CATALOG RETAILER IN‐STOCK PERFORMANCE: AN ASSESSMENT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE LEVELS

The purpose of this article is to study the level of “in‐stock” customer service performance being offered in the catalog channel of distribution. The article provides benchmark information for the catalog industry. More importantly, the article serves as one test of the effectiveness of the modern supply chain, where the expectation is for near perfect orders. Customer service levels are studied by using an empirical observation methodology in which catalog retailer's in‐stock performance was measured. Comparisons are made across item type, season, retailer type, and days from catalog receipt. Overall, items were out‐of‐stock during 15.9% of all checkpoints, compared to an 11.8% stock‐out rate in an earlier study of bricks and mortar retailers.     

PLANNING MULTIPLE LOCATION INVENTORIES

Supplying customer demand from comparable alternate inventory locations when an item is out of stock at its primary stocking point creates a virtual inventory for that item. The expectation is that if more inventories can be drawn upon, the inventory for an item would be lower, the fill rate would be higher, or both. While generally true that safety stocks will be lower, regular stocks, on the other hand, may rise with such cross filling of demand. In this study, a methodology is developed that balances the cross filling effects on both regular and safety stocks for determining whether an inventoried item should be cross‐filled. An example and guidelines are given to show how the methodology can be simplified and applied in practice.     

Forecasting Stock Index Futures Price Volatility: Linear vs. Nonlinear Models

The study examines the relative ability of various models to forecast daily stock index futures volatility. The forecasting models that are employed range from naïve models to the relatively complex ARCH-class models. It is found that among linear models of stock index futures volatility, the autoregressive model ranks first using the RMSE and MAPE criteria. We also examine three nonlinear models. These models are GARCH-M, EGARCH, and ESTAR. We find that nonlinear GARCH models dominate linear models utilizing the RMSE and the MAPE error statistics and EGARCH appears to be the best model for forecasting stock index futures price volatility.     

武汉金融安全区模式设计与研究

金融安全与稳定直接关系到一个国家或地区的经济安全与社会稳定。一个地区 ,在突出的支付风险得以逐一化解之后 ,适时启动创建金融安全区工程 ,并以此全面提高金融监管水平 ,实现区域金融业持续稳健发展已经成为当前我们面临的重要课题。本文在论证武汉市开展创建金融安全区的必要性和可行性的基础上 ,提出了构建以武汉金安指数为核心的指标监测体系、具体创建规划以及相应运行规程。     

Industry specific effects in investment performance and valuation of firms

A necessary criterion for a performance measure in corporate governance is the degree to which it mirrors how well the management succeeds in maximizing firm value. Such a performance measure is marginal q which links changes in firm value to the investments undertaken by the management. Empirical studies of investment and performance based on marginal q have demonstrated the usefulness of this measure. Most research however, has mainly focused on long-term performance. This paper takes a short-term perspective and, based on the marginal q-theory, considers how firms’ market values change in the extreme stock price cycle of a stock market bubble. Using a data set of listed Swedish corporations we find an anomaly in form of a new industry specific effect that, in addition to investment, explains changes in firm value.

中国外贸增长方式转变的评价指标体系与实证研究

从外贸规模、外贸结构、外贸效益、外贸可持续发展、外贸竞争力五个方面建立外贸增长方式及其转变的评价指标体系,以中国1995—2008年的数据,对外贸增长方式转变成效进行了实证研究表明,从总体上来看,外贸增长方式转变已有成效;规模指标显示外贸规模不断扩大;结构指标显示外贸结构在波动中优化,但优化程度与规模增长相比显得不足;效益指标、可持续发展指标、外贸竞争力指标,都有一定程度的上升。但贸易结构有待进一步优化,贸易条件需要进一步改善,环境、资源指标需要进一步提高,外贸增长方式转变的任务仍然十分艰巨。     

我国东部地区社会管理水平测度及分类研究——兼论社会管理水平与经济发展的关系

东部地区社会管理实践活动对全国具有示范效应。文章首先构建了包括社会保障、社会安全、公共服务和社会参与4个一级指标、25个二级指标的社会管理评价指标体系,为东部地区社会管理水平测度研究提供了科学的评价标准;其次,基于2011年东部11个省份的横截面数据,对东部地区社会管理水平进行了测度,并将其划分为社会管理水平较高、社会管理水平一般和社会管理水平较低三个等级区域;最后,依据社会管理水平及子系统的协调度,进一步将东部地区社会管理水平划分为6种类型,并通过相关性分析,检验社会管理水平及子系统水平与经济发展的相关关系。研究结果表明,2011年东部地区社会管理水平及子系统水平较低,省际间差异明显,且子系统水平呈现非均衡发展特征;社会管理水平与经济发展水平呈现显著正相关关系。因此,促进区域协调发展,增强区域经济实力,能够为提升社会管理水平提供物质保障。     

Pig in the middle: Overcoming inflexibility unemployment

The growth in unemployment is not inevitable. It is the product of an implicit consensus amongst the most powerful social actors, which instead of implementing rules adapted to the new technological and economic era, fight to preserve the old rules from which they continue to draw profit. In the short run, preserving the inflexible attitudes towards work (the single salaried job with full salary) is such that unemployment is bound to increase and social strife will intensify. A more flexible approach to work supply and demand is illustrated by the game ‘pig in the middle’, which, with an equitable distribution of gains in productivity directly related to the implementation of new technology, does not exclude full employment for all.     

Monetary policy matters: Evidence from new shocks data

The evidence suggests that monetary policy post 1988 became more forward-looking, invalidating the identifying assumptions in conventional methods of measuring monetary policy's effects, leading to spurious and unlikely results for this period. We propose a new identification scheme that uses factors extracted from Fed Funds futures to measure exogenous changes in policy. Using this shock series in a VAR, we recover the contractionary effect of monetary tightening on output. Moreover, we find that as much as half of the variability in output was driven by monetary policy shocks, and that there is a mild price puzzle.