Trade-off between quoted lead time and price

In a make-to-order environment, lead time and price can play a crucial role in determining the financial success of a firm. Their importance increases when demand is sensitive to the quoted lead time and price. A model is presented which uses the quoted lead time and price as a mechanism to determine the optimal demand level. The relationships between the model parameters and their impacts on the firm's profit is also analysed. In addition, the effect of the number of job requests, and the mean processing time are examined. Based on the results presented in this paper, there is clear indication that the firm's profit is sensitive to the inventory holding rate, and that the inventory holding cost component is redundant in the presence of a tardiness cost component.     

THE EFFECTS OF UNCERTAINTY ON THE LEVERAGE OF NONFINANCIAL FIRMS

This paper investigates the link between the optimal level of nonfinancial firms' short-term leverage and macroeconomic and idiosyncratic sources of uncertainty. We develop a structural model of a firm's value maximization problem that predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and optimal levels of borrowing. This proposition is tested using a panel of nonfinancial U.S. firms drawn from the COMPUSTAT quarterly database covering the period 1993–2003. The estimates confirm that as either form of uncertainty increases, firms decrease their levels of short-term leverage. This effect is stronger for macroeconomic uncertainty than for idiosyncratic uncertainty. ( JEL C23, D8, D92, G32)     

An Assessment of Sheltered Housing Design in Belfast,Northern Ireland

This article presents a UK-based research that has studied the existing sheltered or assisted living housing population and its future housing options and preferences. This meets an identified need to know and understand users' needs and requirements in much more detail that outlines what is liked and disliked by older people about sheltered housing, so that those who plan and design such housing can be aware of their views. The study also sought to understand the architects' challenges in designing and adapting this type of housing. The sheltered housing managed by housing associations in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was assessed through a series of site visits, structured interviews, and a focus group with stakeholders. Findings revealed older users' keen interest in participating in their housing needs assessment, identified building design concerns and provided recommendations for potential design guidelines.     

VOTING, PUNISHMENT, AND PUBLIC GOODS

Researchers have found that voting can help increase voluntary contributions to a public good—provided enforcement through a third party. Not all collective agreements, however, guarantee third-party enforcement. We design an experiment to explore whether a voting rule with and without endogenous punishment increases contributions to a public good. Our results suggest that voting by itself does not increase cooperation, but if voters can punish violators, contributions increase significantly. While costly punishment increases contributions at the price of lower efficiency, overall efficiency for a voting-with-punishment rule still exceeds the level observed for a voting-without-punishment rule. ( JEL C92, D72, H41)     

Doing a transversal method: developing an ethics of care in a collaborative research project

Beck and Sznaider call on ‘methodological cosmopolitanism’ to transcend methodological nationalism and account for an increasingly cosmopolitanized reality. We take up their challenge by drawing on our experiences of conducting a collaborative ethnography of methodological changes in the production of population statistics within and between European national and international statistical institutes. Drawing on debates in science and technology studies, we depart from some conceptual presuppositions of methodological cosmopolitanism to define a ‘transversal method’. Referring to this method as performative and ontopolitical, we reflect on how it requires collaboration and, in our ethnography, gave rise to three practical challenges – (1) going beyond the individual project; (2) using each other's field notes; (3) and working against the national order of things. To meet these challenges, we reflect on how this method required us to practise three modes of care – thinking with others, tinkering with field notes, and dissenting within.     

Emploi des jeunes et inégalité des chances: en quoi le monde arabe est-il différent?

Le marché du travail du Moyen-Orient et de l'Afrique du Nord se caractérise par un chômage des jeunes généralisé et par un nombre disproportionné de chômeurs parmi les nouveaux diplômés. À partir des enquětes du BIT sur le passage de l'école à la vie active menées en Égypte, Jordanie et Tunisie, les auteurs regardent si cela tient à l'inégalité des chances ou à des caractéristiques structurelles induisant des discordances entre offre et demande de travail. Les principales explications seraient le faible nombre d'emplois qualifiés disponibles et le peu de valeur accordée aux qualifications acquises dans le système de formation professionnelle.     

Structure and agency between French and Morphogenetic Régulation

This article examines the gradual evolution of the French Régulation school (FR) for the study of capitalism through the lens of structure and agency. The analysis first segments the school into two epochs, the early Régulation, led by authors Aglietta and Lipietz, and the later Régulation, which saw the rise of Boyer. We find that the gradual progression that occurred within the FR school is linked to its authors' implicit ontic engagement with structure and agency, which, in turn, provides natural linkages to Critical Realism. In the second part of the paper, we demonstrate how the comparison between Morphogenetic Régulation and French Régulation (FR) can facilitate a much deeper reading of the structure-agency debate pertaining to the transformation of capitalism. In so doing, it discusses the value addedness of Morphogenetic Régulation through three specific concepts by stressing their relevance for contemporary studies in international political economy. These concepts are: stratified emergence; causality and the problématique of hierarchy.     

中国对阿拉伯世界人文外交的历史回顾及现实挑战

人文外交作为一种崭新的外交形式,是对当今国际关系领域中国家、市场与社会三者互动的有效应对,也是对文化外交和公共外交的有机整合。人文外交以软实力理论、国家形象理论、建构主义理论和文明对话理论为依托,在当今中国的外交政策中占有重要地位。新中国对阿拉伯世界的外交实践则为人文外交的理论创新积累了宝贵经验。在对阿关系中,人文外交在各时期都促进了中国国家利益的拓展。当下,国际体系处于转型期,尤其是2010年年底以来阿拉伯世界所发生的社会和政治动荡,使中国对阿拉伯世界的外交政策面临挑战。只有将人文外交继续作为我国对阿外交政策的重点,才能在政治动荡的阿拉伯世界始终维护中国的国家利益。