Facilitating computer-supported meetings: A cumulative analysis in a multiple-criteria task environment

There have been many instances of the ineffective applications of new information technology. This article describes a program of enhancing the effectiveness of a new technology, Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), through a series of studies which resulted in improvements in the technology itself as well as in how the technology is supported. Our approach emphasizes human facilitation and facilitative features embedded in the GDSS software.     

Single versus multiple banking: lessons from initial public offerings

A vast research in banking addresses the question of the costs and benefits of multiple bank relationships versus a single bank relationship. Although no clear-cutting conclusion is reached, several contributions suggest that multiple bank relationships might lead to a sub-optimal level of monitoring, compared to a single bank relationship, as a result of free riding and coordination problems. We take a novel approach to tackle this research question, by looking at the role, if any, played by the number of lending relationships in initial public offerings (IPOs). We look at the short-term performances of IPOs as measured by underpricing and find that firms that go public with multiple bank relationships exhibit more underpricing than those that go public with a single bank relationship. This finding is independent of the number of bank relationships and/or whether any of the lending banks also acts as underwriter in the offering. We interpret our results as suggesting that the market attributes a weaker certification role to multiple bank relationships because of their less effective monitoring of IPO firms.     

Multicomponent Efficiency Measurement and Shared Inputs in Data Envelopment Analysis: An Application to Sales and Service Performance in Bank Branches

In most applications ofDEA presented in the literature, the models presented are designedto obtain a single measure of efficiency. In many instances however,the decision making units involved may perform several differentand clearly identifiable functions, or can be separated intodifferent components. In such situations, inputs, in particularresources, are often shared among those functions. This sharingphenomenon will commonly present the technical difficulty ofhow to disaggregate an overall measure into component parts.In the present paper, we extend the usual DEA structure to onethat determines a best resource split to optimize the aggregateefficiency score. The particular application area investigatedis that involving the sales and service functions within thebranches of a bank. An illustrative application of the methodologyto a sample of branches from a major Canadian bank is given.     

Optimal auctions with asymmetrically informed bidders

Summary. The paper analyzes a problem of optimal auction design when the seller faces asymmetrically informed bidders. Specifically, we consider a continuum of risk-neutral uninformed bidders taking part into the auction along with n risk-averse informed bidders. The contribution of the paper is threefold. First, we fully characterize the optimal auction in this non standard environment and in a very general set-up. We find that when informed bidders reveal “bad news” about the value of the good, the seller optimally awards the object to the uninformed bidders. Secondly, we show that the seller is better off in presence of uninformed bidders because this allows to lower the informational rents paid to the informed bidders. Last, we find that, with bi-lateral risk neutrality, the seller always awards the good to the uninformed bidders thereby keeping all the surplus.Received: 22 October 2004, Revised: 21 April 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: D44, D82.We are very grateful to two anonymous referees, Jacques Crémer, Patrick François, Angel Hernando-Veciana and seminar participants at the 2004 SCSE conference (Quebec, Canada) for their valuable comments. Moez Bennouri acknowledges the financial support by the Initiative of the New Economy (INE) program of SSHRC (Canada).     

Electronic Services Co-Creation Experience: Telecommunications Sector in Tunisia as an Example

Despite the intensive use of the Internet in service delivery, little attention has been paid so far to assessing the impact of the quality of electronic services on the willingness of customers to participate in the co-creation experience online. In order to determine how the consumer reacts to the adoption of new information and communication technologies and, in particular, online telecommunication services, we empirically test the influence of electronic service quality dimensions on the co-creation experience online, integrating the attitude, satisfaction, and intention of the customer. The data were collected from a sample of 263 Tunisian telecommunications customers and analyzed using the structural equation modeling technique. The results show that, even if five dimensions of the quality of the online service positively influence the attitude towards the website, all of the dimensions of the quality of e-services positively influence the e-satisfaction. The results also confirm that customers' attitude towards the website and e-satisfaction positively affect the intention to use the website, which in turn affects the willingness of clients to participate in the experience co-creation online.     

Information provision in financial markets

We set up a rational expectations model in which investors trade a risky asset based on a private signal they receive about the quality of the asset, and a public signal that represents a noisy aggregation of the private signals of all investors. Our model allows us to examine what happens to market performance (market depth, price efficiency, volume of trade, and expected welfare) when regulators can induce improved information provision in one of two ways. Regulations can be designed that either provide investors with more accurate information by improving the quality of prior information, or that enhance the transparency of the market by improving the quality of the public signal. In our rational expectations equilibrium, improving the quality of the public signal can be interpreted as a way of providing information about the anticipations and trading motives of all market participants. We find that both alternatives improve market depth. However, in the limit, we show that improving the precision of prior information is a more efficient way to do so. More accurate prior information decreases asymmetric information problems and consequently reduces the informativeness of prices, while a more accurate public signal increases price informativeness. The volume of trade is independent of the quality of prior information and is increasing in the quality of the public signal. Finally, expected welfare can sometimes fall as prior information or the public signal become more precise.