Costs and goals of the multiproduct firm

A profit-maximizing multiproduct firm's optimum production and pricing decision rules are different if the firm's fixed resources are fully employed than if they are underutilized. If they are fully employed, the opportunity cost of using a fixed input affects the firm's pricing decisions. The way for a multiproduct firm to maximize profit is to lose money on a product if large volume and low price of that product increases sales or reduces cost for other products sufficiently. Decision rules are different for a revenue-maximizing firm than for a profit-maximizing one.     

Decision making in the beer game and supply chain performance

The beer game has been used to emphasize, investigate, and analyze supply chain inefficiencies as well as the effect of decision makers’ biases. This paper investigates the short- and long-run performance in the beer distribution game by analyzing Sterman’s (Manag Sci 35(3): 321–339, 1989) model that simulates decision-making. In this model, the system may have chaotic behavior depending on the heuristics used by decision makers. We investigate how quickly the system reaches a steady state (if at all). It is known that ignoring supply line (outstanding orders) leads to the bullwhip effect in experimental research. Among other results, we show that the short-term performance of a supply chain is not a predictor of the long-term performance even when decision makers fully recognize outstanding orders. Results of the simulation and practical implications are discussed.     

Decision making in the solar age: Ecological criteria for the post-economic era

Note to industrial societies: traditional value systems worked in an Age of Petroleum but that age is ending. What changes do we need to make for the new Solar Age?     

Decision making and planning under low levels of predictability: Enhancing the scenario method

In this paper we review and analyse scenario planning as an aid to anticipation of the future under conditions of low predictability. We examine how successful the method is in mitigating issues to do with inappropriate framing, cognitive and motivational bias, and inappropriate attributions of causality. Although we demonstrate that the scenario method contains weaknesses, we identify a potential for improvement. Four general principles that should help to enhance the role of scenario planning when predictability is low are discussed: (i) challenging mental frames, (ii) understanding human motivations, (iii) augmenting scenario planning through adopting the approach of crisis management, and (iv) assessing the flexibility, diversity, and insurability of strategic options in a structured option-against-scenario evaluation.     

Decision making and planning under low levels of predictability

This special section aims to demonstrate the limited predictability and high level of uncertainty in practically all important areas of our lives, and the implications of this. It summarizes the huge body of solid empirical evidence accumulated over the past several decades that proves the disastrous consequences of inaccurate forecasts in areas ranging from the economy and business to floods and medicine. The big problem is, however, that the great majority of people, decision and policy makers alike, still believe not only that accurate forecasting is possible, but also that uncertainty can be reliably assessed. Reality, however, shows otherwise, as this special section proves. This paper discusses forecasting accuracy and uncertainty, and distinguishes three distinct types of predictions: those relying on patterns for forecasting, those utilizing relationships as their basis, and those for which human judgment is the major determinant of the forecast. In addition, the major problems and challenges facing forecasters and the reasons why uncertainty cannot be assessed reliably are discussed using four large data sets. There is also a summary of the eleven papers included in this special section, as well as some concluding remarks emphasizing the need to be rational and realistic about our expectations and avoid the common delusions related to forecasting.     

公共决策中的信息披露与利益集团游说

公共政策影响到各方面人群的利益，而有组织的利益集团可以通过游说来影响公共政策，在政策制定过程中他们可以提供相关的信息，也可以与提供决策相关信息的部门形成某种利益纽带。合理的公共决策机制需要同时激励信息披露和控制政策偏向。     

Decision making under risk in Deal or No Deal

We analyse the choices of 399 contestants in the Australian version of the television game show Deal or No Deal. We calculate risk aversion bounds for each contestant, revealing considerable heterogeneity. We then estimate a structural stochastic choice model that captures the dynamic decision problem faced by contestants. To address individual heterogeneity, we nest the dynamic problem within the settings of both a random effects and a random coefficients probit model. Our structural model produces plausible estimates of risk aversion, confirms the role of individual heterogeneity and suggests that a model of stochastic choice is indeed appropriate. We find mixed evidence of greater risk aversion by females. We also examine generalizations to expected utility theory, finding that the rank‐dependent utility model adds non‐negligible explanatory power and indicates optimism in probability weighting. Finally, we test, but are unable to confirm, the existence of an endowment effect for lotteries. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

工程项目经理选聘决策数学模型研究

项目经理是工程承包公司总部派驻工地的全权代理人,如何选聘项目经理本质上是公司总部与项目经理之间的一个博弈问题。本文在Wilson(1969)、Spence和Zeckhauser(1971)以及Poss（1973）共同提出的博弈模型基础上,根据项目经理对风险的喜好程度及其主观效用函数的不同,建立了相应的数学模型,即风险中性者模型、风险厌恶型模型和风险喜好型模型,并对模型参数的选取与选定作了说明。     

谈基于事实的决策方法

结合ISO9000族标准,阐述基于事实的决策方法,对企业质量管理者的科学决策提出了具体的措施.     

Outsourcing,delocalization and firm organization: Transaction costs versus industrial relations in a local production system of Emilia Romagna

This article investigates the firms’ decisions to outsource, taking into account the impact of their embeddedness in a specific regional context on the relative entrepreneurial decision. It focuses on the role of industrial relations, as a factor that could interfere with the entrepreneurs’ decision of resorting to market relationships in discovering and exploiting new business opportunities. We study a local production system in Emilia Romagna (Northern Italy), i.e. the province of Reggio Emilia (RE), whose firms are characterized by a district kind of environment and where entrepreneurship develops in the presence of ‘thick’ industrial relations. The empirical part of the study shows that the role of transaction costs in explaining the outsourcing is blurred, while industrial relations have a stronger explanatory power. Furthermore, it seems that RE firms generally use outsourcing and international delocalization in complementary ways; however, the correlation depends on the activity and the nature of the delocalization channel. Outsourcing strategies appear to be affected by the pattern of socio-economic development in the region where the firms are located. In particular, the entrepreneurial decision to externalize a part of the production process seems to be related to the specific participatory, formal and informal mechanisms involved in regional development.     

Non-jointness and scope economies in the multiproduct symmetric generalized McFadden cost function

The multiproduct symmetric generalized McFadden cost function is increasingly prominent in empirical production analysis. Researchers should be aware that the scope for imposing and testing non-jointness in this model is limited. In the general version of the model non-jointness requires the non-testable maintained hypothesis of similar (in a sense we define) single-output production technologies, a maintained hypothesis for which there is not normally any basis. The apparent imposition and testing of non-jointness must be qualified accordingly. The attempt to impose non-jointness and global separability simultaneously necessarily imposes constant returns to scale and the implication that outputs are identical up to a scalar multiple. In this special case the model therefore effectively describes merely the production of a single output, and in this sense is only trivially multiproduct.     

基于熵权分析的大型公共工程项目决策

文章分析了影响大型公共工程项目决策的各种因素,建立了用熵权的方法对诸因素进行综合评判的数学模型,给出了应用步骤,并通过实例分析,得出了影响大型公共工程项目最主要的因素可分为3个层次的结论。     

Accounting earnings and firm valuation: the French case

Considering that the level of the association between stock returns and accounting earnings provides a measure of the extent to which earnings summarize the information which is useful for firm valuation, this paper analyses the contemporaneous association between stock returns and earnings changes or earnings level of individual French stocks and portfolios for periods of one, two and five years between 1981 and 1990. The empirical findings are as follows. (a) Stock returns are more linked to earnings changes than to earnings levels indicating that earnings provide more information about changes in firm value than about firm value. (b) Earnings prepared in accordance with the French accounting principles are not less value-relevant than those prepared in accordance with US or UK GAAP. (c) A cross-sectionally and time-aggregated data procedure provides a large increase in the explanatory power of earnings for returns which is consistent with a noise-in-earnings effect probably induced by accounting measurement and valuation principles and with a recognition lag effect due to the fact that value-relevant events are not integrated into earnings exactly when they occur. These two effects are shown to be the major causes of the low association between earnings and returns generally observed in studies based on short period data for individual stocks.