Multiple Levels of Corporate Sustainability

According to Dr. Clare Graves, mankind has developed eight core value systems,1 as responses to prevailing circumstances. Given different contexts and value systems, a one-solution-fits-all concept of corporate sustainability is not reasonable. Therefore, this paper presents various definitions and forms of sustainability, each linked to specific (societal) circumstances and related value systems. A sustainability matrix– an essential element of the overall European Corporate Sustainability Framework – is described showing six types of organizations at different developmental stages, with different forms of corporate sustainability, each supported by specific institutional arrangements.     

新区域主义理论脉络及研究动态述评

随着"新区域主义"的发展,区域经济一体化理论的研究试图超越基于比较优势、资源重新配置和效率的传统分析框架,探讨生产要素的配置效率以外的因素,如贸易与生产率的关系、动态比较优势和贸易需求增加带来的效率增加等。对传统一体化理论研究框架和"新区域主义"的理论和实证研究进行了梳理,特别是从贸易生产率关系、不完全竞争、投资效应、利益集团与政治经济学理论的发展趋势方面进行了综述。     

电子商务退货物流动态行为分析

采用系统动力学的方法构建了一个基于电子商务平台的退货模型,分析了退货政策与电子商务企业的各个运营指标之间的定量关系,并运用Vensim PLE软件进行仿真实验。研究结果表明:1退货政策宽松度越高,退货率和销售率都会相对上升,这与现实相符;2当网络零售商采取有时间限制的退货策略时,如果其退货比例和业内基本一致,其可以通过提供较宽松的退货政策来提高销售量。     

医疗服务费对公立医院公益性影响的系统动力学分析

医疗服务费是医务人员技术劳动价值的体现,调整医疗服务费是当前医疗改革的焦点。本文应用系统动力学方法通过分析医疗服务费调整通过提升医师技术价值从而对医务人员诊疗行为和患者就医行为以及医药企业营销行为的影响,构建医疗服务费对医改影响的因果关系图,分析了医疗服务费调整的关键作用,即促使医方合理用药,提高诊疗质量;促使患者就诊分流,满意度提高;促使医药企业以药品质量赢得市场。最后本文根据研究结论提出相关建议:坚定医疗服务费改革的信心,并及时采取保障措施,一是医院管理制度上保障医务人员价值实现,二是加强基层医疗资源配置吸纳患者的分流。     

Interest Rates and Credit Risk

This paper explores the effects of shifts in interest rates on corporate leverage and default in the context of a dynamic model in which the link between leverage and default risk comes from the lower incentives of overindebted entrepreneurs to guarantee firm survival. The need to finance new investment pushes firms' leverage ratio above some state‐contingent target toward which firms gradually adjust through earnings retention. The response to interest rate rises and cuts is both asymmetric and heterogeneously distributed across firms. Our results help rationalize some of the evidence regarding the risk‐taking channel of monetary policy.     

Reconceptualizing competitive dynamics: A multidimensional framework

Competitive dynamics research, despite progress, lacks a conceptual framework that can extend the field's reach to address today's environment. Increasing stakeholder power and globalization are but two of the organizational and economic forces compelling a broader conceptualization of competition. Our framework expands competitive dynamics along five dimensions—aims of competition, mode of competing, roster of actors, action toolkit, and time horizon of interaction—that prove useful for contrasting the rivalrous and competitive‐cooperative modes and a new approach we call relational competition. We draw conjectures about the moderators, such as industry and culture, that determine the appropriateness of these forms of interaction, and conclude by relating our method to three discrete perspectives: the configurational, transaction cost, and stakeholder views. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

社会医疗保险费用控制方案的系统动力学模拟

针对我国现行的统账结合的医疗保险制度,本文首次建立了模拟社会医疗保险体系运转的系统动力学模型,并以提高医疗保险制度的效率、有效控制成本为前提对各种费用控制的改革方案进行了模拟和比较分析,为医疗保险体系的进一步改革提出了切实可行的建议。     

Small system dynamics model for alleviating the general practitioners rural care gap in Ontario,Canada

The disproportionate concentration of healthcare professionals in urban areas is a concern in many countries, including Canada. A need to address this rural care gap has driven a large number of government led initiatives worldwide over the years. This paper presents a model that can be used as a tool to examine the efficacy of such policies on the workforce distribution in the long term. A small system dynamics model is employed to simulate the current and future distribution of general physicians at a jurisdictional level. The model represents the transition of general practitioners to provide insight into the dynamics of care provision over time. The movement, and competition, between rural and urban areas is modeled to enable detailed exploration of the ability for proposed measures to alleviate the care gap in the future. Among the tested policies are such commonly used initiatives as financial incentives to rural professionals, promotion of medical education in rural areas, expansion of rural education programs and the engagement of international medical graduates etc. We demonstrate how the model can be used as a tool to determine an efficient and well-chosen combination of policies which can help alleviate the rural care gap in the future, given that some policies are more effective than others alone but also combined with other initiatives. The presented small system dynamics model is tested on Canada's reality, but its simple nature lends itself to easy application to other countries that experience a similar problem.     

Cost-sharing in directed networks: Experimental study of equilibrium choice and system dynamics

This study reports the results of an experiment on directed networks with positive externalities induced by cost-sharing. Subjects participated in a network game in which they had to choose between private and public transportations. If a player chose public transportation, then she shared the travel cost equally with other players making the same choice, whereas if she chose private transportation, then her travel cost was fixed. Travel costs on the private route were manipulated across the two experimental conditions. In one condition, these costs were homogeneous among players; in the other condition, they were heterogeneous among players and only privately known. We found that half (none) of the player groups in the homogeneous (heterogeneous) condition converged toward the efficient equilibrium. Examination of the system dynamics shows that convergence toward efficiency was facilitated by: (1) the existence of an intermediate equilibrium choice; and (2) strategic teaching by which a farsighted player chooses strategies with poor short-term payoff in order to shift group decisions to the efficient equilibrium and thereby increase her own long-term benefit.     

Optimal order display in limit order markets with liquidity competition

Order display is associated with benefits and costs. Benefits arise from increased execution-priority, while costs are due to adverse market impact. We analyze a structural model of optimal order placement that captures trade-off between the costs and benefits of order display. For a benchmark model of pure liquidity competition, we give a closed-form solution for optimal display sizes. We show that competition in liquidity supply incentivizes the use of hidden orders to prevent losses due to over-bidding. Thus, because aggressive liquidity competition is more prevalent in liquid stocks, our model predicts that the proportion of hidden liquidity is higher in liquid markets. Our theoretical considerations ares supported by an empirical analysis using high-frequency order-message data from NASDAQ. We find that there are no benefits in hiding orders in il-liquid stocks, whereas the performance gains can be significant in liquid stocks.