Managing the product development process: a simulation study.

Processes; Simulation; Studies; Product; Product development;

Household liquidity and incremental financing decisions:theory and evidence

In this paper we develop a stochastic model for household liquidity. In the model, the optimal liquidity policy takes the form of a liquidity range. Subsequently, we use the model to calibrate the upper bound of the predicted liquidity range. Equipped with knowledge about the relevant control barriers, we run a series of empirical tests on a panel data set of Dutch households covering the period 1992-2007. The results broadly validate our theoretical predictions that households (i) exhaust most of their short-term liquid assets prior to increasing net debt, and (ii) reduce outstanding net debt at the optimally selected upper liquidity barrier. However, a small minority of households appear to act sub-optimally. Poor and vulnerable households rely too frequently on expensive forms of credit (such as overdrafts) hereby incurring substantial amounts of fees and fixed borrowing costs. Elderly households and people on social benefits tend to accumulate too much liquidity. Finally, some households take on expensive short-term credit while having substantial amounts of low-yielding liquid assets

Frequency up-converted radiation from a cavity moving in vacuum

We calculate the photon emission of a high finesse cavity moving in vacuum. The cavity is treated as an open system. The field initially in the vacuum state accumulates a dephasing depending on the mirrors motion when bouncing back and forth inside the cavity. The dephasing is not linearized in our calculation, so that qualitatively new effects like pulse shaping in the time domain and frequency up-conversion in the spectrum are found. Furthermore we predict the existence of a threshold above which the system should show self-sustained oscillations.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, to appear in European Physical Journal D3, replaced version with few minor grammatical change

Generating photon pulses with an oscillating cavity

We study the generation of photon pulses from thermal field fluctuations through opto-mechanical coupling to a cavity with an oscillatory motion. Pulses are regularly spaced and become sharp for a high finesse cavity.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX, needs EuroPhysics Letters Stylefile, to appear in Europhysics Letter

A Theory of Income Smoothing When Insiders Know More Than Outsiders

We consider a setting in which insiders have information about income that outside shareholders do not, but property rights ensure that outside shareholders can enforce a fair payout. To avoid intervention, insiders report income consistent with outsiders' expectations based on publicly available information rather than true income, resulting in an observed income and payout process that adjust partially and over time towards a target. Insiders under-invest in production and effort so as not to unduly raise outsiders' expectations about future income, a problem that is more severe the smaller is the inside ownership and results in an "outside equity Laffer curve". A disclosure environment with adequate quality of independent auditing mitigates the problem, implying that accounting quality can enhance investments, size of public stock markets and economic growth.

A Litner Model of Payout and Managerial Rents

We develop a dynamic agency model where payout, investment and financing decisions are made by managers who attempt to maximize the rents they take from the firm, subject to a capital market constraint. Managers smooth payout in order to smooth their flow of rents. Total payout (dividends plus net repurchases) follows Lintner's (1956) target-adjustment model. Payout smooths out transitory shocks to current income and adjusts gradually to changes in permanent income. Smoothing is accomplished by borrowing or lending. Payout is not cut back to finance capital investment. Risk aversion causes managers to underinvest, but habit formation mitigates the degree of underinvestment.

Large scale EPR correlations and cosmic gravitational waves

We study how quantum correlations survive at large scales in spite of their exposition to stochastic backgrounds of gravitational waves. We consider Einstein-Podolski-Rosen (EPR) correlations built up on the polarizations of photon pairs and evaluate how they are affected by the cosmic gravitational wave background (CGWB). We evaluate the quantum decoherence of the EPR correlations in terms of a reduction of the violation of the Bell inequality as written by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (CHSH). We show that this decoherence remains small and that EPR correlations can in principle survive up to the largest cosmic scales.Comment: 5 figure