Alternate forecasts of the job content and skill requirements of the American economy in 1980

This paper analyzes the potential job content and skill requirements of the American economy in 1980 under three alternate economic futures. Detailed occupational manpower requirements are generated on the basis of a “Status Quo” economy, a “Social Welfare” economy, and a “Defense” economy in the near future. Occupational manpower requirements are then translated into a Job Family-Skill Content classification to determine how these alternate national priority choices may affect future requirements for specific jobs, skills, educational preparation, and vocational training. The results obtained indicate the job families and skill classifications most sensitive to changes in basic economic parameters, and also identify long run trends in manpower and educational requirements unaffected by shifting social priorities and patterns of federal expenditures. The implications of these findings for manpower and educational planning are briefly discussed.     

ENVIRONMENTAL VARIABLES OF MULTINATIONAL TRANSFER PRICING: A U.K. PERSPECTIVE

This paper reports the findings from an empirical study of multinational transfer pricing based on the information provided by 47 British multinational companies. The results indicate that company profit after tax was the key consideration for those companies in formulating their international transfer pricing policies. In addition, they also considered other important variables including the competitive position of their foreign subsidiaries, divisional performance evaluation, and foreign restrictions on repatriation of profits. Six dimensions of environment variables of multinational transfer pricing were also extracted using factor analysis technique.     

A Theory of Menu Federalism: Decentralization by Political Agreement

This paper analyzes agreements between governments that determine the division of policy-making power between central and regional governments. Our analysis demonstrates that initial circumstances and political risks affect the degree of centralization that will be adopted, and that asymmetric forms of federalism are often consequences of ongoing negotiations between regional and central governments over the assignment of policy-making authority. We analyze three settings where gains from constitutional exchange may exist: (i) the under-centralized state, (ii) the over-centralized state, and (iii) the constitutional convention. In each case, an asymmetric form of federalism is the predicted outcome, although the degree of asymmetry differs according to starting point. Modern and historical examples are used to illustrate the relevance of our analysis.     

Your new product development (NPD) is only as good as your process: an exploratory analysis of new NPD process design and implementation

Given industry competitiveness, how do firms' new product development (NPD) process designs differ when responding to an innovation mandate? How do NPD design elements differ across firms when implementing NPD processes? These design elements are strategic business unit (SBU) senior management involvement, business case content, customer interactions, and cross‐functional integration. What are the consequences of different combinations of NPD process design elements for innovation productivity? We explore these questions via a collective case study of newly implemented NPD process designs at three different SBUs of a major US‐based international conglomerate, 1 year after receiving the mandate to grow through innovation. Our analysis suggests that industry competitiveness and firm characteristics influence the NPD process design as SBUs employ distinct combinations of NPD design elements. The differential emphasis on design elements leads to variation in process design and divergence in innovation productivity.     

The effect of estimation risk on optimal portfolio choice

This paper determines the effect of estimation risk on optimal portfolio choice under uncertainty. In most realistic problems, the parameters of return distributions are unknown and are estimated using available economic data. Traditional analysis neglects estimation risk by treating the estimated parameters as if they were the true parameters to determine the optimal choice under uncertainty. We show that for normally distributed returns and ‘non-informative’ or ‘invariant’ priors, the admissible set of portfolios taking the estimation uncertainty into account is identical to that given by traditional analysis. However, as a result of estimation risk, the optimal portfolio choice differs from that obtained by traditional analysis. For other plausible priors, the admissible set, and consequently the optimal choice, is shown to differ from that in traditional analysis.     

The Variance Gamma Process and Option Pricing

A three parameter stochastic process, termed the variance gamma process, that generalizes Brownian motion is developed as a model for the dynamics of log stock prices. The process is obtained by evaluating Brownian motion with drift at a random time given by a gamma process. The two additional parameters are the drift of the Brownian motion and the volatility of the time change. These additional parameters provide control over the skewness and kurtosis of the return distribution. Closed forms are obtained for the return density and the prices of European options. The statistical and risk neutral densities are estimated for data on the S & P500 Index and the prices of options on this Index. It is observed that the statistical density is symmetric with some kurtosis, while the risk neutral density is negatively skewed with a larger kurtosis. The additional parameters also correct for pricing biases of the Black Scholes model that is a parametric special case of the option pricing model developed here.     

Islamic finance and market segmentation: Implications for the cost of capital

This paper considers the impact of full Islamic shari’ya compliance on developing stock exchanges in their effective provision of development capital. Evidence from a unique study focussing on the Sudan telecommunications company and its listings on the Khartoum as well as Arabian Gulf stock exchanges reveals that costs of capital are considerably higher in the former than latter markets. While there are firm governance benefits arising from Islamic finance monitoring costs are substantial and the banking system is better placed to administer financing arrangements. Larger firms are better placed to circumvent this segmentation through cross-listing on regional exchanges.     

The Effects of Competition in Short Product Life‐Cycle Markets: The Case of Motion Pictures*

It is critically important to understand the relationship between new product launch strategies and their interaction with the competitive environment, which results in the successful introduction of new products. Deciding when to launch new products is among the most significant issues facing managers when formulating new products strategy, especially for products with short product life cycles. However, little extant research has focused on the interaction of product launch timing and the competitive market environment. This study explores the effects of four types of competitive threats on the market performance of short product life‐cycle products. Threats from new products and incumbents are possible. Also, products in the same category and those in related product categories exert competitive pressures. In this paper, a framework of competitive threats is developed, and research questions are constructed and empirically tested using the motion pictures industry as the focus of this research. A set of simultaneous equations was estimated using a sample of 2,948 movies introduced in the U.S. market between 1997 and 2004. The results show that all competition types have negative direct, indirect (as mediated by distribution intensity), and total effects on the performance of a new product. For a focal product, incumbent products exert a greater negative impact on performance than new entrants. Surprisingly, products in different, but related, categories are more harmful to the performance of products than products in the same category. The results have important implications for launch timing and new product performance.