议。     

实物期权在项目投资柔性上的应用

经营管理柔性的存在使得投资者在投资决策过程中具有某种相机选择权,这种相机选择权与实物期权具有相似的特点。文章针对这个问题,分析了传统投资项目决策NPV法的缺陷与不足,提出从实物期权中的扩张期权的角度来分析投资决策上的管理柔性,进一步揭示隐含在不确定性投资中的价值,并对扩张期权的应用提出了改进建议。     

上大压小项目的投资经济评价

本文分别运用折现现金流法和基于实物期权的经济评价方法,采用案例分析的形式,对“上大压小”政策执行中部分尚未达到寿命期的20万千瓦机组的关停时机及其经济性问题进行了分析,并时折现现金流法以及基于实物期权的评价方法的结果及其适用性进行了对比;同时,在采用折现现金流法时,对发电企业进行了财务经济评价和国民经济评价,并对机组单位造价、上网电价、煤价等因素进行了敏感性分析,在评价过程中量化了案例中各备选方案的环境成本。本文还应用实物期权理论研究了大机组滞后投资问题。两种方法的评价结果均表明,从全社会的福利角度出发,对尚未达到寿命期的小机组不应该立即关停,而应该使其继续运行到寿命期末再上大机组。本文所采用的经济评价方法能够为“上大压小”项目的执行提供辅助决策支持。     

生态节能建筑全寿命周期经济评价

文章论述了生态节能建筑的概念,揭示全寿命周期成本的内涵,主要引用了绿色GDP概念,运用差额比较法将评价指标分为成本增量指标和效益增量指标来进行评估,并在此基础上建立了经济综合性动态评价,能够较为全面地反映生态节能建筑在经济、社会、环境方面的表现,有助于推进建筑业的可持续发展。     

基于实物期权的专利权评估方法初探

本文从专利权评估的角度分析评估中的常用方法,包括三种传统方法和实物期权法.B-S期权定价模型和二项式期权定价模型是目前最常用的实物期权价值评估方法.由于专利权的实物期权特性,本文认为运用实物期权方法更为准确合理.最后对各种评估方法进行了比较分析,提出了期权定价理论存在的一些问题,这将有利于实物期权法在价值评估和项目决策中的进一步运用.     

建设项目财务评价宜划分为两个层次

<正> 建设项目财务评价是以现行价格与价值尺度,以现行的财税制度为计算依据,从企业、国家、职工三个不同的角度,对拟建项目进行投入与产出的对比分析,评价项目建成投产以后对企业、国家和劳动者收益的贡献大小。从企业和国家管理经济的功能来分析,财务评价宜划分为企业财务效益评价和国家财务效益两个层次。在现行的许多关于项目经济评价的教     

基建项目财务效益评价研究

财务效益评价是基建程序中的一个重要组成部分,也是基建项目管理周期中不可或缺的信息反馈环节,通过对基建项目财务效益进行科学有效的评价,可进一步完善项目管理工作,提升基建项目的投资效益.本文首先对基建项目及财务效益评价的有关概念进行了简单论述,其次提出了以盈利能力和偿债能力为主要内容的基建项目财务效益评价指标体系,再次针对基建项目中的一些不确定性因素,提出了盈亏平衡分析和敏感性分析两种不确定分析法,最后从财务报表的角度对基建项目财务效益评价进行了总结,并就如何完善基建项目建设问题提出了有关建议.     

期权博弈理论在创业投资项目评价中的应用

创业企业的竞争性使我们在对项目进行估值评价时除了考虑投资项目中所包含的实物期权外,还要考虑和竞争对手之间相互影响、相互制约的关系。因此,创业投资的项目评价不仅具有期权特性,还具有博弈特性。本文通过论证期权博弈理论在创业投资领域适用性的基础上,建立了一套创业投资项目价值的期权博弈评价方法,同时进行了检验,并将检验结果与传统评价方法进行比较。     

绿色建筑经济激励政策分析

绿色建筑难以推广的原因是绿色建筑的经济外部性问题,而解决外部性问题的通常做法是政府干预。我们从经济学的角度,对经济激励政策的原理进行了分析,除此之外,还重点对绿色建筑的外部经济性和非绿色建筑的外部不经济性进行剖析,最后我们提出了一些促进绿色建筑产业发展的建议。     

Pleasure and belief in Hume's Decision Process

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to introduce explicitly pleasure and belief in what aims at being a Humean theory of decision, like the one developed in Diaye and Lapidus (2005a). Although we support the idea that Hume was in some way a hedonist – evidently different from Bentham's or Jevons' way – we lay emphasis less on continuity than on the specific kind of hedonism encountered in Hume's writings (chiefly the Treatise, the second Enquiry, the Dissertation, or some of his Essays). Such hedonism clearly contrasts to its standard modern inheritance, expressed by the relation between preferences and utility.

The reason for such a difference with the usual approach lies in the mental process that Hume puts to the fore in order to explain the way pleasure determines desires and volition. Whereas pleasure is primarily, in Hume's words, an impression of sensation, it takes place in the birth of passions as reflecting an idea of pleasure, whose “force and vivacity” is precisely a “belief”, transferred to the direct passions of desire or volition that come immediately before action. As a result, from a Humean point of view, “belief” deals with decision under risk or uncertainty, as well as with intertemporal decision and indiscrimination problems.

The latter are explored within a formal framework, and it is shown that the relation of pleasure is transformed by belief into a non-empty class of relations of desire, among which at least one is a preorder.     

Globalization,Neoliberalism and the attack on social security

Neoliberal political movements advocate privatization of public pension systems. Globalization imposes pressure on nations to conform to neoliberal policy views with respect to the design and structure of social insurance, including public pension systems. The paper begins with an investigation of the economic, ethical and ideological dimensions of the privatization debates in the U.S.; it argues that privatization advocates may be largely moved by ideology, since the other reasons advanced appear weak or unfounded. The second part discusses the history of Social Security, the purposes for its creation, and some of its economic effects. Differences between public and private pension systems are considered. A brief international comparison of some aspects of public pension system finance and benefit structures is presented. The final section considers the ethical, macroeconomic and distributional implications of privatization, prefunding and payroll tax funding, and argues for a pay as you go system financed with income taxes. In order to promote equity, economic security, community, and social cohesion, public pension systems should be universal in coverage. In order to reduce the inequality, income insecurity, and aged poverty generated by market economies, public pension systems ought to be progressive: benefit/contribution ratios should be inversely proportional to income, and progressive income taxes should finance the system. To promote economic growth, the systems should be financed on a pay-as-you-go basis, and should not be prefunded except for an emergency reserve. The fiscal policy recommendations partially depend upon the theory developed by Abba Lerner in the 1940s, and recently advanced by Wynne Godley and Randy Wray: Lerner's “principle of functional finance.”     

Interest on reserves and inflation

The payment of interest on reserves has been a common practice in inflationary economies. This policy may seem paradoxical since it involves returning part of the seigniorage, generated by the inflation process, with the intention to finance the fiscal deficit. This paper argues that the motivation for this policy can be captured by the discretionary regime, where the policymaker pays interest on reserves because he is concerned with the erosion of real liquidity by inflation, which is in part beyond his control. However, this policy is an unlikely outcome in the commitment regime, where the policymaker is in full control of inflation.     

Bayesian estimation of duration models: An application of the multiperiod probit model

The multiperiod probit model is presented and Bayesian estimation using the Gibbs sampler with data augmentation is described. As an empirical illustration, the multiperiod probit model is then used to estimate a duration model using employment duration data for the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Bayesian estimation with unobserved heterogeneity is shown to be a simple extension of estimation of a duration model with no unobserved heterogeneity. More importantly, perhaps, some numerical problems encountered by other authors using Maximum Likelihood are avoided.I would like to thank M. Baker, G. Koop, A. Melino and D. Poirier for helpful comments and discussions. I would also like to thank M. Baker for providing his data.     

Scenarios and creativity: Thinking in new boxes

To be creative and make change happen, leaders must do more than simply ‘think outside the box’, as the traditional business manuals suggest, using the popular American expression. After all, the space outside the box is infinitely expansive. Moreover, there can be no guarantee that a solution to the problem will be found. The answer: ‘Think in new boxes.’ This requires developing the right new box; in other words, useful new models, a helpful new approach to a problem. That is the real art of practical creativity. This short article outlines the approach (Thinking in New Boxes) and its application to classic scenario planning with a few examples. The authors also present the ‘Expressway to Scenarios’, an approach that wins in impact and practicality what it loses in deep analysis, by having top executives involved in key steps.     

On the Role of Paradigms in Understanding Economic Globalization

Any adequate analysis of economic globalization necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the worldviews underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization. This paper is based on the premise that any worldview can be associated with one of the four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It argues that any view expressed with respect to economic globalization is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews. It, therefore, discusses four views with respect to the nature and role of economic globalization which correspond to the four broad worldviews. The paper emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of economic globalization from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint. Emphasizing this example in the area of economic globalization, the paper concludes that there are opportunities for each paradigm to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms.     

A Humean theory of choice of which rationality may be one consequence

For the reader who considers economic theory of choice as a special case of a more general theory of action, Hume's discussion of the determinants of action in the Treatise of Human Nature (1739?–?40), in the Enquiry on Human Understanding (1748) and in the Dissertation on Passions (1757) deserves attention. However, according to some modern commentators, Hume does not seem to have given any evidence that would favour what nowadays we would consider as the kind of rationality involved in modern theories of rational choice. On the contrary, this paper arrives at the conclusion that consistency between preferences and choice, like the usual properties of completeness and transitivity, may be considered as outcomes of a mental process, described by means of a decision algorithm that aims to represent Hume's theory of choice.     

The concept of freedom and its relation to economic development--a critical appreciation of the work of Amartya Sen

Following a brief review of the conception of freedom as employedin economic discourse, this paper focuses on the evolution ofthe concept of freedom in the work of Amartya Sen. It tracesthe development of Sen's thought from the capability analysisof the late 1970s to his more recent separation of freedom intoits opportunity and process aspects. While broadly appreciativeof Sen's development of the concept of positive freedom, thepaper identifies some difficulties arising from his definitionof capability as a set of options as well as from his separationof the opportunity and process aspects of freedom. Aspects ofthe relationship between Sen's conception of freedom and thatof Marx are discussed briefly in the context of Sen's recentdiscussion of the market as a source of freedom.     

How chaebol restructuring after the 1997 crisis has affected corporate decision and performance in Korea: debt financing,ownership structure,and investment

ABSTRACT

Korean chaebol firms, characterized by excessive debt financing and overinvestment, experienced restructuring after the 1997 crisis. By reducing debt financing and thus overinvestment, they tried to reorganize financing structure and ownership structure. Chaebols’ debt reduction turns out to have improved performance. However, polarization between chaebol and non-chaebol firms has become more significant. Even after the crisis, firms that give higher cash flows to a controlling shareholder take more capital investment, indicating that agency problems still exist within chaebols. Chaebol-affiliated firms continue to be more active in R&D than non-chaebol firms. However, the pattern is limited to the group of top 10 chaebols after the crisis.

Abbreviations: KFTC: Korea Fair Trade Commission     

Types of technology

Technology is a concept rife with confusion. Here, I argue that technologies can be distinguished as a combination of type of producer and an idealized artefact life history. Using this definition, a number of technologies are identified. The first technology historically, in the Protostomes, was the production of individual or family dwellings. Next came objects such as spider webs for trapping prey. Stigmergy followed, with the social insects, as a collective endeavour to construct a mega-structure using simple rules of accretion. Some birds and primates began to make tools, or simple technological objects whose function is closely related to their form. Humans are distinguished by their ability to make machines. Traditional technology took place once people voluntarily organised into groups with specialised knowledge to produce more complex objects and structures. Monumental objects like ceremonial pyramids came with the command economies of the early agrarian societies, which also resulted in a new category of artefact, the network. Finally, with modern civilizations came ad hoc accretion, or population-level adding-on, to make truly complex technological systems. Developing a theoretical framework within which artefacts, production processes and ways of interacting with them are identified should help the study of technology to become more scientific.