Risk analysis and investment appraisal in marketing

The author is employed in Pharmaceutical Development and is concerned with the introduction of methods designed to integrate new products and technologies with the often conflicting objectives of production, marketing, and finance.

This article outlines an approach to quantifying risk in investment appraisal and considers a marketing project although the technique has been used to appraise plant investment associated with uncertain technology and sales forecasts and also to investigate the optimal participation and financing for joint venture proposals. In addition, it is suggested that the organization of investment appraisal work may be more important than the techniques employed.     

Cost-benefit analysis of training— An appraisal

With the phenomenal growth in investment in training, there has been an increasing concern with evaluating the training programmes in terms of their economic efficiency—sometimes adopting the cost-benefit approach. However, since behavioural and psychological factors are so central to training, all evaluative studies have come across the problems of quantifying the costs and benefits. These apart, there are problems in enumerating the spillover and long term effects of training programmes, in assuming a discount rate and in identifying the economic life of the training project.

Recent studies purporting to have used cost-benefit analysis have failed to grapple with a number of issues making them closer to conventional financial appraisals. In this paper the limitations of such evaluations, the difficulties in making a cost-benefit analysis of training investment and its feasibility with varying situations is discussed. The article will amply point out to the corporate decision-maker the problems in using cost-benefit analysis and the training contexts where it is feasible.     

The quality and use of regulatory analysis in 2008

This article assesses the quality and apparent use of regulatory analysis for economically significant regulations proposed by federal agencies in 2008. A nine-member research team used a six-point (0-5) scale to evaluate regulatory analyses according to criteria drawn from Executive Order 12866 and Office of Management and Budget Circular A-4. Principal findings include: (1) the average quality of regulatory analysis, though not high, is somewhat better than previous regulatory scorecards have shown; (2) quality varies widely; (3) biggest strengths are accessibility and clarity; (4) biggest weaknesses are analysis of the systemic problem and retrospective analysis; (5) budget or "transfer" regulations usually receive low-quality analysis; (6) a minority of the regulations contain evidence that the agency used the analysis in significant decisions; (7) quality of analysis is positively correlated with the apparent use of the analysis in regulatory decisions; and (8) greater diffusion of best practices could significantly improve the overall quality of regulatory analysis.     

Some shortcomings in the economic analysis of technological change

This paper is concerned with how economic theory traditionally tries to cope with the analysis of technical change. The paper points out some of the shortcomings of conventional analysis and suggests where it needs modification.     

Technology,productivity and economic analysis

A commonly held view is that innovation, deriving directly from expenditure on research and development, brings increased productivity, lower costs, increased profitability and growth, and that these relationships form a economically virtuous circle.However, this view is not supported either by the research results reported here or by other empirical findings. A richer and deeper framework of analysis than this “mythology” provides is required for management decision making in innovation and in this and the subsequent paper the author outlines the necessary features of such a framework.A model of a “network of productivity relationships” with six components is described which traces the effects of innovation, at any point in the network, on input productivities. The model points up the futility of single input measures of innovatory effects. This network is then combined with cost factors to show the effect on categories of unit costs and on total unit cost. Finally, profitability is related to the physical and cost factors to provide managerial control ratios which offer the relevent criteria by which innovation many be appraised.The history of innovation in the U.S. Basic Steel Industry is examined in the light of the model described above and hypotheses are proposed to identify possible productivity and cost effects of innovation with a view ot improving general predictive capability of the results of any given type of innovation.     

The constructive use of hate and fear by entrepreneurs and others seeking personal and economic self-determination

This reflection was originally presented as a speech to the 6th Annual Creativity, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Symposium     

The blocking job shop with rail-bound transportation

The blocking job shop with rail-bound transportation (BJS-RT) considered here is a version of the job shop scheduling problem characterized by the absence of buffers and the use of a rail-bound transportation system. The jobs are processed on machines and are transported from one machine to the next by mobile devices (called robots) that move on a single rail. The robots cannot pass each other, must maintain a minimum distance from each other, but can also “move out of the way”. The objective of the BJS-RT is to determine for each machining operation its starting time and for each transport operation its assigned robot and starting time, as well as the trajectory of each robot, in order to minimize the makespan. Building on previous work of the authors on the flexible blocking job shop and an analysis of the feasible trajectory problem, a formulation of the BJS-RT in a disjunctive graph is derived. Based on the framework of job insertion in this graph, a local search heuristic generating consistently feasible neighbor solutions is proposed. Computational results are presented, supporting the value of the approach.     

Clean technologies in German economic literature: a bibliometric analysis

Over the past two decades, clean technologies (cleantech) have emerged as an important economic factor with remarkable progress. Fueled by growing concerns about climate change and diminishing fossil fuel resources, governments have put aggressive stimulus packages in place to support emerging technologies that drive cleantech businesses. The industry operates in highly regulated market conditions which in turn raises the question of whether economists have addressed private and public information requirements. To answer this question and to explore the relationship between environmental economics and clean technologies, this paper examines German literature using co-citation analysis methods. Based on the co-citation analysis of 588 documents, our results suggest that researchers have provided a rather small and fragmented set of business knowledge for the cleantech industry. Despite its economic and environmental importance, research on the private use and economic impact of cleantech remains scarce.     

The dangers of centralized economic planning

There is little evidence that there is much value in riveting attention on the question of strategic planning in an era of low growth or negative growth. Rather, there is value in discussing strategic planning in terms of the efficient realization of society's goals— whether expressed as economic goals or as non-economic aspirations. This article contains some observations on corporate strategic planning, provides perspective on the energy and materials scarcity question, and warns that detailed economic planning by government thwarts the optimal use of resources to improve living conditions for everyone. The author holds that renewed government reliance upon the workings of a competitive market economy is indispensable for achieving this goal.     

Fair task allocation in transportation

Task allocation problems have traditionally focused on cost optimization. However, more and more attention is being given to cases in which cost should not always be the sole or major consideration. In this paper we study a fair task allocation problem in transportation where an optimal allocation not only has low cost but more importantly, it distributes tasks as even as possible among heterogeneous participants who have different capacities and costs to execute tasks. To tackle this fair minimum cost allocation problem we analyze and solve it in two parts using two novel polynomial-time algorithms. We show that despite the new fairness criterion, the proposed algorithms can solve the fair minimum cost allocation problem optimally in polynomial-time. In addition, we conduct an extensive set of experiments to investigate the trade-off between cost minimization and fairness. Our experimental results demonstrate the benefit of factoring fairness into task allocation. Among the majority of test instances, fairness comes with a very small price in terms of cost.     

A citation analysis of international organization: The use of government documents

This citation study analyzes the use of international, U.S., and foreign documents in the journal International Organization from 1972–1976. The study examines how the three kinds of documents are used and the relationships between the kinds of documents.     

动态经济系统分析的经济计量模型与方法

综述可有效阐明动态经济系统长期关系和因果关系的因果测度理论. 首先简要介绍多变 量时间序列的协整过程及与此相关的若干概念,并总结了在经济计量学领域评价较高的多变 量自回归模型的统计识别方法. 基于多变量时间序列协整过程的向量自回归模型,较详细讨论 了多变量时间序列间各种因果测度的定义及其沃尔德检验. 所述单方向因果测度及其统计检 验理论作为C1W. J . Granger 非因果性理论的扩张,不仅可以检验两组时间序列间的因果影响 存在与否,还可以定量描述影响的程度. 单方向因果测度理论为分析复杂经济系统提     

Overcoming barriers to integrating economic analysis into risk assessment

Regulatory risk analysis is designed to provide decisionmakers with a clearer understanding of how policies are likely to affect risk. The systems that produce risk are biological, physical, and social and economic. As a result, risk analysis is an inherently interdisciplinary task. Yet in practice, risk analysis has been interdisciplinary in only limited ways. Risk analysis could provide more accurate assessments of risk if there were better integration of economics and other social sciences into risk assessment itself. This essay examines how discussions about risk analysis policy have influenced the roles of various disciplines in risk analysis. It explores ways in which integrated bio/physical-economic modeling could contribute to more accurate assessments of risk. It reviews examples of the kind of integrated economics-bio/physical modeling that could be used to enhance risk assessment. The essay ends with a discussion of institutional barriers to greater integration of economic modeling into risk assessment and provides suggestions on how these might be overcome.     

Performance appraisal in the age of TQM

Performance evaluation is often used as a tool to determine salary adjustment as well as an opportunity to improve job performance. When inappropriately applied, performance evaluations may be perceived as being unfair, wasteful, and demeaning. In some organizations, there has been a trend to break down job functions to their most detailed level, weight each activity, judge it, and then add up all the invalid numbers to achieve a more invalid judgment of a person's performance. This non-Gestalt evaluation is an inspection philosophy that has not served manufacturing or health care very effectively. Over the past four years, we have evolved a performance evaluation process at Minneapolis Children's Medical Center for physicians in both patient care and management roles. In this article, we will describe the evolution to the present system and discuss its dovetailing with customer service-driven continuous quality improvement efforts and our plans to improve the process.     

高新技术企业项目经理绩效评估探讨

本文针对传统的绩效评估的不足,运用系统理论[1],通过对高新技术企业管理人员的职能分析,和绩效评估与管理人员行为关系的研究,提出了高新技术企业项目经理绩效评估的指标体系,并且提出了对绩效评估指标体系进行综合处理的数学模型.     

Minimization of passenger takeoff and landing risk in offshore helicopter transportation: Models,approaches and analysis

Offshore petroleum industry uses helicopters to transport the employees to and from installations. Takeoff and landing represent a substantial part of the flight risks for passengers. In this paper, we propose and analyze approaches to create a safe flight schedule to perform pickup of employees by several independent flights. Two scenarios are considered. Under the non-split scenario, exactly one visit is allowed to each installation. Under the split scenario, the pickup demand of an installation can be split between several flights. Interesting links between our problem and other problems of combinatorial optimization, e.g., parallel machine scheduling and bin-packing are established. We provide worst-case analysis of the performance of some of our algorithms and report the results of computational experiments conducted on randomly generated instances based on the real sets of installations in the oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. This paper is the first attempt to handle takeoff and landing risk in a flight schedule that consists of several flights and lays ground for the study on more advanced and practically relevant models.     

A role for transportation in Canada

Transportation planning today involves all modes—airways, railways, roadways, waterways, and pipelines. Even the transmission of electrical power may be considered as a mode of transportation. Moreover, transportation planning involves the economic, political, and social systems of a nation. This paper is an attempt to create an awareness of the vast importance and complexity of transportation planning, to define a potential role of transportation, and finally, to suggest ways and means of achieving transportation's possible role.     

Air intermodal freight transportation: The freight forwarder service problem

Despite being one of the most relevant figures in international multimodal transportation, freight forwarding companies optimization problems did not receive much attention from the research community. In this work we try to fill this gap by presenting the general features of air transportation from the freight forwarder’s perspective and we introduce the air transportation freight forwarder service problem (ATFFSP). A MILP formulation of the problem is proposed and tested on real-life data coming from an Italian freight forwarding company. We study the performance of the model in terms of optimality gap and time needed to reach the optimal solution. Furthermore we compare the solutions found with the ones provided by the company in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the model and its ability to find good and practical solutions. Finally, we study the possibility of opening a new warehouse facility to better manage services and we analyze the corresponding potential benefits.