Materiel management reengineering: value creation through innovation

By reengineering their department's core processes, materiel managers can expand their role in the health care setting while realizing significant cost savings. Using a team model, Inova Health System materiel management staff integrated their processes for vendor selection, purchasing, inventory reduction, and utilization across three hospitals and ancillary services. An integrated approach at all levels of the organization gained buy-in from administrators and staff systemwide.     

Reliance on R&D Partnerships: The Influence of Short-Term R&D Bias and The Nature of Competition

Reports indicate that capital markets frequently focus on short-term corporate financial performance. Arguments suggest that the R&D projects of many firms are skewed towards short-term, low-risk projects with relatively modest expected benefits, reflecting both a response by companies to financial market pressure to maintain short-term returns and a short-term R&D bias. Anecdotal evidence suggests that one response to short-term R&D bias by firms is for them to seek R&D partnerships with customers and suppliers. A theory is developed which suggests that when firms compete on the basis of product costs, they are likely to seek partnerships with customers and suppliers in order to respond to short-term R&D pressures. In contrast, when competition is innovation-based, firms are unlikely to pursue R&D partnerships in response to short-term R&D bias. The results of an empirical study provide support for this proposition.     

Price dynamics in limit order markets

This article presents a one-tick dynamic model of a limit ordermarket. Agents choose to submit a limit order or a market orderdepending on the state of the limit order book. Each traderknows that her order will affect the order placement strategiesof those who follow and the execution probability of her limitorder is endogenous. All traders take this into account which,in equilibrium, generates systematic patterns in transactionprices and order placement strategies even with no asymmetricinformation.     

国际贸易计价货币的选择——兼论人民币国际化

本文以出口商预期利润最大化为视角，介绍和归纳了出口商计价货币选择的有关模型。得出结论：一国货币作为国际贸易发票货币取决于货币汇率的波动性；该国占据的出口市场份额以及该国出口产品的差异性程度，并利用经验数据检验了以上结论，展望了人民币国际化的前景。     

重庆市统筹城乡战略思路及成效分析

重庆市城乡居民收入差距不断加大,二元经济结构显著,呈现“大城市大农村”的二元城乡结构。自获批全国统筹城乡综合配套改革试验区以来,以三个试验区为突破口,配套推进六个方面的相关改革,确定“一圈两翼”的发展格局,实施土地流转及大力发展劳务经济等相关政策措施,城乡统筹全面铺开,取得相当大成效,但距离目标存在一定的差距。     

Influence of purchaser perceptions and intentions on price for forest land parcels: A hedonic pricing approach

A hedonic model was developed to analyze the market for undeveloped forest land in Minnesota. Variables describing in situ conditions, locational characteristics, buyer perceptions and intentions, and transactional terms were tested for their influence on sale price. The independent variables explained 67% of the per hectare sale price variation. Water frontage, road access and density, absentee ownership, future intentions, and financing arrangements had large, positive influences on price. Lack of a real-estate agent and agricultural land in the vicinity of the parcel had negative influences. A parcel's merchantable timber volume was not a significant predictor of price.     

A new estimate of transaction costs

Transaction costs are important for a host of empirical analysesfrom market efficiency to international market research. Buttransaction costs estimates are not always available, or whereavailable, are cumbersome to use and expensive to purchase.We present a model that requires only the time series of dailysecurity returns to endogenously estimate the effective transactioncosts for any firm, exchange, or time period. The feature ofthe data that allows for the estimation of transaction costsis the incidence of zero returns. Incorporating zero returnsin the return-generating process, the model provides continuousestimates of average round-trip transaction costs from 1963to 1990 that are 1.2% and 10.3% for large and small decile firms,respectively. These estimates are highly correlated (85%), withthe most commonly used transaction cost estimators.