Towards an holistic understanding of disruptions in Operations Management

The paper reviews the literature on maintenance management, integrates key dimensions of maintenance within a taxonomy of maintenance configurations, and explores the impact of differing configurations on contextual factors and operational performance. “Prevention”, “hard maintenance integration” and “soft maintenance integration” were identified as key maintenance variables. Data were collected from 253 Swedish manufacturing companies, and three distinct clusters were identified. “Proactive Maintainers” emphasized preventive maintenance policies. “IT Maintainers” relied on computerized and company-wide integrated information systems for maintenance. “Maintenance Laggers” emphasized all maintenance dimensions to lesser extent than the others. The importance of maintenance prevention and integration differ between contexts. There were subtle performance differences across identified configurations, but preventive and integrated maintenance were more important for companies seeking competitive process control and flexibility. There existed no group with any great emphasis on all three maintenance dimensions, but attaining truly high performance may require a rare mix of the three dimensions. This mix of variables could constitute a hypothesized “World Class Maintenance” group.     

Co-movements of index options and futures quotes

We report evidence that the co-movements of index options and index futures quotes differ sharply from perfect correlation in periods with option trades. In half-hour intervals with (without) option trades 25% (12%) of call option quote changes have either the opposite sign or are larger in magnitude than the corresponding index futures quote changes. We calibrate a stochastic volatility model that allows for trade and no-trade periods using real data and simulate the joint co-movements of index quotes and option quotes in this model. We show that for trade intervals the observed co-movements differ from the benchmark case established by our simulations approximately three times too often. We provide empirical evidence that market microstructure effects – specifically, stale quotes and aggressive quotes – explain the majority of the deviations from the benchmark. Our findings are relevant for techniques that use estimates of local co-movements as inputs to price or hedge options.     

Cross-country catch-up in the manufacturing sector: Impacts of heterogeneity on convergence and technology adoption

We analyze how technology transfer from a leading economy affects followers productivity growth in manufacturing sectors and Gross Domestic Product. Allowing for heterogeneous technology levels we explore how this impacts rates of catch-up in labor productivity across manufacturing sectors and GDP for 16 OECD nations. Our results indicate that aggregate studies bias downward the estimated rates of catch-up. These rates of catch-up, as well as efficiency levels, also differ across countries. We find that institutional factors such as bureaucratic efficiency are important determinants of the estimated catch-up rates.First version received:October 2001/Final version received:September 2003Earlier versions of this paper have been presented under the titles of Cross-Country Catch-up in Manufacturing and Heterogeneous Rates of Catch-up in Manufacturing Industries. The authors would like to thank participants of the North American Productivity Conference, June 2000, at Union College, N, Y., and the Associate Editor for helpful comments and criticisms.     

Market Making with Costly Monitoring: An Analysis of the SOES Controversy

This article presents a model of information monitoring andmarket making in a dealership market. We model how intensivelydealers monitor public information to avoid being picked offby professional day traders when monitoring is costly. Pricecompetition among dealers is hampered by their incentives toshare monitoring costs. The risk of being picked off by theday traders makes dealers more competitive. The interactionbetween these effects determines whether a firm quote rule improvestrading costs and price discovery. Our empirical results supportthe prediction that professional day traders prefer stocks withsmall spreads, but offer less support for the prediction thattheir trading leads to wider spreads.     

The dynamics of European industrial structure

Has the European integration process lead to increased specialization and what drives changes in countries’ specialization? To address these questions we apply a model that incorporates endowments, technology and increasing returns to scale. Analysis reveals that countries with high capital accumulation have become increasingly specialized in capital-intensive industries; this holds for both human and physical capital. No general tendency towards increased specialization is found with the exception of capital-intensive industries. Analysis indicates scale economies in R&;D at the firm level and that R&;D at the firm level drives productivity and competitiveness. JEL no. C29, F12, O33, O52     

Dynamic effects of institutions on firm-level exports

The gap between theoretically predicted trade patterns and actual trade suggests that our understanding of what shapes trade patterns is incomplete. Institutional barriers may be one factor behind this gap, and recent research suggests that institutions are a greater obstacle to trade than tariffs. Using detailed firm-level data, we analyze how institutional quality in recipient countries affects exports by Swedish firms. Our results suggest that weak institutions in recipient countries make exports to these countries less likely and that exports to countries with weak institutions are characterized by relatively short duration and small volume. Analyzing long-term trade flows, we identified a learning process where exporters become less dependent on institutional quality in the target economy over time. More specifically, in addition to previous research that emphasize learning related to knowledge about the contracting partner and rule of law, we extend this notion and show that there is also a learning process where firms acquire knowledge about the general business climate. When learning about the contractual partner and business institutions in recipients countries takes place, exports increase relatively quickly during the first 2 years of exports and thereafter levels out. Hence, firms that are initially sensitive to weak institutions, start small, and learn how to handle foreign institutions are likely to be most successful in maintaining long-term relationships with foreign markets.     

Distance,Transaction Costs,and Preferences in European Trade

Beckerman (1956) and Linder (1961) have suggested that international trade is not determined by supply-side factors alone—perceptions about foreign countries and country preferences matter. We explore the relation between exports, cultural distance, and country preferences in Europe. The results show that several distance and preference-related variables, based on Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, income gaps, and voting patterns in the Eurovision Song Contest, are significantly related to bilateral trade. We conclude that cultural distance and preferences influence trade through several channels, both indirectly through transaction costs and more directly, as countries seem to prefer some trade partners before others.     

The Chinese electricity industry: supply capacity and its determinants with reference to OECD countries

Empirical evidence suggests that China has benefited from foreign direct investment (FDI). An important question that remains unanswered is whether China has benefited more from FDI than other countries in general, and other transition and developing countries in particular. This paper investigates this issue by performing a meta-analysis on a sample of 67 country-specific studies yielding 137 observations that have gauged the link between FDI and measures of economic growth. The results suggest that the impact of FDI is, on average, more positively significant for China than for the full sample of countries, but that the difference between China and other transition economies is less clear.     

Incorrect asymptotic size of subsampling procedures based on post-consistent model selection estimators

Subsampling and the m out of n bootstrap have been suggested in the literature as methods for carrying out inference based on post-model selection estimators and shrinkage estimators. In this paper we consider a subsampling confidence interval (CI) that is based on an estimator that can be viewed either as a post-model selection estimator that employs a consistent model selection procedure or as a super-efficient estimator. We show that the subsampling CI (of nominal level 1−α for any α(0,1)) has asymptotic confidence size (defined to be the limit of finite-sample size) equal to zero in a very simple regular model. The same result holds for the m out of n bootstrap provided m²/n→0 and the observations are i.i.d. Similar zero-asymptotic-confidence-size results hold in more complicated models that are covered by the general results given in the paper and for super-efficient and shrinkage estimators that are not post-model selection estimators. Based on these results, subsampling and the m out of n bootstrap are not recommended for obtaining inference based on post-consistent model selection or shrinkage estimators.     

Causal Inference by Independent Component Analysis: Theory and Applications*

Structural vector‐autoregressive models are potentially very useful tools for guiding both macro‐ and microeconomic policy. In this study, we present a recently developed method for estimating such models, which uses non‐normality to recover the causal structure underlying the observations. We show how the method can be applied to both microeconomic data (to study the processes of firm growth and firm performance) and macroeconomic data (to analyse the effects of monetary policy).