The implications of athlete freedom to contract: lessons from North America

The 1995 Bosman judgement by the European Court of Justice granted professional athletes in Europe inter-country freedom to contract and eased foreign-player restrictions. Based on two decades of free-agency experience in North America, we expect to see salaries of European players rise substantially, top players earn more while marginal players earn less, and players absorb more of their training costs. Ticket prices and competitive balance will be unaffected. Clubs and leagues will be likely to attempt to control player costs by instituting schemes such as payroll caps and increased revenue sharing.     

新时期企业降低成本工作的创新

文章从广西柳州钢铁（集团）公司实际情况出发，认为企业应立足岗位，在工作实践中不断增强员工的降成本意识，提高员工劳动技能，推动企业的技术进步，并通过科技创新降成本，实施各项成本控制手段，激发和调动职工的积极性和创造性。发挥职工在企业降成本工作中的重要作用。     

对学习要求与学习价值关系的探讨——从价值工程的视角

学习的价值工程理论认为,学习价值是学生获得的课程功能与学习成本的比值。对学习的不同要求,需要投入不同的成本,所以不同学习要求的学习价值是不同的,学习要求合理,学习具有较大价值;学习要求不合理,学习的价值较小或没有价值;如果学习要求严重偏离学生实际,会对学生身心造成极大的伤害,学习产生负价值。为了提高学生的学习价值,应当认真研究学生的智能结构,让学生学那些智能结构适宜、能够学好、爱好学的课程。     

Agency costs and the discount rate for public sector enterprises

In this paper, we examine the implications of agency costs on the discount rate for public sector enterprises (PSEs); we do this in the framework of the Capital Asset Pricing Model. With the addition of agency costs, the discount rate for Public Sector Enterprises (PSEs) under uncertainty becomes the risk-adjusted discount rate plus a premium for agency costs; under certainty, the discount rate for PSEs is shown to be the risk-free rate plus a premium for agency costs. Use of a discount rate by PSEs without adjusting for agency costs both under certainty and uncertainty, will lead to sub-optimal capital investment decisions by PSEs.     

MARKETS, IMPER FECTIONS AND THE DANGERS OF OVER-REGULATING ENERGY MARKETS

Government regulation in general has over-expanded. However, in British energy markets, a new form of regulation, concentrating on promoting competition in gas and electricity, has emerged to the benefit of consumers. If the government pursues its policy of targeting favoured energy activities, these gains will disappear, the costs of achieving environmental targets will be unnecessarily heavy and energy markets will be re-politicised.     

股利政策冲突、稳健会计选择与公司债务成本

本文研究了我国上市公司的会计稳健性动因,并在此基础上研究了会计稳健性对上市公司债务融资成本的影响后果.通过对沪市A股公司2004～2008年相关数据的分析,在应计为基础的会计稳健性测量指标下,研究结果表明:与股利分配方案相关的债权人-股东冲突越严重,上市公司越倾向于采用更为稳健的会计选择;同时,会计稳健性越高的公司,债务成本也相应更低.本文认为,随着我国银行业的市场化,以银行为主体的债权人将基于风险控制的考虑,要求上市公司提供稳健的会计数据;在银行利率决策时,稳健会计信息发挥了作用,稳健性较高的上市公司得以获得较低的利率水平.     

Statutory firing costs and lay-offs in Canada

Firing costs may deter firms from engaging in both lay-offs and temporary hiring. While the net response of average employment to firing costs is ambiguous, lay-offs will be reduced through both channels and their frequency therefore will unambiguously decline. This paper estimates the effect of Canadian advance notice and severance laws on individual permanent lay-off hazards. Individual notice laws are found to reduce the lay-off hazard, particularly among non-professional, non-union workers, but the effect is small. Neither group notice nor severance laws are statistically significant. These laws do not appear to substantially affect adjustment in the Canadian labour market.     

EVOLUTION AND REVOLUTION: A QUANTUM VIEW OF STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN ORGANIZATIONS

There may be hidden costs in making prompt incremental and piecemeal changes to organizational structure to cope with a new strategy or environment. We shall argue that changeless stable intervals punctuated by infrequent but revolutionary periods of ‘quantum’or multifaceted structural change may sometimes be the most economical strategy. Incremental structural changes may create severe and costly disharmonies as they destroy an integral structural configuration. These costs might outweigh the benefits of adapting structure to changes in strategy and environment. Because such costs may be high it might be necessary to delay changing until they can be justified. Such delays can require subsequent revolutionary structural changes. The applicability of this view of change for different contexts will be discussed.     

基于成本分析的发车频率模型在广州BRT的应用

班车的发车频率对服务水平及成本控制都起着重要作用。发车频率低,可以降低成本,但是不能满足乘客需求,会引发一系列社会问题;发车频率高,虽然给乘客提供了更好的服务,但是却大大增加了运营成本。本文将在陈文进《大众运输路线服务模式构建之研究》中提出的基于成本的公交班车派发频率模型的基础上,增加环境因素的考虑对模型进行完善。再次本文将以LINGO为工具对模型进行简单求解,并将模型应用于广州快速公交对广州BRT的发车频率进行优化。     

A three-way corporate partnership for specialty hospitals

Ultimately, the burden of escalating health care costs will be shared by all. A coalition of hospitals, suppliers, and group purchasing organizations possesses the power to communicate with each other as well as to ensure viability in the 21st century. Creative contracting will hopefully become the wave of the future in the health care industry.     

Maintenance management: Keeping up with production's changing trends and technologies

Current trends in manufacturing have led to reduced levels of work-in-process inventory and increased levels of automation and machine complexity. These changes have two important implications for maintenance management. First, machine breakdowns not only cause a loss of output from the down machine, but also result in lost production on downstream machines. This occurs because of the elimination of buffer stock between workstations. Second, the gap between the technological expertise of the operators and the technological sophistication of their machines has widened. This gap decreases the ability of operators to make adjustments and minor repairs to their own machines.These two factors cause an increase in maintenance costs associated with machine downtime and maintenance labor. Historically, the proportion of preventive and corrective maintenance has attempted to balance these costs. As buffer stock is reduced and more machines are coupled, the costs of downtime will increase, increasing the need for preventive maintenance and decreasing its cost compared to the cost of lost production.Increases in the use of computer-based planning systems have resulted in the development of computerized preventive maintenance systems that have proven to be successful in planning for maintenance labor and materials. Integrating planning methods with corrective maintenance tasks will help reduce breakdowns, make more efficient use of maintenance craft labor, and provide information for inventory control of maintenance, repair, and operating (MRO) materials.This article examines methods of reducing machine downtime costs, maintenance labor costs, and MRO inventory costs in today's changing production environment. Techniques for reducing these costs are explored in the areas of maintenance planning, maintenance methods improvement, and MRO inventory control.     

THE POLITICAL EMBEDDEDNESS OF PRIVATE ECONOMIC TRANSACTIONS*

Governments are able to manipulate economic transactions in order to achieve foreign policy goals. This article addresses the question: can managers of multinational enterprises (MNEs) structure economic transactions in ways that will limit the costs resulting from government intervention? Using a transaction cost framework, the efficiency of alternative structures (exporting, joint ventures, licensing, or wholly owned subsidiaries) for protecting a firm's interests are assessed. We argue that the traditional focus on the dyadic relationship between supplier and buyer misses sources of transaction costs; by conceptualizing economic transactions as embedded in a political context, additional sources of transaction costs are revealed. We examine three cases of home government intervention in US MNE transactions with the Soviet Union. We find that the full range of structural alternatives is affected by government sanctions, although sanctions are imposed on exporting relationships first and removed last. We find that MNEs are, therefore, beginning to insulate international transactions by making their overseas subsidiaries more independent of US technology and supplies with the hope that the US government will be less likely to impose its will extraterritorially by intervening in foreign subsidiaries’private economic transactions.     

环境规制、流动性风险与债务融资成本

环境规制会影响企业经营和银行对企业的风险评价,进而影响企业债务融资成本。本文以我国A股2012~2017年重污染行业上市公司为研究对象,研究了环境规制对债务融资成本的具体影响。研究结果显示,环境规制强度对重污染企业债务融资成本具有正向影响作用;且这种影响效应在小规模企业和非国有企业更加显著;进一步研究发现,环境规制通过流动性风险路径影响企业债务融资成本。本文的研究丰富了企业债务融资成本相关文献,对企业加强债务融资管理与政府实施环保政策具有一定的启示作用。     

利益相关者视角下的财务困境成本与收益

本文认为,传统的财务理论仅从企业的角度考虑负债所导致的财务困境成本与收益,忽视了负债经营对债权人、客户、供应商、雇员及竞争对手等利益相关者交易行为的影响。企业财务杠杆过高会给潜在的债权人、客户、供应商和雇员带来了隐性成本,而理性的利益相关者通常可以事先预见到这些成本,最终将由负债企业承担。企业财务杠杆过高还会导致竞争对手趁机掠夺其市场份额,从而使企业未来利润大幅度下降。尽管有企业可以利用财务困境获得一些收益,但是相对于其财务困境成本,这些收益通常是微不足道的。     

Brexit – Customs borders will impose costs and delays

• ? The UK's decision to leave the EU customs union is likely to see physical customs borders being introduced, including in Ireland. This will impose administrative costs and delays, with our modelling suggesting that introducing customs checks would reduce the level of UK GDP in 2030 by between 0.7–1.3%. But there are opportunities for the two sides to limit the damage through cooperation and the UK could also mitigate the costs by agreeing free‐trade agreements (FTA) with third countries.
• ? The UK can take as ‘light‐touch’ an approach to customs checks on imports from the EU as it desires. But it is likely that the EU will introduce customs checks on goods imported from the UK, even if the two sides agree an FTA, to ensure regulatory compliance and that ‘rules of origin’ have been satisfied – this will be particularly important if the UK agrees FTA with countries the EU does not have deals with.
• ? Introducing customs borders would pose some logistical problems, particularly in the Dover Strait where existing infrastructure is limited and there are space constraints. A potential fivefold increase in customs declarations will also pose challenges on the IT front. If the UK and EU are unable to agree transitional arrangements, then the additional infrastructure would need to be up and running in a very short period of time. This risks a period of substantial disruption.
• ? Traders will have to complete additional paperwork – such as export licences and import declarations – but much of this can be dealt with electronically, which should help to limit costs and delays. In addition, if the two sides were to share information then this could help to limit the extent to which risk‐based inspections caused delays.
• ? The Government is effectively calculating that the benefits from agreeing FTA with other countries will outweigh the costs of customs controls on the UK‐EU border. This judgement looks doubtful and, at best, would take many years to bear fruit.

     

Hassle Costs: The Achilles' Heel of Price-Matching Guarantees*

We show that price-matching guarantees can facilitate monopoly pricing only if firms automatically match prices. If consumers must instead request refunds (thereby incurring hassle costs), we find that any increase in equilibrium prices due to firms' price-matching policies will be small; often, no price increase can be supported. In symmetric markets price-matching guarantees cannot support any rise in prices, even if hassle costs are arbitrarily small In asymmetric markets, higher prices can be supported, but the prices fall well short of maximizing joint profits. Our model can explain why some firms adopt price-matching guarantees while others do not.     

Effort estimation for enterprise resource planning implementation projects using social choice – a comparative study

ERP implementation projects have received enormous attention in the last years, due to their importance for organisations, as well as the costs and risks involved. The estimation of effort and costs associated with new projects therefore is an important topic. Unfortunately, there is still a lack of models that can cope with the special characteristics of these projects. As the main focus lies in adapting and customising a complex system, and even changing the organisation, traditional models like COCOMO can not easily be applied. In this article, we will apply effort estimation based on social choice in this context. Social choice deals with aggregating the preferences of a number of voters into a collective preference, and we will apply this idea by substituting the voters by project attributes. Therefore, instead of supplying numeric values for various project attributes, a new project only needs to be placed into rankings per attribute, necessitating only ordinal values, and the resulting aggregate ranking can be used to derive an estimation. We will describe the estimation process using a data set of 39 projects, and compare the results to other approaches proposed in the literature.     

我国的物流成本及与美国的比较分析

分析了中美两国物流成本现状统计数据的差异及我国物流运行的现状和发展趋势,利用SPSS软件对中美两国物流成本的关键数据进行了统计分析与预测。指出了我国的物流的三个发展阶段及其特点。对中国物流成本的构成的发展趋势也进行了分析,提出了管理成本将在今后一段时间内增加然后下降和保管成本将逐步下降的趋势。     

Is Privately‐provided Electronic Money Next?

To survive, any new electronic money will need to provide some advantage to its users, such as lower transaction costs, increased privacy, a greater ability to avoid taxes, or a more stable value than its government-provided competitors. Any successful new money will have to overcome substantial barriers to entry, however. These barriers to entry occur primarily in the form of the costs of switching to a different means of payment and require an understanding of the role played by 'network economics.' Unless a substantial number of the individuals and businesses with whom a person trades use the same money, any new means of payment will have little value. A temptation facing government regulators will be to extend and expand regulations to apply to new means of payment and forms of money. A more productive role of governments is to attempt to protect their own money-creation franchises by minimising the advantages offered by privately-provided alternatives. Governments should enforce contracts and punish fraud while remaining vigilant with respect to inflation, keep tax rates low and protect the privacy of their citizens.