A portfolio approach in the e-purchasing of materials

By improving the procurement process purchasing departments are becoming more and more strategic in order to increase overall companies performances. In the last years, web-based tools have effectively supported this trend by offering to buyers useful tools in order to help their activities. Purchasing departments have now to choose the right tool for the right purchase in the right supply market; for this reason it is important for them to adopt a portfolio approach exploiting all the different solutions offered by the technology according to the different situations.In this perspective, this paper identifies four most common purchasing approaches adopted by companies, which drivers are considered to choose among these, and which level of performances companies achieve through the identified approaches.Empirical evidence is based on a survey research involving 162 US companies.     

Growth, Technological Change, and ICT Diffusion: Recent Evidence from OECD Countries

In this paper we present an overview of GDP and productivitygrowth patterns in OECD countries over the past decade, on thebasis of harmonized data. Our evidence suggests that fast-growingcountries generally shared three characteristics: improvementsin labour utilization; a generalized enhancement in human capital;and rapid shifts in the composition of physical capital towardsinformation and communication technology (ICT) equipment. Particularly,we show that technological change embodied in new ICT capitalgoods has been a primary source of output and productivity growthin ICT-using sectors. The international comparison allows relatinggrowth patterns to institutional and policy indicators, therebyoffering some preliminary insights into the potential sourcesof growth disparities. Cross-country evidence yields some tentativesupport to the idea that institutional factors affecting competitionin the product market are likely to affect productivity patterns,especially in a period of rapid diffusion of a general-purposetechnology (such as ICT).     

Estimating deferred taxation on dividends in business groups

In a group of companies corporate income taxation is levied on basic earnings and then on dividends paid to holding companies. The entity of this taxation depends on the tax regime, so that income may be taxed twice, first in the hands of the subsidiaries, then in the next years in the hands of holding companies. Therefore, consolidated profits may not be wholly paid to shareholders (who are the ultimate owners) and deferred taxes have to be computed in order to determine the true profitability of a group of companies. Using input–output theory, we developed a framework to estimate deferred taxation on dividends in business groups. Such relationships can be particularly useful when cross‐shareholdings exist to determine deferred liabilities under several accounting standards. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

More than nothing? Accounting,business, and management studies,and the research audit

This paper argues that business school scholarship can be seen as the example par excellence of what we are calling extreme neo-liberalism. By extreme neo-liberalism we mean the coexistence in the same sphere of extreme externalization of costs and extreme regulation of the sources of value. We argue that this condition is most obvious in the research audits conducted in Britain, and spreading globally, audits that record both the extreme externalization in business scholarship of all the sources of the wealth expropriated by business, and at the same time, regulate the very labour that produces this extreme self-regulation. Although this self-regulated labour regards itself as complete, and although it regards its acts of externalization as acts of self-making, we consider the relation between pedagogy and scholarship in order to show how this pervasive form of self-regarding simply does not hold. We conclude by noting that if business scholarship persists in defining itself against all that makes wealth possible, and thus making itself, logically at least, worthless, it also opens the possibility of starting an investigation of wealth, worth and value, from another point of view, one not dependant of completing business, but competing with it.     

On the measurement of intra-industry trade: Some further thoughts

Zusammenfassung Zur Messung des intra-industriellen Handels. Einige weitere Gedanken. — Der Autor untersucht, was für und was gegen das Argument des Korrekturbedarfs bei der Messung des intra-industriellen Handels (IIH) spricht, und kommt zu dem Ergebnis, da\ eine Korrektur sowohl aus theoretischen als auch aus empirischen Gründen abzulehnen ist. Der unkorrigierte Index von Grubel und Lloyd hat sich als der beste der gegenw?rtig verfügbaren Indizes erwiesen, wenn er auch ziemlich stark auf das Ausma\ der Datendisaggregierung reagiert. Empirische Studien scheinen darauf hinzudeuten, da\ die Ebene der 4- bis 5-stelligen SITC am besten geeignet ist, um den IIH zu messen. Selbst an Hand dieser stark disaggregierten Daten ist der auf bilateraler Basis berechnete IIH sehr beachtlich, besonders wenn er mit dem hier vorgeschlagenen neuen Index gemessen wird. Dieser Index wird aus theoretischen überlegungen abgeleitet und ist nicht mit dem überlappen des Handels verknüpft.

---

Résumé Des mésures du commerce intra-branche: Quelques réflexions supplémentaires. — Dans cette étude l’auteur examine les points positifs et négatifs de l’argument d'une ?nécessité de la correction? en mesurant le commerce intra-branche. Il conclue que la nécessité devrait être rejetée à cause de la théorie et l’évidence empirique. On trouve que l’indicateur de Grubel et de Lloyd est le meilleur de ceux qui sont au moment disponibles. Il réagit néanmoins de mesure considérable au niveau de la disagrégation des données. L’évidence empirique semble montrer que le niveau de 4 ou 5 chiffres CTCI est le plus adéquat pour mesurer le commerce intra-branche. Même avec ces données très hautement disagrégées le commerce intra-branche est tout considérable, particulièrement si mesuré par le nouvel indicateur du commerce intra-branche qui est proposé ici. Cet indicateur est dérivé des considérations théoriques et n'est pas lié aux échanges croisés.

---

Resurnen Sobre la medición del comercio intrasectorial: algunas ideas más. — En este trabajo se examinan las ventajas y desventajas del argumente de la necesidad de corrección al medir el comercio intrasectorial y se concluye que deberia ser rechazado en base a razones teóricas y empiricas. El indice no corregido de Grubel y Lloyd es el mejor de los indices existentes; sin embargo, es sensible al nivel de desagregacón. La evidencia empírica parece indicar que el nivel de 4 a S digitos de la SITC es el nivel más apropiado para medir el comercio intrasectorial. Incluso medido a este nivel altamente desagregado, el comercio intrasectorial computado bilateralmente résulta bastante importante, especialmente si es medido con el nuevo indice propuesto aqui. Este indice es derivado de consideraciones teóricas y no esta ligado a la superposition del comertio.

     

Informational cascades with endogenous prices: The role of risk aversion

In this paper, we show that long run market informational inefficiency and informational cascades can easily happen when trades occur at market clearing prices. We consider a sequential trade model where: (i) the investors’ set of actions is discrete; (ii) dealers and investors differ in risk aversion; (iii) investors’ information is bounded. We show that informational cascade occurs as soon as traders’ beliefs do not differ too sharply. Thus, prices cannot fully incorporate the private information dispersed in the economy.     

Intangible capital,relative asset shortages and bubbles

Purely technological factors can be a fundamental force behind the emergence of asset price bubbles in developed economies. We analyze an economy in which the production technology utilizes both physical and intangible capital, where the latter cannot be used as collateral for borrowing. Technological change, in the form of increased importance of intangible capital in production, sharpens the borrowing constraints of entrepreneurs, leading to a scarcity of high-yield assets relative to low-yield ones. This can create the conditions for asset bubbles. Additionally, due to the financial frictions, standard dynamic efficiency tests are not valid, and bubbles are not Pareto improving.     

Geodesics on the equilibrium manifold

We show the existence of a Riemannian metric on the equilibrium manifold such that a minimal geodesic connecting two (sufficiently close) regular equilibria intersects the set of critical equilibria in a finite number of points. This metric represents a solution to the following problem: given two (sufficiently close) regular equilibria, find the shortest path connecting them which encounters the set of critical equilibria in a finite number of points. Furthermore, this metric can be constructed in such a way to agree, outside an arbitrary small neighborhood of the set of critical equilibria, to any given metric with economic meaning.     

Trust and reciprocity: extensions and robustness of triadic design

Our paper reconsiders the triadic design proposed by Cox (Games and Economic Behavior 46:260–281, 2004) to identify trust and reciprocity in investment games. Specifically, we extend the design in two directions. First, we collect information on investors’ choices by using both the direct-response (as does Cox) and strategy methods. Using the latter, we are able to condition reciprocity on initial inequality, which is endogenous when investigating reciprocity. We demonstrate that the triadic design provides evidence for reciprocity once that initial inequality is considered. Second, we elicit expectations and test their coherence with the triadic outcomes. By examining the relationship between trust actions and expected gains, we analyze whether investors’ expectations are consistent with their behavior. Finally, we test for the existence of an emotional bias, i.e., whether expectation mismatches induce trustees to change actual choices from the planned ones.