Download or read book The Cost Stickiness Phenomenon written by Daniel Baumgarten and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-04-23 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding cost behavior is a fundamental element of cost accounting and the management of a firm. Deviating from the traditional assumption of symmetric cost behavior, numerous recent research studies show that costs are sticky, that is, they decrease less when sales fall than they increase when sales rise. Daniel Baumgarten comprehensively analyzes the cost stickiness phenomenon by discussing its development and all relevant findings presented in the research literature. Furthermore, he provides several suggestions for future research and discusses important implications of cost stickiness for fundamental analysis and analysts’ forecasts by means of two comprehensive empirical analyses.
Download or read book Asking About Prices written by Alan Blinder and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 1998-01-08 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do consumer prices and wages adjust so slowly to changes in market conditions? The rigidity or stickiness of price setting in business is central to Keynesian economic theory and a key to understanding how monetary policy works, yet economists have made little headway in determining why it occurs. Asking About Prices offers a groundbreaking empirical approach to a puzzle for which theories abound but facts are scarce. Leading economist Alan Blinder, along with co-authors Elie Canetti, David Lebow, and Jeremy B. Rudd, interviewed a national, multi-industry sample of 200 CEOs, company heads, and other corporate price setters to test the validity of twelve prominent theories of price stickiness. Using everyday language and pertinent scenarios, the carefully designed survey asked decisionmakers how prominently these theoretical concerns entered into their own attitudes and thought processes. Do businesses tend to view the costs of changing prices as prohibitive? Do they worry that lower prices will be equated with poorer quality goods? Are firms more likely to try alternate strategies to changing prices, such as warehousing excess inventory or improving their quality of service? To what extent are prices held in place by contractual agreements, or by invisible handshakes? Asking About Prices offers a gold mine of previously unavailable information. It affirms the widespread presence of price stickiness in American industry, and offers the only available guide to such business details as what fraction of goods are sold by fixed price contract, how often transactions involve repeat customers, and how and when firms review their prices. Some results are surprising: contrary to popular wisdom, prices do not increase more easily than they decrease, and firms do not appear to practice anticipatory pricing, even when they can foresee cost increases. Asking About Prices also offers a chapter-by-chapter review of the survey findings for each of the twelve theories of price stickiness. The authors determine which theories are most popular with actual price setters, how practices vary within different business sectors, across firms of different sizes, and so on. They also direct economists' attention toward a rationale for price stickiness that does not stem from conventional theory, namely a strong reluctance by firms to antagonize or inconvenience their customers. By illuminating how company executives actually think about price setting, Asking About Prices provides an elegant model of a valuable new approach to conducting economic research.
Download or read book Asymmetric Cost Behavior written by Kristina Reimer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-07-09 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thesis of Kristina Reimer provides a comprehensive analysis of asymmetric cost behavior (also known as cost stickiness) by discussing its origin and development in the theoretical and empirical research from the 1920s of the past century up until today. Further, using an empirical approach, she investigates the implications of asymmetric cost behavior for credit and financial risk of a firm. In addition, she provides an introduction into credit risk fundamentals by focusing on credit default swaps. Thereby she analyses the development of credit default swap market as well as the components of credit spreads. Finally, she provides several suggestions for future research.
Download or read book Advances in Management Accounting written by Laurie L. Burney and published by Emerald Group Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-28 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advances in Management Accounting (AIMA) is a publication of quality applied research in management accounting. The journal’s purpose is to publish thought-provoking articles that advance knowledge in the management accounting discipline and are of interest to both academics and practitioners.
Download or read book Competition and Cooperation in Economics and Business written by Lindawati Gani and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asia and the Pacific have become the growth engine of the world economy with the contribution of two-third of the global growth. The book discusses current issues in economics, business, and accounting in which economic agents, as individuals, entrepreneurs and professionals, as well as countries in the Asia and Pacific regions compete and collaborate with each other and with the rest of the globe. Areas covered in the book include economic development and sustainability, labor market competition, Islamic economic and business, marketing, finance, accounting standard compliances, and taxation. It will help shed light on what business and economic scholars in regions have done in terms of research and knowledge development, as well as the new frontiers of research that have been explored and opening up. This is an Open Access ebook, and can be found on www.taylorfrancis.com.
Download or read book Labor Demand written by Daniel S. Hamermesh and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-28 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Daniel Hamermesh provides the first comprehensive picture of the disparate field of labor demand. The author reviews both the static and dynamic theories of labor demand, and provides evaluative summaries of the available empirical research in these two subject areas. Moreover, he uses both theory and evidence to establish a generalized framework for analyzing the impact of policies such as minimum wages, payroll taxes, job- security measures, unemployment insurance, and others. Covering every aspect of labor demand, this book uses material from a wide range of countries.
Download or read book Sticky Cotton written by Eric F. Hequet and published by Texas Tech University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential reference for anyone searching for ways to avoid or mitigate the problem of cotton stickiness.
Download or read book General Theory Of Employment Interest And Money written by John Maynard Keynes and published by Atlantic Publishers & Dist. This book was released on 2016-04 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Maynard Keynes is the great British economist of the twentieth century whose hugely influential work The General Theory of Employment, Interest and * is undoubtedly the century's most important book on economics--strongly influencing economic theory and practice, particularly with regard to the role of government in stimulating and regulating a nation's economic life. Keynes's work has undergone significant revaluation in recent years, and "Keynesian" views which have been widely defended for so long are now perceived as at odds with Keynes's own thinking. Recent scholarship and research has demonstrated considerable rivalry and controversy concerning the proper interpretation of Keynes's works, such that recourse to the original text is all the more important. Although considered by a few critics that the sentence structures of the book are quite incomprehensible and almost unbearable to read, the book is an essential reading for all those who desire a basic education in economics. The key to understanding Keynes is the notion that at particular times in the business cycle, an economy can become over-productive (or under-consumptive) and thus, a vicious spiral is begun that results in massive layoffs and cuts in production as businesses attempt to equilibrate aggregate supply and demand. Thus, full employment is only one of many or multiple macro equilibria. If an economy reaches an underemployment equilibrium, something is necessary to boost or stimulate demand to produce full employment. This something could be business investment but because of the logic and individualist nature of investment decisions, it is unlikely to rapidly restore full employment. Keynes logically seizes upon the public budget and government expenditures as the quickest way to restore full employment. Borrowing the * to finance the deficit from private households and businesses is a quick, direct way to restore full employment while at the same time, redirecting or siphoning
Download or read book Life Admin written by Elizabeth F. Emens and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2019 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life "admin" are the administrative tasks that have exploded in our busy lives. Scheduling. Planning. Paying. The busier our lives are, the more the invisible "admin" piles up on top of us. A working mother, Emens realized that mental labor was consuming her. To survive-- and to help others along the way-- she gathered favorite tips and tricks, admin confessions, and the secrets of admin-happy households. Get past the invisible quicksand that is holding you back and learn how to do less "admin"--And do it better. -- adapted from publisher info
Download or read book Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick written by Chris Bradley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beat the odds with a bold strategy from McKinsey & Company "Every once in a while, a genuinely fresh approach to business strategy appears" —legendary business professor Richard Rumelt, UCLA McKinsey & Company's newest, most definitive, and most irreverent book on strategy—which thousands of executives are already using—is a must-read for all C-suite executives looking to create winning corporate strategies. Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick is spearheading an empirical revolution in the field of strategy. Based on an extensive analysis of the key factors that drove the long-term performance of thousands of global companies, the book offers a ground-breaking formula that enables you to objectively assess your strategy's real odds of future success. "This book is fundamental. The principles laid out here, with compelling data, are a great way around the social pitfalls in strategy development." —Frans Van Houten, CEO, Royal Philips N.V. The authors have discovered that over a 10-year period, just 1 in 12 companies manage to jump from the middle tier of corporate performance—where 60% of companies reside, making very little economic profit—to the top quintile where 90% of global economic profit is made. This movement does not happen by magic—it depends on your company's current position, the trends it faces, and the big moves you make to give it the strongest chance of vaulting over the competition. This is not another strategy framework. Rather, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick shows, through empirical analysis and the experiences of dozens of companies that have successfully made multiple big moves, that to dramatically improve performance, you have to overcome incrementalism and corporate inertia. "A different kind of book—I couldn't put it down. Inspiring new insights on the facts of what it takes to move a company's performance, combined with practical advice on how to deal with real-life dynamics in management teams." —Jane Fraser, CEO, Citigroup Latin America
Download or read book The Paradox of Choice written by Barry Schwartz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.
Download or read book Democratizing Innovation written by Eric Von Hippel and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-02-17 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of user-centered innovation: how it can benefit both users and manufacturers and how its emergence will bring changes in business models and in public policy. Innovation is rapidly becoming democratized. Users, aided by improvements in computer and communications technology, increasingly can develop their own new products and services. These innovating users—both individuals and firms—often freely share their innovations with others, creating user-innovation communities and a rich intellectual commons. In Democratizing Innovation, Eric von Hippel looks closely at this emerging system of user-centered innovation. He explains why and when users find it profitable to develop new products and services for themselves, and why it often pays users to reveal their innovations freely for the use of all.The trend toward democratized innovation can be seen in software and information products—most notably in the free and open-source software movement—but also in physical products. Von Hippel's many examples of user innovation in action range from surgical equipment to surfboards to software security features. He shows that product and service development is concentrated among "lead users," who are ahead on marketplace trends and whose innovations are often commercially attractive. Von Hippel argues that manufacturers should redesign their innovation processes and that they should systematically seek out innovations developed by users. He points to businesses—the custom semiconductor industry is one example—that have learned to assist user-innovators by providing them with toolkits for developing new products. User innovation has a positive impact on social welfare, and von Hippel proposes that government policies, including R&D subsidies and tax credits, should be realigned to eliminate biases against it. The goal of a democratized user-centered innovation system, says von Hippel, is well worth striving for. An electronic version of this book is available under a Creative Commons license.
Download or read book Why Wages Don t Fall during a Recession written by Truman F. BEWLEY and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deep question in economics is why wages and salaries don't fall during recessions. This is not true of other prices, which adjust relatively quickly to reflect changes in demand and supply. Although economists have posited many theories to account for wage rigidity, none is satisfactory. Eschewing "top-down" theorizing, Truman Bewley explored the puzzle by interviewing--during the recession of the early 1990s--over three hundred business executives and labor leaders as well as professional recruiters and advisors to the unemployed. By taking this approach, gaining the confidence of his interlocutors and asking them detailed questions in a nonstructured way, he was able to uncover empirically the circumstances that give rise to wage rigidity. He found that the executives were averse to cutting wages of either current employees or new hires, even during the economic downturn when demand for their products fell sharply. They believed that cutting wages would hurt morale, which they felt was critical in gaining the cooperation of their employees and in convincing them to internalize the managers' objectives for the company. Bewley's findings contradict most theories of wage rigidity and provide fascinating insights into the problems businesses face that prevent labor markets from clearing. Table of Contents: Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Methods 3. Time and Location 4. Morale 5. Company Risk Aversion 6. Internal Pay Structure 7. External Pay Structure 8. The Shirking Theory 9. The Pay of New Hires in the Primary Sector 10. Raises 11. Resistance to Pay Reduction 12. Experiences with Pay Reduction 13. Layoffs 14. Severance Benefits 15. Hiring 16. Voluntary Turnover 17. The Secondary Sector 18. The Unemployed 19. Information, Wage Rigidity, and Labor Negotiations 20. Existing Theories 21. Remarks on Theory 22. Whereto from Here? Notes References Index Reviews of this book: In Why Wages Don't Fall During A Recession, [Truman Bewley] tackles one of the oldest, and most controversial, puzzles in economics: why nominal wages rarely fall (and real wages do not fall enough) when unemployment is high. But he does so in a novel way, through interviews with over 300 businessmen, union leaders, job recruiters and unemployment counsellors in the north-eastern United States during the early 1990s recession...Mr. Bewley concludes that employers resist pay cuts largely because the savings from lower wages are usually outweighed by the cost of denting workers' morale: pay cuts hit workers' standard of living and lower their self-esteem. Falling morale raises staff turnover and reduces productivity...Mr. Bewley's theory has some interesting implications...[and] has a ring of truth to it. --The Economist Reviews of this book: This contribution to the growing literature on behavioral macroeconomics threatens to disturb the tranquil state of macroeconomic theory that has prevailed in recent years...Bewley's argument will be hard for conventional macroeconomists to ignore, partly because of the extraordinary thoroughness and honesty with which he evidently conducted his investigation, and the sheer volume of evidence he provides...Although Bewley's work will not settle the substantive debates related to wage rigidity, it is likely to have a profound influence on the way macroeconomists construct models. In particular, the concepts of morale, fairness, and money illusion are almost certain to play a big role in macroeconomic theory. His demonstration that there exist in reality simple, robust behavioral patters that cannot plausibly be founded on traditional maximizing behabior also raises the prospect of a more empirically oriented, more behavioral macroeconomics in the future. --Peter Howitt, journal of Economic Literature Reviews of this book: I think any scholar interested in labour markets and wage determination should read this well-written, lively, and highly stimulating book...[It] provides a fresh view and a lot of complementary background knowledge about how experienced people in the field see the employment relationship and what is actually crucial. Knowledge of this sort is all too rare in economics, and Truman Bewley's truly impressive study can serve as a role model for future investigations. --Simon G'chter, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics To call this book a breath of fresh air is an understatement. The direct insights are fascinating, and Truman Bewley's use of them is sharp and insightful. Labor economists and macroeconomists have a lot to think about. --Robert M. Solow, Nobel Laureate, Institute Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Truman Bewley set out to conduct a handful of interviews with business executives to gain some theoretical inspiration, and his project blossomed into over 300 interviews with business people, labor leaders and consultants. He is truly the accidental interviewer of economics. Time and again, he found that workers behave like people, not atomistic, selfish economic agents. His insights will engage and enrage economic theorists and empiricists for years to come. --Alan Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University
Download or read book Optimal Pricing Inflation and the Cost of Price Adjustment written by Eytan Sheshinski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These collected articles constitute what is perhaps the definitive study of pricing models under inflation, providing a solid basis for further research on this elusive question. What are the real effects of inflation? These collected articles constitute what is perhaps the definitive study of pricing models under inflation, providing a solid basis for further research on this elusive question. Covering a broad range of theory and applications by well-known microeconomists, the eighteen contributions evaluate the effects of inflation on aggregate output and on welfare and reveal the scope of recent efforts to explicitly incorporate frictions in economic models. A basic building block common to most of the essays in this volume is the observation that individual firms change nominal prices intermittently. The frequency and size of nominal price changes are influenced by the cost of price adjustment and changes in the economic environment, production costs, market demand, market structure, and most important, inflation. Thus the degree of nominal rigidity is influenced by the economic environment, and in a dynamic context. Two introductory essays survey the empirical studies of pricing policies by individual firms and the theoretical efforts to integrate the nominal rigidities at the micro level into macro relationships. The essays that follow treat the general problem of optimal dynamic adjustment in the presence of convex costs of adjustment, include applications of the inventory models to the case of nominal price adjustment by an individual firm, address the question of aggregation, introduce active search by consumers, and provide empirical analysis of nominal price rigidities.
Download or read book The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money written by John Maynard Keynes and published by . This book was released on 1989 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Dominant Currency Paradigm A New Model for Small Open Economies written by Camila Casas and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-11-22 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most trade is invoiced in very few currencies. Despite this, the Mundell-Fleming benchmark and its variants focus on pricing in the producer’s currency or in local currency. We model instead a ‘dominant currency paradigm’ for small open economies characterized by three features: pricing in a dominant currency; pricing complementarities, and imported input use in production. Under this paradigm: (a) the terms-of-trade is stable; (b) dominant currency exchange rate pass-through into export and import prices is high regardless of destination or origin of goods; (c) exchange rate pass-through of non-dominant currencies is small; (d) expenditure switching occurs mostly via imports, driven by the dollar exchange rate while exports respond weakly, if at all; (e) strengthening of the dominant currency relative to non-dominant ones can negatively impact global trade; (f) optimal monetary policy targets deviations from the law of one price arising from dominant currency fluctuations, in addition to the inflation and output gap. Using data from Colombia we document strong support for the dominant currency paradigm.
Download or read book Learning from SARS written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2004-04-26 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.
