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on Project, Program and Portfolio Management |
| By: | Lawrence, Craig |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the social opportunity cost of a hypothetical public project in Australia and compares these values with the cost of the project as measured by factor prices. Since 2001, the Australian taxation system has included an ad valorem tax, the Goods and Services Tax, however relatively little analysis of the impact of this tax on public project evaluation methods has been undertaken. This tax creates divergences between social opportunity cost and conventional cost measures. Therefore it is recommended that shadow prices be applied to pubic projects. Following Campbell (1975), a shadow price can be introduced into Australian project evaluation in the form of a cut-off benefit cost ratio. The calculations reported on in the paper indicate that this ratio lies between 1 and 1.3 for public projects in Australia. |
| Keywords: | allocative efficiency; cost benefit analysis; efficiency; optimal taxation; project evaluation; social discount rate |
| JEL: | H21 H43 D61 |
| Date: | 2009–02–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:13481&r=ppm |
| By: | Belenzon, Sharon; Schankerman, Mark |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the role of intrinsic motivation, reputation and reciprocity in driving open source software innovation. We exploit the observed pattern of contributions - the 'revealed preference' of developers - to infer the underlying incentives. Using detailed information on code contributions and project membership, we classify developers into distinct groups and study how contributions from each developer type vary by license (contract) type and other project characteristics. The central empirical finding is that developers strongly sort by license type, project size and corporate sponsorship. This evidence confirms the importance of heterogeneous motivations, specifically a key role for motivated agents and reputation, but less for reciprocity. |
| Keywords: | incentives; innovation; intrinsic motivation; motivated agents; open source software; reciprocity; reputation |
| JEL: | L14 L17 L41 O31 O32 |
| Date: | 2008–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7012&r=ppm |
| By: | Iwan Bos (University of Amsterdam); Maarten Pieter Schinkel (University of Amsterdam) |
| Abstract: | Basing-point pricing is known to have been abused by geographically dispersed firms in order to eliminate competition on transportation costs. This paper develops a topographic test for collusive basing-point pricing. The method uses transaction data (prices, quantities) and customer project site locations to recover the basing-point(s) from which delivered prices were calculated. These bases are compared to the locations of the production mills in a test that discriminates between competitive and collusive basing-point pricing. We define a measure for the likelihood of collusion that can be used to screen industries that traditionally apply delivered pricing for the presence of cartels. We operationalize this screen with a software. The test is hard to beat for cartels using this otherwise elusive form of price-fixing. When a cartel was found to have abused the basing-point system, our method can be used to estimate antitrust damages. |
| Keywords: | basing-point pricing; cartels; detection; antitrust; damages |
| JEL: | L41 K42 C12 |
| Date: | 2009–01–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:uvatin:20090007&r=ppm |
| By: | Furuoka, Fumitaka |
| Abstract: | At the end of the 1990s, the Japanese government distributed annually more than US$10 billion as foreign aid directly or indirectly to developing countries. Japan’s ODA can be divided into the following four groups: 1) Bilateral Grants, 2) Technical Co-operation, 3) Multilateral Aid, and 4) Bilateral Loans. In 2001, Bilateral Grants made up 19.3 percent of Japan’s total ODA budget; Technical Co-operation constituted 29.7 percent; Multilateral Aid and Bilateral Loans accounted for 24.7 percent and 26.3 percent, respectively. There have been criticisms that Japanese ODA loans have been provided mainly for economic infrastructure projects only. In response to these criticisms, the Japanese government claims to have made efforts to channel these loans into various social sectors, such as agricultural projects or rural development. |
| Keywords: | Foreign Aid; Japan |
| JEL: | F35 |
| Date: | 2009–02–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:13598&r=ppm |
| By: | Loranth, Gyongyi; Morrison, Alan |
| Abstract: | We examine the interdependency between loan officer compensation contracts and commercial bank internal reporting systems (IRSs). The optimal incentive contract for bank loan officers may require the bank headquarters to commit not to act on certain types of information. The headquarters can achieve this by running a basic reporting system that restricts information flow within the bank. We show that origination fees for loan officers emerge naturally as part of the optimal contract in our set-up. We examine the likely effect of the new Basel Accord upon IRS choice, loan officer compensation, and bank investment strategies. We argue that the new Accord reduces the value of commitment, and hence that it may reduce the number of marginal projects financed by banks. |
| Date: | 2009–02 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:7155&r=ppm |