The economic implications of the VLSI revolution

In 1970 a silicon-wafer fabrication plant cost $2 million: in 1979 it was $50 million. The production of integrated circuits is not only capital intensive. It is also a high-risk business—rapid innovation brings the dangers of product and process obsolescence. Vast investments in complex equipment to produce ever tinier integrated circuits can be recouped only through high-volume sales. Consumers pay less per unit of performance and large firms are favoured. VLSI (very large scale integration) may shortly bring a generation of devices more flexible even than the microprocessor. But the diffusion of the new technology depends heavily on ‘gatekeepers’ who evaluate potential applications. The greatest obstacle, as in the case of automation, will be the design and choice of appropriate software.     

Company giving to schools: Business or charity?

Almost weekly, national newspapers report the launch of governmental initiatives and funding programmes to improve educational standards and the environment in which these are to be actioned. Local newspapers also recognise the news-worthiness of the school community. The MP's visit, the Gladiator opening a school fete, the environmental programme are all avidly reported. With the millions of pounds being poured into education and the insatiable appetite of the media to report what is happening at schools, it is hardly surprising that business has recognised the commercial potential of dealing with the school community, be this as a direct supplier or as an organisation that may receive publicity through association. This article will examine the business-school relationship and the motives that underlie this relationship. Much of the below article is developed from material taken from the author's recent book, ‘A Handbook of School Fundraising’¹.     

A weighted logit freight mode-choice model

The paper describes the estimation of a weighted discrete choice model applicable for analysing choice of mode and crossing for freight in the Oresund region. The study finds that, by applying a weighted logit approach, it is possible to establish a suitable decoupling of agents and shipments. Moreover, by assessing preferences on the basis of a representative baseline OD matrix it is possible to better reflect the dependence between mode substitution effects and geography/infrastructure. The paper presents demand elasticities with respect to monetary cost and travel time as well as value-of-time estimates for five modes and thirteen commodity groups.     

Customer perceived value in B-t-B service relationships: Investigating the importance of corporate reputation

The importance of customer perceived value (CPV) has been advocated in numerous publications over the recent years. The research presented in this article aims at 1) understanding drivers of customers' perception of economic value, especially when the service provided has high a degree of intangibility, and 2) assessing the consequences of value perceptions. The authors present a theoretical model of antecedents and consequences of CPV in a B2B service industry setting. Corporate reputation, information sharing, distributive fairness and flexibility are modeled as drivers of CPV whereas word-of-mouth (WOM) and search for alternatives (loyalty measures) represent the effects of CPV. A test of the hypothesized model using structural equation modeling showed that corporate reputation had substantially stronger effect on CPV than the other drivers measured. This indicates that when the intrinsic nature of service performance is hard to evaluate, corporate reputation works as substantial shorthand for value. Finally, customers' perceptions of economic value increase their likelihood of recommending the supplier and reduce their tendency to seek information about alternatives.     

Business cycle fluctuations and the life cycle: How important is on-the-job skill accumulation?

We study the effects of on-the-job skill accumulation on average hours worked by age and the volatility of hours over the life cycle in a calibrated general equilibrium model. Two forms of skill accumulation are considered: learning by doing and on-the-job training. In our economy with learning by doing, individuals supply more labor early in the life cycle and less as they approach retirement than they do in an economy without this feature. The impact of this feature on the volatility of hours over the life cycle depends on the value of the intertemporal elasticity of labor supply. When individuals accumulate skills by on-the-job training, there are only weak effects on both the steady-state labor supply and its volatility over the life cycle.     

The use of mixtures of market and experimental choice data in establishing guideline weights for evaluating competitive bids in a transport organisation

The government sector is increasingly using competitive bidding for service deliveries such as the provision of bus and rail services as well as the purchasing of professional engineering services such as project planning, design, and project supervision. As part of a program to simplify and introduce consistency in the tender evaluation process, one government transport agency in New Zealand financed a study to investigate the potential of combined revealed and stated preference methods as a way of establishing weights to attach to the criteria used to evaluate offers of engineering services. These techniques have mainly been used in the study of travel choices; yet they have a much broader appeal in studying the decision making process of organisations. In this paper we use a data-mixing model to capture the decision expertise of a transport organisation through the revelation of preference weights for each evaluation criterion. Using choice information based on both market-driven and experimentally derived choice sets, we should be able to increase the robustness of the evaluation weights in comparison to the weights obtained from single data-sourced models. The resulting parameterised tool can be used in subsequent tender evaluations to provide an additional source of advice to supplement or replace that provided by current members of a bid evaluation team.     

Trade, Exchange Rate, and Energy Pricing Reform in Iran: Potentially Large Efficiency Effects and Gains to the Poor

Iran is committed to substantial trade and market reform in its Third Five Year Development Plan. It started, however, with nontariff barriers on all products, a dual exchange rate regime with the market rate more than four times the official rate, and domestic energy product subsidies of about 90%. The authors develop a multisector computable general‐equilibrium model with ten rural and ten urban households to analyze the various reforms, separately and together. Reflecting the large initial distortions, they find that the combined reforms could generate large welfare gains equal to about 50% of aggregate consumer income. Moreover, the results show that well‐intentioned policies of commodity subsidies for the poor can have perverse effects. Even nontargeted direct income payments to all households (not just the poor) would enormously and progressively increase the incomes of the poor compared to the status quo.     

移动支付和3G应用

<正>我是Cibernet副总裁Ken Hansen,大家都知道Cibernet公司,我的新服务就是不仅来中国发展,而且在全球,特别是在商务方面,通过更好的方式来为您服务。首先我要谈一点公司的背景,我们是Ciberent的一部分。在美国,关于移动商务方面,也就是CTI,1998年的时