Granularity of Services

Service-oriented architectures are widely discussed as a design principle for application and enterprise architectures. Nevertheless, an adequate granularity of services has not yet been researched sufficiently from an economic perspective. The finer the granularity to realize the functions of a process, the higher the number of services is, and the more effort has to be directed towards composing them. In contrast, very coarse-grained services bear the disadvantages of higher implementation costs and lower reuse potential (e.g., in different processes). The aim of the decision model proposed in this paper is to determine an adequate granularity of services from an economical perspective. Thus, degrees of freedom, which often exist for the choice of granularity after a domain analysis, can be leveraged to realize a cost-efficient solution. We illustrate the applicability and practical benefits of the decision model with an example from the context of a financial services provider.     

Secure and Sustainable Benchmarking in Clouds

Cloud computing entails a novel security threat: The cloud service provider is entrusted with the data of all its customers. This may not be sustainable for highly confidential data. Encryption, or more generally cryptography, may provide a solution by computing on data encrypted by the customers. While this solution is theoretically appealing, it raises a number of research questions in information system design.     

影响高新技术企业税收优惠政策实施效果的因素分析——以东莞市为例

本文从行为经济学的角度,运用东莞市高新技术企业的问卷调查结果,对影响高新技术企业税收优惠政策效果的因素进行实证研究,提出在税收优惠政策既定的情况下,企业的组织特征、对税收优惠政策的认知水平、政策信息的传递都会影响优惠政策的实施效果。     

Cross-cultural entrepreneurship research: Current status and framework for future studies

Although cross-cultural research in the field of entrepreneurship is still in its infancy as a research stream, it offers important inferences for both theory and practice. Some have criticized the relative immaturity of previous survey-based studies’ methodology. In order to address this flaw, we analyze existing survey-based studies in the field of cross-cultural entrepreneurship to identify research gaps in content and methodology and then derive the most appropriate analytical approach to fill the gaps for this type of research. Finally, we present a practical framework in which to conduct sound and prudent future studies, integrating the most appropriate analytical approach, general methodological insights, and the particularities of entrepreneurship research in a cross-cultural setting.

Course Allocation via Stable Matching

The allocation of students to courses is a wide-spread and repeated task in higher education, often accomplished by a simple first-come first-served (FCFS) procedure. FCFS is neither stable nor strategy-proof, however. The Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Al Roth and Lloyd Shapley for their work on the theory of stable allocations. This theory was influential in many areas, but found surprisingly little application in course allocation as of yet. In this paper, different approaches for course allocation with a focus on appropriate stable matching mechanisms are surveyed. Two such mechanisms are discussed in more detail, the Gale-Shapley student optimal stable mechanism (SOSM) and the efficiency adjusted deferred acceptance mechanism (EADAM). EADAM can be seen as a fundamental recent contribution which recovers efficiency losses from SOSM at the expense of strategy-proofness. In addition to these two important mechanisms, a survey of recent extensions with respect to the assignment of schedules of courses rather than individual courses is provided. The survey of the theoretical literature is complemented with results of a field experiment, which help understand the benefits of stable matching mechanisms in course allocation applications.     

Employee Stock Options, Corporate Taxes, and Debt Policy

We find that employee stock option deductions lead to large aggregate tax savings for Nasdaq 100 and S&P 100 firms and also affect corporate marginal tax rates. For Nasdaq firms, including the effect of options reduces the estimated median marginal tax rate from 31% to 5%. For S&P firms, in contrast, option deductions do not affect marginal tax rates to a large degree. Our evidence suggests that option deductions are important nondebt tax shields and that option deductions substitute for interest deductions in corporate capital structure decisions, explaining in part why some firms use so little debt.     

现代企业组织结构优化分析

我国企业曾经是“技术落后,管理更落后”。随着知识经济时代的推进,管理的艺术性大大增强,致使计划、组织和控制职能呈现出更大的灵活性。这种灵活性的本质就是市场适应性在管理工作中的“映射”。计划工作的首要任务就是确定企业经营战略;组织工作的首要任务就是在经...     

An inexact l2-norm penalty method for cardinality constrained portfolio optimization

Abstract

We analyze and solve a single-period portfolio optimization problem with non-convex constraints, which address practical concerns of investment such as the active share weights of sectors and the number of stocks held in a portfolio. We reformulate the problem to simplify the computation and propose an inexact l₂-norm penalty method to solve the problem.     

林业与绿色经济研究进展

阐述了"绿色经济"的内涵变化及林业发展思路变迁。在"绿色经济"内涵不断丰富的过程中,学术界对相关理念的接受也促使中国林业发展理念持续进步。林业在绿色经济中具有基础性的地位和作用,要发挥这一作用,需要林业发展战略的深刻转型和制度创新。     

THE DYNAMICS OF REAL EXCHANGE RATES: A RECONSIDERATION

In this paper we offer a bootstrap‐based version of the Cox specification test for non‐nested hypothesis to discriminate between ESTAR and MSAR models. Both models are commonly used for modeling real exchange rates dynamics. We show that the test has good size and power properties in finite samples. In an application, we analyze several major real exchange rates to shed light on the question of which model describes these processes best. This allows us to draw conclusions about the driving forces of real exchange rates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.