Jeudi 23 octobre 2008
Joseph E. CHAMPOUX
Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Management, The Robert O Anderson School of Management, The University of New Mexico
The Use of Popular Film in the Teaching of Business and Management
Abstract: “The Use of Popular Film in the Teaching of Business and Management,” will examine the unique qualities of film as a teaching tool. I will also demonstrate several business and management concepts with selected film scenes.
Jeudi 22 mai 2008
Niels VESTERGAARD
University of Southern Denmark
Ecological Benchmarking to Explore Alternative Fishing Schemes: The Danish Demersal Fishery in the North Sea
Abstract: The cod stock in the North Sea is threatened by overexploitation. To recover this fishing stock, pressure needs to be reduced. This implies that catch compositions with small amounts of cod are preferred by public policy makers. The present analysis assesses the technological efficiency of fishing trips, considering landings of cod as an undesirable output. A non-parametric frontier technology approach based on directional distance functions is applied to explore alternative fishing activities for Danish gill netters operating in the North Sea with the goal of protecting the cod stock. Since the performance observed on different fishing trips may be under influence of the external operating environment, a four-stage approach introduced by Fried et al. (1999) is applied to correct for such exogenous factors. The corrected directional distance function efficiency scores reveal the behavioural inefficiencies, i.e., prospects for decreasing the catch of cod while catch of other species are increased.
mercredi 23 avril 2008
Claudio ZOLI
University of Verona
Comparing inequality across distributions with different total income: a characterization of inequality equivalence criteria
Abstract: We introduce an axiomatic framework to analyze the perception of inequality across distributions with different total income. The main result is the characterization of a new two parameters generalized version of inequality equivalence criterion (IEC), the flexible IEC (FIE). This criterion is able to encompass all the most used criteria of inequality equivalence and is sufficiently flexible to provide a erception consistent with evidence from questionnaire investigations, namely that the inequality perception goes from the relative view (focussing on income shares) to the absolute view (focussing on absolute income differentials) as incomes increase. One parameter of the FIE is associated with the Bossert and Pfingsten (math. Soc. Sc. 1990) intermediate IEC (IIE) while the other is shown to lead to an alternative single parameter version of the IEC, the proportional IEC which is dual to the previous. We provide independent characterizations both of PIE and IIE. Also alternative IECs existing in the literature are characterized within the axiomatic framework suggested. These results are consistent with those obtained i the surplus sharing lierature and recently in the inequality measurement literature. Moreover they can provide insights on risk comparisons of lotteries with different expected value.
Mercredi 2 avril 2008
Louis LEVY-GARBOUA
Université de Paris 1, Paris School of Economics
Cognitive Consistency, the Endownment Effect and the Preference Reversal Phenomenon (text)
Abstract: We exhibit three non-standard cases of preference reversal (PR) between choices and valuations of bets. PR patterns diverge whether asking prices or bidding prices are used to elicit values, a finding not well explained by contingent weighting theory. PR also occurs when a lottery is confronted with a sure gain, which is inconsistent with regret theory. Lastly, PR does not require small probabilities of winning for the riskier bet. The endowment effect arises as a surprising consequence of the WTA/WTP disparity when the probabilities of winning get close to certainty. Due to the presence of a small uncertainty regarding goods which one does not own and to a discontinuity of WTP close to certainty, people underestimate the value of goods not owned but do not overestimate the value of goods owned. We consider a new theory of choice under risk, cognitive consistency (CC) theory (Lévy-Garboua 1999), which can predict both standard and non-standard cases of PR, the WTA/WTP disparity and the endowment effect in the context of single choices with a single parameter added to risk aversion. We show that the BDM mechanism and the random lottery incentive system are incentive-compatible if subjects have preferences which satisfy CC theory. A new experiment is designed to test the predictions of CC versus other theories of PR and the endowment effect. The experimental results strongly support CC predictions, reject the regret theory explanation for PR and the loss aversion explanation for the endowment effect, and allow direct estimation of risk aversion and the additional parameter of CC theory with no restriction on the utility function
Mercredi 26 mars 2008
W. Henry CHIU
School of Social Sciences, Universty of Manchester
Skewness Preference, Risk Taking and Expected Utility Maximization
Abstract: Available empirical evidence suggests that skewness preference plays an important role in understanding asset pricing and gambling. This paper establishes a skewness-comparability condition on probability distributions that is necessary and sufficient for any decision maker's preferences over the distributions to depend on their means, variances and, third moments only. Under the condition, an Expected Utility maximizer's preferences for a larger mean, a smaller variance, and a larger third moment are shown to parallel respectiviely his preferences for a first-degree stochastic dominant improvement, a mean-preserving contraction, and a downside risk decrease and are characterized in terms of the von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function in exactely the same way. The condition and its characterizations permit a rigourous evaluation of the available empirical evidence on skewness preference in the context of asset pricing and gambling. By showing that all Bernoulli distributions are mutually skewness comparable, we further show that in the wide range of economic models where these distributions are used individuals' decisions under risk can be understood as tradeoffs between mean, variance and skewness. Our results on skewness-inducing transformations of random variables can also be applied to analyze the effects of progressive tax reforms on the incentive to make risky investments.
Mercredi 12 mars 2008
Bernard SINCLAIR-DESGAGNE
HEC Montréal and CIRANO
Supply Chain Structures, Coordination Costs, and Trade
Abstract: The nature of trade has changed dramatically over the last decades. Technological and institutional developments have allowed multinational firms to more easily slice up their value chains ans disperse their production activities accross the globe, thereby leading to a remarkable increase in input trade. This phenomenon has of course drawn considerable attention from economics and business researchers.
While existing studies have gained key insights into the type of activities that are offshored and their ensuing welfare implications, its simplified technological setup cannot capture another key organizational feature which affects trade: the precise structure of supply chains. To see how the latter matters, imagine that a final good firm can fragment its production process into three sub-processes and locate one sub-process in East, one in Center and one in West. This firm can then use two types of supply chain. It can import the inputs produced in East and West directly into Center for good assembly (in accordance with some authors in the production management literature, we call this the moledular supply chain); or it can organize its supply chain sequentially by first producing a set of inputs in East and exporting it to West, then making a second set of (intermediate) inputs in west and shipping it to Center where the fianl good is asssembled. The chosen supply chain configuration will depend on the respective location's comparative advantages, trade costs between regions, and also coordination costs. Intuitively, the resulting trade and offshoring patterns may differ significantly depending on the supply chain structure adopted.
This paper articulates and explores this example further. We set up a simple three-country industry-equilibrium model in which final-good firms need to combine a continuum of inputs to produce a final good. Firms can choose from three types of supply chain structures to deliver their final goods. All inputs and assembly can either be made domestically, or firms can adopt a modular supply chain, or they can use a sequential supply chain. Comparative advantages being exogeneous and given, the resulting structures trades off coordination costs, which are higher under a moledular chain, and trade costs, which tend to increase under a sequential chain. We investigate the implications of this tradeoff on the equilibrium supply chain structure, as well as on trade offshoring patterns.
Mercredi 13 février 2008
Stéphane VIGEANT
EQUIPPE (USTL) and CABREE (University of Alberta)
Scale Efficiency Test and DEA Estimation: A Bootstrap Approach with Quasi-fixed Inputs
Abstract: The objective of the paper is to provide us with a nonparametric statistical test procedure for organization scale efficiency. This would allow the practitioner to test weather the observed scale efficiency is real or due to sampling variation. In order to do so, we use a smooth bootstrap methodology in both its homogeneous and heterogeneous versions as developped and represented by Simar and Wilson (1998 and 2000). The approach allows us to approximate the sampling distribution of the test statistic under the null hypothesis and to determine the decision rule. The scale efficiency measures are defined so as to include the quasi-fixed inputs. They are estimated using the DEA methodology. We present an empirical application of this methodology to Tunisian high schools. The results show that scale efficiency measures are sensitive to sampling variations. However, the simulation results show that very often we cannot reject the null hypothesis of scale efficiency for average size DMUs and to reject this hypothesis in favor of the alternative hypothesis of increasing returns to scale for the small DMUs and of increasing returns to scale in the case of the large units.