Emerging models of organizational buying processes

The purpose of this article is to assess past and current trends in the literature on buying decisions by organizations and to look constructively toward future problems and developments. Until recently, organizational buying behavior has been largely ignored. There are, however, a number of promising developments, and we might be at the threshold of moving from alchemy to the beginning stages of scientific understanding.The article starts with a brief discussion of the “methodological” and “substantive” choices that can be made in studying organizational processes that underlie buying behavior. An appreciation of these choices is necessary for the examination of the past and current literature. The major trends in the study of organizational buying behavior are then identified and evaluated. Building upon these trends, we sketch the basic dimensions of the organizational buying processes and highlight some of the major problem areas to be faced in future research and model development. Throughout the article we assume some familiarity with the professional and academic literature in industrial buying.     

Search for information and portfolio selection

The paper examines the problem of how to allocate scarce resources between increasing the investor's knowledge, that is reducing his uncertainty, and the actual investment—that is a kind of an ex ante decision before the final parameters of the securities are known. Our model provides answers to questions of how the search for knowledge affects portfolio selection, to what extent additional information can improve estimates of securities' statistical parameters and how the benefits and costs of additional search alter the investor's efficient mean-variance portfolio set.     

Incentive effects of rate-of-return regulation: The case of Hong Kong electric utilities

A comparison of Hong Kong and United States rate-of-return regulation indicates differences in the definition of the rate base and in the proportion of it permitted a fair rate of return. These differences imply that Hong Kong electric utilities utilize proportionately more fixed (less current) assets, and that these assets are financed proportionately more by equity (less by debt), than their United States counterparts. Our results support both these predictions, providing further evidence that since rate-ofreturn regulation is implemented by reference to reported results, comparatively minor differences in regulatory frameworks can have quite dramatic consequences for utilities' asset structure and financing mix.     

The safety impact of land use changes resulting from bypass road constructions

This paper analyzes the effect of bypass construction on road safety, specifically crash rates on bypass segments and in bypassed communities. It further investigates the effect of bypass construction on those communities’ economic development through changes in the number and spatial distribution of businesses and residential development, and examines whether these changes affect the road-safety level. Finally, it evaluates the effect on road safety of various traffic arrangements implemented in such communities. Drawing on an extensive data collection, the study focuses on Arab cities in the Galilee region of Israel, using cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis.The results show that bypass construction does not necessarily reduce overall crash frequencies or crash rates. It merely shifts road crashes from the highways (the bypass roads) to inner roads (bypassed) and from there to local traffic, with no significant reduction. The findings indicate a large variance in the effects of bypass constructions on safety.