Efficient Repeated Implementation

This paper examines repeated implementation of a social choice function (SCF) with infinitely lived agents whose preferences are determined randomly in each period. An SCF is repeatedly implementable in Nash equilibrium if there exists a sequence of (possibly history‐dependent) mechanisms such that its Nash equilibrium set is nonempty and every equilibrium outcome path results in the desired social choice at every possible history of past play and realizations of uncertainty. We show, with minor qualifications, that in the complete information environment an SCF is repeatedly implementable in Nash equilibrium if and only if it is efficient. We also discuss several extensions of our analysis.     

On the Equivalence of Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Implementation

We consider a standard social choice environment with linear utilities and independent, one‐dimensional, private types. We prove that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism there exists an equivalent dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that delivers the same interim expected utilities for all agents and the same ex ante expected social surplus. The short proof is based on an extension of an elegant result due to Gutmann, Kemperman, Reeds, and Shepp (1991). We also show that the equivalence between Bayesian and dominant strategy implementation generally breaks down when the main assumptions underlying the social choice model are relaxed or when the equivalence concept is strengthened to apply to interim expected allocations.     

Factors Affecting Planned Unit Development Implementation

Planned unit developments (PUD) have been celebrated as one of the few means of escape from the stranglehold of Euclidean zoning but little is known empirically about their use and implementation. In this paper, I present quantitative data from Michigan exploring the factors affecting successful PUD implementation. Results indicate that citizen participation, emphasis of PUD regulations, PUD appeal and differences among key players during PUD review have significant impacts on successful PUD implementation. I also find that Michigan municipalities are more successful at achieving mixed-use, density, preservation, affordable housing, community facilities and design through PUDs than through other regulatory vehicles.     

The Limits of ex post Implementation

The sensitivity of Bayesian implementation to agents' beliefs about others suggests the use of more robust notions of implementation such as ex post implementation, which requires that each agent's strategy be optimal for every possible realization of the types of other agents. We show that the only deterministic social choice functions that are ex post implementable in generic mechanism design frameworks with multidimensional signals, interdependent valuations, and transferable utilities are constant functions. In other words, deterministic ex post implementation requires that the same alternative must be chosen irrespective of agents' signals. The proof shows that ex post implementability of a nontrivial deterministic social choice function implies that certain rates of information substitution coincide for all agents. This condition amounts to a system of differential equations that are not satisfied by generic valuation functions.     

Implementation of just-in-time methodology in a small company

This paper describes the implementation of JIT in a small manufacturing company and the benefits that resulted for the company's operations. Preliminary analysis identified various problems in the existing manufacturing operations. The pre-implementation and post-implementation conditions of the company arc detailed. The achievements of the JIT implementation included a reduction in material traversing, reduced lead limes and inventories leading to an overall reduction in the cost of manufacturing. A smooth flow of material from the raw material stage to the finished product stage was established. Three separate product lines were combined into a flexible manufacturing assembly line. With the adoption of a holistic approach to JIT implementation, it was found that even a small company can make significant strides towards world class manufacturing status. The experience gained by the company can encourage and benefit other small companies to embrace the JIT approach.     

道德约束环境下的Nash实施

探讨了代理人发送信号的成本对社会选择规则可实施性的影响,证明了在存在道德约束的实施环境中,单调性不再是一个社会选择规则可Nash实施的必要条件。当代理人数量大于2时,满足一致性条件的社会选择规则都是可Nash实施的。当代理人数量等于2,满足交叉性条件和一致性条件的社会选择规则是可Nash实施的。结论表明:在实际的实施问题中,社会选择规则可实施的范围可能远远大于预期,在存在道德约束的实施环境中,一些不满足单调性但却满足一致性条件的社会选择规则,如Pareto规则都是可Nash实施的。     

Higher Order Uncertainty and Information: Static and Dynamic Games

Weinstein and Yildiz (2007) have shown that in static games, only very weak predictions are robust to perturbations of higher order beliefs. These predictions are precisely those provided by interim correlated rationalizability (ICR). This negative result is obtained under the assumption that agents have no information on payoffs. This assumption is unnatural in many settings. It is therefore natural to ask whether Weinstein and Yildiz's results remain true under more general information structures. This paper characterizes the “robust predictions” in static and dynamic games, under arbitrary information structures. This characterization is provided by an extensive form solution concept: interim sequential rationalizability (ISR). In static games, ISR coincides with ICR and does not depend on the assumptions on agents' information. Hence the “no information” assumption entails no loss of generality in these settings. This is not the case in dynamic games, where ISR refines ICR and depends on the details of the information structure. In these settings, the robust predictions depend on the assumptions on agents' information. This reveals a hitherto neglected interaction between information and higher order uncertainty, raising novel questions of robustness.     

Policy Implementation in Urban Bangladesh: Role of Intra-organizational Coordination

The present study intended to explore role of intra-organizational coordination in policy implementation in urban Bangladesh. In doing so, an attempt was also made to investigate why and how problems of intra-organizational coordination take place in policy implementation. The study was basically based on empirical data gathered during 2003–2004. The available data substantiated that intra-organizational coordination is an important factor for policy implementation. Problems of coordination within organization in urban Bangladesh take place owing to lack of institutionalized rules and regulation and problematic financial management. Once coordination within organization is problematic, policy implementation is hampered which resulted in delay in project completion, increase of cost and unsatisfactory public service delivery.

Weak Monotonicity Characterizes Deterministic Dominant‐Strategy Implementation

We characterize dominant‐strategy incentive compatibility with multidimensional types. A deterministic social choice function is dominant‐strategy incentive compatible if and only if it is weakly monotone (W‐Mon). The W‐Mon requirement is the following: If changing one agent's type (while keeping the types of other agents fixed) changes the outcome under the social choice function, then the resulting difference in utilities of the new and original outcomes evaluated at the new type of this agent must be no less than this difference in utilities evaluated at the original type of this agent.     

Robustly Collusion‐Proof Implementation

A contract with multiple agents may be susceptible to collusion. We show that agents' collusion imposes no cost in a large class of circumstances with risk neutral agents, including both uncorrelated and correlated types. In those circumstances, any payoff the principal can attain in the absence of collusion, including the second‐best level, can be attained in the presence of collusion in a way robust to many aspects of collusion behavior. The collusion‐proof implementation generalizes to a setting in which only a subset of agents may collude, provided that noncollusive agents' incentives can be protected via an ex post incentive compatible and ex post individually rational mechanism. Our collusion‐proof implementation also sheds light on the extent to which hierarchical delegation of contracts can optimally respond to collusion.     

考虑不确定履约率的全局鲁棒供应组合决策研究

生产和采购的全球化为供应链企业带来了更多的复杂性与不确定性。收集全面信息和使用有效的工具是控制决策风险、减少不确定性危害的有效途径。在供应商选择与订单分配管理中,供应商履约率是影响企业供应组合决策的主要因素,如何对其进行定量刻画是迫切需要解决的问题。已有的研究通常是由期望方法或鲁棒方法来刻画履约率。然而,期望履约率法往往忽略了履约率的波动性,从而造成需求损失;而鲁棒履约率法通常存在过于保守、退化过于迅速两个缺点,使企业承担不必要的成本。本文研究供应商选择与订单分配决策问题,使用全局鲁棒优化的两个不确定集合来刻画供应商履约率,同时给出了这一问题的确定性鲁棒表达和一种多项式时间求解算法。最后,通过仿真实验证实本文的全局鲁棒优化模型可克服期望模型和一般鲁棒模型的缺点。本文提出的算法能有效求解本文全局鲁棒优化等价确定性问题,为企业的供应商选择和订单分配决策提供更为灵活精确的辅助工具。     

运营滞后与信用担保互换下的项目投资决策模型

在项目投资面临运营滞后以及债务融资约束的情形下,基于实物期权框架构建了企业家签订信用担保互换契约的两阶段投资决策模型。运用动态规划以及均衡定价方法,给出了企业家股权及期权价值的显示表达,得到了两个阶段担保成本满足的代数方程,并进一步分析了运营滞后和信用担保下企业家的最优投资决策问题。数值结果表明：外部运营时滞会提高杠杆率,导致企业家提前投资,同时会提高企业家第一阶段债务融资的担保成本,但会降低第二阶段债务融资的担保成本;随第一阶段投资额度逐渐增大,企业家的最优投资水平呈U型变化,第一阶段债务融资时的担保成本单调递减,而第二段债务融资时的担保成本呈现倒U型;企业家两个阶段的融资缺口对项目最优投资水平、最优破产水平以及担保成本有显著影响。     

基于学习曲线的ERP实施培训时间决策模型

通过分析ERP项目的特点,将学习曲线引入到ERP实施的研究中,基于学习曲线理论刻画企业的工作效率随项目时间变化的规律.在此基础上,将ERP项目抽象为前期的培训和后期的具体实施两个阶段,以项目实施周期和咨询成本最小为目标,建立ERP实施培训时间决策模型,通过培训时间控制并预测ERP项目的整体周期,进一步利用遗传算法对模型进行优化求解.为区分信息化基础不同的企业在项目初期工作效率的差异,在模型中加入初始工作效率这一变量,通过企业的信息化基础水平间接地测算企业的初始工作效率;结合行为导向的实证研究结果,在模型中限定培训时间的取值范围,解决多个近似解之间的取舍问题.案例研究表明,模型在实际应用中可以起到较好的优化和预测效果,能够为企业制定ERP项目计划和投资预算提供决策支持.     

A Structure Theorem for Rationalizability with Application to Robust Predictions of Refinements

Rationalizability is a central solution concept of game theory. Economic models often have many rationalizable outcomes, motivating economists to use refinements of rationalizability, including equilibrium refinements. In this paper we try to achieve a general understanding of when this multiplicity occurs and how one should deal with it. Assuming that the set of possible payoff functions and belief structures is sufficiently rich, we establish a revealing structure of the correspondence of beliefs to sets of rationalizable outcomes. We show that, for any rationalizable action a of any type, we can perturb the beliefs of the type in such a way that a is uniquely rationalizable for the new type. This unique outcome will be robust to further small changes. When multiplicity occurs, then we are in a “knife‐edge” case, where the unique rationalizable outcome changes, sandwiched between open sets of types where each of the rationalizable actions is uniquely rationalizable. As an immediate application of this result, we characterize, for any refinement of rationalizability, the predictions that are robust to small misspecifications of interim beliefs. These are only those predictions that are true for all rationalizable strategies, that is, the predictions that could have been made without the refinement.     

管理：制定和实施规则的技术——管理规则论引论

通过对人类社会各类管理现象的考察,以及对几种代表性管理定义的分析,归纳出管理活动的特有行为方式的本质是制定和实施规则,并据此提出管理的基本职能及其相应的基本工作环节.     

土地使用权机制的实现与执行

机制设计者的目的是想最优化一个基于环境参数空间的社会福利函数,但是有关环境参数的相关信息分散于经济之中,因此机制设计者既想收集尽可能多的相关信息,又想充分利用这些信息制定一个社会决策。机制通常在两个框架下讨论,分为实现和执行,两者本质区别在于后者利用了对策性思维方式。本文给出了土地使用权机制在二维信息传递空间下的实现问题,将激励相容条件引入信息有效的机制实现中,给出了占优均衡下的机制执行。研究发现:在实话实说假设下,能够降低信息传递空间维度,并且通过一个信息有效的机制来实现政府目标函数;参与人能够利用私有信息时,实话实说不能成为一个纳什均衡,但在占优均衡下可以通过机制来执行。     

基于QFD的ERP实施多合作方选择模型研究

ERP实施合作方选择是ERP项目实施风险控制的关键环节。论文利用QFD方法的特点,以ERP实施企业风险控制的实际需求为导向,从费用、工期、质量、范围、合作五个方面细分了ERP项目风险控制需求,进一步从三阶段发展视角、三层能力视角、三角合作视角出发,分别提出了ERP软件供应商、ERP咨询商和三方合作关系的评价特性,在此基础上,确定了风险控制需求与评价特性相关关系,并考虑了评价特性之间的自相关关系,建立了基于QFD的ERP实施多合作方选择模型。最后,通过实例验证了模型的实用性。     

Scalable Dynamic Bid Prices for Network Revenue Management in Continuous Time

This study develops an approximate optimal control problem to produce time‐dependent bid prices for the airline network revenue management problem. The main contributions of our study are the analysis of time‐dependent bid prices in continuous time and the use of splines to modify the problem into an approximate second‐order cone program (ASOCP). The spline representation of bid prices permits the number of variables to depend solely on the number of resources and not on the size of the booking horizon. The advantage of this framework is the ASOCP's scalability, which we demonstrate by solving for bid prices on an industrial‐sized network. The numerical experiments highlight the ASOCP's ability to solve industrial sized problems in seconds.     

制造型企业市场导向执行模式及前因变量和绩效

考察了市场导向执行的具体模式,以及市场导向模式选择的影响因素和绩效。对227家制造型企业的问卷调查结果显示:MKTOR量表在中国制造业环境下具有良好的信度和效度;我国制造型企业市场导向的具体模式可以分为6种;不同模式市场导向下的产品创新绩效和企业财务绩效存在明显差异;市场导向的模式选择与内部组织因素和外部环境因素有关。     

Implementation guidelines for mass customization: current characteristics and suggestions for improvement

Interest in mass customization (MC) is increasing in both industry and academia. Academic research on MC implementation guidelines (IGs) has, however, lagged behind other research streams in the MC literature. The present article reviews the existing literature on MC-IGs and inductively derives a classification scheme for prior research findings to identify potential areas for further research. While the issue of what enables MC has been intensively researched, investigation of several questions is still required, such as which enablers should be implemented and in what sequence, depending on the specific context in which MC is pursued. Other areas for future study of MC-IGs include applicability context specifications, as-is analysis tools, hindrance factors and required resources. This article complements previous MC literature reviews by providing an overview of MC-IGs available in the literature, identifying the building blocks of MC-IGs and proposing a definition of MC-IGs that can be used as a basis for future research in MC implementation.