Detecting Supply Chain Innovation Potential for Sustainable Development

In a world of limited resources, it could be argued that companies that aspire to be good corporate citizens need to focus on making best use of resources. User value and environmental harm are created in supply chains and it could therefore be argued that company business ethics should be extended from the company to the entire value chain from the first supplier to the last customer. Starting with a delineation of the linkages between business ethics, corporate sustainability, and the stakeholder concept, this article argues that supply chains generally have a great innovation potential for sustainable development. This potential could be highlighted with system thinking and the use of change management knowledge, promoting not only innovations within technology but also within organizational improvement. We propose process models and performance indicators as means of highlighting improvement potential and thus breaking down normative business ethics’ requirements to an opertionalizable corporate level: Good business ethics should focus on maximizing stakeholder value in relation to harm done. Our results indicate that focusing on supply chains reveals previously unknown innovation potential that seems to be related to limited system understanding. The assumption is that increased visibility of opportunities will act as a driver for change. Results also highlight the importance of focusing on sustainability effects of the core business and clearly relating value created to harm done.     

Continuous‐time models,realized volatilities,and testable distributional implications for daily stock returns

We provide an empirical framework for assessing the distributional properties of daily speculative returns within the context of the continuous‐time jump diffusion models traditionally used in asset pricing finance. Our approach builds directly on recently developed realized variation measures and non‐parametric jump detection statistics constructed from high‐frequency intra‐day data. A sequence of simple‐to‐implement moment‐based tests involving various transformations of the daily returns speak directly to the importance of different distributional features, and may serve as useful diagnostic tools in the specification of empirically more realistic continuous‐time asset pricing models. On applying the tests to the 30 individual stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average index, we find that it is important to allow for both time‐varying diffusive volatility, jumps, and leverage effects to satisfactorily describe the daily stock price dynamics. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Median‐voter Equilibria in the Neoclassical Growth Model under Aggregation*

We study a dynamic version of Meltzer and Richard's median‐voter model where agents differ in wealth. Taxes are proportional to income and are redistributed as equal lump‐sum transfers. Voting occurs every period and each consumer votes for the tax that maximizes his welfare. We characterize time‐consistent Markov‐perfect equilibria twofold. First, restricting utility classes, we show that the economy's aggregate state is mean and median wealth. Second, we derive the median‐voter's first‐order condition interpreting it as a tradeoff between distortions and net wealth transfers. Our method for solving the steady state relies on a polynomial expansion around the steady state.     

Indices for Working Land Conservation: Form Affects Function

Using environmental indices (EIs) to rank applications for enrollment in conservation programs is becoming common practice. However, there is little guidance on how it should be done. The indices adopted by existing programs have often been linear, using weighted averages of environmental parameters without explicit consideration of whether they represent a reliable preference ordering on environmental states. Our article investigates society's weights for addressing multiple resource concerns and how functional forms of EIs can influence program outcomes. We propose a means by which preference weights are observed from policymaker actions. Weights for multiple resource concerns are determined and combined with biophysical crop simulation data to create an environmental index (EI) for crop rotations. This index is developed using alternative function forms to score conservation efforts on working cropland and to measure their effect on program outcomes.     

以价值为基础的维修管理——用OEE作为关键性能指标

介绍挪威工业界使用OEE作为考核设备效率的关键性能指标,以及实际使用OEE指标的4个层次生产损失的模式和15个生产损失要素。     

The Siting of Hazardous Waste Facilities in Federal Systems: The Political Economy of NIMBY

This paper offers a new political economy explanation for thepervasive problem of siting hazardous waste treatment facilitiesin federal system. We first show that a decentralized systemyields the first-best waste treatment capacity level and that acentralized structure gives rise to free-riding behavior amonglocal jurisdictions. In our model, each community seeks toinfluence the central government through political contributions.This leads to suboptimal levels of treatment capacity. Thecapacity is increasing in the compensation level if the marginalbenefit of treatment capacity is sufficiently large, and in thegovernment's weight on aggregate social welfare relative tolobbying activities. The centralized system can replicate thedecentralized system with a sufficiently high compensation level.Since compensation has proved difficult, a centralized systemfaces greater obstacles than a decentralized system.     

Price Competition and Advertising Signals: Signaling by Competing Senders

Can price and advertising be used by vertically differentiated duopolists to signal qualities to consumers? We show that pure price separation is impossible if the vertical differentiation is small, while adding dissipative advertising ensures the existence of separating equilibria. Two simple, but nonstandard, equilibrium refinements are introduced to deal with the multisender nature of the game, and they are shown to produce a unique separating and a unique pooling profile. Pooling results in a zero‐profit Bertrand outcome. Separation gives strictly positive duopoly profits, and dissipative advertising is used by the high‐quality firm when products are sufficiently close substitutes. Finally, compared to the complete‐information benchmark, the separating prices of both firms are distorted upwards when the degree of vertical differentiation is large, and downwards when it is small.     

Adaptive planning and uncertainty resolution

The article discusses uncertainty resolution and the approaches to uncertainty in planning. Statically perceived uncertainty may be described more or less explicitly in decision making. Stating various possible outcomes and, possibly, their numerical probabilities may allow quantitative theory to be applied. However, there will be a residual of genuine uncertainty due to the limits set by the available information. By “buying” more information the decision maker can decrease the genuine uncertainty. It is also often possible to reduce uncertainty by waiting. The most effective way is to state the expectations explicitly and to let the various future states of information correspond to alternative decisions in a conditional strategy. This requires a new kind of forecast that refers to the development of information available. A less efficient mode of planning can still take into consideration the fact that revisions are expected. This is flexible planning in a wide sense.     

MUNICIPAL CONTRACTING OUT: GOVERNANCE CHOICES,MISALIGNMENT AND PERFORMANCE IN SWEDISH LOCAL GOVERNMENT

In this paper we apply a Transaction Cost Theory framework to analyse the use and effects of contracting out in Swedish local government. During the last decade Swedish local authorities, like in many other countries, have, to a larger extent, started to contract external subcontractors to fulfil their responsibilities towards its citizens. It is not only in the traditional subcontracting sectors such as housing, infrastructure, and technical services that this trend is evident, but also in policy areas like education, social care, and elderly care. In fact, very little is known about the overall effects of, and the mechanisms underlying, governance choices. The overall results corroborate transaction cost reasoning. Supplier competition and specificity have anticipated effects on municipal de‐integration. Too little, but not too much, use of contracting out, in relation to theoretical predictions, worsens performance. The latter aspect is not fully in accordance with TCE‐propositions.