Compensation plans, Uncertainty, Decision making, Cost variance

I. Introduction, 355.—II. A basic model, 355.—III. A model with unemployment, 357.—IV. Conclusion, 358.

I. Introduction, 641 — II. Leontief's dynamic multisector economy, 641 — III. A dynamic generalized inverse solution, 642 — IV. Initial conditions, 642 — V. Extremal solutions, 646 — VI. Concluding remarks, 648 — Appendix, 648.

Retail gasoline prices in 22 cities were surveyed to identify the effects of competition on price during the 1964-1971 period, when gasoline supplies were relatively normal and price wars were common. The informational theory of oligarchy is used to derive regression results and determine their market relevance. The 1965 price restoration move led by Texaco effectively eliminated small marketers selling at supra-competitive levels. The findings support the conclusion that collusive pricing was practiced to some extent during the period until competitive pricing returned in 1970. 8 references.

The Black-Scholes option pricing model, as generalized for dividend payments by Merton, is used to calculate implied variances of future stock returns. These variances are found to be better predictors of future stock return variances than those obtained from historic stock price data. A trading strategy is developed that exploits the informational content of the implied variances. The trading strategy, contrary to the efficient market hypothesis, produces abnormally high returns.

Stephen P. Bradley, Sherwood C. Frey, Jr., Equivalent Mathematical Programming Models of Pure Capital Rationing, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 345-361

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence that the Bureau of the Census' X–ll program for seasonal adjustment [3] overstates the incidence of seasonality in some forms of times series data. This problem arises in a recent study by Bonin and Moses [1] (hereafter B-M) indicating that 7 of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial stocks exhibited persistent seasonal patterns during the period July 1962 through June 1971.

Krouse and Lee [5] have formulated an optimal financing problem of a firm in the dynamic setting of optimal control theory. Specifically, the problem is to find a financing mix of retained earnings and external equity over time in a way that maximizes the present value of the entire future dividends stream accruing to the firm's initial stockholders subject to a given maximum allowable growth rate for the firm.