农产品讨价还价行为：尼日利亚奥甘州牛肉零售定价案例研究

对市场上的商品缺乏标准的度量和分级是发展中国家（如尼日利亚）农产品市场的一个主要特征。由此导致价格标签很少被使用，事实上也很难实施。在尼日利亚的大部分地区，农产品和非农产品的批发和零售价格都是由激烈的讨价还价所决定的。分级和商品质量的随意性，意味着价格可能无意地被一些不相干的因素影响。在尼日利亚商品交换过程的研究方面，很少有对商品讨价还价行为进行实证研究的。本文的主要研究目的在于：①从市场期间、买方特征和性别等方面，比较牛肉零售价格的形成方式；②估计牛肉价格形成与所考虑的决定因素之间的关系。研究在四个独立的城市市场进行，研究结果表明，针对不同性别的买方，买方价格和卖方价格的形成方式没有差异；针对不同着装的买方（特征），在讨价还价中的方式也没有差异；但讨价还价的时间在统计上则显著影响。统计上来看，多数零售价格变量的平均值早晨比晚上较大。     

Development prospects of the russian machine-tool industry

The article addresses the problems of the functioning of the machine-tool industry, one of the key branches of mechanical engineering, and formulates the lines of its competitive recovery.     

Fertility,income distribution,and economic growth: theory and cross-country evidence

The authors perform discriminatory, empirical tests of a theoretical model that predicts that family size adversely affects output per capita and nonsteady state growth rates. Neoclassical models posit that adverse output and nonsteady growth rates are affected by labor force growth (LFG) or population growth (PG). This study tests whether family size (FS) will be more significant than LFG or PG in explaining differences in economic growth (EG) rates across countries during 1960-88. A proxy variable for the public education system was used to separate government interventions on human capital formation from market forces. Data were obtained for 73 countries, which exclude centrally planned economies, oil-producing countries, and those with less than 1 million population. The empirical test is run with 58-country, 45-country, and 96-country samples to test for robustness and reliability. The empirical test supports the theoretical model. It demonstrates that equal distribution of income and smaller FS enhance EG. With income inequality, the effect of FS was significant, and the effect of the LFG rate or PG rate was insignificant. With a given FS, LFG was positively correlated with EG. A reduction of the net fertility rate by one point would increase the worker output growth rate by 0.25%, and the differences in growth rates between high- and low-fertility countries would be 1%. An increase in the income share of the bottom 60% would increase the growth rate of worker output by about 1%. Higher investments in public or private education would be conducive to growth.     

The Size and Growth of UK Manufacturing and Service Firms

This paper investigates the relationship between firm size and growth for UK manufacturing and services over the period 1991 to 1995. We test for size effects on growth, using models which incorporate the influences of previous growth and industry membership. The results from the analysis suggest that for both manufacturing and services, small firms tend to grow faster than larger firms. The growth of manufacturing firms appears to persist over time, whereas this is not the case for service firms. Small firms tend to have more variable growth rates than their larger counterparts in manufacturing and services. This suggests that large firms may enjoy advantages associated with diversified operations which make them less susceptible to periods of extremely high or low growth.     

Still Searching (Systematically)<Superscript>1</Superscript> for Entrepreneurial Discoveries

We examine how entrepreneurs can search deliberately for discoveries. We use consideration sets to impose constraints on how and where they search. A consideration set is a promising set of information channels, which entrepreneurs can select and search based on prior knowledge. To decide how to search the channels in a consideration set, we apply existing mathematical formalism to illustrate a maximal search sequence. Because there is some probability that a search sequence could continue indefinitely, we determine stopping rules. We argue that entrepreneurial search is more feasible within a consideration set than it is in the rest of the world.     

Approximation approach for the performance analysis of production lines under a kanban discipline

In a JIT production environment, pull-type control systems are usually implemented to reduce the lead time and to synchronize the production rate with the demand rate. The design of an effective production control system requires easy and reliable approaches for evaluating the effect of the major system parameters on its performance.In this paper we model the kanban control system of a manufacturing line as a Markov process. In addition, we develop an approximation approach to the model that permits reliable evaluation of manufacturing system performance in terms of throughput time and work-in-process. The validation of the approach is implemented by comparing the exact results (based on discrete event simulation) and the approximated results.A good approximation is observed for a large range of conditions.