Resource Allocation through Negotiation and Compromise: A Database Approach

In this paper, a resource allocation system is modeled with relational database technology. To allocate resources through a negotiation-based system, two steps of pre-allocation and negotiated allocation have been modeled with a join procedure for two relations. These relations represent the requirements for experiential nursing practice and the availability of such experience at hospitals, respectively.The first step was implemented through a new join operation called -Distance Join. After the first step, some nursing departments and some hospitals have fully satisfied requirements or fully utilized availability. Other nursing department and hospitals have partial or no satisfaction of requirements or availability, respectively.The second step was implemented through a custom-designed implementation of a user-interface that provides coordinated negotiation among the nodes involved in the system. With the customized interface and join operation, an off-the-shelf or packaged database management system is used. Through this interface, nursing departments and hospitals negotiate until potentially all demands and availability are totally satisfied. This negotiation takes place without face-to-face meetings but with complete knowledge of the entire situation by all parties. This provides the potential for complete fulfillment of nursing experience requirements and total utilization of hospital experience availability.     

Uncertainty and the partial loss offset provision

Sufficient conditions are given for a tightening of the partial loss offset provision to reduce, respectively to stimulate, individual risk-taking.     

Modeling the international gray market for public policy decisions

Composed of a heterogeneous group of resellers, the members of the international gray market surreptitiously, but legally, acquire genuinely branded goods from various sources and remarket them throughout the globe in competition with channels authorized by trademark owners. These owners charge that this practice of global arbitrage unfairly damages the value of their brands and channel relationships and seek government protection against these imports under national trademark laws. Because of the sensitivity of gray market activities, evidence of harm to authorized channel members is difficult to verify. This paper turns to a modeling approach to disentangle the web of relationships and identify the economic impact of international gray market trading. The model views the problem from the perspective of the international firm managing its independent channel members in two countries and confronted with a gray market that will engage in arbitrage given sufficient incentive. The results show that though the global gray markets can make channel management a painful exercise, the damage is insufficient to warrant prohibition by public agency.     

Value theory with personalized trading

This paper extends existing general equilibrium theory to describe the competitive production and allocation of “personalized commodities:” commodities with only one potential buyer or seller. The basic, novel theoretic possibility introduced into value theory with the introduction of personalized trading—the trading of personalized commodities—is that price discrimination over quantity may occur under perfect competition. Theorems on the existence and optimality of competitive equilibria under discriminatory pricing are proved.     

A proposed cure for the information explosion

The marketing information system is intended to solve the businessman's dilemma of having too much information of the wrong kind in the wrong form. The ideal system should generate an orderly flow of pertinent data for decision making, providing instantaneous information for each management level. The author describes the steps in the construction of such a system: obtaining support; reviewing and appraising the marketing organization and its policies; organizing development; and determining the level of sophistication. More and more such systems will be established as managers recognize their contribution in utilizing the information explosion.     

Self/paid-employment, public/private sector selection, and wage differentials

We use Probit models to account for the double selection problem of choice between, on the one hand, self- and paid-employment and, on the other, employment in the public and private sector. These models provide corrections for sample selection in wage equations for paid employees in the public and private sectors. Using a modified version of the Oaxaca and Ransom [J. Econom. 61 (1994) 5] procedure, we decompose the wage gap between the public and private sectors into a portion attributable to differences in characteristics, the public sector advantage, the private sector disadvantage and unobserved selection effects. Rich data for the Republic of Cyprus, a thriving economy with institutional features reminiscent of a developing economy, help determine the choice of type (self/paid) and sector (public/private) of employment. The human capital model describes the wage determination process satisfactorily. The size and distribution of public sector rents between men and women are similar to those in North America and are bracketed by results for developing countries.