Fitting Standard Software Packages to Non-standard Organizations: The " Biography' of an Enterprise-wide System

This paper investigates the development and implementation of a generic off- the-shelf computer package and the competing pressures for standardization and differentiation as this package is made to fit new organizational settings. The particular focus is on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and its application within universities. In order for the ERP system to fit this setting a new module called "Campus' is being developed. We followed the module as the current "generic user' embodied in the software was translated to a more "specific user' (a number of universities piloting the module) and back once again to a generic form of university user (the potential "global university marketplace'). We develop the notion that these systems have a "biography', which helps us to analyse the evolution of software along its life cycle and provides insights into the different dynamics at play as Campus is translated for use in a number of institutions and countries. The study draws on over three years of ethnographic research conducted in a British University and a major ERP Supplier.     

The Impact of Capital-Based Regulation on Bank Risk-Taking

In this paper we model the dynamic portfolio choice problem facing banks, calibrate the model using empirical data from the banking industry for 1984–1993, and assess quantitatively the impact of recent regulatory developments related to bank capital. The model implies a U-shaped relationship between capital and risk-taking: As a bank's capital increases it first takes less risk, then more risk. A deposit insurance premium surcharge on undercapitalized banks induces them to take more risk. An increased capital requirement, whether flat or risk-based, tends to induce more risk-taking by ex-ante well-capitalized banks that comply with the new standard. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: G20, G28.     

Asymptotic efficiency of the demand revealing mechanism

It is shown that the demand revealing mechanism creates only a negligibly small undesired deficit, when the number of participants in the decision group in question is sufficiently large. Since the size of deficit is a measure of inefficiency and since the former is inevitable, the states result demonstrates the approximate optimality of the mechanism.     

R&D, Investment, and Industry Dynamics

We present a model of industry evolution where the dynamics are driven by a process of endogenous innovations followed by subsequent embodiments in physical capital. Traditionally, the only distinction between R&D and physical investment was one of labeling: the first process accumulates an intangible stock, knowledge, while the second accumulates physical capital. Both stocks affect output in a symmetric fashion. We argue that the story is not that simple, and that there is more to it than differences in the object of accumulation. Our model stresses the causal relationship between past R&D expenditures and current investments in machinery and equipment. This causality pattern, which is supported by the data, also explains the observed higher volatility of physical investment relative to that of R&D expenditures.     

The Tail Probability of Discounted Sums of Pareto-like Losses in Insurance

In an insurance context, the discounted sum of losses within a finite or infinite time period can be described as a randomly weighted sum of a sequence of independent random variables. These independent random variables represent the amounts of losses in successive development years, while the weights represent the stochastic discount factors. In this paper, we investigate the problem of approximating the tail probability of this weighted sum in the case when the losses have Pareto-like distributions and the discount factors are mutually dependent. We also give some simulation results.     

Testing for nonlinearities in German bank stock returns

In this paper nonlinear structures in German bank stock returns are investigated in a stochastic modelling framework. In the first step we show the existence of a nonlinear return structure by means of the McLeod-Li and the BDS test. In the second step we focus our analysis on the kinds of nonlinearity actually present in bank stock data. On the basis of the Hsieh test it is possible to discriminate with high power additive from multiplicative dependencies to provide guidance for the choice of an adequate class of stochastic models. It is shown that the multiplicative dependencies predominating the bank stock returns can be captured by low order GARCH models.     

The Working Behavior of Young People in Rural Cote d'Ivoire

One of the major features of structural adjustment is an attemptto reallocate labor—and hence output—through changesin relative prices. This article assesses how price changesaffect the working patterns of young people in rural Côted'Ivoire. The analysis is based on a model of the labor supplyof rural households and on the construction of composite priceindexes. The data come from the Côte d'Ivoire Living StandardsSurvey for 1985 and 1986. The panel aspect of the data allowsthe work choice made in one year to depend on the individual'schoice in the previous year. Results indicate that the priceof agricultural output generally is a positive incentive onthe decision to participate in the labor force. However, thisresult depends heavily on the employment and education of theindividual in the previous period. Those not already workingare less likely to respond to favorable movements in the pricesof cash crops by entering the work force.     

Modeling volatility and changes in the swap spread

We investigate the determinants of changes in U.S. interest rate swap spreads using a model that explicitly allows for volatility interactions between swaps of different terms to maturity. Changes in the swap spread are found to be positively related to interest rate volatility, to changes in the default risk premium in the corporate bond market, and to changes in the liquidity premium for government securities. Swap spread changes are negatively related to changes in the level of interest rates and changes in the slope of the term structure. We also find that there is a strong and significant volatility interaction among spreads for swaps of different maturities and that the process for the conditional variance of the spread is highly persistent across all maturities.     

Social and Environmental Disclosure and Corporate Characteristics: A Research Note and Extension

This paper is concerned with the attempts to explain the disclosure of social and environmental information in the annual reports of large companies by reference to observable characteristics of those companies. An extensive literature has sought to establish whether variables such as corporate size, profit and industry segments can explain corporations' disclosure practices. The results from that predominantly North American and Australasian literature are largely inconclusive. This paper provides an extension of that literature by considering a more disaggregated specification of social and environmental disclosure and by employing a detailed time-series data set. By so doing, the paper tests two possible explanations for the inconclusiveness of prior research: namely that any relationships between corporate characteristics and disclosure are dependent upon the type of disclosure and that any such relationships are not stable through time. The results provide support for these explanations as sufficient, if not necessary, conditions for explaining the inconsistency in prior results.