Buyer and seller perceptions of transportation purchasing variables

The study in this article involved the investigation of 15 carrier selection variables over three dimensions by three groups with high involvement in the purchasing decision—traffic managers, sales representatives, and sales managers. The primary focus of the study was the identification of significant differences in the assessment of importance of the technical abilities of a carrier, the service orientation of a carrier and the image of a carrier as perceived by sales managers and sales representatives representing the selling systems, and traffic managers representing the buying systems.     

The economics of dying: A misapplication of tools

Conclusions Unlike McKenzie and Tullock, we do not know how personsshould treat their bodily organs or what is an ideal exit. That depends upon their utility goals, which are defined in output terms specific to the decision maker. We contend that the body is an input into the utility production process, and therefore, as with any input, it must be maintained and repaired at a level consistent with the output goals for maximization of utility. Thus, from this framework, it is quite consistent for a person to die with healthy organs without any thought of belief in reincarnation or the desire to bequeath one's bodily organs to others, or religious values. Self interest is all that must prevail.Also, the fact that there are interrelationships between the organs in the system, and at points these relationships take on fixed factor characteristics such that reduced levels of operation in one organ can create disorientation or coma or damage to other organs, means that the body cannot die as M-T suggest. Zero capacity for all organs at death is a technical impossibility as well as being inconsistent with the output goals of utility maximizers.     

Frictions, Heterogeneity and Optimality in Mortgage Modeling

The purpose of this article is to provide a unified framework for incorporating frictions into a theoretical options-pricing model (OPM) for mortgages. This article presents formulation for a frictions-adjustable mortgage model that integrates borrower heterogeneity while simultaneously preserving prepayment and default financial decisions. Our model demonstrates the flexibility of the OPM by simulating separate and concurrent effects of three categories of frictions on the mortgage and mortgage components. Researchers can use our example formulation to determine the effects of specific borrower characteristics on mortgage values without destroying the options theoretic framework.     

E-Finance: An Introduction

E-finance is defined as “The provision of financial services and markets using electronic communication and computation”. In this paper we outline research issues related to e-finance that we believe set the stage for further work in this field. Three areas are focused on. These are the use of electronic payments systems, the operations of financial services firms and the operation of financial markets. A number of research issues are raised. For example, is the widespread use of paper-based checks efficient? Will the financial services industry be fundamentally changed by the advent of the Internet? Why have there been such large differences in changes to market microstructure across different financial markets?     

Sustainable Internet access for the rural poor? Elements of an emerging Indian model

Although there are many projects, mainly supported by international donors, demonstrating that the Internet can be supplied to rural areas in developing countries, the real objective is to make these projects sustainable on a commercial basis. Among other things, this type of sustainability will require a project with unusually low costs of Internet delivery to poor, isolated users. In this paper we have examined a case from India, which uses a unique combination of low-cost indigenous technology and a low-cost model of delivery that exploits the ability of the informal sector to respond and adapt to local needs. This model, we feel, may serve as an example, to other developing countries seeking to bridge the global Digital Divide.     

Impact of Divergent Consumer Confidence on Option Prices

This paper investigates the impact of divergent consumer confidence on option prices. To model this, we assume that consumers disagree on the expected growth rate of aggregate consumption. With other conditions unchanged in the discrete-time Black–Scholes option-pricing model, we show that the representative consumer will have declining relative risk aversion instead of the assumed constant relative risk aversion. In this case all options will be underpriced by the Black–Scholes model under the assumption of bivariate lognormality. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The measurement of corporate portfolio strategy: analysis of the content validity of related diversification indexes

Measures developed for the analysis of corporate diversification have become fundamental to a broad range of strategy research. This paper examines the content validity of the two most widely used continuous measures of related diversification—the related component of the entropy index and the concentric index—and raises fundamental questions about their validity as indicators of portfolio relatedness. These questions are not driven by the use of SIC data for estimation of the indexes; they involve validity problems intrinsic to the construction of the measures. The related component of entropy and the concentric index are sensitive to features of corporate portfolio composition that may not be directly linked to portfolio relatedness. These sensitivities can create important ambiguities in strategy research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Risk taking and failure in de novo savings and loans in the 1980s

This article examines failure rates in de novo S&Ls that initiated operations during the 1980–1986 period. Overall failure rates are similar to those for existing institutions but are found to vary significantly by location, time of charter, and organizational form. Both univariate tests and results from a probability-of-failure model indicate that inadequate capital, economic stress, poor management of higher risk lending allowed by broader powers, and operating inefficiencies contributed significantly to the likelihood of failure. Use of brokered funds and rapid asset growth are also significantly related to failure likelihood. Interestingly, for those S&Ls which eventually failed, rapid asset growth and high proportions of nonperforming assets actually delayed the timing of their failure. We interpret this to be the result of regulatory forbearance. We also find significant differences between the financial characteristics of de novo and non-de novo S&Ls.     

Time diversification and security preferences: A stochastic dominance analysis

We use stochastic dominance to test whether investor should prefer riskier securities as the investment horizon lengthens. Return distributions for stocks, bonds, and U.S. Treasury bills are generated for holding periods of one to 25 years by simulation. For each holding period, stochastic dominance tests are run to establish preferences between the alternative security classes. Contrary to previous mean-variance based studies, we find no evidence that high-risk securities (stocks) dominate low-risk securities (bonds, Treasury bills) as the investment horizon lengthens. However, we do find that corporate bonds systematically dominate government bonds.     

印度不是中国的翻版

电子工业在中国和印度的发展显然将追寻两条不同的道路,原因在于这两个国家正在采取非常不同的经济发展模式。