This paper develops a theory of outside ownership where such an ownership arrangement mitigates an external finance problem. Part of the gains from outside ownership accrue to asset owners which determines the asset value. The theory provides a context to analyze asset ownership and asset values...

Trade and growth theories predict a mutual causation of innovation and exports. We test empirically whether innovation causes exports using a uniquely rich German micro dataset. To overcome the potential endogeneity, we need to identify variations in innovations that are exogenous to export...

Is gift-exchange inevitably to be crowded out by impersonal market exchange? The presence of a thick-market externality indicates that this is indeed likely to be the case. But reciprocity or gift-exchange induces social relations. The utility function is extended in order to take account of...

This paper generalizes Porter’s notion of the value chain for the analysis of service industries. The generalization entails that the flow and the physical transformation and assembly of goods that are characteristic of manufacturing are generalized into flows and transformation of data and...

Short-term performance of a production management system for make-to-stock factories may be quantified through the service rate per shift; long-term performance through the average monthly work in process (WIP). This may yield, for example, that WIP is minimized, while the probability of the...

This paper addresses a highly challenging scheduling problem in the field of printed circuit board (PCB) assembly systems using Surface Mounting Devices (SMD). After describing some challenging optimization sub-problems relating to the heads of multi-head surface mounting placement machines, we...

In this paper we are especially interested how to optimize the production/inventory control for a manufacturer of sweets, under the following circumstances: short production lead times in combination with an intermittent demand pattern for the so-called B-taste items. As for A-taste items a...

In this paper we discuss a real-life case study in the optimization of the logistics network for the collection of containers from end-of-life vehicle dismantlers in the Netherlands.Advanced planning concepts like dynamic assignment of dismantlers to logistic service providers are analyzed by a...

Abstract: We study the effects of improvements in eBay’s rating mechanism on seller exit and continuing sellers’ behavior. Following a large sample of sellers over time, we exploit the fact that the rating mechanism was changed to reduce strategic bias in buyer rating. That improvement did...