Outsourcing: Volume and Composition of R&D

This paper examines the impact of the outsourcing of production on the volume and composition of the home country's research and development (R&D). We find that outsourcing decreases the process R&D of the multinational firm in large markets when it only conducts process R&D (the substitution effect between outsourcing and process R&D). Outsourcing tends to emerge as a complementary factor to product development when the multinational firm conducts both product R&D and process R&D (the complementary effect between outsourcing and product R&D) under some conditions. This implies that international outsourcing has a different effect on product innovation and process innovation.     

The Knowledge Network of International Entrepreneurship: Theory and Evidence

The knowledge network associated with the young and emerging field of International Entrepreneurship is defined through a Bolean search progression of key words on the SSCI data bases from 1992 to 2000. The knowledge network of an applied field portrays, and usually follows, the actual developmental path of its corresponding field. Some 287 articles document the early emergence of International Entrepreneureship as a field of scholarly inquiry. When a field is young and in need of theoretical foundations, the knowledge networks of other fields may provide for those early needs. This is the case of International Entrepreneurship. The rich theoretical foundations of the two fields of International Business and Entrepreneureship, among others, have nourished and accelerated the internationalization process of entrepreneurship. A detailed analysis of 7,651 citations contained in the contributions of the 287 documents reported here traces International Entrepreneurship's rich, yet young, developmental path. This analysis reveals a wealth of information, for example the lists of highly-cited books, articles, authors and their affiliated institutions presented here.     

Improving the Accuracy of Recent Survey Forecasts of the T-bill Rate

This study concentrates on the Survey of Professional Forecasters (SPF) to demonstrate a way to improve the consensus forecasts of interest rates. It promotes the notion that, in improving the survey forecast accuracy of a variable, one should investigate the usefulness of the predictive information contained in the survey forecasts of other theoretically relevant variables. This idea has been applied to the SPF forecasts of the 3-month Treasury-bill rate, which are shown to be one-sided for 2001.1-2003.4. We improve the accuracy of these forecasts by exploiting the predictive information contained in the SPF forecasts of inflation and output growth. We thus recommend that the possible improvement should be investigated before such interest rate forecasts are utilized for decision-making.JEL Classification C530     

Effects of parking and cordon charge policies on tourist's modal shift in central business district of Mashhad city,Iran

The second largest holy city of the world, Mashhad, attracts high volumes of tourists and pilgrims every year. Most visitors travel by private car and are a source of considerable funds for the local economy. Among road users, tourists as one of the major traveller categories in Mashhad city behave differently due to the particular trip purpose. The aim of this research is to model tourist's shifting modes of travel behaviour when policy measures, such as the parking and cordon fares, are implemented. The tourists’ preferences were examined using binary logit analysis when different options of travel cost and time scenarios were provided. Results indicate that travel time, parking cost, cordon cost, education level and vehicle price influence tourist's modal choice. In addition, the finding shows that congestion pricing will be more effective than a parking pricing strategy in encouraging switching of modes.     

Reply

Zangenehzadeh concludes that student evaluations of faculty performance result in higher grades, and he makes estimates of the amount of inflation. An exchange ensues with Robert C. Scott on the significance of the methodology on the results.     

Outside monitoring and CEO compensation in the banking industry

We hypothesize that CEO compensation is optimally designed to trade off two types of agency problems: the standard shareholder-management agency problem as well as the risk-shifting problem between shareholders and debtholders. Analyses in this setup produces two predictions: (1) the pay-for-performance sensitivity of CEO compensation decreases with the leverage ratio; and (2) the pay-for-performance sensitivity of CEO compensation increases with the intensity of outside monitoring on the firm's risk choice. We test these two hypotheses for the banking industry where regulators and nondepository (subordinated) debtholders provide outside monitoring on the risk choice. We construct an index of the intensity of outside monitoring based on three variables: subordinated debt rating, non performing loan ratio and examination rating assigned by regulators. We find supporting evidence for both hypotheses.     

A directional analysis of Federal Reserve predictions of growth in unit labor costs and productivity

Existing evidence suggests that the Federal Reserve forecasts of inflation imply asymmetric loss, as the Fed has significantly over‐predicted inflation for the post‐Volcker period. Consistent with such evidence, we show that the Federal Reserve forecasts of growth in both unit labor costs and productivity, while directionally accurate for 1983–2003, imply asymmetric loss. That is, the forecasts of growth in unit labor costs are more (less) accurate in predicting the upward (downward) moves. The forecasts of growth in productivity, however, are less (more) accurate in predicting the upward (downward) moves. The interpretation of our findings may be that, in achieving long‐term price stability, the Fed is cautious not to incorrectly predict the upward (downward) moves in growth in unit labor costs (productivity).     

Stochastic programming approach to re-designing a warehouse network under uncertainty

The warehouse network re-design problem includes integrating or eliminating existing warehouses and establishing new sites. In this paper, we incorporate variability in product demand and operational costs with a two-stage stochastic modeling approach. We use the Sample Average Approximation (SAA) approach together with Benders decomposition to provide a solution method. Our results indicate not only that the stochastic solution is an improvement over the deterministic solution but also that the solutions’ differences grow with increasing uncertainty. The stochastic solutions show more robustness than the deterministic solutions. The computational results show that a change in the type of probability distribution of the stochastic parameters does not significantly affect the value of the stochastic solutions.     

Synthesis of Complex Criteria Decision Making: A Case Towards a Consensus Agreement for a Middle East Conflict Resolution

The title of this paper reflects both the process and the outcome of the current undertaking. Frustrated with the current state of the Middle East but encouraged by earlier attempts at modeling complex problems, the authors participated in a panel discussion assembled to address the conflict and propose a possible road-map to peace. However, the participants of this project did not come to a single course of action that will result in peace in the Middle East but did reach a consensus agreement about a resolution that needs to be managed. This paper explores the process, the outcome and the factors that influence the decision as well as potential pitfalls. The Analytic Network Process (ANP), a well known multicriteria decision making approach, applied frequently in recent years to examine conflicts around the world, is used in this analysis. It provides a framework for synthesizing judgments on the diverse aspects of the problem represented in the structure of the decision. It pieces together these judgments in a holistic and logical way.