A Simple Approximation of Productivity Scores of Fuzzy Production Plans

This paper suggests a simple approximation procedure for the assessment of productivity scores with respect to fuzzy production plans. The procedure has a clear economic interpretation and all the necessary calculations can be performed in a spreadsheet making it highly operational.rationing; inequality preservation; taxation; manipulation; proportional method

Sharing the cost of risky projects

Users share the cost of unreliable non-rival projects (items). For instance, industry partners pay today for R&D that may or may not deliver a cure to some viruses, agents pay for the edges of a network that will cover their connectivity needs, but the edges may fail, etc. Each user has a binary inelastic need that is served if and only if certain subsets of items are actually functioning. We ask how should the cost be divided when individual needs are heterogenous. We impose three powerful separability properties: Independence of Timing ensures that the cost shares computed ex ante are the expectation, over the random realization of the projects, of shares computed ex post. Cost Additivity together with Separability Across Projects ensure that the cost shares of an item depend only upon the service provided by that item for a given realization of all other items. Combining these with fair bounds on the liability of agents with more or less flexible needs, and of agents for whom an item is either indispensable or useless, we characterize two rules: the Ex Post Service rule is the expectation of the equal division of costs between the agents who end up served; the Needs Priority rule splits the cost first between those agents for whom an item is critical ex post, or if there are no such agents between those who end up being served

n-Person Nonconvex Bargaining: Efficient Proportional Solution

For n-person bargaining problems the family of proportional solutions (introduced and characterized by Kalai) is generalized to bargaining problems with non-convex payoff sets. The so-called "efficient proportional solutions" are characterized axiomatically using natural extensions of the original axioms provided by Kalai.n-person non-convex bargaining; proportional solutions; egalitarian solution

Rational Inefficiencies

In this paper, we suggest that inefficiency may be an indirect, on-the-job compensation to agents in an organization. We show how to use actual production data to reveal the trade-offs between different inefficiencies (slacks). Moreover, we discuss how to use this to improve productivity analysis as well as decision making and incentive provisions in organizations.efficiency, preferences, incentives, bargaining, planning, Productivity Analysis,

Cost Allocation and Convex Data Envelopment

This paper considers allocation rules. First, we demonstrate that costs allocated by the Aumann-Shapley and the Friedman-Moulin cost allocation rules are easy to determine in practice using convex envelopment of registered cost data and parametric programming. Second, from the linear programming problems involved it becomes clear that the allocation rules, technically speaking, allocate the non-zero value of the dual variable for a convexity constraint on to the output vector. Hence, the allocation rules can also be used to allocate inefficiencies in non-parametric efficiency measurement models such as Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The convexity constraint of the BCC model introduces a non-zero slack in the objective function of the multiplier problem and we show that the cost allocation rules discussed in this paper can be used as candidates to allocate this slack value on to the input (or output) variables and hence enable a full allocation of the inefficiency on to the input (or output) variables as in the CCR model.cost allocation; convex envelopment; data envelopment analysis; slack allocation

Super Efficiency Evaluations Based on Potential Slack

Super efficiency evaluations are introduced along the lines of the potential improvements approach in Bogetoft and Hougaard (1999). Both a reference selection and a related super efficiency index is defined. The new (potential slack) super efficiency index is compared to a Farrell-based super efficiency index (as in Andersen and Petersen 1993) with respect to convex envelopment technologies.super efficiency, potential slack, reference selection, efficiency index, DEA, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Selling Digital Music: Business Models for Public Goods

This paper considers the market for digital music. We claim that the combination of the MP3 format and peer-to-peer networks has made music non-excludable and this feature is essential for the understanding of the economics of the music market. We study optimal business models for selling non-excludable goods and show that despite promising theoretical results, adding just a slight uncertainty about the number of customers has significant negative implications for profitability. Indeed, as the average number of customers tends to infinity the average payment per customer converges to zero. Therefore, the music industry should concentrate on alternative ways of creating profit such as selling access to listeners, concerts, merchandise, ringtones etc.digital music; experience good; public good; music industry; piracy

On the Welfare Economic Foundations of Health Status Measures

Measures of health status, such as e.g. the QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Years) measure, have been proposed as a tool in the economic assessment of new medical technologies, and its possible foundations in individual utility theory have been discussed in the literature. However, the problems of aggregation or interpersonal utility comparison inherent in the application of such measures has went largely unnoticed. In the present work, we consider a general equilibrium model of a society, where different aspects of health are identified as Lancasterian characteristics. In this model, we consider the welfare theoretical basis for evaluation of changes of allocation from a Pareto optimum, and in particular, we investigate conditions on the economy under which the individuals will have the same marginal rates of substitution between characteristics, which is a precondition for a meaningful measurement of health status. It turns out that this equality will obtain only under very restrictive conditions of separability in characteristics production.QALYs; Consumers' characteristics, General equilibrium

Inequality Preserving Rationing

The present paper considers rationing problems interpreted as e.g. bankruptcy problems or taxation problems. We demonstrate that among the continuous and order-preserving rationing methods, theproportional method is the only rationing method that preserves inequality in both gains and losses.rationing; inequality preservation; taxation; manipulation; proportional method

Decreasing Serial Cost Sharing: an Axiomatic Characterization

The increasing serial cost sharing rule of Moulin and Shenker [Econometrica 60 (1992) 1009] and the decreasing serial rule of de Frutos [Journal of Economic Theory 79 (1998) 245] have attracted attention due to their intuitive appeal and striking incentive properties. An axiomatic characterization of the increasing serial rule was provided by Moulin and Shenker [Journal of Economic Theory 64 (1994) 178]. This paper gives an axiomatic characterization of the decreasing serial rule.serial cost sharing; cost allocation; axiomatic characterization