Optimal Two‐part Pricing under Cost Uncertainty

This paper examines the optimal two‐part pricing under cost uncertainty. We consider a risk‐averse monopolistic firm that is subject to a cost shock to its constant marginal cost of production. The firm uses two‐part pricing to sell its output to a continuum of heterogeneous consumers. We show that the global and marginal effects of risk aversion on the firm's optimal two‐part pricing are to raise the unit price and lower the fixed payment. We further show that an increase in the fixed cost of production induces the firm to raise (lower) the unit price and lower (raise) the fixed payment under decreasing (increasing) absolute risk aversion. The firm's optimal two‐part pricing is unaffected by changes in the fixed cost under constant absolute risk aversion. Finally, we show that a mean‐preserving spread increase in cost uncertainty induces the firm to raise the unit price and lower the fixed payment under either decreasing or constant absolute risk aversion. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An entropy approach to size and variance heterogeneity in U.S. commercial banks

In this paper, we investigate the effect of bank size differences on cost efficiency heterogeneity using a heteroskedastic stochastic frontier model. This model is implemented by using an information theoretic maximum entropy approach. We explicitly model both bank size and variance heterogeneity simultaneously. We find that non-performing loans, federal insurance premium, legal expenses and director fees drive bank inefficiency as the bank becomes larger. Moral hazard, bank management and a ??too big to fail?? doctrine are likely explanations for the results from this study.     

Transaction costs to retailers of different methods of payment: Results of a pilot study

Do credit card transactions cost the retailer substantially more than other forms of payment? This question was central to a study of the relative costs of cash, cheque, credit card and credit account transactions to retailers in the United Kingdom. The study identifies the principal cost elements and provides quantitative estimates based upon a pilot sample. The costs of accepting credit card and providing credit accounts were found to depend crucially upon the generation of additional sales by these forms of payment.     

Dividend policy and investment: Theory and evidence from US panel data

This paper examines the importance of dividend policy and liquidity constraints in the context of the firm's investment behaviour. While early financial literature has argued that dividend policy should be independent of firm investment decisions, recent studies indicate that linkages are probable in a world of imperfect capital markets. This study develops an alternative Q specification which incorporates the actual dividend payment of the firm in order to test the hypothesis of independence. Empirical results suggest that after controlling for the firm's dividend payment, liquidity constraints remain an important determinant of firm investment behavior.     

Lump‐Sum versus Pay‐As‐You‐Go: The Moderating Effect of Contract Types on the Optimal Logistics Decisions

When outsourcing their logistics operations to transportation companies, manufacturers/retailers need to design a contract, under which payment can be made either in a lump sum or over time (i.e., per each delivery). This paper investigates how the payment method (i.e., type of contracts) impacts the transporter's delivery schedule by developing an analytical model based on the optimal control and game theories. Our findings show that the transporter's delivery schedule depends on the method of payment and the overall cost of hiring a transporter varies with the types of contracts. We provide theoretical explanations to these findings along with managerial implications. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

POS机银行卡交费系统在哈尔滨电业局的应用

随着电力经营业务的不断扩展,用电客户数量的增加以及供电企业优质服务的更高要求,以银行代收为主要收费方式的营销模式已经呈现出一系列不足,哈尔滨电业局在全国首家建立完善的POS机银行卡实施查询交费系统,解决电费回收难,方便广大电力客户进行多样化、方便化自助交费方式。从系统投入使用已经实现了电费回收五百余万元,充分说明了POS机交费得到了广大用户的认可。     

基于银行卡个人支付手段与支付模式的研究

本文通过分析基于银行卡个人支付手段的交易流程,指出基于POS、ATM传统机具的支付模式存在较大的金融信用风险,并存在资源稀缺性的缺陷;而基于移动终端或电话终端的支付模式比基于POS、ATM的支付更具有可普及性,且金融风险得到了降低;随着生物识别技术的发展,基于生物识别的支付模式可能是未来的一个发展方向。生物识别具有唯一性,在这种模式下,金融风险会得到最大限度的降低。     

Audit Fees in a Joint Audit Setting

Abstract

This paper uses the uniqueness of the French audit environment to conduct an in-depth study of audit pricing issues associated with the requirement to hire two independent auditors (joint audit). I use a model derived from Simunic's [(1980). The pricing of audit services: Theory and evidence. Journal of Accounting Research, 18(1), 161–190] seminal work to examine to what extent audit fees are influenced by the number of Big 4 joint auditors (zero, one, or two). After controlling for well-known drivers of audit fees that are specific to audit client firms (size, complexity, and risk), for governance characteristics and for auditor selection, the paper shows that the decision to hire two Big 4 auditors as joint auditors does not require the payment of a higher Big 4 premium compared to the choice of one Big 4 auditor paired with a smaller auditor, other things being equal. The choice of two Big 4 auditors thus appears to be a rational economic choice for large and international firms.     

How to Regulate Heterogeneous Hospitals?

In many areas of health care financing, there is controversy over the sources of cost variability and about the respective roles of inefficiency versus legitimate heterogeneity. This paper proposes a payment system that creates incentives to increase hospital efficiency when hospitals are heterogeneous, without reducing the quality of care. We consider an extension of Shleifer's yardstick competition model and apply an econometric approach to identify and evaluate observable and unobservable sources of cost heterogeneity. Moral hazard can be seen as the result of two components: long‐term moral hazard (hospital management can be permanently inefficient) and transitory moral hazard. The latter is linked to the manager's transitory cost‐reducing effort. For instance, he or she can be more or less rigorous each year when bargaining prices for supplies delivered to the hospital by outside firms. The use of a three‐dimensional nested database makes it possible to identify transitory moral hazard and to estimate its effect on hospital cost variability. Econometric estimates are performed on a sample of 7,314 stays for acute myocardial infarction observed in 36 French public hospitals over the period 1994–1997. We obtain two alternative payment systems. The first takes all unobservable hospital heterogeneity into account, provided that it is time invariant, whereas the second ignores unobservable heterogeneity. Simulations show that substantial budget savings—at least 20%—can be expected from the implementation of such payment rules. The first method of payment has the great advantage of reimbursing high‐quality care. It leads to substantial potential savings because it provides incentives to reduce costs linked to transitory moral hazard, whose influence on cost variability is far from negligible. This payment rule could be extended to other areas of health care financing, such as Adjusted Average Per Capita Cost to calculate Medicare Managed Care reimbursements in the United States.     

香港与内地商业银行收费之比较

通过对香港银行业和内地商业银行的收费进行比较,找出内地商业银行收费（主要是中间业务收费）中存在的问题,并提出相应的解决办法。     

Estimating banking cost efficiency with the consideration of cost management

This study re-investigates the bank cost efficiency by a combination of two strands of literature. The first strand is related to bank cost efficiency; the other is related to earnings management. Employing the findings reported in bank earnings management literature, this study argues that bank observed total cost (“accounting cost”) may be the biased estimator of the true total cost. Using the biased total cost may thus yield incorrect inferences from estimating bank cost efficiency. We propose a method to modify accounting cost, which is referred to as “economic cost”, to be consistent with the economic theory; that is, one that is free of cost management. Both accounting and economic costs are then adopted to analyze the efficiency of 29 commercial banks in Taiwan banking industry. Our results show that estimated efficiency, with the application of economic cost, offers results that are more reasonable results than those of the accounting cost.     

银行卡业务需求影响因素分析

银行卡是一种现代金融工具,是多种金融业务的载体。银行卡业务是银行业务的重要组成部分,分析影响银行卡业务需求的因素以及银行卡业务需求的变化规律,对银行卡业务的经营发展有着重要的现实意义。基于计量经济模型的相关知识,论文分析了银行卡业务需求的影响因素,找出影响银行卡业务需求的显著变量以及两者之间的相关性,从而提出一些促进银行卡业务发展的建议与对策。     

Supply chain finance: A three-party decision model with suppliers' guarantees for retailers

Under the premise that financing constraints frequently occur in the supply chain, this paper investigates the financing model of the supplier providing guarantee for the retailer under symmetric and asymmetric information. The optimal solutions of the retailer, the supplier, and the bank are studied by using the Stackelberg game. Results show that increasing the supplier's guarantee proportion can effectively improve the bank's reasonable margin rate and increase the supplier's profit. Under the condition of asymmetric information, the bank can increase the probability of credit loan in the supply chain by reducing the cost of spot check and setting up a reasonable fine limit.     

Applying lot-by-lot double sampling plan to reform Taiwan National Health Insurance auditing system

This paper seeks to design an elaborate and effective “sampling audit and payment process” for a single-payer system of national health insurance. Furthermore, contrive incentive mechanisms in the “sampling audit and payment process” to make the healthcare providers willing to apply for their medical claim payments straightforwardly. A framework of “medical claim payment auditing by double sampling plan (MCPAD)” procedure based on the lot-by-lot double sampling plan was proposed to curb the growth of medical expenses. The proposed procedure entertains several advantages, including: (1) it meets international standards of sampling plan; (2) it simplifies the auditing process; (3) it reduces sample size and auditing costs; and (4) it encourages healthcare providers using an honest medical claim payment through the incentive mechanisms. This study successfully reduces the sampling cost and effectively audits the claimed medical fees as well as encourages healthcare providers to straightforwardly apply for their medical claim payments. Practically, the proposed MCPAD procedure is also applied to healthcare provider. It is anticipated that the proposed procedure in other nations in the future.     

美国联邦质量责任担保法规

文章通过简要介绍美国联邦质量责任担保法规体系中的3种法律,希望对我国的产品质量安全法律法规体系的建立提供参考借鉴意义。其中迈哥努森-莫斯担保法是管理消费者产品担保的联邦法律,其目的是阻止制造商制定不公平的消费者担保,而且通过裁定律师费用来使得消费者提起担保诉讼在经济上成为可行;统一商业法是管理产品销售合同的主要法律来源,向消费者提供关于柠檬问题的一种可供选择的法律措施;1995年及以后生产的轿车和卡车排放担保是联邦要求排放控制担保可以保护车主以免承担因为与排放有关的某些诸如由材料或工艺上的制造缺陷造成的,或引起汽车超过联邦排放标准故障的修理成本。     

Financial fragility,uninsured deposits,and the cost of debt

Using annual data from 1995 to 2009, I analyze the impact of banks’ financial fragility on the costs of U.S. corporate bank loans. Diamond and Rajan (2001) hypothesize that financially fragile banks are able to raise funds at a lower cost and competition among banks result in some of these benefits being passed on to borrowers. My results provide broad support for this hypothesis, as I find that a one standard deviation increase in a bank's financial fragility lowers the cost of this bank's corporate loans by 7%. Since some types of regulation, such as deposit insurance, can decrease banks’ financial fragility, this paper also contributes to the debate on the benefits and costs of bank regulation which can be helpful for policy-making.     

Simon Patten on Public Infrastructure and Economic Rent Capture

Reflecting the Progressive Era's reform agenda Simon Patten (1852–1922) argued that freeing markets from one source of economic rent (by taxing land rent) would merely leave the surplus to be taken by other monopolists and rent extractors (railroads, Wall Street trusts, and basic privatized utilities). To prevent unearned income (economic rent) from adding to the economy's cost of living and doing business, potentially rent‐yielding infrastructure should be kept in the public domain as a “fourth factor of production.” Instead of rentiers making a profit by charging access fees and user fees, the return to public investment should take the form of reducing the economy's overall price structure.     

THE ROLE OF FEES IN PATENT SYSTEMS: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

This paper reviews the economic literature on the role of fees in patent systems. Two main research questions are usually addressed: the impact of patent fees on the behavior of applicants and the question of optimal fees. Studies in the former group confirm that a range of fees affect the behavior of applicants and suggest that a patent is an inelastic good. Studies in the latter group provide grounds for both low and high application (or pre‐grant) fees and renewal (or post‐grant) fees, depending on the structural context and policy objectives. The paper also presents new stylized facts on patent fees of 30 patent offices worldwide. It is shown that application fees are generally lower than renewal fees, and renewal fees increase more than proportionally with patent age.     

Strategic Cost Management and Institutional Changes in Hospitals

Accounting research raises the concern that firms in the health care and defence contracting industries, when facing a dual payment system with both cost-based and fixed-rate payments, have an incentive to reallocate overhead costs through increasing inputs used in cost-based operations. However, prior literature reports contradictory empirical evidence regarding such real activity manipulation. Drawing on the institutional perspective, we hypothesise that firms' market power and interorganisational dependence affect their cost-management strategies and choice of overhead allocation in response to dual payment systems. Analysing the data of California hospitals from 1980 to 1991, we find that when facing a dual payment system, dominant (strong market position) hospitals adopt a cost-revenue-enhancing strategy, increasing direct costs for cost-based services without containing costs in fixed-rate services. In contrast, nondominant hospitals choose a cost-reduction strategy and improve operation efficiency on fixed-rate services. We also find that nondominant hospitals shift more overhead costs away from fixed-rate services to cost-based services by reclassifying the allocation bases across services; combining this cost shifting with the cost-reduction strategy, nondominant hospitals demonstrate the compliance with the regulation expectation of cost containment.     

增强银行卡品牌忠诚度途径研究

文章在详细论述银行卡品牌忠诚度重要性的基础上,从营销的角度提出了增强银行卡品牌忠诚度的对策。