从“三种生产理论”到“多种生产理论”——科学发展观的一种新启示

随着生态环境问题的出现并严重化,“两种生产理论”的局限性逐渐暴露,将生态环境生产纳入其中的“三种生产理论”应运而生。但在当今知识经济时代,文化和制度等社会环境因素的力量逐渐突显并日趋强大,我们发现“三种生产理论”还有待于进一步丰富和发展。文章通过举例指出了“三种生产理论”的一些不足之处,并将文化生产和制度生产融入其中,提出“多种生产理论,”以期对科学发展观的形成有所启示。     

Direct Valuation of Personal Care by Households

This paper valued the quantity of child, sick, and elderly care provided by households using a new, direct measure. Such measures add to the literature that estimates the size of the contribution of non-market work by household members, particularly women, and to literature about valuation of childcare. This production remains unvalued in standard national income accounts. Traditional attempts to quantify this care multiplied care-giver hours by a wage rate, a method that suffers from several drawbacks, including omitting the contributions of anything but labor, the inability to handle joint production, and the use of an arbitrary wage rate. This study avoided these problems by valuing the amount of care with its market price based on data from a small urban area. The mean value was $3,547 annually (97 percent of it childcare) for all sample households and $9,610 for those providing care. The results afforded evidence of scale economies in parental childcare and quantified care furnished by different kinds of providers.     

上海确保市场供应稳定蔬菜价格的实践与思考

＂菜篮子＂里看形势。首先系统介绍上海多管齐下确保市场供应稳定蔬菜价格的有效做法,如落实菜篮子区县长负责制、完善蔬菜调控保障体系、强化蔬菜产销衔接功能、加强蔬菜产销能力建设等。蔬菜供应涉及千家万户,在充分发挥市场机制作用的基础上,需要政府实行有效的调控,担负起公共服务的职责,既要防止＂菜贵伤民＂,又要防止＂菜贱伤农＂。     

The Failure of Practical Intuition: How Forward‐Coverage Inventory Targets Cause the Landslide Effect

Seasonal demand for products is common at many companies including Kraft Foods, Case New Holland, and Elmer's Products. This study documents how these, and many other companies, experience bloated inventories as they transition from a low season to a high season and a severe drop in service levels as they transition from a high season to a low season. Kraft has termed this latter phenomenon the “landslide effect.” In this study, we present real examples of the landslide effect and attribute its root cause to a common industry practice employing forward days of coverage when setting inventory targets. While inventory textbooks and academic articles prescribe correct ways to set inventory targets, forward coverage is the dominant method employed in practice. We investigate the magnitude and drivers of the landslide effect through both an analytical model and a case study. We find that the effect increases with seasonality, lead time, and demand uncertainty and can lower service by an average of ten points at a representative company. While the logic is initially counterintuitive to many practitioners, companies can avoid the landslide effect by using demand forecasts over the preceding lead time to calculate safety stock targets.     

The Implications of Utilizing Market Information and Adopting Agricultural Advice for Farmers in Developing Economies

To alleviate poverty in developing countries, governments and non‐governmental organizations disseminate two types of information: (i) agricultural advice to enable farmers to improve their operations (cost reduction, quality improvement, and process yield increase); and (ii) market information about future price/demand to enable farmers to make better production planning decisions. This information is usually disseminated free of charge. While farmers can use the market information to improve their production plans without incurring any (significant) cost, adopting agricultural advice to improve operations requires upfront investment, for example, equipment, fertilizers, pesticides, and higher quality seeds. In this study, we examine whether farmers should use market information to improve their production plans (or adopt agricultural advice to improve their operations) when they engage in Cournot competition under both uncertain market demand and uncertain process yield. Our analysis indicates that both farmers will use the market information to improve their profits in equilibrium. Hence, relative to the base case in which market information is not available, the provision of market information can improve the farmers' total welfare (i.e., total profit for both farmers). Moreover, when the underlying process yield is highly uncertain or when the products are highly heterogeneous, the provision of market information is welfare‐maximizing in the sense that the maximum total welfare of farmers is attained when both farmers utilize market information in equilibrium. Furthermore, in equilibrium, whether a farmer adopts the agricultural advice depends on the size of the requisite upfront investment. More importantly, we show that agricultural advice is not always welfare improving unless the upfront investment is sufficiently low. This result implies that to improve farmers' welfare, governments should consider offering farmer subsidies.     

Optimal Policies for Perishable Products When Transportation to Export Market Is Disrupted

We consider a problem where a firm produces a variety of fresh products to supply two markets: an export market and a local market. A public transportation service is utilized to deliver the products to the export market, which is cheap, but its schedule is often disrupted severely. Each time this happens, the firm faces the following questions. (i) For a product that has been finished and is waiting for delivery to the export market, should it continue to wait, at an increasing risk of decay, and when should the waiting be terminated and the product be put to the local market? (ii) For a product that has not been finished, should its processing be postponed, so as to reduce the loss from decay after its completion? (iii) What is the best sequence to process the remaining products, according to the information available? We develop, in this study, a model to address these and other related questions. We find optimal policies that minimize the total expected loss in both the make‐to‐order and make‐to‐stock production systems, respectively. For each finished product, we reveal relationships among the desirable waiting time, the price at the local market, and the decaying cost. For unfinished products, we find the optimal start times and processing sequence. Numerical experiments are also conducted to evaluate the optimal policies.     

Managing Supply Risk for Vertically Differentiated Co‐Products

The manufacturing complexity of many high‐tech products results in a substantial variation in the quality of the units produced. After manufacturing, the units are classified into vertically differentiated products. These products are typically obtained in uncontrollable fractions, leading to mismatches between their demand and supply. We focus on product stockouts due to the supply–demand mismatches. Existing literature suggests that when faced with product stockouts, firms should satisfy all unmet demand of a low‐end product by downgrading excess units of a high‐end product (downward substitution). However, this policy may be suboptimal if it is likely that low‐end customers will substitute with a higher quality product and pay the higher price (upward substitution). In this study, we investigate whether and how much downward substitution firms should perform. We also investigate whether and how much low‐end inventory firms should withhold to strategically divert some low‐end demand to the high‐end product. We first establish the existence of regions of co‐production technology and willingness of customers to substitute upward where firms adopt different substitution/withholding strategies. Then, we develop a managerial framework to determine the optimal selling strategy during the life cycle of technology products as profit margins shrink, manufacturing technology improves, and more capacity becomes available. Consistent trends exist for exogenous and endogenous prices.     

开发区设立能减少企业非效率投资吗？

开发区设立对吸引企业投资有重要影响。从企业投资效率角度,基于2007—2021年中国沪深A股上市公司数据,实证检验了开发区设立对企业非效率投资的影响及其作用机制。研究发现,开发区设立会减少企业非效率投资,企业全要素生产率在开发区设立影响企业非效率投资中发挥了部分中介作用。异质性分析表明,在内陆地区、中西部地区和非国有企业、非能源企业以及长三角城市群中,开发区设立对企业非效率投资的抑制作用更加显著。因此,建议地方政府积极引导开发区内企业创新,规避盲目追求规模扩张的非效率投资,应结合企业类型和城市分类制定差异化和精准化的开发区政策,进一步完善开发区升级的相关制度,培育企业可持续发展的意识。     

当前中国企业研究生工作站存在的问题及对策研究

研究生培养质量的提高是当前我国研究生教育工作的主题,江苏省企业研究生工作站培养模式是研究生教育创新工程的重要形式,也是提升研究生培养质量的重要平台。文章结合河海大学所建企业研究生工作站的实践,探究企业研究生工作站的运行模式、机制、组织架构及管理制度,基于对现有工作站实践中存在问题的基础,提出了相应的对策。     

基于Malmquist指数的煤矿生产物流动态效率评价

煤矿生产物流效率低下严重制约着我国煤炭生产行业的可持续发展,迫切需要结合煤矿生产物流的时序动态特征,对其效率进行动态评价。本文首次采用Malmquist生产率指数方法考察了煤矿生产物流动态效率,在建立的煤矿生产物流效率投入产出指标体系基础上,构建了相应的动态效率评价模型,并通过案例分析了某矿区的煤矿生产物流动态效率及变化趋势,并将Malmquist指数分解为技术效率指数和技术变动指数,结果表明该矿区煤矿生产物流效率的增长趋势主要来源于技术效率的提高而非技术前沿变动。