11,549 research outputs found
Competition and Technological Complexity in Procurement: An Empirical Study of Dual Sourcing
The role of competition in defense procurement has long been controversial due to the extraordinary demand for technological advance, the relatively small production quantities involved and the importance of learning by doing. Since the early 1980s, Defense Department policy has encouraged the use of competition in the production phase of procurement where possible, particularly for relatively simple technologies. Recent theory, however, suggests that splitting production between two bidders ("dual sourcing") produces strong incentives for collusion unless the bidders are unsure of each other's costs, e.g. for sophisticated technologies in the early phases of production. Furthermore, dual sourcing may help discipline contractors in settings where contractual incompleteness is a particular problem. For both these reasons, dual sourcing may be more valuable for complex, rather than simple, technologies. To date, however, there have been no attempts to investigate empirically how technological complexity affects the viability of competition in procurement. I explore the effects of dual sourcing using a panel dataset comprising 14 missile systems with an average of 12.5 years of production history per system. Each missile's complexity is categorized based on the nature of its guidance and control system. Simple missiles enjoy greater scale economies than complex missiles, but the learning curves for the two missile types are not significantly different. The effects of dual sourcing, though, depend importantly on the nature of the technology involved: it significantly speeds learning and interferes with scale economies for complex missiles, but has no significant effects for simple ones. Dual sourcing thus produces no apparent savings for simple missiles, but for the average complex missile dual sourcing lowers unit costs by the seventh year of dual sourcing. Whether these potential savings justify the costs of transferring technology to the second source and the possible weakening of R&D incentives remains an open question.
Application of HCMM satellite data to mineral exploration
There are no author-identified significant results in this report
Field Utilization and Analysis of AIS 128-channel Imagery Using Microcomputers: Application to Yerington, Nevada Field Area
Geologists in exploration need to be able to determine the mineral composition of a given outcrop, and then proceed to another in order to carry out the process of geologic mapping. Since April 1984 researchers have been developing a portable microcomputer-based imaging system (with a grey-scale of 16 shades of amber), which were demonstrated during the November 1984 GSA field trip in the field at Yerington, NV. A color-version of the same technology was recently demonstrated. The portable computer selected is a COLBY 10-Megabyte, hard disk-equipped repackaged-IBM/XT, which operates on either 110/220 VAC or on 12VDC from the cigarette lighter in a field vehicle. A COMPAQ PLUS or an IBM Portable will also work on modified software. The underlying concept is that the atmospheric transmission and surface albedo/slope terms are multiplicative, relating the spectral irradiance to the spectral color of the surface materials. Thus, the spectral color of a pixel remains after averaged log-albedo and log-irradiance have been estimated. All these steps can be carried out on the COLBY microcomputer, using 80 image lines of the 128-channel, 12-bit imagery. Results are shown for such an 80-line segment, showing the identification of an O-H bearing mineral group (of slightly varying specific characters) on the flight line
Spatial Proximity and Complementarities in the Trading of Tacit Knowledge
We model knowledge-trading coalitions in which the transfer of tacit knowledge is unverifiable and requires face-to-face contact, making spatial proximity important. When there are sufficient “complementarities” in knowledge exchange, successful exchange is facilitated if firms can meet in a central location,thereby economizing on travel costs. When complementarities are small,however, a central location may be undesirable because it is more vulnerable to cheating than a structure involving bilateral travel between firms. We believe that our framework may help explain the structure and stability of multimember technology trading coalitions such as Sematech and Silicon Valley.Tacit Knowledge, Clusters, Knowledge Trading, Complementarities. Spatial Proximity
Buyer-Option Contracts Restored: Renegotiation, Inefficient Threats, and the Hold-Up Problem
“Buyer option” contracts, in which the buyer selects the product variant to be traded and chooses whether to accept delivery, are often used to solve hold-up problems. We present a simple game that focusses sharply on subgames in which the buyer proposes inefficient actions in order to improve his bargaining position. We argue for one of several alternative ways to model this situation. We then apply that modeling choice to recent models of the foundations of incomplete contracts and show that a buyer option contract is sufficient to induce first-best outcomes.
Study made of interaction between sound fields and structural vibrations
Study analyzes structural vibrations and the interactions between them and sound fields. It outlines a conceptual framework to analyze the vibrations of systems and their interactions, incorporating the results of earlier studies and establishing a unified basis for continuing research
Corporate Social Responsibility and the Environment: A Theoretical Perspective
We survey the growing theoretical literature on the motives for and welfare effects of corporate greening. We show how both market and political forces are making environmental CSR profitable, and we also discuss morally-motivated or altruistic CSR. Welfare effects of CSR are subtle and situation-contingent, and there is no guarantee that CSR enhances social welfare. We identify numerous areas in which additional theoretical work is needed.corporate social responsibility, environment, self-regulation, preemption, private politics
Feasibility of using S-191 infrared spectra for geological studies from space
There are no author-identified significant results in this report
High-order, Dispersionless "Fast-Hybrid" Wave Equation Solver. Part I: Sampling Cost via Incident-Field Windowing and Recentering
This paper proposes a frequency/time hybrid integral-equation method for the
time dependent wave equation in two and three-dimensional spatial domains.
Relying on Fourier Transformation in time, the method utilizes a fixed
(time-independent) number of frequency-domain integral-equation solutions to
evaluate, with superalgebraically-small errors, time domain solutions for
arbitrarily long times. The approach relies on two main elements, namely, 1) A
smooth time-windowing methodology that enables accurate band-limited
representations for arbitrarily-long time signals, and 2) A novel Fourier
transform approach which, in a time-parallel manner and without causing
spurious periodicity effects, delivers numerically dispersionless
spectrally-accurate solutions. A similar hybrid technique can be obtained on
the basis of Laplace transforms instead of Fourier transforms, but we do not
consider the Laplace-based method in the present contribution. The algorithm
can handle dispersive media, it can tackle complex physical structures, it
enables parallelization in time in a straightforward manner, and it allows for
time leaping---that is, solution sampling at any given time at
-bounded sampling cost, for arbitrarily large values of ,
and without requirement of evaluation of the solution at intermediate times.
The proposed frequency-time hybridization strategy, which generalizes to any
linear partial differential equation in the time domain for which
frequency-domain solutions can be obtained (including e.g. the time-domain
Maxwell equations), and which is applicable in a wide range of scientific and
engineering contexts, provides significant advantages over other available
alternatives such as volumetric discretization, time-domain integral equations,
and convolution-quadrature approaches.Comment: 33 pages, 8 figures, revised and extended manuscript (and now
including direct comparisons to existing CQ and TDIE solver implementations)
(Part I of II
Astroturf: Interest Group Lobbying and Corporate Strategy
We study three corporate nonmarket strategies designed to influence the lobbying behavior of other special interest groups: (1) astroturf, in which the firm covertly subsidizes a group with similiar views to lobby when it normally would not; (2) the bear hug, in which the firm overtly pays a group to alter its lobbying activitives; and (3) self-regulation, in which the firm voluntarily limits the potential social harm from its activities. All three strategies reduce the informativeness of lobbying, and all reduce the payoff of the public decision-maker. We show that the decision-maker would benefit by requiring the public disclosure of funds but that the availability of alternative strategies limits the impact of such a policy.
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