Linking performance drivers in production planning and inventory control to process choice

This study investigates how process choice relates to production planning and inventory control decisions. We empirically examine the validity of deductively derived patterns about these types of decisions. More importantly, we look for normative insights by exploring how production planning and inventory control decisions affect operations performance. Our findings show that production line and continuous flow plants use more of a level production strategy, and carry less raw material and work-in-process inventory. The performance drivers for these plants, through which the operations function excels, are effective utilization of equipment, reduced finished goods inventory, and reduced setup down time. To gain forward demand visibility and batching economies, job and batch shops rely much more on backlogs in their planning process. These plants use more of a production chase strategy and position inventory lower in the bills of materials. Four performance drivers for top-performing job and batch shops are to find ways that better anticipate customers' orders, have a more responsive chase strategy, carry less raw material or purchased inventory, and shorten production planning horizon, partly through less reliance on backlogs. It is intriguing that top-performing plants not only do the expected things, given their choice of process, but also excel in selected dimensions—some of which fit the profile normally associated with a different process choice. To monitor and continuously improve operations, evaluation ‘scorecards’ should pay particular attention to performance drivers, which change depending on the plant's process choice.     

U.S.-Africa trade balance and the J-curve: An asymmetry analysis

ABSTRACT

For the first time in the body of literature, we consider bilateral trade balance models of the US with each of her 20 trading partners from Africa and try to assess the J-curve phenomenon. After applying the linear and nonlinear ARDL approaches, we find support for the J-curve effect in three partners from the linear models. However, support rises to eight partners when we shift to nonlinear models. Furthermore, we find short-run asymmetric effects of exchange rate changes in almost all models and significant long-run asymmetric effects in half of the partners.     

Cost Accounting,Ethical Accountability,and Accounting Principles

This essay explains why cost accounting, ethical accountability, and accounting principles are interrelated concepts. During the past two decades, the relationship between accounting systems and discharge of accountability has increasingly drawn the attention of researchers. However, researchers have shown a marginal interest in the inclusion and examination of the theme of cost accounting, and in particular, no interest has been oriented to explore the potential role of cost accounting in serving presentation of the trustful cost information as regards the discharge of accountability. In this essay, we will reason that the traditional discourse of cost accounting is fundamentally different from the managerial discourse of cost accounting. The traditional cost accounting is built upon the ethical, legal, professional, and principle-based discourses. By exploring the differences between the two cost accounting discourses, this essay will reduce the effect of current skeptical views with which quality of our academic education, relevance of our research, and our understanding of the potential role of cost accounting in serving the provision and presentation of trustful information have been seriously undermined.     

Pricing Decisions in Dual-Channel Supply Chain Including Monopolistic Manufacturer and Duopolistic Retailers: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Emergence of the Internet as a new distribution channel has led to increasing attention by researchers to dual-channel supply chain in recent years. In this paper, pricing and ordering decisions are investigated on a dual-channel supply chain which consists of monopolistic manufacturer and duopolistic retailers. The market is assumed to be controlled by the manufacturer. Thus, the manufacturer becomes leader and the two retailers act as followers. Due to establishing this new structure, different game-theoretic models including Bertrand, Collusion, and Stackelberg are developed to analyze pricing strategies under the various interactions between the two retailers. Then, the equilibrium decisions are compared under the considered scenarios and valuable managerial insights are presented. We found that the various games do not have any effects on the manufacturer’s responses. The retail prices given by the Collusion game are higher than by the other games. In the Collusion model, demands in the retail channel are lower than in the other games. Moreover, the manufacturer and retailers receive respectively the lowest and the highest profits under the Collusion game.     

World pandemic uncertainty and German stock market: evidence from Markov regime-switching and Fourier based approaches

Quality & Quantity - This study aims to examine the impact of the world pandemic uncertainty index on the German stock market index (DAX index) for the 1996Q1 to 2020Q3 period while controlling...     

Industrialization in an age of globalization: some comparisons between East and South East Asia and Latin America

The contrast between industrial experience in East and South East Asia and Latin America is dramatic. Whilst a first generation of newly industrialized economies in East Asia grew rapidly on the basis of manufacturing expansion, the longer‐established industries of Latin America have performed relatively poorly by most indicators. This paper utilizes data from UN and World Bank databases to assess relative performance since the early 1980s. It shows that whilst there is some evidence of modest catch‐up in efficiency terms for Latin America in the 1990s, this is not enough to make serious inroads into the loss of international competitiveness experienced by the region in earlier decades.     

Re-testing Prebisch–Singer hypothesis: new evidence using Fourier quantile unit root test

The Prebisch–Singer hypothesis in economics asserts that over time the relative price of primary goods relative to manufactured goods should experience a downward trend. To test the hypothesis, we must first establish the unit root properties of the relative price term and then regress the stationary series on a trend term. We use the quantile unit root test which allows for both smooth unknown numbers and the form of breaks in the trend function through a Fourier function to show that the relative price of 23 out of 24 primary goods is stationary. However, the Prebisch–Singer hypothesis is supported only in half of the primary commodities.     

Policy Uncertainty and the Demand for Money in Korea: An Asymmetry Analysis

Previous studies included money supply volatility as well as output volatility as measures of uncertainty in estimating the demand for money. However, a more comprehensive measure of uncertainty is now constructed for many countries and is known as policy uncertainty. When we included this new measure in the formulation of the demand for money in Korea and relied upon a nonlinear specification of the money demand which allows us to assess the asymmetric effects of changes in the policy uncertainty measure, we found asymmetric long-run effects of policy uncertainty on the demand for cash in Korea. Our conjecture is that increased uncertainty induces Koreans to hold less cash in favor of safer assets and decreased uncertainty has opposite effects, though at different rate.     

Bilateral Trade Balances of Malaysia with Her 11 Largest Trading Partners: New Evidence from Asymmetry Cointegration

Research on the effects of exchange rate changes on the trade balance is now moving in a new direction, by investigating whether exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects. The approach that relies upon separating depreciations from appreciations introduces nonlinearity into the adjustment process and relies upon the nonlinear ARDL approach of Shin et al. [2014. Modelling asymmetric cointegration and dynamic multipliers in a nonlinear ARDL framework, in: R. Sickels and W. Horrace (Eds), Festschrift in Honor of Peter Schmidt: Econometric Methods and Applications, 281–314 (Springer)]. When we applied this new method to the bilateral trade balances of Malaysia with each of her 11 largest partners, we found adjustment asymmetry in all models, short-run impact asymmetry effects and long-run asymmetry effects in the trade balance models between Malaysia and Asian countries.     

Nominal and real effective exchange rates of middle eastern countries and their trade performance

Indexes of real and nominal effective exchange rates that are published by the IMF, are mostly for industrial countries. None of the Middle Eastern countries have received any attention on this regard. This paper tries to close the gap by constructing such indexes for 11 middle eastern countries over 1971(I)–1994(IV) period. As an application, long-run response of their trade balance to devaluation is also investigated.