Measuring the Performance Drivers of a Pilot Implementation of a Purchasing Card System

Corporate purchasing cards have been offered as an efficient means of maintaining control over purchasing while reducing the administrative cost associated with the acquisition of low-dollar items. However, despite its growing popularity, there has been little systematic research on the use of this technology. This study uses archival data and a survey of users from a single large organisation to describe the nature of purchasing card technology and to investigate the consequences of its implementation. The card was found to be more positively accepted by younger, more committed employees who had shorter periods of tenure at the organisation studied, but who had received higher levels of supervisory encouragement, and who had more experience with credit cards.     

The Quality Delivery Option in Treasury Bond Futures Contracts

This paper uses three methods to estimate quality option values for CBOT Treasury bond futures contracts. It presents evidence regarding: (1) payoffs from exercising this option at delivery, (2) estimates from a T-bond futures pricing model that incorporates this option, and (3) estimates obtained from an exchange option pricing formula. The results indicate that this option is worth considerably less than reported by Kane and Marcus (1986a) . For example, payoffs obtained by switching from the bond cheapest to deliver three months prior to delivery to the one cheapest at time of delivery average less than 0.30 percentage points of par.     

Les effets de la note de planification,des pressions temporelles et des caractéristiques individuelles du vérificateur sur l'estimation du temps de révision par le chef de groupe en vérification*

Résumé. Cette étude se penche sur l'effort en terme de temps de révision des chefs de groupe en vérification (tel que reflété par leurs estimations du temps requis pour la révision du dossier de vérification) et la mesure dans laquelle cet effort est orienté par une autre activité importante du chef de groupe: la planification initiale de la mission de vérification. La planification initiale de la vérification est conditionnée par l'identification de certaines zones critiques dans la note de planification. Les pressions temporelles et les caractéristiques individuelles du vérificateur sont également étudiées, car les recherches antérieures en vérification semblent indiquer qu'elles sont susceptibles d'influencer la révision du chef de groupe. Cette analyse est fondée sur les réponses, provenant de soixante-treize chefs de groupe de dix grands cabinets d'experts-comptables, à un cas de vérification. Les résultats indiquent que: 1) les chefs de groupe font preuve d'un consensus raisonnable en budgétisant plus de la moitié du temps de vérification pour la révision, 2) le plan initial de vérification oriente leur révision ultérieure, 3) les pressions au niveau du temps n'influencent pas de façon significative leurs estimations relatives au temps de révision, et 4) l'appartenance à un cabinet, le niveau d'expérience de vérificateur, et l'effort de planification initiale sont reliés aux différences des pratiques et des perceptions de la révision par le chef de groupe. La fin de cet article comporte une discussion des conséquences de ces résultats en regard de la pratique et des recherches ultérieures.     

HOW DELEGATING AUTHORITY BIASES SOCIAL CHOICES

Delegating authority can bias social choices. The bias derives from the persuasion process that accompanies social decision making. When decision makers can decide to delegate their authority, asymmetries in decision makers' persuasiveness and openness to persuasion can play an important role in distorting the outcomes of social choices. When permitted in social decision making, such ad hoc delegating may favor extreme points of view and may force more group decisions to formal, social-choice mechanisms such as voting.     

COMPARING POST-COLD WAR MILITARY CONVERSION IN THE UNITED STATES AND RUSSIA

According to the conventional wisdom, military conversion in Russia would be more difficult than in the United States because Russia does not have the developed market infrastructure and institutions that help western defense firms redeploy resources for civilian production. A closer look raises doubts about these arguments. Western defense firms have had difficulties with conversion because they cannot compete with the existing relatively efficient civilian firms. Meanwhile, the principal competitors of the Russian defense firms, the large Russian civilian enterprises, are closer in nature to defense enterprises than to efficient market firms. While this does not bode well for the Russian economy in general, the defense enterprises should not find themselves at a significant disadvantage in the civilian markets. Two effects can be distinguished. On the one hand, due to the more developed market infrastructure, the U.S. economy is presumably good at redeploying defense-related resources across firm boundaries. On the other hand, the large and efficient civilian sector in the United States makes the marginal "civilian" value of the redeployed resources low. It is the interaction of these factors, rather than the degree of development of market infrastructure alone, that determines the relative difficulty of military conversion. Additionally, empirical evidence based on regional data indicates that despite enormous defense expenditure cuts, the economic performance of Russia's regions is only relatively weakly correlated with the regions' dependency on defense industry.     

The Use of Electronic Funds Transfers to Capture the Effects of Cash Management Practices on the Demand for Demand Deposits: A Note

The rapidly increasing use of more sophisticated cash management practices is a factor influencing the demand for money that is not considered in standard models of money demand. Within the framework of an inventory theoretic model of money demand, this paper provides theoretical grounds for using the number of electronic funds transfers as an indication of increasing cash management sophistication. Specifically, the demand for demand deposits is determined from the solution of a simultaneous equation system that also determines the optimal level of cash management. Therefore, the level of cash management services influences transactions costs, implying that transactions costs are endogenous. The number of electronic funds transfers is closely linked to the level of cash management services and is therefore related to transactions costs. Models of money demand that treat transactions costs as exogenous and fixed are therefore misspecified and will not perform well when transactions costs are changing. By explicitly incorporating the changing nature of transactions costs through the use of electronic funds transfers, the problems of instability and poor predictive power associated with the demand for money in the 1970's are overcome.