A new system to finance the United Nations

The end of the Cold War has not delivered a peace dividend but, paradoxically, a peace penalty on the United Nations. This article argues that revision of the existing funding arrangements is inadequate and that a radical restructuring of the financial system is a prerequisite for successful multilateralism.     

Operational Research and the environment

The discipline of Operational Research (OR) is primarily concerned with improving the effectiveness and efficiency of decision processes. These processes take place everywhere in society: industry, banking, agriculture, government, politics. Frequent use of mathematical optimization models is typical of OR. Since the early '80s these models are increasingly packaged in a user-friendly way, as Decision Support Systems. In the following we will illustrate how OR can be used to describe and solve a number of environmental problems.     

Trade uncertainty and the two-step procedure: The choice of numeraire and exact indexation

Summary In a small open economy it is optimal to first maximize national income and second choose the best consumption point.The same two-step procedure under (quantitative) uncertainty is suboptimal if one of the goods is used as numéraire. Optimality is restored however, if nominal prices are deflated by the exact price index. Hence there is equivalence between the appropriate two-step procedure and the introduction of a stock market under uncertainty (Diamond 1967) under ideal circumstances.I would like to thank, without implicating, Peter van Bergeijk, Steven Brakman, Willem Buiter, Richard Gigengack, Jean-Marie, Viaene, Casper de Vries and an anonymous referee for useful comments and Angelique van Haasteren and Martijn Herrmann for graphical assistance.     

Human capital and the internationalisation of venture capital firms

We examine the neglected area of internationalisation by VCs. Using a representative sample of 195 VCs, we show that the decision of a European VC firm to invest internationally is driven by its human resources. Having more VC executives in general and more VC executives with previous international experience in specific, results in a higher probability of investing internationally. In contrast, more VC executives with experience in the VC industry or with an engineering background lead to a higher probability of remaining domestic.     

Seasonality and non-linear price effects in scanner-data-based market-response models

Scanner data for fast moving consumer goods typically amount to panels of time series where both N and T are large. To reduce the number of parameters and to shrink parameters towards plausible and interpretable values, Hierarchical Bayes models turn out to be useful. Such models contain in the second level a stochastic model to describe the parameters in the first level.     

Consumer reporting: A conceptual framework for the organizational level

In this paper, a conceptual framework for consumer reporting at the organizational level is developed. Consumer reporting is defined as the provision of information by an organization to its consumers with respect to the effects of its activities judged relevant by those consumers. In this context, the term organization covers business firms but also governmental agencies, hospitals, charities, and other non-profit organizations with relations to their consumers/clients.The concept of consumer satisfaction is regarded as the core element of consumer reporting. Several issues with respect to consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction as well as their measurement are discussed. It is concluded that perceptual indicators of consumer satisfaction should constitute the core of consumer reporting in establishing the consumer profile of the organization. However, additional information could be provided too, for instance situational indicators of consumer satisfaction or information about consumer dissatisfaction. All of this information should be geared towards the goal of accounting for the resulting organizational strategy and policies towards the consumers. Several practical examples are given to illustrate the items about which information can be provided and the fact that consumer reporting can be realized in practice.

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Berichterstattung von Organisationen für Verbraucher: ein konzeptioneller Rahmen

Zusammenfassung Eine solche Berichterstattung wird im vorliegenden Beitrag definiert als Informationen einer Organisation für ihre Konsumenten über diejenigen Wirkungen ihrer Aktivitäten, die von diesen Konsumenten für wichtig gehalten werden. Der Begriff Organisation steht hier nicht nur für kommerzielle Firmen, sondern auch für Behörden, Krankenhäuser, Stiftungen und andere nicht gewinnorientierte Organisationen mit ihren jeweiligen Beziehungen zu ihren Verbrauchern bzw. Klienten.Das Konzept der Verbraucherzufriedenheit steht dabei im Mittelpunkt. Deshalb werden zunächst dieses Konzept und die Methoden zur Messung von Verbraucherzufriedenheit diskutiert. Ergebnis ist dabei, daß das Konsumentenprofil einer Organisation durch perzipierte Indikatoren ermöglicht wird. Figur 1 gibt hierfür ein Beispiel. Das Konsumentenprofiel kann durch situative Indikatoren und durch Informationen über Verbraucherzufriedenheit ergänzt werden (Figur 2). Alle diese Informationen sollten zum Ziel haben, die Unternehmenspolitik gegenüber den Konsumenten zu verantworten.Zum Schluß werden einige praktische Beispiele behandelt, die einerseits zeigen, welche Informationen solche Berichterstattungen enthalten können, und andererseits, daß es in der Praxis bereits Ansätze in dieser Richtung gibt.

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Hans Kasper is Associate Professor of Marketing and Hein Schreuder Professor of Business Economics at the Faculty of Economics, University of Limburg, P.O. Box 616, NL-6200 MD Masstricht, The Netherlands.     

Assessment and selection of management consultants: A comparative cognitive study between small- and large-scale companies

This paper explores alternative ways of evaluating and ultimately hiring a generalist consultancy for short- and medium-term projects, and how this is shaped by the size of the clients’ company. What buying factors do managers of small and large firms have in mind when hiring consultants for their projects?Instead of employing surveys incorporating predefined buying factors based on what the researchers think would be important, a cognitive mapping methodology - the repertory grid technique - is applied to investigate the underlying phenomena. Using the repertory grid technique to draw mental models is a novel research technique within the supply management field. Recent behavioral supply chain management research found the behavior of managers to be critically influenced by mental models: the lenses through which managers perceive, simplify and interpret the world.Results show differences between the buying factors used in small- and large-scale companies: managers of large companies are more ‘reputation and outcome-oriented’ and managers of small businesses are more concerned with ‘how the services are rendered’. However, both constituents stressed the importance of expertise, quality and the relationship between the client and the management consultancy, although the character of such a relationship differed between small- and large-scale firms. Results also point out criteria that managers of small and large companies employ to discriminate between good and poor performing consultancies and to judge service delivery. The practical implications for both companies hiring consultancies and the consultancy companies are discussed. For consultancies, our findings can help tailoring their efforts to a differing clientele when marketing and selling their services. For companies hiring consultancies, fixating too much on particular buying factors may lead to biased decisions.     

Economic performance and “frontier” efficiency: A product life-cycle approach

We propose to introduce some economic performance variables of the firms and relate these with the corresponding frontier efficiency measures of 13 industries of the Belgian manufacturing sector in 1978. In order to find groups of similar firms by applying a cluster technique, we assume that this relationship is of a product life cycle nature.In the light of the product life cycle scheme itself and variations of it we can consider the possible explanatory variables of technical inefficiency in each group of firms as sources which intensify or slow-down the economic performance of the firm under consideration. Some cautious characterization of the top and bottom level clusters is formulated and linked to the efficiency issue.This paper was processed by N. R. Adam     

Nonlinearities and heterogeneity in environmental quality: An empirical analysis of deforestation

We use a panel data set of 59 developing countries over the 1972–1994 period to study the deforestation process. Relying on both parametric and semiparametric models, we examine nonlinearities and heterogeneity in the deforestation process. We first study the existence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and then analyze determinants of deforestation. Our data sample provides no evidence of an EKC. We also find that political institution failures may worsen the deforestation process in developing countries.     

Access Pricing,Quality Degradation,and Foreclosure in the Internet

Access to both a local and a global network is needed in order to get complete connection to the Internet. The purpose of this article is to examine the interplay between those two networks and how it affects the domestic public policy towards a domestic provider of local access. We find that a cost-oriented regulation is detrimental to domestic welfare, because it shifts profit to the foreign provider of global access. The optimal policy is that the regulator commits itself to set an access price above costs, possibly the same price as in an unregulated market economy. A regulation of the global access price has a non-monotonic effect on domestic welfare, and there is a potential conflict between international and domestic regulation policy.