This paper describes a maximum principle for distributed parameter systems, i.e. systems characterized by partial differential equations. The maximum principle is applied to solve the problem of a cattle rancher who must decide the number of cattle in different age groups to be bought and sold...

This paper investigates the determination and consequences of organizational changes (OC) in a panel of British and French establishments. Organizational changes include the decentralization of authority, delayering of managerial functions, and increased multitasking. We argue that OC and skills...

We explore buyback contracts in a supplier-retailer supply chain where the retailer faces a price-dependent downward-sloping demand curve subject to uncertainty. We formulate the problem as a supplier-led Stackelberg game and derive explicitly the equilibrium contract parameters along with the...

A commonly observed two-stage pricing strategy for a custom-made product involves a prepurchase entry fee for a potential consumer and a purchase price if he decides to buy the product. We solve and compare two settings: In the first, the firm does not commit in advance to the second-stage price...

Fixed costs of ordering items or setting up a process arise in many real-life scenarios. In their presence, the most widely used ordering policy in the stochastic inventory literature is the (s, S) policy. Optimality of (s, S) policies and (s, S)-type policies have been investigated for various...

In this paper we investigate evidence for the "skill bias" of organizational change (OC). These include the decentralization of authority, delayering of managerial functions and increased multi-tasking. We use several sources of panel data on British and French establishments. Three findings...

This paper is the first part of a project that will examine the role of MNCs in the transfer of FMS technology. The paper is the result of a hypotheses generating phase conducted largely through a literature review. Multinational corporations (MNCs) are the principal agents of international...

When will a monopolist have incentives to foreclose a complementary market by degrading compatibility/interoperability of his products with those of rivals? We develop a framework where leveraging extracts more rents from the monopoly market by 'restoring' second degree price discrimination. In...

In this paper we discuss some of the most important economic issues raised in European Commission vs. Microsoft (2004) concerning the market for work group servers. In our view, the most important economic issues relate to (a) foreclosure incentives and (b) innovation effects of the proposed...

This paper contains an empirical analysis demand for “work-group” (or low-end) servers. Servers are at the centre of many US and EU anti-trust debates, including the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger and investigations into the activities of Microsoft. One question in these policy decisions is...