铁路编组站布局的双层规划方法研究

运用双层规划对编组站布局问题进行描述,上层规划表示决策者为了达到车流组织最优而采取的最优投资策略,下层规划为给定编组站布局方案条件下的车流组织优化。通过对上层和下层问题分别剖析,构建了编组站布局的双层规划模型,考虑到模型的复杂性,提出应用遗传算法求解,并给出了求解策略。研究结果表明,双层规划方法适用于实际编组站布局问题决策。     

铁路入川通道运输组织优化研究

铁路货运量持续增长,全路待发入川车流持续高位运行,分界口能力紧张的问题尤为突出。在阐述铁路入川通道运输组织概况的基础上,针对广元南站北端咽喉进路交叉多、技术站作业超能力、车流结构与机车机班不匹配、车流去向和卸车点集中形成积压堵塞等问题,提出调整广元西口机车机班担当方案、优化编组计划方案、强化站场设备扩能改造、探索新的乘务方式、调整分界口车流结构等优化铁路入川通道运输组织的对策,为实现入川通道车流的大出大入、提高路网整体效率和效益提供参考。     

外资并购与民营并购绩效的比较研究——基于1995-2009年经验数据

跨国并购作为国际直接投资的高级形态,已成为国际资本流动的主要形式。文章以外资和民营并购我国上市公司为研究样本,对两种并购方式下目标公司长期和短期市场绩效进行了比较检验。研究结果显示:外资并购短期绩效显著高于民营并购短期绩效,外资并购长期绩效显著低于民营并购长期绩效。该结果说明:短期内由于外资享有我国社会的普遍优惠政策,资本市场对外资并购反应比民营并购更加正面,但从长期来看,外资并购并不必然带来先进的科学技术、公司治理和管理水平,外资并购实际运作效果并不优于民营并购。     

Private label shoppers between fast fashion trends and status symbolism – A customer characteristics investigation

The question who the private label prone consumer is has received a lot of attention in research. While we so far have a good understanding of the private label shopper in the grocery industry, there is limited research in other industries. We assess private label shopper characteristics as a driver of private label choice using a unique data set of an online only fashion retailer covering 68,147 women shoes consumers in Germany. Fashion consumers are faced with a tradeoff between price and seasonality of fashion items as discounts are used to sell last season's stock. We find that private label choice is positively influenced by price orientation and less by discount proneness. Thus, private label shoppers are rather a fashion savvy segment focusing on buying more in season but at a lower price.     

Long-run underperformance following private equity placements: The role of growth opportunities

Our results show that the post-offering performance of private equity issuers is related to growth opportunities. We find significant long-run underperformance in stock returns following private placements only for firms with high Tobin's q. High-q firms experience not only poor stock price performance but also poor operating performance. Low-q firms, in contrast, do not display significant stock price or operating underperformance. We further examine three potential explanations for this relation: over-investment in assets by managers, investor skewness preference, and over-optimism about earnings prospects. Our results are consistent with the view that investors are overly optimistic about the prospects of high growth firms.     

The good,the bad and the ugly: agent behavior and efficiency in open and closed organizations

Current literature has largely ignored the fact that some organizations are highly selective when admitting new agents while others are more open. In addition, some organizations audit or sort agent behavior within the organization more aggressively than others. One might expect a priori that closed, highly selective, organizations would always be more efficient because they screen out the worst types, which could lead to better agent behavior. We show that this is not the case. Specifically, when agent behavior in equilibrium is uniform across organizations (i.e., when the number of agents behaving the same way is identical), closed organizations are inefficient. However, when agent behavior varies across organizations, closed organizations may or may not be inefficient, depending on net payoffs to the organization and the agents. Our analysis implies that organizations should choose the open type when screening or sorting costs are high, when there is a high frequency of good agent types in the population, when agent misbehavior does not reduce output significantly, and when penalties for misbehavior are large. The paper has benefitted from useful comments by David Flath, Charles Knoeber, Claudio Mezzetti, two anonymous referees and participants of the Spring 2005 Midwest Economic Theory meetings at Vanderbilt University, the 2005 meetings of the Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory in Vigo, Spain, the 2005 conference on Research in Economic Theory and Econometrics in Syros, Greece, and workshops at North Carolina State University, Texas A&M University and McGill University.     

Creating legitimacy in global private governance: The case of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil

This article suggests that understanding legitimization processes of private governance initiatives requires a multi-dimensional approach. This suggestion has been operationalized in three aspects that can be used to better understand such processes: legality, moral justifications, and consent/acceptance. These aspects are based on different theoretical traditions and are applied in an analysis of the process of creating legitimacy of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). This empirical research reveals the characteristics of the legitimization process of the RSPO and shows the value of a multi-dimensional approach. The three perspectives complement each other and deepen our insights in legitimization processes by revealing tensions and trade-offs in the different ways in which non-state market driven governance arrangements can create legitimacy.