Duality,income and substitution effects for the competitive firm under price uncertainty

This paper uses duality theory to decompose the total effect on the competitive firm's output of an increase in the riskiness of output price into income and substitution effects. Properties of preferences that control the sign of each effect are identified. The analysis extends to the general class of quasi‐linear decision models in which the payoff is linear in the random variable. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Impact of investors’ status on their evaluation of positive and negative,and past and future information

This paper examines the effect of investors’ status (current and prospective) on their evaluation of information varying in valence (negative and positive) and temporality (past and future). Master of Business Administration graduates, proxying for current or prospective investors, rated the relevance of negative, positive, past, and future Management Discussion and Analysis information. Investors’ relevance ratings of information resulted in the following ranking (from highest to lowest): negative‐future, negative‐past, positive‐future, and positive‐past information. Furthermore, prospective investors (relative to current) rated positive and future information as more relevant and negative information as less relevant. Implications for effective disclosure strategies and policies are discussed.     

Rationality of bargaining solutions

The aim of this paper is to obtain the rationality of two-person bargaining solutions by imposing usual assumptions in cooperative bargaining theory. In particular, it is proved that the conjunction of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives and either Pareto Continuity or Strong Monotonicity implies this rationality.     

Inflation and Exchange Rate Regimes in Mexico

The paper presents a version of the exchange-rate-regime model of inflation. Quarterly data from Mexico from 1946 to 1995 are used to estimate and test a simultaneous-equation model for wage inflation, price inflation and industrial production, taking account of the Lucas critique and the statistical properties of the data. The main finding is that, after the fall of the fixed-exchange-rate regime in 1976, there was a Barro–Gordon type inflation bias owing to the inability of policymakers to commit to low inflation. There is no significant evidence of political business cycles in inflation.     

The impact of outsourcing new technologies on integrative capabilities and performance

Outsourcing plays an important role for firms adopting new technologies. Although outsourcing provides access to a new technology, it does not guarantee that a firm can subsequently integrate the technology with existing business processes and leverage it in the marketplace. This distinction, however, has rarely been made in the literature. In the context of business process enhancing technologies, this study builds on the resource‐based and knowledge‐based views to study the impact of outsourcing on firms' subsequent performance in the market and their integrative capabilities, that is, a firm's capacity to use and assimilate a new technology with its business processes and build upon it. The study argues that greater reliance on outsourcing may reduce a firm's learning by doing, internal investment, and tacit knowledge applications, thereby impeding a firm's integrative capabilities and performance in the market. The study uses survey and archival data on banks' outsourcing strategies for Internet adoption to test for the performance consequences of outsourcing, which are found to be negative. However, the findings also show that outsourcing is less detrimental for firms with experience in prior related technology. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Comparing Operational Efficiency of Mobile Operators in Brazil, Russia, India and China

Using partial factor productivity and data envelopment analysis approaches, this study measures and compares the operational efficiency of the 10 dominant mobile operators in Brazil, Russia, India and China （BRIC） between 2002 and 2006. The results of data envelopment analysis indicate that the two leading Brazilian mobile operators, Vivo and TIM, are fully efficient throughout the entire period of study, however, Indian mobile operators are the least efficient among BRIC operators. Interestingly, the findings of this study verify that full operational efficiency can be achieved by operators with large revenues, such as China Unicorn, and by other, y with medium and small revenues, such as Hvo, TIM and Oi. Partial faetor productivity demonstrates that 3 of the 4 Brazilian mobile operators, Vivo, TIM and Oi, have remarkable productivity ratios, and that the state-owned operator, China Unicom, has the highest revenue per capital expenditure among BRIC operators. In contrast, Indian mobile operators ＇productivity ratios are generally low compared to other BRIC mobile carriers.