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This paper is concerned with the solution of linear and linear goal programming problems in which the values of the right-hand side parameters are not fixed constants. Specifically, we are concerned with linear optimization problems in which the right-hand sides of the constraining equations are free to vary subject to a set of linear constraining equations. By formulating a relaxed linear program wherein the right-hand sides are treated as variables, we show how it is possible to solve one larger linear program that yields as a solution not only the optimal values for the decision variables, but also the optimal values for the right-hand sides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the implications of using a wealth maximizing model to determine the optimal amount of insurance coverage in those cases of either a total or a partial loss. The impact of expenses, taxes, rate of return on assets, and the capital structure of the firm on this decision are considered. The results are interesting and provocative in that they reinforce much of what is intuitively known and because in several cases they suggest that intuition may in fact lead to incorrect decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forest resources constitute one of the major natural resources of the Southeastern United States. A significant amount of these forest resources are owned and managed by paper companies as industrial forests. The manager of an industrial forest faces the complex problem of simultaneously maximizing the return from the assets entrusted to his care and providing an even flow of wood to the mill. Basic to the problem is the choice of the criteria function for maximization.
The basic purpose of this dissertation is to evaluate the effects of alternative criteria functions on the optimum management plan. The two leading candidates for the optimization criterion are the net present value of the asset and the internal rate of return of the asset. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the question of optimal investment in a firm there are broadly two trends of thinking in the existing literature. In one, the maximand is a static utility function; and in the other it is the growth rate of sales revenue under the conditions of long run profit maximization. Above we have proposed a model of optimizing the investment with reference to a dynamic utility function over an infinite time horizon. If, however, the time horizon is finite the same criterion can be used; but obviously the results would be somewhat different depending largely upon the postulated transversality condition. We have then examined a special case of our model where the utility and production functions are specified in a certain way. It is found that then under certain assumptions the three criteria--Lintner-type current utility maximization, Baumol-type growth rate optimization, and our dynamic utility maximization over an infinite time horizon--fully agree in terms of their respective decision rules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author suggests a methodology for facilitating interactive decision making in a decentralized organization by providing information which may result in the transfer of divisional resources. The resource-transfer information is generated at the beginning of the planning period so that the organization's production control and evaluation systems may be formalized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents various approximations on saving propensities and shadow wage of workers in government investment projects. The wage that government investment projects must pay is typically held to be much greater than the marginal value product of a worker in agriculture. This suggests that neither the actual wage paid nor the marginal value product of a worker in agriculture correctly measures the social opportunity cost of labor to government investment projects; project planners need to take account not only of the output foregone in agriculture, but also of the social cost of any additional commitment to consumption that increasing project employment implies. In practice various approximations are used, and the most influential attempt to date to provide a consistent basis for these approximations has been the OECD Manual by Little and Mirrlees. This paper derives an expression for the shadow price of labor in government projects from a simple optimization model, from which the Little-Mirrlees shadow wage, along with several of the other formulae proposed in the literature, can be obtained directly by making appropriate parametric assumptions. Some hypothetical computations suggest that the resulting upward bias may be very considerable. Its implications are the selection of projects that are overly capital intensive and generate a sub-optimal quantity of employment per unit of government investment.

This paper presents a model for choosing the periodical collection in a reading room. The model consists of two stages. In the first stage the probability distribution of contacts by users with a given periodical is developed and employed to determine the utility of the periodical. In the second stage the problem of choosing an optimum periodical collection is formulated as a capital budgeting problem and solved with the aid of dynamic programming. The implementation of this model at the University of Connecticut is described in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B urnham P utnam B eckwith. Marginal-Cost Price-Output Control. K enneth E. B oulding. Economic Analysis. W. H. B. C ourt. A Concise History of Britain from 1750 to Recent Times. H oward G. D iesslin. Agricultural Equipment Financing. W alter E ucken. Kapitaltheoretische Untersuchungen. M axime G lansdorff. Théorie générate de la valeur et ses applications en esthétique et en économie. International Economic Papers, No. 4. J ean L abasse. Les capitaux et la région. A ndrÉ M archal. Méthode scientifique et science économique K urt B. M ayer. Class and Society. H. T heil. Linear Aggregation of Economic Relations. K nut W icksell. Value, Capital and Rent H erman W old. A Study in the Analysis of Stationary Time Series. B arbara W ootton. The Social Foundations of Wage Policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Various studies of prerecognition responses to tachistoscopically presented words have indicated that an individual is capable of discriminating among words or classes of words below the visual recognition thresholds of the specific words themselves. More recent theoretical and experimental papers have been concerned with offering alternative explanations for subception effects rather than with demonstrating their presence or absence. A. Binder points out that discrimination between classes of objects may occur at a lower threshold than the recognition of a specific object if the class characteristics have a lower threshold than those characteristics peculiar to a specific object. The number of appropriate verbal reports is usually limited-explicitly or implicitly-by a particular experimental design. Thus, a given report may represent an attempt to reconcile what was perceived with the type of response required by the experimental instructions. The results indicate that recognition of tachistoscopically presented words is not an all or none process, but that it proceeds along a gradient. Some characteristics of the words have lower thresholds than others and are recognized at shorter exposure times.

It is well-known that the traditional static theory of the firm cannot be applied without modification to the analysis of the dynamic problems of a mining firm. The concept of 'user cost' has been used in the literature to represent the discounted 'future' marginal profit foregone by a marginal increase in extraction now. Although this concept is useful for an intuitive understanding of the issues involved, the actual user cost itself, like many other shadow prices in optimization models, in general comes out of the solution of the problem rather than helps to obtain the solution. This paper presents a diagrammatic approach to a simple optimal extraction problem without recourse to an arbitrary construction of a user cost curve. Although our results can be obtained quite simply and definitely using optimal control techniques, the approach adopted here has the advantage of being accessible to a larger section of economists. Moreover for reasonably simple problems, diagrams help intuition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first is to obtain a nice characterization of production possibility sets generalizing the well-known nonsubstitution theorem. The second is Io obtain a relationship between indispensability of nonproducible commodities and desirable properties of production possibility sets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper reformulates Houthakker's capacity method for quadratic programming in the framework of the simplex and dual methods for quadratic programming, thereby greatly reducing the conceptual and computational complexities of the method. It is shown that the method is applicable for all convex quadratic programming problems, including the case of a semi-definite matrix of the quadratic form and that of constraints in equality form. In the linear programming case the method reduces to a parametric version of the dual method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Refutes a study which examined the nature of the Giffen effect. Reasons for the irrationality of step-optimization; Effect of secondary contraints on consumer goods; Analyses of the Giffen effects.

The article presents a theoretical exploration of a theory of cash balance holdings in the corporate sector presented by the authors, Miller and Orr, in a 1966 article titled "A Model for the Demand for Money to Firms." The authors do not seek to validate the model through empirical testing, but seek to discuss the extensions of the model that have been developed that may merit empirical testing. The article presents a summary of the results to be extended and discusses Bernoullian cash flows, asymmetric movement in driftless generating processes, money demand in a three-asset model, costs of transfer and the elasticity or demand for cash, the Eppen-Fama case, lumpy-and-proportional transfer costs, and the Weitzman case.

The users of an accounting report may be single or multiple. Restriction to the case of a single user results in a tractable statement of the accounting problem such that, with suitable specification, the tools of optimization theory may be employed to locate the best (optimal) method of accounting. Unfortunately movement to a multiple user situation tends to complicate the analysis. Nevertheless, such an approach is clearly applicable in a class of partnerships. In particular, I have demonstrated that a partnership characterized by Pareto optimal sharing of partnership outcomes (with the independence and differentiability requirements) is necessary and sufficient to construct surrogate utility and probability functions for the partnership. This, in turn, provides a basis for a well-defined cost-benefit view of the accounting choice problem. And as observed above, the prescriptions of extant accounting theory need not be consistent with those provided by the cost-benefit analysis. Quite clearly, normative accounting analysis, moving from the beliefs and preferences of the individual, is not confined to a single person world. Indeed, this type of analysis can be extended, beyond that of a partnership setting, to any situation where risk sharing is prevalent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the nature of optimal performance measurement in a multiperson organization. The focus is on a statement of the optimization problem. Performance evaluation refers to retrospective assessment of outcomes including profit measurement or standard cost variance analysis. The optimality question may involve the actual determination of an optimal measurement system, conditions for the existence of an optimum, and even a statement of a specific class of optimization problems. Experts say that a multiperson or a multiperiod setting is a necessary condition for the usefulness of retrospective evaluations of decisions.

The article cites a study examining the effect of aggregation on the success of decision making in accounting. It is argued that the aggregation of data can destroy a portion of the information contained in a set of data messages. This study considered aggregations which theoretically result in no loss of information content. The issue focused on the ability of a decision maker to use accounting reports having equal degrees of information content but different degrees of aggregation. Based on the results it appears that little is contributed by the accountant performing the simple aggregation described in the study.

The problem of scheduling jobs on M-parallel processors is one of selecting a set of jobs to be processed from a set of available jobs in order to maximize profit. This problem is examined and a dynamic programming solution is presented which decomposes it into a sequencing problem within an allocation problem. The computation required for solution is found to depend on the sequencing problem as it is affected by the waiting cost function. Various forms of the waiting cost function are considered. The solution procedure is illustrated by an example, and possible extensions of the formulation are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Describes a dynamic programming approach to optical grazing strategies using a succession model for a tropical grassland. Application of operations research techniques; Simulated grassland succession on an Indian grassland.

This article responds to a comment regarding the authors study which examined the problems of optimizing the financial structure of insurance companies and the regulation of insurance rates. Those who have studied the problems of optimizing the financial structure of the insurance company and the regulation of insurance rates should find the comments by Scheel and by Gummins and according to the author are not of considerable interest. Scheel presents an extension of the author's model that should enlighten those who seek to optimize the investment and financing strategies of the firm. The questions raised by Gummins and did not touch some rather important issues relevant to the regulation of the financing opportunities of the insurance company. The authors address themselves to the comments made by Scheel and then turn to the question relevant to rate regulation.

Recurrent decision making by a lower-level manager can be viewed as a sequential decision process in which time and uncertainty are limiting factors. Under these conditions, the manager must determine how to best utilize his decision making time consistent with his own particular set of decision values. A dynamic programming model was devised to determine the optimal (consistent) allocation of decision time among five different types of problems for a sequence of simulated recurrent decision situations. Fifty-one lower-level managers were interviewed about their use of decision time and decision procedures. The model was validated by comparing model assumptions and results with the findings from the interviews. The model was used to determine the effects of variations in the levels of time available and uncertainty upon the optimal allocation of decision time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a heuristic procedure for decision making coordination in a decentralized organization structure. The procedure consists of simplified rules of iterative communication between decentralized units and a central agent. The central agent assigns budgeted profit levels and adjusts such levels guiding the system toward optimality. The decision making procedure developed in this study is compatible with management by objectives practices and can serve as a prototype for decentralized management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with an alternative method of solution for the problem of an optimum study program by the method of incremental analysis, which offers some advantages over the dynamic programming approach. There is a need to determine an optimum assignment of courses to a student undertaking a program of study within a given curriculum. We make use of certain restrictions placed upon the problem to guide towarda an optimum solution. The curriculum is comprised of three study areas. TheTaft-Reisman type function expresses learning potential as a function of the number of courses taken in the study area.

The article presents information on the new types of experimental design and the correspondingly appropriate statistical analysis which provide new promise for the scientific study of educational problems in the United States. Scientific facts may command interest because they are slightly used to describe something that has happened or an existing state of affairs. The main role of science is to examine the causes of events thereby leading to the formulation of general laws. An additional control designed to offer evidence of the influence of maturation, practice effects and other possible contributing factors consisted of a sixth grade group which had no classroom instruction in the content of a unit. The museum type of excursion was the only one of the four excursions in which a meaningful difference was found in favor of the control group, that is, the group which did not take the excursion.

This article attempts to present a formal outline of the production aspect of the two-commodity model of the Principles from David Ricardo. Ricardo's Principles model involves two home-produced commodities only, the composite commodities "corn" and "manufactures." Production requires the use of land and the application of labour and capital. Ricardo fused the two into a single variable by employing the concept of "a dose of capital and labour," the consumption of which is assumed to be invariant with respect to the scale of production and the particular industry. Furthermore, output is an increasing function of input, which, with a given technology, increases at a constant rate. In terms of the classical terminology, this is the "law of constant returns" which was said to apply to manufacturing industry. In Ricardo's view, long-run equilibrium prices is determined by conditions of production. Relative production costs depend on the marginal product of inputs in the two industries. In Ricardo's production model, the resources restriction indicates the all-prevailing restriction which is at the root of the economic problem. In addition to this, the notion of the qualitative relationships between inputs and outputs. The postulate of the relevance of material incentives, the significance of the objective conditions, and the concept of optimisation latent in the notion of the margin, all feature in Ricardo's model. The author concludes by saying that the powerful intellectual attraction of the Ricardian system is presumably due to the universal traits of the model.

This article discusses a short screening test for organic deficit. This study examines the merits of 17 short tests culled from the literature or suggested by the authors' experience as indices of brain damage and applied to samples of normals and patients from all available diagnostic categories. Because definitive evidence of the validity of these tests for the specific evaluation of brain damage was lacking, the experimental design provides for an analysis of any diagnostic patterns that might appear.

The primary purpose of this note is to point out that while the test proposed in the article "A Test for the Detection of a Poisson Process" by Reinmuth published in the periodical "Decision Sciences," Vol. 2, 1971 is well-known, it is not a good procedure for this application. Secondly, this note aims to suggest more appropriate methods of analysis.

The recent literature reporting the results of economic research displays the significant change in emphasis toward empirical investigations. Generally in such investigations hypotheses are specified in mathematical form and subjected to relevant statistical tests. A major question becomes that of evaluating the empirical results. This often leads to a respecification of the initial mathematical formulation of the hypothesis and retesting—hopefully using a new sample. Unfortunately, new samples are often unavailable, or only available at unacceptably high costs, and consequently, as Huang states in a recently published text on econometric methodology: "it is often necessary to determine on the basis of the sample information the preferable specification of the variables to be included in the model and the functional relationship". Since the coefficient of multiple determination (&Rmacr;² as corrected for degrees of freedom) measures how good the sample data fit the hypothesized relationship, many researchers base their evaluation of empirical results on this statistic. In this regard, Theil has indicated that if we consider two alternative specifications, one true and one false, variables in a regression model should be added or switched so long as &Rmacr;&sup2' is increased. In practice researchers often follow such a rule to add or delete independent variables, change the functional form of the hypothesis and/or change the form of the dependent variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]