A suggested methodology for calculating the cost of university graduates

Costs are the valuations placed on the use of resources; they include operating and opportunity costs. As such they vary according to one's orientation. In higher education, costs can be evaluated from the point of view of three entities: the university as an economic firm (institutional cost); the students as private individuals (private cost); and society at large (social cost). This paper considers the institutional costs of higher education.Based on a hypothetical college model, two methodologies are suggested for evaluating the institutional costs in the “production’ of university graduates. The net-value-added method assumes that the cost of dropouts is inherent in the cost of graduates. The cost-per-student-year method assumes that dropouts and graduates are joint products of the educational system each with their own separate costs.The application of the two cost models is demonstrated with empirical data based on the University of Mosul in Iraq. The implications of the suggested methodologies for institutions with diverse specializations, high dropout rates, or large proportions of transfer students are also discussed.     

项目采购成本分析

当前市场竞争日益激烈,如何有效控制生产成本从而实现价格优势显得尤为重要。降低采购成本是企业参与市场竞争的需要,加强采购成本的控制与管理是降低采购成本的主要手段。企业应建立全方位成本观念,完善采购制度,采取公开招标、电子采购等方式增加采购透明度,建立供应商信息库,确保采购主渠道的畅通,减少采购中间环节,选择最优采购方案,降低采购成本。     

资源型城市产业转型成本分析

本文界定了产业转型成本的含义,总结了资源型城市产业转型成本的特征,并对其进行了流动成本和转型机会成本的归纳和分析,最后提出了这些成本应如何在政府和企业之间进行分担。     

Volunteering time decisions: a multi‐factor experimental study

Non‐profit organizations often seek volunteers to help staff a fundraising event. In the present research, an experimental study assessed volunteering time decisions for a fundraising event following manipulations of opportunity cost valence, opportunity cost avoidability and question order involving donating time and donating money. Opportunity costs represent foregone alternatives sacrificed (e.g. working) when engaging in an activity (e.g. volunteering), with valence of the opportunity cost indicating the appeal (positive or negative) of the foregone alternative and avoidability of the opportunity cost suggesting how easy it would be to forgo the alternative. Prospective donors are often asked to consider both volunteering time and contributing money, and these two questions posed to individuals can be varied in terms of order. The results of the experiment revealed that individuals intended to volunteer the most time when an opportunity cost was negative and avoidable. The lowest time donation intentions occurred when an opportunity cost was positive and less avoidable with individuals also being asked about donating money prior to being asked to donate time. The results highlighted the importance to non‐profit firms of considering opportunity costs potential volunteers face and suggested care in structuring the order of questions involving time and money posed to those individuals. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

我国汽车生产企业物流成本管理探讨

随着社会经济的全球化发展趋势,我国汽车生产企业面临的市场竞争环境日趋激烈,物流成本控制逐渐成为降低汽车生产成本的关键环节。本文通过探讨我国汽车生产企业物流成本管理中存在的主要问题,从而提出有效的成本控制措施,以实现企业管理成本的最小化,创造更大的经济效益。     

不确定条件下环境政策的时机选择

本文建立了一个连续时间模型，用于分析不确定条件下环境政策的时机选择。模型结果显示，环境政策的采用有两种不可逆性，而且它们在相反的方向上起作用：第一，旨在降低生态危害的政策对社会施加了沉淀成本。它产生立即采用这一政策而不是等待有关生态影响及其经济后果的更多信息的机会成本，这种机会成本使等待而不是现在就采纳政策更可取；第二，环境危害可能部分或完全不可逆。这就意味着立即采用一项政策而不是等待具有沉没收益，即负的机会成本。这种负的机会成本偏离了政策采用中传统的成本一收益分析。因此，现在立即采用一项政策可能是更合适的，即使传统的分析宣称它是不经济的。文章表明，不确定性对环境政策的时机选择有着重要的影响。     

SEARCH AND VACANCY COSTS IN THE TOKYO HOUSING MARKET: ATTEMPT TO MEASURE SOCIAL COSTS OF IMPERFECT INFORMATION

The social cost of imperfect information, in terms of buyers' search costs and sellers' opportunity costs of vacancy, is estimated in the real estate market of resale condominiums in central Tokyo by using a new, comprehensive dataset of resale condominium transactions. The results suggest a substantial social cost. Specifically, if housing information were perfectly available and marketing time were null, sellers would get benefits of 22.59% of imputed net rents of their property. In addition, buyers would save 1,042,000 yen spent on search activities for one transaction, if information were perfect. This is equivalent to 13.2% of buyers' average annual income.     

浅析我国高速公路成本控制的措施

高速公路成本控制是系统的全程控制,降低成本,发挥成本优势,是高速公路企业在市场竞争中处于有利地位的重要措施。本文介绍了高速公路成本控制的内容,通过对高速公路成本控制的分析,阐述了高速公路成本控制的原则,并从高速公路的进度成本,质量成本,风险成本以及采购成本的控制四个方面对高速公路的成本控制的措施进行了说明。高速公路成本的控制对于提高高速公路企业的经济效益和社会效益有着非常重要的作用和意义。     

美捷公司实施物流外包的构想

物流的成本己成为构成商品价值的重要内容,随着生产技术的发展,制造成本的降低空间越来越小,物流成为了企业的“第三个利润源”。而通过对物流成本的计算,可以知道物流成本占企业生产总成本的份额,发现物流活动存在的问题,调整物流活动,更直观地体现出物流的经济效益,更有利于企业成本的管理,而物流业务外包无疑是很多中小企业降低成本的有效措施。     

Product diversification and attitudes toward risk in agricultural production

In this article we analyze the relationship between risk-avoidance behavior and economic jointness in a multi-output agricultural technology. We focus on farmer specific heterogeneity in attitudes towards risk-taking, while treating production uncertainty as unobserved stochastic error that is common to all region specific farms. We furthermore utilize a new flexible functional form, the Constant Elasticity of Transformation, Constant Elasticity of Substitution, Generalized Leontief (Behrman, Lovell, Pollak, and Sickles, [1992]) which has the appealing property of relative flexibility while ensuring proper curvature properties of the estimated multi-output technology over a larger sample region of the price/quantity space than a flexible form such as the Generalized Leontief [Diewert, 1971].Our empirical study deals with small-scale agriculture in the Indian Semi-Arid Tropics (SAT), partly because of the importance of yield-related risk in this region, but also because we have measures of farmer specific risk attitudes in the SAT data. Our modeling approach allows for the calculation of the shadow cost of farmer specific risk attitudes in terms of foregone profits, while at the same time controlliing for the technical factors that give rise to multi-output production in the absence of risk. We are thus able to estimate these opportunity costs while modeling a multiple output technology in which cost complementarities can lead to diversified production and in which joint production is not always undertaken.     

An examination of the equilibrium specification and structure of production for Canadian telecommunications

Multiple-output models of Canadian telecommunications production are estimated under different production equilibria. A specification test is conducted between the short- and long-run equilibrium models and the long-run equilibrium is rejected. In order to capture the nature of the disequilibrium, a dynamic cost of adjustment model is estimated for Bell Canada. There are significant adjustment costs and it is estimated that for $1.00 of marginal capital costs the carrier must incur an additional cost of $0.30 to install the new capital into the production process.     

基于制度经济学视角分析产业集群组织内部企业边界

产业集群内的企业在利润最大化的驱使下不断增加企业边界,在企业内部的生产成本和交易成本的制约下不断缩小企业边界在这两种相反效应的共同作用下,企业边界将达到边际收益等于边际成本时的规模,企业实现利润最大化。企业生产边际成本要包含企业内部交易成本。     

THE CASE FOR A COMMUNITY TRANSACTION ENGINE: GETTING COASE FOR THE TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY

New types of marketplace are now becoming viable. They can slash transaction costs, bring new resources into the economy and expand economic opportunity. These markets can be grown by the private sector. But, to deliver their full potential, they need a change in the mindset of government.     

A model of the firm in time and space

We consider a multi-plant monopoly that sells to markets which are geographically separated and which stores product over time via an inventory capability. It is assumed that plant average production cost is U-shaped and that, if the output of a plant's production run were sold to a single market at only one point in time, the plant would operate on the falling portion of its average cost curve. Hence, it is in the interest of the firm to aggregate markets, both spatially and temporally, to lower average production cost. We develop the optimal joint interplant spacing-inventory policy. We also consider the effects changes in freight costs, storage costs, and interest charges have on the firm's optimal policy.     

基于博弈论的供应链伙伴关系交易成本研究

在大部分的工业行业领域,物流的成本能占到生产总成本的一半左右,做好生产活动的供给工作,降低交易成本,对于制造商和供应商意义重大。文章通过研究制造商和供应商之间的博弈,分析了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的过程,并提出了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的措施。     

供应链合作关系间交易成本的博弈分析

在大部分的工业行业领域,物流的成本能占到生产总成本的一半左右,做好生产活动的供给工作,降低交易成本,对于制造商和供应商意义重大。文中通过研究制造商和供应商之间的博弈,分析了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的过程,并提出了供应商伙伴关系减少交易成本的措施。     

浅析统计管理与铁路企业的关系

不断变化的市场经济对铁路企业项目管理工作提出了更高的要求,铁路企业必须充分发挥出经济、技术和管理等方面各项措施的优势,建立健全成本管理责任制,以此实现降本增效与企业可持续发展的目标。统计学作为一门涵盖调查、整理、分析的方法论科学,通过搜集、汇总、计算企业生产、经营和管理中的各种活动,作出推断和预测,为相关决策提供依据和参考。     

A behavioural model of traffic congestion: Endogenizing speed choice, traffic safety and time losses

Conventional economic models of traffic congestion assume that the relation between traffic flow and speed is a technical one. This paper develops a behavioural model of traffic congestion, in which drivers optimize their speeds by trading off time costs, expected accident costs and fuel costs. Since the presence of other drivers affects the latter two cost components and hence the Nash equilibrium speed, a ‘behavioural’ speed-flow relationship results for which external congestion costs include expected accident costs and fuel costs, in addition to the time costs considered in the conventional model. It is demonstrated that the latter in fact even cancel in the calculation of optimal congestion tolls. The overall welfare optimum in our model is found to be off the speed-flow function, and off the average and marginal cost functions derived from it in the conventional approach. This full optimum requires tolls to be either accompanied by speed policies, or to be set as a function of speed. Using an empirically calibrated numerical simulation model, we illustrate these qualitative findings, and attempt to assess their potential empirical relevance.     

Transaction Costs in the Trading System of Cashew Nuts in the North of Benin: A Field Study

Cashew nut trading is an activity with growing economic importance in the north of Benin. Among the cost categories supported by the trading actors are transaction costs to which rare empirical studies have been devoted. Therefore, based on the theoretical concept this article empirically analyzes the importance of the transaction costs generated by cashew nut trading in the north of Benin. The empirical data were collected in two villages. Using a paired‐sample T test this study shows that the transaction costs are relatively important, but are not the major cost category. The average “production cost” is higher than the average transaction cost incurred by the trading actors. Although the transaction costs are on average lower than the other costs category, they are viewed by most actors (82 percent) as a serious constraint in the trading system due to moral hazard problems arising from the existence of these costs. By analyzing the specific factors that influence the magnitude of the transaction costs borne by the actors, the article shows that some socio‐cultural and environmental characteristics of the actors are determinant of the level of transaction costs incurred.     

小批量生产制造业的成本控制研究

降低成本和提高企业的经济效益是成本控制的主要目的。本文主要通过对小批量制造业成本控制存在的问题进行分析,来提出相应的解决方案。