Cost Share Adjustment Processes for Cooperative Group Decisions About Shared Goods: A Design Approach

For group decision about shared goods, the nature of the shared good and how its cost is to be shared among group members must be determined. Complexity arises from heterogeneity in preferences and endowments and nonlinear cost. To facilitate group decision, this paper proposes special type of group decision support system, a cost share adjustment process (CSAP), in which cost shares are adjusted iteratively via algorithmic rules until unanimity is reached, ideally producing a socially optimal, cost feasible, and fair outcome. In contrast to public good literature, our designs apply for situations of nonlinear cost, with economies of scale and fixed costs. In response to impossibility theorems, a design approach is developed: design elements for CSAPs include message space, cost allocation and adjustment rules, controllers, and incentive rules, with many possibilities for specifying a process. Simulation and economic experiment are employed to compare alternative designs, in particular highlighting the incentive effects of message space. As simulation and experiment both indicate, complicated cost allocation rules for incentive purposes may impede locating group agreement. Instead, economic experiments show that unanimity Approval Voting can mitigate the effects of strategic behavior.     

A study of MRP benefits and costs

This paper describes benefits and costs of MRP systems based on a large survey of MRP users. These users report they have achieved significant improvements in inventory turnover, delivery performance, and other benefits, and that further improvements are expected when their MRP systems are fully implemented. A series of regression models are also described in the paper which explain why some companies achieve more benefits from MRP than others. The models are not only fitted to the sample data, but they obtain good predictive results on a holdout sample. These models indicate that companies should stress a broad approach to implementation; there is no one overriding factor which guarantees MRP success.     

The Differential Impact of Public and Private Governance Institutions on the Different Modes of Foreign Investment

This paper examines the respective impacts of public and private governance institutions on foreign direct and foreign portfolio investment inflows. We present two hypotheses: (1) there is a strong correlation between the quality of a country’s public governance institutions and the amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) received while the quality of its private governance institutions has no further discernible impact on this correlation; (2) there is a strong correlation between the quality of a country’s public governance institutions and the amount of foreign portfolio investment (FPI) received while the quality of its private governance institutions has a further positive impact on this correlation. Our findings, which are based on panel data analysis, show both hypotheses to be valid.