中美评级机构博弈

国际信用评级市场被美国三大评级机构———惠誉,标准普尔和穆迪垄断,而三大机构的独立性,公正性和前瞻性近些年备受质疑,各主权国家的金融安全和产品定价权受到威胁。中国在国际评级市场中要承担起一个大国的责任,运用博弈论的方法分析中国评级机构能否顺利进入由美国垄断的国际评级市场,针对均衡结果提出对抗垄断的评级市场的建议。     

Multivariate risk aversion and uninsurable risks: Theory and applications

The objective of this paper is to develop conditions for global multivariate comparative risk aversion in the presence of uninsurable, or background, risks, and thus generalize Kihlstrom and Mirman [1974] and Karni [1979,1989]. We analyze von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) utility functionsas well as smooth preference functionals which are nonlinear in distribution but locally linear in probabilities. In each case we provide an economic application which illustrates how our theorems can be used. We analyze a risk sharing, a portfolio choice, and a labor supply problem for VNM utility functions, and the optimal allocation of effort to risky technologies in the presence of a random supply (or quality) of a public good for nonlinear preference functionals. We consider thecase where the random variables are mean-independent as well as the case where they are independent. In the labor supply application for VNM utility functions, we show that if the two risks are independent, the comparative statics effect of greater risk aversion on labor supply in the presence of a background non-wage income risk is determined by a monotonic relationship between labor supply and the wage rate under certainty. That is, we extend the applicability of the Diamond-Stiglitz [1974]-Kihlstrom-Mirman [1974]single-crossing property to the case where an independent background risk is present.     

Metaheuristic algorithms for the multistage hybrid flowshop scheduling problem

We consider the multistage hybrid flowshop scheduling problem, in which each stage consists of parallel identical machines. The problem is to determine a schedule that minimizes the makespan for a given set of jobs over a finite planning horizon. Since this problem class is NP-hard in the strong sense, there seems to be no escape from appealing to heuristic procedures to achieve near-optimal solutions to real life problems. First, a series of new global lower bounds to be used to estimate the minimum makespan are derived. Then, two new metaheuristic algorithms first sequence and then allocate jobs to machines based on a particular partition of the shop. The optimization procedure is based on simulated annealing and the variable-depth search. Computational experiments show the efficiency of the proposed procedures.     

Global apparel production and sweatshop labour: can raising retail prices finance living wages?

This paper provides some empirical evidence on issues raisedby the global anti-sweatshop movement. We first consider therelationship between wage and employment growth, finding noconsistent trade-off between them. We then measure the shareof labour costs in the production of garments in the US andMexico. We find that the retail price increases necessary toabsorb the costs of raising wages substantially are small, wellwithin the range of price increases that polls suggest US consumersare willing to pay. We close by considering some implicationsof these results.     

Attribute differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS earnings: An exploratory study

In this study we explore attribute differences between U.S. GAAP and IFRS earnings. Our study is motivated by the ongoing harmonization process in accounting standard setting as well as by recent convergence projects by the FASB and the IASB. We test two market-based earnings attributes, i.e., value relevance and timeliness, as well as two accounting-based earnings attributes, i.e., predictability and accrual quality. These attributes are tested for German New Market firms as they are allowed to choose between IFRS and U.S. GAAP for financial reporting purposes. Overall, we find that U.S. GAAP and IFRS only differ with regard to predictive ability. The fact that U.S. GAAP accounting information outperforms IFRS also holds after controlling for differences in firm characteristics, such as size, leverage and the audit firm. However, our results also seem to suggest that these differences are not fully valued by investors, as we do not observe significant and consistent differences for the value-relevance attribute.     

The impact of the current economic crisis on the geography of air traffic volumes: an empirical analysis

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of air services dynamics during the recent economic crisis. Through a regression analysis, we show that at the country scale, the change in the supply of seats is highly dependent on economic growth, confirming the cyclical nature of the air sector. Hence the crisis of air services has much more affected the USA, Europe and Japan than the rest of the world. However, many countries deviate from this general trend. In a second step, using the existing literature, we explain some of these deviating figures. National specificities and airline strategies seem to influence the intensity of the crisis. We argue that the intensity of the crisis in the US is due to the structural oversupply of the air sector. Through other cases, especially the Middle East, we show that hubbing strategies might reduce the impact of the crisis, or at least make it less dependent upon local economic dynamics. In contrast with other authors, we found no positive impact of the share of low-cost carriers on the supply during the crisis, despite their success in some specific contexts like between Europe and Morocco.     

Global GDP shares in the 21st century — An equilibrium approach

Using a 9-region model of the world economy, we investigate the implications of the diffusion of total factor productivity (TFP) for global GDP shares during the 21st century. The nine regions are: Africa, Asia (excluding China, India and Japan), China, Europe, India, Japan, Latin America, North America and Oceania. According to our projections, TFP catch-up at a plausible rate implies that the share of the high-income regions will more than halve by 2050 and almost halve again in the subsequent 50 years. These projected shares are little affected by variations in demographic outcomes, saving behaviour and international capital flows, but are reduced substantially should TFP catch-up be slower.     

跨国公司理论前沿进展:全球战略-地理空间内生互动视角

跨国公司全球战略新的变化趋势与跨国公司战略—地理空间互动关系密切相关,但传统的跨国公司理论体系无法深入刻画这一内生互动关系。为了完善现有的理论体系,近年来跨国公司理论研究领域出现的一些前沿进展,丰富和深化了人们对全球化进程中跨国公司战略行为与地理空间内在互动关系的理解。     

专业服务业跨国公司全球资源的利用研究

专业服务业是一个比较特殊的服务领域,它具有许多特殊的性质。本文试图从全球资源利用的角度对专业服务业跨国公司进行探讨,分析专业服务企业资源特性,并针对专业服务业跨国公司的全球经营优势,对其全球资源利用进行研究。     

The effects of interorganizational governance on supplier's compliance with SCC: An empirical examination of compliant and non-compliant suppliers

Often, there is a huge gap between the requirements of the Supplier Codes of Conduct (SCC) imposed by buyers from advanced economies and actual compliance with SCC in developing countries. It is difficult for reseachers to reach suppliers who have violated SCC, especially within a large sample, because few disclose SCC violations to the public. In this paper, however, we identified 108 non-compliant Chinese apparel and textile suppliers. Through the investigation of these non-compliant suppliers and their compliant peers, this paper tests the impacts of antecedent factors (price pressure, production complexity, and contract duration) and buyer's governance mechanisms (peer-to-peer and buyer-to-supplier) on the likelihood of a supplier's compliance with SCC. While the buyer-to-supplier governance does not show significant effects, the peer-to-peer governance demonstrates the likelihood of supplier's commitment to SCC. This research reveals that if buyer's governance efforts move away from threat and toward cooperation, supplier's compliance with SCC could be more sustainable.