The stand-alone test and decreasing serial cost sharing

Summary. The rule of decreasing serial cost sharing defined in de Frutos [1] over the class of concave cost functions may violate the important stand-alone test. Sufficient conditions for the test to be satisfied are given, in terms of individual rationality as well as coalitional stability. These conditions restrict the shape of the cost function and the distribution of demands. Received: July 29, 1999; revised version: October 4, 1999     

Competition, Market Structure and Job Turnover

Does internationalization mean increased reallocation of employment among plants and thus higher adjustment costs? This paper studies the reallocation of jobs among plants in the Swedish economy 1986–97 using micro data. It turns out that the rate of job turnover is high in industries with high rates of innovation and employment growth, and low in concentrated industries with limited competition. However, we find no evidence for the view that increased openness to international competition would increase job turnover. In fact turnover is lower in export oriented industries where foreign ownership is frequent.     

Model-Based Decision Support in Manufacturing and Service Networks

In this paper, we sketch some of the challenges that should be addressed in future research efforts for model-based decision support in manufacturing and service networks. This includes integration issues, taking into account the autonomy of the decision-making entities in face of information asymmetry, the modeling of preferences of the decision makers, efficiently determining robust solutions, i.e. solutions that are insensitive with respect to changes in the problem data, and a reduction of the time needed for model building and usage. The problem solution cycle includes problem analysis, the design of appropriate algorithms and their performance assessment. We are interested in a prototypical integration of the proposed methods within application systems, which can be followed up with field tests of the extended application systems. We argue that the described research agenda requires the interdisciplinary collaboration of business and information systems engineering researchers with colleagues from management science, computer science, and operations research. In addition, we present some exemplifying, illustrative examples of relevant research results.     

国际一体化对宏观经济政策有效性的影响

本文讨论了国内宏观经济政策如何受到国际一体化的影响。宏观经济政策有效性取决于以下几个因素：政策工具的数目、达到经济目标的效果，及运用这些工具时受到的约束。一般认为，国际一体化降低政策有效性，而本文指出，国际一体化在很多情况下可能增强决策者运用宏观经济政策的能力。国际一体化创造了许多新的政策工具。有关货币政策、财政政策和产业结构政策的标准分析显示，国际一体化究竟是提高还是降低了政策工具的效力，取决于国际一体化的具体来源和一国的货币制度。