西方误读中国商道

中国文化相当多面和多变，商业文化也不例外，有三个方面最常被误读。 美国式个人主义：多年以来，中国似乎都是笼罩着浓厚集体主义的国家，但环境已经发生巨变。陈伟是一位巴黎奢侈品行业的经理，他不断亲身感受到中国个人主义的上升。     

Economics and the treatment of AIDS: a preliminary assessment

This paper applied cost-effectiveness analysis to the use of drug therapy in the treatment of AIDS. The empirical approach adopted overcame the facts that the samples of patients had varying clinical prognoses, had variable entry dates into the samples and, because AIDS is a terminal disease, had variable exit dates. Holding these variables constant, administration of the drug AZT proved to be a less costly alternative than other existing palliatives for AIDS. The sub-sample of patients treated with AZT had lower hospitalization costs, lower caring costs and sufferers had an increased ability to continue to participate for longer as economically active members of society.     

Adäquate Wundauflagen

Wundumgebung und Wundauflagen - Die wundumgebende Haut, sofern sie intakt ist, hat eigentlich keinen direkten Einfluss auf die Wundheilung, da aber die Wundauflagen oder der Sekund?rverband auf der wundumgebenden Haut fixiert wird, ist die Beurteilung und Schutz dieser Hautareale für die Wundheilung von Bedeutung.     

Integrating soft factors into the assessment of cooperative relationships between firms: accounting for reputation and ethical values

Alliances and other forms of cooperation between firms often promise great benefits, for example, by the exchange of knowledge or co‐specialization of resources. At the same time, the necessary actions to realize these benefits can augment vulnerability to opportunistic behaviour of partners. In addition to formal contracts to mitigate the resulting behavioural uncertainties, often, mechanisms, such as reputation or ethical values, are suggested as important supplements. However, when it comes to assessment of a specific cooperation opportunity, it is difficult to account systematically for the economic consequences of these ‘softer factors’. Therefore, this paper aims to surpass mere financial analysis of chance and risk and to integrate systematically both reputation and ethical values into an economic assessment of cooperative relationships. For this purpose, we develop a theoretical framework that is based on a simple‐decision model to account for reputation and ethical values of potential partners as drivers of behavioural uncertainty reduction. We also discuss how this framework can be used to assess cooperative relationships and illustrate these ideas with reference to the inter‐organizational accounting practices of a large drugstore chain and its suppliers.     

The G20 proposal on IMF governance: Has any progress been made?

At their London summit in April 2009 the G20 proposed major changes in the governance of the International Monetary Fund (IMF): a reallocation of voting shares to emerging and developing countries, an antedated reform of the quota system, a delinking of the managing director’s election from regional origin and support for the Singapore quota and voice reform of 2006. Unfortunately, these reform proposals remain in part imprecise, they leave crucial issues untouched and they have so far not been implemented.     

Revealed preferences in macroeconomic policy decisions

This paper extends the usual instrument-target framework by directly estimating macroeconomic policy preferences over a number of policy targets using a derived reduced form and then solving the nonlinear optimality conditions for optimal instrument choice. Solving the optimality equations using observations on predetermined variables yields the implicit set of preference weights which induced the observed choices. The derivation format parallels the integrability discussions about consumer preferences implicitly expressed through demand functions. The approach is applied to a simple macro model estimated over the period from 1955 through 1972.