Profit sharing (with workers) facilitates collusion (among firms)

We show how profit sharing by firms with workers facilitates collusion among firms in a dynamic oligopoly environment with uncertain demand. We first show that firm profits can always be increased by tying wages to market conditions. The optimal agreement takes the form of an option and features partial sharing because increased sharing raises the expected price‐wage differential, but reduces price‐wage variability. We then show that given any cartel, there exist market conditions such that simply giving some expected profit to workers raises expected firm profits via the transfer's impact on the incentive to cheat on the cartel.     

Economic malaise in Japan: Changing economic order and the future of the U.S.–Japan economic relationship

B. Gao. 2001. Japan's Economic Dilemma: The Institutional Origins of Prosperity and Stagnation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 300 pages; ISBN 0‐521‐79025‐5. F. Bergsten, T. Ito, & M. Noland. 2001. No More Bashing: Building a New Japan‐United States Economic Relationship. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. 328 pages; ISBN 0‐88132‐286‐5.     

对高校图书采购工作的几点建议

近几年，随着高校招生规模的迅速扩大，以及国家教学评估工作的全面推开，高校图书采购量迅速攀升，成为图书交易市场的一支重要力量。但由于我国图书发行行业刚刚由垄断走向竞争，在图书市场改革和建设过程中还存在很多不规范、不完善的地方，导致高校图书采购过程中产生一系列问题而且日益突出，令人震惊的四川省13所高校“图书腐败”案就是一个典型的案例。因此，亟需对高校图书采购工作深入研究，改进管理，提高图书采购经费的使用效益。[编者按]     

Initial Public Offering Investor Valuations: An Examination of Top Management Team Prestige and Environmental Uncertainty

Relying on one of the more notable entrepreneurial settings, an initial public offering (IPO), this article extends prior work on top management team (TMT) characteristics. We examine whether or not prestigious TMTs at the time of an IPO enhance organizational legitimacy and thereby provide a signal to potential investors. Because an IPO represents an entrepreneurial context characterized by high levels of uncertainty, we also consider the impact of environmental uncertainty on the TMT prestige/investor valuation relationship. We find that both an element of TMT prestige and environmental uncertainty influence investor valuations. However, we also find that the influence of prestige does not assuage investors when analyzing IPOs in different environmental conditions.     

医院信息化的任务和作用研究

医院信息化是我国医院发展的趋势,医院信息化建设的目的是为患者提供完美服务。通过医院信息化建设能深刻影响医院的组织和环境;改造医院价值链;并通过增强医院的核心能力,最终达到提高医院的竞争优势。     

对我国商业银行"垂直审贷"体制改革模式的思考

分析传统审贷体制与现阶段两种“垂直审贷”模式各自的特点,并比较了两种改革模式的不同之处。针对商业银行审贷体制的进一步改革,提出了过渡时期机制设计的方案,体现了各个相关内部机构的权力制衡。     

Addressing consumers’ concerns about online security: A conceptual and empirical analysis of banks’ actions

Online security is a major problem for financial institutions worldwide. Account hijacking and online fraud are on the rise. Financial losses in the banking industry due to attacks have been estimated in 2003 to be about US $1.2 billion in the US alone. Studies also indicate that security concerns are a major issue for an increasing number of consumers. The rapid growth in phishing attacks threatens the future of online banking. In the absence of an adequate response, banks are likely to incur even greater costs and experience a significant decline in consumer trust. Thus, the fight against these serious problems entails the management of perceived, as well as actual, security. This paper examines how banks are responding to these challenges. First, assessments of the actual and consumer perceived threats along with the available technical solutions are provided. Second, a conceptual approach to dealing with the issues is proposed. Essential among the recommendations is the need to involve the consumer in managing security concerns. Third, an empirical study examines the actual response of the 200 largest US banks. The findings indicate that many banks are not meeting these challenges and that significant opportunities for improvement exist. Smaller banks, in particular, are failing to take the necessary actions. Specific recommendations to help improve actual security and increase consumer trust in the system are proposed.     

Intraday trade in dealership markets

We develop and test a structural asymmetric information transaction model to characterize the price impact of information when markets are thin. Since orders are accepted individually, the model allows for transaction costs and brokerage fees. Equilibrium demands mixed entry strategies on the part of potentially informed traders. Estimation of the structural parameters is performed using a maximum likelihood procedure on NYSE data. The structural model is rejected primarily because the nonlinear restrictions do not allow for sufficient correlation between price movements and pricing errors. This leads to unreasonably low estimates of the probability of informed trade relative to an unrestricted alternative. The price impact of information is found to be positive and significant, but economically small. This is because although the amount of private information is substantial, the quality of the information signals is poor, particularly in the middle of the trading day. Informed agents do not trade small quantities, which suggests that their ability to divide orders is limited by transaction costs.