Low Cost Microcomputer Software for Multi-Attribute Decision Analysis

Total product quality is multidimensional and includes customer acceptance as well as the usual quantitative elements for conformance, performance and reliability. Also included are broad ranges of operational expectations that are specific to the particular product. Thus to assess overall quality requires analysis of a multi-attribute vector of quality measures, some of which are subjective but cannot be ignored in making quality-related decisions. Warranty costs reflect the overall effect of these elements and can serve as an overall measure for making economic decisions. In this paper, we will summarize warranty cost models and describe two warranty planning problems that are important in engineering economic decision making.     

Improving retirement adequacy through asset class prioritization

Highly risk-averse retirees are generally advised to adopt a fixed spending strategy such as the 4% withdrawal rule. To prevent the premature depletion of a retirement portfolio, the rule attempts to proxy as the ‘safe withdrawal rate’. But a constant withdrawal rate means that retirees accumulate unspent surpluses when markets outperform and face spending shortfalls when markets underperform. While a safe withdrawal rate can prevent spending shortfalls, the opportunity cost of unspent surpluses associated with this strategy can be extreme. We apply a range of basic investment decision rules to a retirement portfolio applying various withdrawal rates and examine the probability of shortfalls over a retirement horizon. Using a block bootstrap simulation technique, we examine decision rules relating to stock and bond investments. Our results show that retirement portfolios with a bias towards stocks coupled with a decision rule that sources withdrawals from bonds and cash before stocks significantly outperforms alternative withdrawal strategies, despite the inherent increase in volatility. This finding is in direct contrast to the safe withdrawal rate conventions used in contemporary financial advice models.     

Speed of Issuance,Lender Specialization,and the Rise of the 144A Debt Market

Using a large sample of convertible and straight debt issues in the public, 144A, and bank loan markets from 1991 to 2004, we find that the 144A market has risen largely at the expense of the nonshelf public market, the overwhelming majority of the 144A issues are subsequently registered, and straight debt issuers with the highest credit quality and transparency tend to use the shelf public market. Our findings suggest that firms’ preference for speed of issuance drives the growth of the 144A market, and banks and qualified institutional buyers have advantages over public lenders in handling credit risk and information asymmetry.     

The Use of Management Control Mechanisms to Mitigate Moral Hazard in the Decision to Outsource

Using archival data from the U.S. passenger airline industry, this study examines whether management control mechanisms aimed at mitigating moral hazard explain outsourcing decisions over and above transaction cost economics (TCE) determinants documented in prior research. Consistent with TCE theory, we find that in‐house production efficiencies and our proxy for transaction risk (i.e., deriving from transaction infrequency, transaction complexity, and relationship‐specific investments) significantly explain the extent of outsourcing of aircraft maintenance. We extend TCE insights to show that incentive delta (i.e., the sensitivity of CEO portfolio holdings to stock price changes) strengthens the negative association between production efficiencies and outsourcing while incentive vega (i.e., the sensitivity of CEO holdings to stock return volatility) weakens the negative association between transaction risk and outsourcing. Monitoring strengthens the negative association between in‐house production efficiencies and outsourcing, but has no effect on the transaction risk–outsourcing relation. The results suggest that the use of outsourcing to achieve cost savings is promoted through both incentive contracts and monitoring, but outsourcing to achieve the desired risk level is promoted only through incentive contracts.     

Conflicts of interest

This paper has two distinct objectives. (1) I defend an analysis of the concept of a conflict of interest. On my analysis the concept of a conflict of interest is broader than is generally supposed. I argue that a very large class of cases not ordinarily regarded as conflicts of interest should be so regarded. Conflicts of interest are an integral feature of many professional relationships and do not (as is often supposed) require the existence of external financial or personal relationships. (2) I defend and explain the commonsense view that conflicts of interest areprima facie wrong and argue that in ordinary cases it is wrong, all things considered, to allow an avoidable conflict of interest to occur. I attempt to establish these claims on the basis of weak and relatively noncontroversial assumptions.Thomas L. Carson is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author ofThe Status of Morality and numerous papers on ethical theory and business ethics.     

广西沿边特色经济带建设对策探究

广西沿边地区基础设施薄弱,投资环境差,发展滞后。要以沿边贸易合作深入发展为契机,适时调整边境地区经济政策,加快基础设施建设,对边境地区优势产业加大投入,营造良好的产业发展环境,加强干部教育培养,提高人才素质,为边境地区优势产业发展打下良好的基础。     

城镇居民消费结构演变实证分析——基于面板ELES模型

2003年以来,我国城镇居民人均收入增长速度较快,恩格尔系数也有所下降,城镇居民消费结构变化显著。结合面板数据建立ELES模型分析我国城镇居民消费结构演变趋势,结果表明:城镇居民消费存在显著的收入效应和时间效应,且在满足吃饱穿暖基本消费需求之后城镇居民将会增加享受型和发展型消费支出,其中交通通讯与文教娱乐消费将成为城镇居民未来一段时间内消费新热点;最后结合分析结论提出促进城镇居民消费水平的相关政策建议。     

The decline of the traditional travel agent model

This article analyzes the struggle between traditional travel agencies and airlines to gain control of the Spanish airline services market. Also analyzed is the strong emergence of a third player, online travel portals that act as online travel agencies. We use a multinomial logit model to study the influence of 27 socio-economic factors and trip attributes on passenger purchase channel choice. The results show that the profile of a passenger who has a greater likelihood of making his/her bookings online is that of a young person, a student or educated to a high level, a habitual traveler, booking a simple journey and using an LCC. The factors linked to an increased likelihood of making purchases by phone include: being male, middle-aged, on a business or short trip, and the passengers usually use a travel agency. Finally, passengers who are over 65 years of age, with a lower academic level, who use a travel agency and are going to make a more complicated journey, are more likely to purchase their tickets in-store.