The Non-Existence of the Labor Demand/Supply Diagram,and other Theorems of Institutional Economics

The most famous and influential diagram in modern (neoclassical) labor economics is the model of wage determination by supply and demand. Using concepts and ideas from institutional economics, I argue that the theory of a perfectly competitive labor market is logically contradictory and, hence, the demand/supply diagram cannot exist on the plane of pure theory. Four other fundamental theorems concerning labor markets are also derived, as are implications about the theoretical foundation of the field of industrial relations and the economic evaluation of labor and employment policy.

The Labor Market Participation of Sandwich Generation Italian Women

We empirically analyzed the labor market participation of Italian women, with special emphasis on the role of intergenerational family links. Older relatives, on the one hand, discourage the work participation of women by requiring care; on the other hand they may provide household services favoring labor supply. We studied this dual impact estimating a trivariate probit model where the three choices to be in the labor force, to use informal help from older relatives and to care for them are jointly determined. Our estimates show that care duties towards members of the previous generation hinder the labor market participation of Italian women, and that informal help received from older relatives strongly increases their probability of being engaged in paid work.

The Distributive Impact of Reforms in Credit Enforcement: Evidence From Indian Debt Recovery Tribunals

It is generally presumed that stronger legal enforcement of lender rights increases credit access for all borrowers because it expands the set of incentive compatible loan contracts. This result relies on an assumption that the supply of credit is infinitely elastic. In contrast, with inelastic supply, stronger enforcement generates general equilibrium effects that may reduce credit access for small borrowers and expand it for wealthy borrowers. In a firm‐level panel, we find evidence that an Indian judicial reform that increased banks' ability to recover nonperforming loans had such an adverse distributive impact.     

Understanding innovation performance and its antecedents: A socio-cognitive model

Little attention in the previous literature has been paid to understanding employees’ factors that drive customer development knowledge and performance from the perspective of social psychology. Drawing on social cognitive theory, this study validates a research model that examines the above issue. In the setting of new product development across high-tech firms in Taiwan, this study postulates that innovation self-efficacy, role conflict, and role ambiguity influence innovation performance directly and indirectly via the mediation of customer knowledge development and innovation outcome expectation. This study contributes to the social science literature by applying social cognitive theory to the rarely explored area of innovation performance and by presenting an operationalization of role stressors (i.e., role ambiguity and role conflict) in the area. Lastly, managerial implications and limitations from the empirical findings are provided.     

转移成本对感知质量与满意之间关系的调节作用——对B2B电子中介买方用户的实证研究

如何提高用户满意,对于为买卖双方提供交易支持服务的B2B电子中介而言,是扩大平台运营规模和增加市场竞争力的基础。本文以B2B电子中介的买方用户为研究对象,建立了基于转移成本调节的感知质量与用户满意因果关系概念模型,借助于国内知名的B2B电子中介采集了覆盖五大洲114个国家的649份样本数据,然后运用无约束方法验证了用户感知质量与满意之间、转移成本与满意之间的正向影响关系,以及转移成本对感知质量和满意之间关系影响的负向调节作用。实证研究结果显示,较高的转移成本会减弱买方用户的感知质量对满意的影响,有利于B2B电子中介提高买方用户的满意水平,进而为B2B电子中介如何从转移成本角度提高买方用户满意提供了实证基础。     

An empirical study of the relationship between a self-service technology investment and firm financial performance

More and more enterprises are taking advantage of self-service technologies (SSTs) in their customer-related operating activities, especially service firms. Although research on SSTs is prevalent, few studies have examined the impact of SSTs on firm financial performance. Given the growing importance of SSTs in the service industries in general and in the banking industry in particular, we therefore empirically examined the impacts of ATMs, one of the most widely accepted SSTs, on bank financial performance. Contrary to the existing literature, our results show ATMs have a positive relationship with profitability. However, we find no association between ATMs and growth performance.     

Linking long-term capacity management for manufacturing and service operations

For firms that combine manufacturing and service operations in one system, the task of managing capacity is not straightforward. New goods and services may not have the same set of competitive priorities, and the models and concepts available in the literature for service operations differ from those for manufacturing operations. We address this problem and review the concepts and models for capacity management in the long term in both streams of literature, i.e. manufacturing and services, to develop a unified framework for manufacturing and service operations. The framework creates transparency between new goods manufacturing and service operations, since the same long-term capacity management structure is used for both product types, as well as between capacity strategy and planning strategy, since new goods and services are treated simultaneously. In the framework, the concepts of chase and level strategies are redefined for service operations to allow for integration with manufacturing operations. A case study demonstrates the usefulness of the integrated approach for long-term capacity management.     

基于连续时间动态博弈的供应链声誉及其微分对策研究

着眼于企业及其供应链的可持续发展,纳入时间因素分析供应链协调问题.基于供应链视角考虑顾客价值开拓,并将其本质抽象为“供应链声誉”的构建过程.针对这一供应链动态协调问题,基于供应链成员企业之间的长期合作关系,在连续时间背景下采用变分法建立了供应链各方关于供应链声誉的微分对策模型,通过求解该模型发现在拟约束方程组有解时Nash均衡存在,并求出了相应的最优微分对策.这些理论研究结论阐明了长期的、稳定的合作关系对于实现供应链协调的意义,对于实践中供应链动态协调的实现具有一定的启发与参考价值.论文最后对相关结论进行了数值分析.     

基于评价者过滤的个性化信任模型

信任问题是困扰C2C电子商务发展的重要瓶颈。在传统模型基础上,本文进一步引入5梯度的连续性评分标度、交易次数、多维评分、惩罚因子四项因素,研究两种商品交易历史对卖家信任的影响。为满足个性化选择,创建了评价者过滤机制,在此基础上构建可满足用户需要、防范信用欺诈的个性化信任模型,通过仿真实验验证模型的有效性。     

Competitive and Collaborative Quality and Warranty Management in Supply Chains

Product quality and product warranty coverage are two important and closely related operational decisions. A longer warranty protection period can boost sales, but it may also result in dramatically increased warranty cost, if product quality is poor. To investigate how these two decisions interact with each other and influence supply chain performance, we develop a single‐period model with a supplier that provides a product to an original equipment manufacturer, which in turn sells it to customers. Customer demand is random and affected by the length of the product warranty period. Warranty costs are incurred by both the supplier and the manufacturer. We analyze two different scenarios based on which party sets the warranty period: manufacturer warranty and supplier warranty. Product quality is controlled by the supplier, and the manufacturer determines the ordering quantity. We analyze these decentralized systems and provide the structural properties of the equilibrium strategies. We also compare the results of centralized and decentralized systems and identify the conditions under which one system provides a longer warranty and better product quality than the other. Our numerical study further shows that, in decentralized settings, when the warranty period is determined by the firm sharing the larger proportion of total warranty costs, the supply chain can achieve greater system‐wide profit. Both parties can therefore benefit from properly delegating the warranty decision and sharing the resulting additional profit. We further design a supplier‐development and buy‐back contract for coordinating decentralized supply chains. Several extensions are also discussed.