Optimizing the credit term decisions in supply chain finance

We study a credit term determination problem in the context of a supplier-buyer supply chain. The supplier's credit term decision is simultaneously made with its production and inventory decisions, and most importantly, it is impacted by the buyer's order quantity. We present a new game-theoretic framework to model this problem, which captures the interaction between the supplier's credit term decision and the buyer's order decision in a multi-period setting. An exact method based on nonlinear programming is implemented to obtain the optimal solutions. We apply our methodologies on a real world case. The computational results show that our approach significantly outperforms the heuristics with fixed credit terms, and either a short or a long credit term can be sub-optimal for the supplier in profitability. Our work offers the first data-driven model and solution approach that assists purchasing and supply managers to make optimal dynamic credit term decision in conjunction with production, ordering and inventory decisions in a game-theoretic setting.     

The monetary base or M1? results from a small macromodel

This article investigates the issue of whether M1 or the monetary base should be used as an intermediate target for monetary policy. Because the target variable should be reliably related to future economic activity, each aggregate is used in estimating a small macromodel which consists of a nominal GNP growth equation and an inflation specification. The empirical results indicate that M1 better explains GNP growth and inflation for the period 1960–1980. Forecast errors of GNP growth from 1970–1980 are reduced when M1 is used instead of the adjusted base, although there is little difference between inflation forecasts. Based on the evidence presented in this study, M1 is preferred as the intermediate target variable.     

Guidelines for Corporate Trademark Licensing

Licensing a trademark in many firms, if it occurs at all, is an incidental ad hoc arrangement. An unorganized approach can mean trouble. It can also mean the firm is losing an opportunity to exploit fully a valuable asset. Tom Meyer, Cathie Tinney, and Terry Tinney argue that trademark licensing is deserving of careful attention and planning.     

Sales recruiting—A major area of underinvestment

How does a firm decide whether the amount now being spent to generate sales force applicants is too much, not enough, or about right? This question can be answered by using information routinely generated by corporate activities and a relatively straight forward decision theory technique. To illustrate that technique, an analysis was conducted for a hypothetical but by no means atypical firm. The results suggest that many corporations could appreciably increase their overall profitability by spending more on sales force recruitment and selection.     

Pricing assets with stochastic cash-flow growth

We model the time series behavior of dividend growth rates, as well as the profitability rate, with a variety of autoregressive moving-average processes, and use the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) to derive the appropriate discount rate. One of the most important implications of this research is that the rate of return beta changes with the time to maturity of the expected cash flow, and the degree of mean reversion displayed by the growth rate. We explore the consequences of this observation for three different strands of the literature. The first is for the value premium anomaly, the second for stock valuation and learning about long-run profitability, and the third is for the St. Petersburg paradox. One of the most surprising results is that the CAPM implies a higher rate of return beta for value stocks than growth stocks. Therefore, value stocks must have higher expected returns, and this is what is required theoretically in order to explain the well-known value premium anomaly.     

Minimising foreign control of land in an era of globalisation prospects for St. Lucia

Although globalisation is not a recent phenomenon, it is the trend toward trade liberalisation that poses the greatest threat to small countries. The paramount question is how can small states buffeted by the forces of trade liberalisation attract foreign investment while protecting their populations from the foreign control of land. Using St. Lucia as a case study, this paper reviews the existing land tenure system, examines the force of current legislative, fiscal and land use policy instruments used to limit foreign control of land, and presents alternatives for curtailing the potentially negative effect of trade liberalisation on the foreign control of land.     

Cumulative prospect theory and the St. Petersburg paradox

Summary. We find that in cumulative prospect theory (CPT) with a concave value function in gains, a lottery with finite expected value may have infinite subjective value. This problem does not occur in expected utility theory. The paradox occurs in particular in the setting and the parameter regime studied by Tversky and Kahneman [15] and in subsequent works. We characterize situations in CPT where the problem can be resolved. In particular, we define a class of admissible probability distributions and admissible parameter regimes for the weighting- and value functions for which finiteness of the subjective value can be proved. Alternatively, we suggest a new weighting function for CPT which guarantees finite subjective value for all lotteries with finite expected value, independent of the choice of the value function. Some of these results have already been found independently by Blavatskyy [4] in the context of discrete lotteries.Received: 14 October 2004, Revised: 6 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C91, D81.We thank Pavlo Blavatskyy and Thorsten Hens for their helpful remarks regarding our paper. Moreover, we thank the referee for his constructive suggestions. This research was supported by the University Research Priority Program “Finance and Financial Markets” a research instrument of the University of Zürich.     

The Limits to Artist‐Led Regeneration: Creative Brownfields in the Cities of High Culture

Despite the burgeoning literature on creative cities, seldom explored is the context of cities rich in cultural capital but more orthodox in their approach to preserving the autonomy of culture. This article discusses the status of artistic spaces occupying abandoned industrial premises (‘creative brownfields') in historic cities that traditionally shape their policies around prestigious cultural institutions (‘cities of high culture'). Based on comparative insights from St Petersburg and Lausanne, the article explores the relations and tensions between mainstream cultural governance and creative brownfields. While there is no lack of creative brownfields in these cities, their wider urban impact is found to be marginal; moreover, these sites represent dispersed instances of temporary occupations rather than situated clusters of creative actors. More than coincidental, this (lack of) spatialization is argued to result from a particular governmentality—that of high culture—which disregards, rather than promotes, spaces of alternative cultural governance. The article conceptualizes creative brownfields in cities of high culture as the ‘soft infrastructure' of cultural production, in contrast with those in ‘creative cities' as the ‘hard infrastructure' of urban production. The article also calls for a recognition of the local context of regulation and accumulation in understanding the cultural/urban interplay.     

Convenience food consumption in the Nordic countries and St. Petersburg area

Building on the theoretical framework provided by sociological research on eating practices, family meals, self‐cooked meals and time use, this study examines national differences and similarities in the use of convenience food in Northern Europe. The study draws on two quantitative sets of data, the primary data set (N = 8248) collected in 2012 in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, and the complementary data set (N = 800) collected in St. Petersburg area in 2013. In general, consumers’ attitudes towards convenience food were negative. Time saving was an important motivator for convenience consumption in all countries. The effects of other attitudes were diffuse and factors such as low cost, health effects, and taste of convenience food, affected convenience consumption differently in different countries. In the four Nordic countries women used less convenience food than men. In Finland and in Norway older respondents used convenience food less often than the young. Generally, the use of convenience food was most frequent among those living alone. The effects of education and occupation were small, implying that the phase of life is more important than social stratification in explaining convenience food consumption. In the St. Petersburg data, there were no differences related to social background.     

Contaminant,Commodity and Fuel: A Multi-sited Study of Waste's roles in Urban Transformations from Italy to Austria

This article traces the flow of municipal solid waste from southern Italy through a waste-to-energy facility and district heating system in Austria, examining the roles that waste's transformation from contaminant to commodity to fuel plays in interconnected, distributed, and contested urbanization processes. It contends that, while metabolic circulation hides socioecological costs in one place to facilitate valorization in another, specific spatial configurations emerge through territorialization—of waste economies, in this case—providing the spatial base to realize metabolic flows and to anchor political narratives. A decisive effect is that certain patterns of urbanization become locked-in, impeding alternative metabolic transitions and spatial configurations. Attending to the coproduction of three sites—Naples, Italy; Zwentendorf, Austria; and St Pölten, Austria—through the circulation and transformation of waste and energy the article provides an empirical multi-sited case study of a political ecology of urbanization.