FAUCOMPRET E., KONINGS J. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., The integration of Central and Eastern Europe in the European Union: trade and labour market adjustment, Journal of world trade, Volume 33, Number 6, p. 121-145, 1999.

This paper analyses the economics of EU enlargement from three perspectives. First, we provide an institutional background and point out the importance of Agenda 2000. Second, we analyse the implications for EU trade with Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) and in particular we discuss the EU Antidumping legislation and its implications for trade integration between the EU and CEECs. Third, we engage in an analysis of the implications of economic integration for the EU labour market. To this end, we use a unique firm level survey of 281 Belgian firms. Our findings suggest that: (i) the EU follows a too restrictive approach to trade integration; (ii) economic integration with CEECs leads to a reduction in the demand for low-skilled labour in small firms; however, this effect is reversed for large firms.

GAEREMYNCK A. and VEUGELERS R., The revaluation of assets as a signalling device: a theoretical and an empirical analysis, Accounting and business research, Volume 29, Number 2, p. 123-138, 1999.

In many countries firms can choose whether or not to report a revaluation in the financial statements. An analytical model is developed to indicate conditions in which it is more likely that successful firms will choose not to revalue assets as a credible signal to potential investors. These industry settings include a high variance in success and low equity-to-debt ratios. The empirical results for Belgium indeed confirm that successful firms are less likely to revalue assets in those industries. However, only the revaluation of fixed tangible assets and not financial assets seems to be a credible signal. Finally, the results support the choice to revalue, but not the amount of revaluation, as a signalling

ROODHOOFT F. and WARLOP L., On the role of sunk costs and asset specificity in outsourcing decisions: a research note, Accounting, organizations and society, Volume 24, Number 4, p. 363-369, 1999.

The accounting literature has argued that firms overengage in outsourcing because they ignore the transaction costs involved in buying services from external suppliers. A filed study with health-care managers shows that decision makers are actually quite sensitive to the asset specificity and uncertainty associated with the "buy" option in an outsourcing decision. However, they also appear inappropriately sensitive to the sunk costs inherent in most real-life outsourcing decisions, and may actually underengage in outsourcing. Prior commitment to internal procurement systematically reduced the willingness to outsource, relative to a pure "make or buy" scenario

VAN DE WIELE P. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., De vrijwillige vermelding van de omzet in de jaarrekening volgens het verkort schema, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 2, p. 133-159, 1999.

VEUGELERS R. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., Anti-dumping policy and the profitability of national and international collusion, European economic review, Volume 43, p. 1-29, 1999.

This paper is the first to study the effect of European antidumping policy on market structure, i.e. the incentives for firms to engage in a domestic or international cartel in a multi-stage setting. The analysis concentrates on how European antidumping policy influences the incentives for firms to collude domestically or internationally. We tackle the question of whether antidumping regulation helps to establish, maintain or rather endanger full cartels as well as cartels restricted to domestic firms only. Our findings suggest that antidumping legislation can both have a pro-competitive or an anti-competitive effect. Which case prevails depends crucially on the measures taken by the government, which in turn depends on the welfare objective function used by the European government. Also the cost asymmetry and the degree of product heterogeneity between domestic and foreign firms matter. In addition to market structure we also discuss welfare effects. We find that antidumping measures are capable of both increasing or decreasing total community welfare depending on the type of measures installed.

GAEREMYNCK A. and VAN DE GUCHT L., The recognition of an accounting practice and its timing as signalling tools, the 21^st annual congress EAA, Bordeaux, 5-7 mei 1999.

VANDER BAUWHEDE H. and WILLEKENS M., Earnings Management and Institutional Differences: A Review of the Literature and Belgian Evidence on audit Quality as a constraint on Earnings Management, 22nd Annual congress of the European Accounting Association, European Accounting Association, Bordeaux, France, 5-7 May 1999.

GAEREMYNCK A., Het voorspellen van de kans op falen op basis van een eerste balans, dag van de creditmanager, Graydon, 28 oktober 1999.

WILLEKENS M., Het voorspellen van de kans op falen op basis van het creditreport, dag van de creditmanager, Graydon, 28 oktober 1999.

GAEREMYNCK A., 8 om te horen, Het jaarrekeningenbeleid van de ondernemingen, Ekonomika ,6 december 1999.

GAEREMYNCK A., Reële bestedingen voor onderzoek via het ontwikkelen van een O&O deflator, VRWB dag, Vlaanderen koploper in wetenschap en technologie? Beleidsvisie voor de toekomst, 20 oktober 1999.

WILLEKENS M. and VANDER BAUWHEDE H., Earnings Management and Institutional Differences: A Review of the Literature and Belgian Evidence on audit Quality as a constraint on Earnings Management, UFSIA doctoral workshop, UFSIA, May 1999 en VVE-dag van het Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek in Vlaanderen, Universiteit Gent, Maart 1999.

COLLIE D. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., Trade, FDI, and unions, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9943, 32 p., 1999.

In this paper we study the location behaviour of a foreign and a domestic multinational (MNE) competing à la Cournot in the domestic product market both under free trade and under the optimal domestic trade policy. Both firms produce a homogenous good using a labour intensive technology. While the domestic country is unionized, the foreign country is not. We find that when foreign wage levels are relatively low, both firms agglomerate in the South (North-South FDI) and the optimal government intervention is a zero tariff on imports. For intermediate wage levels abroad, no FDI occurs and the optimal government intervention is a tariff either lower or equal to the rent extracting tariff à la Brander and Spencer (1981). For relatively high foreign wage levels, the optimal tariff is such that both firms agglomerate in the domestic country (North-North FDI).

At least three important insights evolve from this paper. First, when the labour market is unionized, trade and FDI are clearly not substitutes. Second, when firms are footloose, the optimal domestic tariff is always lower or equal to the tariff policy in the absence of relocation possibilities. And third, a tariff, deterring outward FDI or inducing inward FDI can improve domestic welfare.

GAEREMYNCK A. and VAN DE GUCHT L., The recognition of an accounting practice and its timing as signalling tools, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9920, 25 p., 1999.

This paper extends the literature on the signalling function of accounting and financial information by investigating the information content of the adoption of a certain accounting practice, namely the recognition of deferred taxes in the financial statements. Specifically, we examine whether (1) the decision to recognise a certain accounting practice, and (2) the timing of the recognition supplement one another as signalling devices. The new accounting law on deferred taxes (Royal Decree of December 30, 1991) requires all Belgian firms to recognise deferred taxes for all grants on the balance sheet as of 30/12/91. The results show that the recognition and the timing of the recognition supplement one another as signalling tools. The immediate recognition of positive deferred taxes signals good news: firms that report positive deferred taxes typically perform better at the time of adoption and in the near future thereafter. Within the class of recognisers, early recognisers perform better than late recognisers. However, this second signal, the timing of the recognition is only used as a second signal for the class of tax-paying firms. Our findings also indicate that the impact on the balance sheet is a significant determinant of the decision to report deferred taxes. Firms where the adoption of deferred taxes would lead to a high increase in the debt/equity ratio are less likely to adopt, or, if they do report deferred taxes, do so later. These results suggest that firms decide not to recognise positive deferred taxes in order to limit the decrease in their solvency position. Indeed, firms that have already experienced a decline in their solvency position are more likely to postpone the recognition of deferred taxes.

GAEREMYNCK A. and WILLEKENS M., The simultaneous relation between audit report type and business termination: evidence for non-listed companies in an non-litigious audit environment, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9955, 43 p., 1999.

This study provides evidence on the relationship between audit report type and subsequent business termination in an environment where firms are closely held and the audit environment is non-litigious. The results show that an endogenous relationship exists between bankruptcy and audit report type, and between voluntary liquidation and audit report type. A non-clean opinion is typically given to firms with financial difficulties, which in turn become more severe after the receipt of a non-clean audit opinion. We find evidence that, even without a litigation deterrent in Belgium, financial performance has a similar impact on audit report type as in litigious environments, that is, the worse the financial condition the higher the likelihood of receiving a non-clean audit report. We also find that the self-fulfilling prophecy holds for bankruptcy, that is that a non-clean audit report triggers bankruptcy.

Our paper investigated the relationship between audit report type and business termination for various types of business terminations including bankruptcy, voluntary liquidation and merger. The results reveal significant differences across the forementioned types of business terminations. One difference is that the self-fulfilling prophecy only holds when the audited firm has no decision power as to termination of is operations, that is for bankruptcy. It does not hold for voluntary liquidation nor merger.

Another important difference relates to business termination through merger. No significant difference in performance exists between surviving and merging firms and no endogenous relationship exists between mergers and audit report type. For merging firms audit report qualifications are triggered by the weakness of the auditee's internal control system and not by substandard financial performance.

Finally, our study provides some evidence on quality differentiation between Big Six and non Big Six auditors in the Belgian audit market. When financial difficulties are obvious, as is the case when a company is about to go bankrupt, both Big Six and non big Six auditors are as competent and/or independent to assess and report going concern problems. However, when financial difficulties are less apparent, as is the case for firms which are about to go into liquidation, our results indicate that Big Six auditors are more likely to issue a qualified audit opinion.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., VEUGELERS R. and BELDERBOS R., Undertakings and antidumping jumping FDI in Europe, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9941, 30 p., 1999.

This paper studies the effects of EU antidumping policy when foreign firms have the possibility to 'jump' antidumping measures by engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the EU. Using a multi-stage framework, we study the EU administration's choice between an antidumping duty and a price-undertaking, taking into account the effect of these measures on the location decision of the foreign firm and the subsequent price competition between local and foreign firms. Our findings suggest that the EU administration acting purely in the EU industry's interest prefers a price-undertaking to a duty, if the latter leads to 'duty jumping' FDI. FDI toughens price competition in the EU market and leaves local firms worse off. Antidumping jumping FDI will only occur if the EU administration has broader objectives than just protecting the profitability of EU industry, if fixed costs of FDI are not too high, and if the cost advantage of foreign firms are, at least partially, firm-specific and transferable abroad. If foreign firms are able to act strategically taking into account EU antidumping policy, the presence of antidumping law can also discourage FDI that would have taken place under free trade conditions.

VANDENBUSSCHE H. and WAUTHY X., European antidumping policy and firms' strategic choice of quality, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9944, 22 p., 1999.

In this paper, we consider a European industry characterized by vertical product differentiation. Using a two-stage model with quality choice made before price competition takes place, we show that EU anti-dumping policy that takes the form of price-undertakings offers a powerful protection to domestic firms, but only at the price competition stage. Once the impact of the A-D policy on quality choices is taken into account, European Welfare as well as profits accruing to the domestic firm decrease whenever the free trade equilibrium is affected. Hence we show that European Antidumping policies may induce "perverse" leapfrogging.

COLLIE D. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., Trade, FDI and unions, Center for economic research. Discussion paper, Volume 9942, p. 1-26, 1999.

In this paper we study the location behaviour of a foreign and a domestic multinational (MNE) competing à la Cournot in the domestic product market both under free trade and under the optimal domestic trade policy. Both firms produce a homogenous good using a labour intensive technology. While the domestic country is unionized, the foreign country is not. We find that when foreign wage levels are relatively low, both firms agglomerate in the South (North-South FDI) and the optimal government intervention is a zero tariff on imports. For intermediate wage levels abroad, no FDI occurs and the optimal government intervention is a tariff either lower or equal to the rent extracting tariff à la Brander and Spencer (1981). For relatively high foreign wage levels, the optimal tariff is such that both firms agglomerate in the domestic country (North-North FDI). At least three important insights evolve from this paper. First, when the labour market is unionized, trade and FDI are clearly not substitutes. Second, when firms are footloose, the optimal domestic tariff is always lower or equal to the tariff policy in the absence of relocation possibilities. And third, a tariff, deterring outward FDI or inducing inward FDI can improve domestic welfare.

KONINGS J., VANDENBUSSCHE H. and VEUGELERS R., Union wage bargaining and European antidumping policy in imperfectly competitive markets, CEPR discussion paper series, Volume 1860, p. 2-31, 1999.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the interaction between union bargaining power and the likelihood and type of European antidumping measures (duties and undertakings) in imperfectly competitive product markets. We present a simple theoretical model which is well embedded in EU legal practice, to show that cost asymmetries, induced by union wage bargaining in a European firm, lead to an increase in both the likelihood and the level of antidumping protection against foreign imports of a similar product. In addition, our results indicate that a cost asymmetry, in the form of a unionized wage differential, alters the relative probability of a duty versus an undertaking. We show that the size of these effects depends on the intensity of product market competition. In a further step, we use Belgian firm level micro-data to provide some evidence for our predictions.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., KONINGS J. and SPRINGAEL L., Import diversion under European antidumping policy, NBER working paper series, Volume 7340, p. 2-37, 1999.

This paper is the first to study empirically the effects of European antidumping actions on import diversion from importers 'named' in an antidumping investigation, and potentially subject to protectionist measures, to countries not named' in the investigation. For this purpose we use a unique data set at the 8-digit product level. The amount of import diversion can be regarded as an indication of the effectiveness of antidumping policy which is used to protect the home industry from foreign imports. We find that -- in contrast to the US -- trade diversion in the European Union caused by antidumping actions is rather limited. This result holds even after controlling for selection-bias in the antidumping investigation procedure. We offer a number of explanations for the difference between Europe and the US regarding trade diversion.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., VEUGELERS R. and BELDERBOS R., Undertakings and antidumping jumping FDI in Europe, CEPR discussion paper series, Volume 2320, p. 2-29, 1999.

This paper studies the effects of EU antidumping policy when foreign firms have the possibility to 'jump' antidumping measures by engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the EU. Using a multi-stage framework, we study the EU administration's choice between an antidumping duty and a price-undertaking, taking into account the effect of these measures on the location decision of the foreign firm and the subsequent price competition between local and foreign firms. Our findings suggest that the EU administration acting purely in the EU industry's interest prefers a price-undertaking to a duty, if the latter leads to 'duty jumping' FDI. FDI toughens price competition in the EU market and leaves local firms worse off. Antidumping jumping FDI will only occur if the EU administration has broader objectives than just protecting the profitability of EU industry, if fixed costs of FDI are not too high, and if the cost advantage of foreign firms are, at least partially, firm-specific and transferable abroad. If foreign firms are able to act strategically taking into account EU antidumping policy, the presence of antidumping law can also discourage FDI that would have taken place under free trade conditions.

VANDENBUSSCHE H. and WAUTHY X., European antidumping policy and firms' strategic choice of quality, CORE discussion paper, Volume 9916, p. 1-26, 1999.

In this paper, we consider a European industry characterized by vertical product differentiation. Using a two-stage model with quality choice made before price competition takes place, we show that EU anti-dumping policy that takes the form of price-undertakings offers a powerful protection to domestic firms, but only at the price competition stage. Once the impact of the A-D policy on quality choices is taken into account, European Welfare as well as profits accruing to the domestic firm decrease whenever the free trade equilibrium is affected. Hence we show that European Antidumping policies may induce "perverse" leapfrogging.

GAEREMYNCK A., lid van de redactieraad van het Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, sinds 1995 en verantwoordelijke van de K.U.Leuven voor de LIM-nieuwsbrief op het vlak van onderzoek in het Nederlandstalig landsgebied (verantwoordelijke Mertens G., Tinbergen Instituut Amsterdam en K.U.Brabant), sinds 1998.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., member of the editorial board of Economisch en Sociaal Tijdschrift from January 1999 – November 1999.

WILLEKENS M., member of the Editorial Board of International Journal of Auditing, since October 1995.

FWO, ‘The impact of the European Competition Policy on the Evolution of Market Structure and Firm Growth’ funded by the Belgian Science Foundation’ supervised by a team from the University of Leuven

Promotor: VANDENBUSSCHE H., VAN CAYSEELE P., J. KONINGS J. (K.U.Leuven) and PAUWELS W. (UFSIA University of Antwerp).

VRWB, ‘Het ontwikkelen van een deflator voor de O&O uitgaven’, februari 1999- juli 2000.

Promotor: GAEREMYNCK A. with ROODHOOFT F., VEUGELERS R. and VAN HULLE C.

Voor het inschatten van de reële bestedingsmogelijkheden van O&O wordt vaak de BNP deflator gebruikt. O&O uitgaven zijn echter totaal anders samengesteld (meer lonen, hoger gekwalificeerd personeel) zodat het ontwikkelen van een specifieke prijsdeflator aangewezen is om de echte bestedingsmogelijkheden te kennen. De doelstelling van dit onderzoek is een dergelijke deflator te ontwikkelen voor zowel de universiteiten als de bedrijven.

VANDENBUSSCHE Hylke, CORE (UCL), Louvain-la-neuve July 1998 – January 1999; CENTER, Tilburg, KUB, January 1999 – June 1999, both as Visiting Fellow.

Vandenbussche H. with Van Cayseele P., Konings J. and Pauwels W. (UFSIA); an international workshop was organised at K.U.Leuven for one day on "Antidumping and Antitrust" by the supervisors of the Antwerp (UFSIA)-Leuven (K.U.Leuven) Flemish Science Foundation –project, February 1999.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., member of the Scientific Committee of the European Trade Study Group (ETSG: http://www.etsg.org), since 1998, selecting papers for the annual conference; affiliate Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London, Research since 1996 with the right to issue discussion papers circulated to +/- 8000 academics and institutions.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., referee for the following journals: International Economic Review, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, The Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Review of International Economics, Economica, The Journal of Industrial Economics, World Economy, Recherches Economiques de Louvain.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., Research and other Affiliations : Centre for Globalization (external fellow), University of Nottingham, since 1995; CEPR (Research Affiliate), London, since 1996; Judge Institute of Management, (Visiting Researcher), Cambridge, since 1996.

DENUIT M., DHAENE J. and VAN WOUWE M., The economics of insurance: review and some recent developments, Mitteilungen der Schweizerische Aktuarvereinigung, Number 2, p. 137-175, 1999.

The present paper is devoted to different methods of choice under risk in an actuarial setting. The classical expected utility theory is first presented, and its drawbacks are underlined. A second approach based on the so-called distortion expectation hypothesis is then described. It will be seen that the well-known stochastic dominance as well as the stop-loss order have common interpretations in both theories, while defining higher degree stochastic orders leads to different concepts. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the similarities of the two approaches of choice under risk as well as to point out their major differences.

DHAENE J. and DENUIT M., The safest dependence structure among risks, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 25, Number 1, p. 11-21, 1999.

In this paper, we investigate the dependence in Frechet spaces containing mutually exclusive risks. It is shown that, under some reasonable assumptions, the safest dependence structure, in the sense of the minimal stop-loss premiums for the aggregate claims involved, is obtained with the Frechet lower bound and precisely corresponds to the mutually exclusive risk of the Frechet space. In that respect, the present paper complements some previous studies by Heilmann (1986), Dhaene & Goovaerts (1996, 1997), Müller (1997) and Taizhong & Zhiqiang (1998). A couple of actuarial applications enhance the interest of the results derived

DHAENE J., WILLMOT G. and SUNDT B., Recursions for distribution functions and stop-loss transforms, Scandinavian actuarial journal, Number 1, p. 52-65, 1999.

In this paper, recursions are presented for computing distribution functions and stop-loss transforms. The recursions can be applied for exact and approximate evaluation. The class of recursions for the probability function includes the classed discussed by Sundt (1992), incorporating the class stuied by Panjer (1981). We discuss in particular convolutions and compound functions.

DE SCHEPPER A., GOOVAERTS M. and HEIJNEN B., A recursive schem for perpetuities with random positive interest rates. II. The impenetrable wall, Scandinavian actuarial journal, Number 1, p. 1-14, 1999.

In some former contributions, the authors investigated actuarial quantities with stochastic interest rates. In a first model, the randomness is modelled by means of an ordinary Wiener process, and as a consequence negative interest rates are possible. A second model provides a tool to avoid these negative interest rates, which can be necessary in particular situations. This paper wants to present an alternative solution to the problem of negative interest rates. This new model will be implemented to the case of an annuity certain and of a perpetuity.

DE SCHEPPER A. and GOOVAERTS M., The GARCH(1,1)-M model: results for the densities of the variance and the mean, Insurance:mathematics and economics , Volume 24, Number 1/2, p. 83-94, 1999.

This paper starts from the GARCH(1,1)-M model of Bollerslev [Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity, Journal of Econometrics 31 (1986) 307--327], and investigates the limit diffusion form as it is presented in Nelson [ARCH models as diffusion approximations, Journal of Econometrics 45 (1990) 7--38]. The distribution for the conditional variance process is derived, and in the limit for t going to infinity is shown to coincide with the stationary distribution given in Nelson [ARCH models as diffusion approximations, Journal of Econometrics 45 (1990) 7--38]. In addition it is shown how the distribution for the complete model can be arrived at; explicit calculations are given in case the conditional variance is a martingale.

DE VYLDER F. E. and GOOVAERTS M., Inequality extensions of Prabhu's formula in ruin theory, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 24, Number 3, p. 249-271, 1999.

Prabhu's formula in the classical actuarial risk model expresses the non-ruin probability in the bounded time interval [0,t] as a function of the distribution of the total claim amount in that interval. It is valid in case of an initial risk reserve u=0 only. We show that simple modifications of Prabhu's expression furnish lower and upper bounds for the ruin probability in case u>0 . These bounds allow to construct good approximations in the safe sense of finite-time ruin probabilities homogeneous extensions of the classical risk model. These estimates may be interesting in practice because no general algorithms are yet available for the numerical exact evaluation of finite-time ruin probabilities in such models

DE VYLDER F. E. and GOOVAERTS M., Explicit finite-time and infinite-time ruin probabilities in the continuous case, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 24, Number 3, p. 155-172, 1999.

In this rather self-contained paper we indicate general explicit analytic expressions for finite-time and infinite-time ruin probabilities in the classical risk model corresponding to initial risk reserves u=0 . We assume that the claimsize distribution has a density on [0,8) . Our solutions are continuous versions of discrete expressions by Picard and Lefèvre but our methodology is different and the continuous formulas have a component with no counterpart in the discrete case [cf. Picard, P., Lefèvre, C., 1997. The probability of ruin in finite time with discrete claim size distribution. Scandinavian Actuarial Journal 1, 58--69].

DE VYLDER F. E. and GOOVAERTS M., Solvency margins and equalization reserves, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 24, Number 1/2, p. 103-115, 1999.

We indicate a simple solution to the evaluation of solvency margins and equalization reserves in a non-life insurance portfolio. One of our provision models is based on a combination of ruin and credibility theory. It takes characteristics such as variance of claims, correlation of claims and volume of portfolio into account.

GOOVAERTS M. and DHAENE J., Supermodular ordering and stochastic annuities, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 24, p. 281-290, 1999.

In this paper, we consider several types of stochastic annuities, for which an explicit expression of the distribution function is not available. We will construct a random variable with the same mean and which is larger in stop-loss order, for which the distribution function can easily be obtained

GOOVAERTS M. and REDANT H., On the distribution of IBNR reserves, Insurance:mathematics and economics, Volume 25, Number 1, p. 1-9, 1999.

Starting from a basic IBNR model, for which variations in the three dimensions of the problem are considered such as e.g. given in Doray, 1996 (Insurance: Mathematics and Economics 18 (1), 43--58) the random fluctuations in the direction of the calendar years is modelized, taking into account the apparatus of financial mathematics. The method can be extended to take into account random fluctuations in the other directions of the problem (such as development and year of origin direction). The results are based on supermodularity order, such that, in the framework of stop-loss ordering one obtains the distribution of the IBNR reserve corresponding to an extremal element in this ordering, when some marginals are fixed. The results obtained in this way are general in that sense that all of the possible dependencies between the variables are allowed

DHAENE J. and GOOVAERTS M.J., Stochastic upper bounds for sums of random variables, Third International Congress on Insurance: Mathematics & Economics, London, 19-21 July 1999.

SIMON S., GOOVAERTS M.J. and DHAENE J., An easy computable upper bound for the price of an arithmetic Asian option, Third International Congress on Insurance: Mathematics & Economics, London, 19-21 July 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., DHAENE J. and DE SCHEPPER A., Stochastic upper bounds for present value functions, ASTIN/AFIR Colloquium, Tokyo, 22-27 August 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J. and DHAENE J., Supermodular Ordering and Stochastic Annuities, Meeting on Risk Theory, Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach, 5-11 september 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Stochastische annuiteiten, AKE Lunch Seminar, 8 maart 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Afhankelijkheden bij verzekeringen, Statistische dag, Utrecht, 10 maart 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Financieringsmethoden voor pensioenfondsen, Studiedag CED-SAMSON, 21 april 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Afhankelijkheid van risico’s met toepassing op IBNR berekeningen, ASLK seminar, 6 mei 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Application of comonotone risks to actuarial problems, CEMAPRE UNIV. of Lisboa, 30 november 1999.

GOOVAERTS M.J., Stochastic interest rates, City University, London, 21 november 1999.

GOOVAERTS, M.J., DHAENE, J. REDANT, R., Afhankelijkheid van risico’s – theorie en overzicht, casus, discussie, Permanente Educatie, Actuariëel genootschap, Woerden, Nederland, 27 april, 1999.

DENUIT M., DHAENE J. and RIBAS C., Some positive dependence notions, with applications in actuarial sciences, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9942, 17 p., 1999.

The paper is devoted to the study of several notions of positive dependence among risks, namely association, linear positive quadrant dependence, positive orthant dependence and conditional increasingness in sequence. Various examples illustrate the usefulness of these notions in an actuarial context.

DENUIT M., DHAENE J. and VAN WOUWE M., The economics of insurance: a review and some recent developments, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9917, 34 p., 1999.

The present paper is devoted to different methods of choice under risk in an actuarial setting. The classical expected utility theory is first presented, and its drawbacks are underlined. A second approach based on the so-called distorted expectation hypothesis is then described. It will be seen that the well-known stochastic dominance as well as the stop-loss order have common interpretations in both theories, while defining higher degree stochastic orders leads to different concepts. The aim of this paper is to emphasize the similarities of the two approaches of choice under risk as well as to point out their major differences.

DHAENE J. and DENUIT M., The safest dependence structure among risks, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9916, 15 p., 1999.

In this paper, we investigate the dependence in Frechet spaces containing mutually exclusive risks. It is shown that, under some reasonable assumptions, the safest dependence structure, in the sense of the minimal stop-loss premiums for the aggregate claims involved, is obtained with the Frechet lower bound and precisely corresponds to the mutually exclusive risk of the Frechet space. In that respect, the present paper complements some previous studies by Heilmann (1986), Dhaene & Goovaerts (1996, 1997), Müller (1997) and Taizhong & Zhiqiang (1998). A couple of actuarial applications enhance the interest of the results derived.

GOOVAERTS M. and DHAENE J., Supermodular ordering and stochastic annuities, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9906, 15 p., 1999.

In this paper, we consider several types of stochastic annuities, for which an explicit expression of the distribution function is not available. We will construct a random variable with the same mean and which is larger in stop-loss order, for which the distribution function can be easily obtained.

GOOVAERTS M., DHAENE J. and DE SCHEPPER A., Stochastic upper bounds for present value functions, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9914, 33 p., 1999.

In most practical cases, it is impossible to find an explicit expression for the distribution function of the present value of a sequence cash flows that are discounted using some given stochastic return process. In this paper, we present an easy computable approximation for this distribution function. The approximation is a distribution function which is, in the sense of convex order, an upper bound for the original distribution function.

SIMON S., GOOVAERTS M. and DHAENE J., An easy computable upper bound for the proce of an arithmetic Asian option, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9950, 15 p., 1999.

Using some results from risk theory on stop-loss order and comonotone risks, we show in this paper that the price of an arithmetic Asian option can be bounded from above by the price of a portfolio of European call options.

SIMON S. and VAN WOUVE M., Flexible unit-linked life insurance contracts and exotic options, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9951, 19 p., 1999.

In this paper we discuss the pricing of unit linked contracts that offer the insured the possibility to change some features of his contract at a prespecified point in time. This will be done by means of a generalised chooser option.

GOOVAERTS M.J., editor of Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, associate editor of ASTIN Bulletin, editor of Insurance: Mathematics and Economics.

GOOVAERTS M.J., BAUWELINCKX T., editors Praktijkgids Aanvullende Bedrijfspensioenen, Ced-Samson, Wolters Kluwer, 1999.

REDANT R., DHAENE J., GOOVAERTS M.J. and BAUWELINCKX T., set-up of VACS N.V. spin-off L.R.D.

F.W.O. A1795, Actuariële ordening van afhankelijke risico’s,

Promotor: GOOVAERTS M.J., DHAENE J.

L.R.D., verscheidene projecten Actuariële Divisie, met verzekeraars en banken (Fortis, ING, KBC, Fidisco, Bank van Breda, Cobac).

Promotor: GOOVAERTS M.J

O.T./97/6, Onderzoeksraad K.U.Leuven, Actuariële Aspecten van Afhankelijkheden in Verzekeringsportefeuilles,

Promotor: GOOVAERTS M.J., DHAENE J.

Spreeuw J., Heterogeneity of hazard rates in insurance, Universiteit van Amsterdam, Faculteit der Economische Wetenschappen en Econometrie, publicly defended October 8, 1999.

Promotor: GOOVAERTS M.

Member of doctoral committee: DHAENE J.

Actuarial Education and Research Fund, Society of Actuaries Commitee on Knowledge Extension Research, U.S.A., 1999 Individual Grants Competition. "Actuarial aspects of dependencies in insurance portfolios", Dhaene J., Denuit M. and Goovaerts M.

GOOVAERTS M.J. participated in the Third IME meeting at City University as member of the scientific committee.

DHAENE J., member of the "Information and Organisation Comitee" of the K.V.B.A. (Royal Society of Belgian Actuaries); also delegate for the K.V.B.A. in the educational comittees of the "I.A.A." (International Actuarial Association) and the "Groupe consultatif des associations d’actuaires des pays des communautés Européennes".

GOOVAERTS M.J., lid van de Onderzoeksraad

MCDONALD C. and VAN DE GUCHT L., High-yield bond default and call risks, Review of economics and statistics, Volume 81, Number 3, p. 409-419, 1999.

This paper empirically investigates high-yield bond default and call behavior of high-yield bonds using a competing risks hazard model that simultaneously estimates the impact of bond age, issue-specific characteristics and business conditions on both events. Results reveal nonmonotonic aging effects: default rates increase and then drop while call rates first increase and then level off. Rating and coupon size affect default risk while maturity and issue size impact only call rates. Defaults are more likely when economic conditions have worsened and no improvement is anticipated. Calls are more likely when interest rates have decreased but are expected to rise.

SERCU P. and VAN HULLE C., Fiscale regels voor optieplannen, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 1, p. 71-85, 1999.

Dit is een financieel-technisch artikel dat de bedrijfseconomische waardering van opties belicht en deze vergelijkt met de forfaits voorzien in het nieuwe ontwerpdecreet voor executive option plans. Uit deze vergelijking blijkt dat de voorziene regeling fiscaal gunstig is, behalve misschien voor aandelen met hoge dividenduitkeringen, en dat langlopende in-the-money opties op aandelen met klein dividendrendement aantrekkelijkst zijn. Tot slot wordt ook het fiscale nut van andere opties dan de gewone Europese calls toegelicht.

SERCU P. and VAN HULLE C., Traditionele versus optie-waarderingsmethodes voor groeibedrijven: er zijn geen mirakeloplossingen, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 3, p. 323-336, 1999.

De verdiensten van beslissingsbomen, al dan niet gecombineerd met optiemethodes, zijn onmiskenbaar. Zoals DCF in vergelijking met DD, dwingt een optiemodel de analist tot beredeneerde voorspellingen in plaats van oppervlakkig natte-vinger-werk. Bovendien vereist een optiemodel een grondig nadenken over risico en risicoveranderingen over de tijd. Toch mogen die troeven de analist niet blind maken voor de mogelijke fouten die geïntroduceerd worden door verkeerde veronderstellingen over de onderliggende processen, de implicatie van de onderliggende variabelen voor de kasstromen onder diverse investeringsbeslissingen, en de correctie voor risico. Er is een reëel gevaar dat, omwille van de techniciteit van de modellering, de uiteindelijke gebruiker weinig inzicht heeft in het hele waarderingsproces en in de modelleringsfouten die kunnen optreden. Optiemethodes, alhoewel theoretisch superieur, leveren voor de praktijk geen wonderoplossing.

VAN HULLE C., Corporate governance et décisions en entreprise: les entreprises belges se comportent-elles différemment des entreprises néerlandaises?, Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique, Volume 38, Number 2, p. 37-48, 1999.

Les modèles de governnance belge et néerlandais affichent de nombreuses différences. Là où, dans les entreprises belges cotées en bourse, les actionnaires de référence controlent fortement le conseil d'administration, les entreprises néerlandaises opèrent dans le cadre d'un règlement d'autonomie poussé, qui confère un grand pouvoir de décision au management. Reste bien évidemment la question de savoir si de telles différences en matière de rapports de force ont un impact sur le comportement des entreprises. Cet article contient des resultats empiriques en rapport avec cette problématique, en particulier au sujet de la croissance et du comportement d'investissement. Lorsque la croissance de la capitalisation bousière belge et néerlandaise ainsi que l'augmentation de la capitalisation de valeurs individuelles sont comparées, on peut observer des différences frappantes entre les deux pays. Ainsi, pendant la période 1974-1996, l'importance relative de la bourse vis-à-vis du PNB a connu un succés plus important aux Pays-Bas. Là où fin 1974, la proportion était encore identique, on constate qu'en fin 1996, l'importance relative de la capitalisation boursière est deux fois plus grande aux Pays-Bas qu'en Belgique. Cette différence va de pair avec une activité d'émission d'actions plus forte par les entreprises néerlandaises. Ceci tend à montrer qu'en comparaison avec les entreprises belges, les entreprises néerlandaises soit investissent plus facilement, soit changent leur structures plus facilement par le biais de fusion ou d'acquisition. Ces résultats sont de plus étayées par les résultats d'une enquête de causalité concernant le timing relatif de la croissance des investissements, d'une part, et l'augmentation du chiffre d'affairs et du cash-flow, d'autre part. Il en ressort que les entreprises belges ont tendance à attendre une croissance des cash-flows avant de consentir des investissements supplémentaires. Par contre, dans le cas des entreprises néerlandaises, l'augmentation des investissements devance la croissance en chiffre d'affaires. Sans fournir bien évidemment de preuve irréfutable, ces résultats laissent supposer que le modèle de governance influence effectivement le comportement des entreprises.

VAN HULLE C., Cross holdings in Germany, a comment, Journal of institutional and theoretical economics, Volume 155, Number 1, p. 110-112, 1999.

VAN HULLE C., Principles of corporate governance with an application to the financial sector, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 3, p. 299-322, 1999.

This paper discusses the logic of the share holder and the stake holder model for corporate governance and the way these theoretical ideas are applied in the actual governance system of the US (Anglo-Saxon) and Belgium (Continental Europe). Several major conclusions follow. First, a good governance solution for publicly quoted firms requires that the problem of 'who monitors the monitor' is addressed. In turn this implies that to be successful, actual governance systems need the integrated use of several tools. Second, because of the importance of quality labels in financial mass markets, and the fact that so far Europe has not been able to build a consensus on a workable alternative, the US (Anglo-Saxon) view of governance is likely to gain influence in European stock markets. Finally, when corporate governance arguments are applied to the problem of share ownership by banks within the Belgian context, it is seen that governance models add useful perspectives to this regulatory issue.

GAEREMYNCK A. and VAN DE GUCHT L., The recognition of an accounting practice and its timing as signalling tools, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9920, 25 p., 1999.

This paper extends the literature on the signalling function of accounting and financial information by investigating the information content of the adoption of a certain accounting practice, namely the recognition of deferred taxes in the financial statements. Specifically, we examine whether (1) the decision to recognise a certain accounting practice, and (2) the timing of the recognition supplement one another as signalling devices. The new accounting law on deferred taxes (Royal Decree of December 30, 1991) requires all Belgian firms to recognise deferred taxes for all grants on the balance sheet as of 30/12/91. The results show that the recognition and the timing of the recognition supplement one another as signalling tools. The immediate recognition of positive deferred taxes signals good news: firms that report positive deferred taxes typically perform better at the time of adoption and in the near future thereafter. Within the class of recognisers, early recognisers perform better than late recognisers. However, this second signal, the timing of the recognition is only used as a second signal for the class of tax-paying firms. Our findings also indicate that the impact on the balance sheet is a significant determinant of the decision to report deferred taxes. Firms where the adoption of deferred taxes would lead to a high increase in the debt/equity ratio are less likely to adopt, or, if they do report deferred taxes, do so later. These results suggest that firms decide not to recognise positive deferred taxes in order to limit the decrease in their solvency position. Indeed, firms that have already experienced a decline in their solvency position are more likely to postpone the recognition of deferred taxes.

VAN HULLE C., Belgische corporate governance in (snelle?) beweging, Bedrijfsbeheer en taalbedrijf, Jubileumboek 30 jaar VLEKHO, Agora Printing, Averbode, p. 177-190, 1999.

Mede door het groepsfenomeen, vormen belangentegenstellingen tussen kleine en grote aandeelhouders in beursgenoteerde ondernemingen het kernstuk van de huidige governancediscussie in België. Deze bijdrage schetst de redenen waarom een op Angelsaksische principes geïnspireerde aanpassing van de bestaande Belgische geplogenheden waarschijnlijk de beste oplossing uitmaakt. Men mag trouwens verwachten dat met de stijgende belangstelling voor het risicokapitaal vanwege het publiek, met het aanzwellende belang van institutionele beleggers en zeker met de komst van de euro, de financiële markten een toenemende druk op de ondernemingen zullen uitoefenen om hun corporate governanceregels naar Angelsaksische stijl aan te passen.

VAN HULLE Cynthia, member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Multinational Financial Management and member of Newsletter European Finance Association.

F.W.O. G.0149.97 (Belgian Foundation for Scientific Research), and OT/96/3 (Research Council of the K.U. Leuven), ‘Het Leven en Sterven van Startende Ondernemingen’, Oktober 1996 – December 2000.

Promotor: VAN DE GUCHT L., with Konings J., Roodhooft F. and Sleuwaegen L.

VIONA, (Research grant from the Flemish Ministry on Labour Administration), ‘Werkegelegenheidsdynamiek: het ontstaan en verdwijnen van Vlaamse Bedrijven’.

Pomotor VAN DE GUCHT L. with Konings J. and Roodhooft F., 1998-2000.

$200,000 for a study on the regional and industrial differences in the impact of firm entry on job flows.

VRWB, ‘Het ontwikkelen van een deflator voor de O&O uitgaven’, februari 1999 - juli 2000.

Promotor: GAEREMYNCK A., with ROODHOOFT F., VEUGELERS R. and VAN HULLE C.

Voor het inschatten van de reële bestedingsmogelijkheden van O&O wordt de BNP deflator gebruikt. O&O uitgaven zijn totaal anders samengesteld (meer lonen, hoger gekwalificeerd personeel) zodat het ontwikkelen van een specifieke prijsdeflator aangewezen is om de echte bestedingsmogelijkheden te kennen. De doelstelling van dit onderzoek is een dergelijke deflator te ontwikkelen voor zowel de universiteiten als de bedrijven.

Bethune Gerrit, The timing of replacement investments and the utilization of capital equipment, UFSIA, publicly defended on 30^th August 1999.

Member of the commission: VAN HULLE C.

VAN HULLE C., discussant EFA-meetings, Helsinki, 25-28 August 1999 and discussant workshop on issues in performance measurement, EIASM, 10-11 December 1999.

VAN HULLE C., Principles of corporate governance with an application to the financial sector, Fortis Bank leerstoel, 22 april 1999, Leuven.

VAN HULLE C., Beursintroducties in België: een nieuwe wind ?, Chubb, 9 november 1999, Brussel.

SERCU P. and VAN HULLE C., Fiscale regels voor optieplannen, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 1, p. 71-85, 1999.

Dit is een financieel-technisch artikel dat de bedrijfseconomische waardering van opties belicht en deze vergelijkt met de forfaits voorzien in het nieuwe ontwerpdecreet voor executive option plans. Uit deze vergelijking blijkt dat de voorziene regeling fiscaal gunstig is, behalve misschien voor aandelen met hoge dividenduitkeringen, en dat langlopende in-the-money opties op aandelen met klein dividendrendement aantrekkelijkst zijn. Tot slot wordt ook het fiscale nut van andere opties dan de gewone Europese calls toegelicht.

SERCU P. and VAN HULLE C., Traditionele versus optie-waarderingsmethodes voor groeibedrijven: er zijn geen mirakeloplossingen, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 3, p. 323-336, 1999.

De verdiensten van beslissingsbomen, al dan niet gecombineerd met optiemethodes, zijn onmiskenbaar. Zoals DCF in vergelijking met DD, dwingt een optiemodel de analist tot beredeneerde voorspellingen in plaats van oppervlakkig natte-vinger-werk. Bovendien vereist een optiemodel een grondig nadenken over risico en risicoveranderingen over de tijd. Toch mogen die troeven de analist niet blind maken voor de mogelijke fouten die geïntroduceerd worden door verkeerde veronderstellingen over de onderliggende processen, de implicatie van de onderliggende variabelen voor de kasstromen onder diverse investeringsbeslissingen, en de correctie voor risico. Er is een reëel gevaar dat, omwille van de techniciteit van de modellering, de uiteindelijke gebruiker weinig inzicht heeft in het hele waarderingsproces en in de modelleringsfouten die kunnen optreden. Optiemethodes, alhoewel theoretisch superieur, leveren voor de praktijk geen wonderoplossing.

VERDIN P. and VAN HECK N., The Euro and corporate strategy: reflections on the impact of the single currency on the strategies of non-financial companies, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 2, p. 197-220, 1999.

Now that the Euro has been introduced and Europhoria is still running high, it is time to (re)consider the strategic question surrounding the Euro from a corporate perspective. Is the Euro really strategic? In what way? Or is it just an operational nuisance?

Only a few months ago, most managers still considered the Euro mainly a technical and operational issue. Only one out of two companies saw strategic implications. Are these companies right? What are the real strategic questions that companies are facing up to and how does the Single Currency affect these? We see three main strategic questions :

We have addressed these questions in our paper, working against the background of year-long research in a wide range of industries and companies on the development of European strategies and organizations.

VERDIN P. and VAN HECK N., The Euro: operational hype or strategic relevance?, European management journal, Volume 17, Number 4, p. 356-367, 1999.

Until quite recently, many mangers have considered the euro mainly as a technical and operational issue, rather than examining its strategic implications. This article considers what strategic questions the euro poses to companies.

The author’s research shows that the effects of the single currency on market convergence are neither as overwhelming or as simplistic as different contributors to the debate have claimed, and the same goes for price divergence. Companies should not rush to homogenise prices just because of the euro. The single currency question can blind managers to some more important strategic issues.

The main lessons for corporates are that they should undertake continuous re-evaluation of their industry and their position within it. The process of managing change in the increasingly competitive European market should not be affected by the introduction of the euro.

SERCU P. and WU X., The forward bias: evidence against the transaction-costs hypothesis from the Intra-European cross-rates, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9922, 29 p., 1999.

The forward puzzle may be due to a combination of essentially unpredictable exchange rate changes and transaction costs—circumstances that, as Baldwin (1990) argues, should prevent speculators from entering the market and aligning expected exchange rate changes and interest differentials. We study this hypothesis using daily EMS-currency rates against the DEM. We find, first, that the existence of an ERM band for EMS currencies induces statistically significant mean-reversion (that is, predictability) in daily exchange rates against the DEM. Second, this predictability is not at all picked up by the forward premium. Finally, our trading rules produce an average abnormal profit that is larger than transaction costs. Thus, the puzzle still stands: the forward bias is not due to a combination of essentially unpredictable exchange rate changes and transaction costs.

VERDIN P. and VAN HECK N., The Euro and corporate strategy: reflections on the impact of the single currency on the strategies of non-financial companies, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9903, 20 p., 1999.

While the operational impact of the Euro should not be underestimated, the research question that lies underneath this paper is what the Euro means for corporate strategies in the European context. How will the conversion to a Single Currency change the key strategic questions that companies are facing up to. First of all, we found that the differences across borders and barriers for integration are far more complex than those resulting from different currencies. The Euro is only a very small piece of a constantly changing puzzle. Second, the Euro can open opportunities for value creation since the Euro might unleash opportunities for more segmentation but on ‘economic’ relevant criteria. Thirdly, the Euro can be used as a catalyst for discussing and speeding up cross-border integration.

WU X., SERCU P. and CHEN C. J. P., Japan's corporate returns on value and cost: a comprehensive look, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9926, 49 p., 1999.

The paper documents that for 1974-95 the Japanese non-financials' return on cost, a measure of return on (direct) investment, is consistently higher than their return on value (an estimate of the expected return or cost of capital). Against conventional wisdom, when translated into USD terms, the Japanese cost of capital is actually higher than the U.S. counterpart. The paper further shows that as of the 90s the main-bank centered keirestu firms, with their internally disciplined corporate governance system, lost their traditional advantage of lower cost of capital, compared to the non-keiretsu firms. Examining corporate earnings, investment, and forms of financing reveals that, in recent years, keiretsu firms have become more liquidity constrained than non-keiretsu firms. Their investment drops dramatically, and while (also much reduced) retained cash earnings provide most of the financing, debt financing is replaced by more expensive new equity as the major source of outside financing. Non-keiretsu firms are suffering as well, but to a lesser degree, and are still able to finance their investment even with substantial short-term debts. The main-bank system seems starting to crumble following an over-investment episode in late-80s.

Key words: Cost of Capital, Japan, Return on Investment, Financial Policy, Corporate Governance, keiretsu

SERCU P. is an Associate Editor of the European Finance Review, European Financial Management, and the Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions, and Money, and reviewed also for the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Finance, and the Review of Financial Studies. He was a member of the Program Committees of the 1999 Annual Conferences of the American Finance Association (Chicago, January 1999), the Western Finance Association (Santa Barbara, June 1999) and the European Finance Association (Helsinki, August 1999)

VERDIN P., member of the Review and Programme Committee of the yearly international strategic management conference, organised by Strategic Management Society (SMS); reviewer for: American Academy of Management, Strategic Management Journal, European Management Journal, British Journal of Management, Managerial and Decision Economics, Journal of Management Studies, Oxford University Press; member of the Advisory Board of the European Management Journal.

VERDIN P., book review of Mendelson H. and Ziegler J., Survival of the Smartest, Manageris, n° 17, December 1999.

VERDIN P., From Local Champions to Global Masters; a video about International Management, released on March 15 1999 by Videomanagement N.V., with Tractebel as an illustration. The video covers the ‘Why’, the ‘What’ and the ‘How’ of international management.

VERDIN P. and VAN HECK N., The Euro: Strategic opportunity or operational nuisance? Treasury Management International, February 1999.

VERDIN P. and VAN HECK N., Europe’s Non-Event, CFO Europe, December 1998 - January 1999.

INSEAD R&D, Does industry Matter? International evidence, empirical study of strategy and share-holder value in collaboration with Hawawin G.(INSEAD) and Subramanian V. (PhD Candidate, K.U.Leuven).

Promotor: VERDIN P.

The main research area of the project is empirical analysis of profit drivers. It has three major parts: the impact of industry and firm factors on performance for dominant and average firms; cross-country comparisons of industry and firm effects on performance; the impact of strategic, financial and operational value drivers on performance.

INSEAD R&D From local champions to global masters: a strategic perspectiveon managing internationalisation?, Book project with Van Heck N. (MacMillan, Forthcoming 2000).

Promotor: VERDIN P.

Interuniversity Attraction Poles, The Strategic Analysis of Organisations: Microeconomic and Management Perspectives, with an Application to Universities, financed by the Belgian government for five years. Three Belgian universities ( K.U.Leuven, ULB and the university of Mons ) are participating, with Dewatripont M. and Thijs-Clement (honorary president of the ULB), as the general promotors. The project founds on interdisciplinary research with regard to the agency theory, transaction theory and incentive theory, applied on universities, the non-profit and the private sector.

Promotor: DE BONDT R., with VERDIN P., Overlaet R., Moesen W., Spinnewyn F. and Tavernier K.

In March, Sercu P. and Uppal R. (then of UBC and MIT) were at NYU to jointly receive the 5th Annual Sanwa Prize for a Monograph on International Financial Markets, for successfully finishing a project "Exchange Rate Volatility, Trade, and Capital Flows under Alternative Exchange Rate Regimes.

In June, Sercu P. received the Western Finance Association Corporate Finance Award for a paper "Japan's Corporate Returns on Value and Cost: A Comprehensive Look", which is joint work with Xueping Wu and Charles Chen, both of the City University of Hong Kong.

Gilliot D., Overlaet R., Subramanian V., Verdin P., Verghote P. with Féola C., Tavernier M. and Wilkin L. (ULB), participants PAI MEETING, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, January 14, 1999.

Gilliot D., Verdin P., Verghote P., PAI SEMINAR, ECARE-ULB, Brussels, Belgium, March 26, 1999.

GILLIOT D., VERDIN P., VERGHOTE P, PAI MEETING, ULB, Brussels, Belgium, September 20, 1999.

Sercu P., Japan's Corporate Returns on Value and Cost: A Comprehensive Look, at the Western Finance Association Annual Meeting (Santa Barbara, CA), which is joint work with Xueping Wu and Charles Chen, both of the City University of Hong Kong.

Sercu P. selected papers and dicussants at the American Finance Association Annual Meeting (Chicago, Ill), and chaired, the International Finance session, January 1999.

Sercu P., selected the 18 papers and their discussants at the EFA/EIASM Doctoral Tutorial in Finance (Helsinki) and chaired the tutorial, August 1999.

Sercu P. and VINAIMONT T., Peso Effects in the Forward Bias: Evidence from the Private ECU, presented at the European Finance Association Annual Meeting (Helsinki); Sercu P. also discussed ‘Convergence in the ERM and Declining Numbers of Common Stochastic Trends’, by Rangvid J. and Sörensen C., Copenhagen Business School. In the Colloquium on Portfolio Choice, he discussed ‘Optimal Investment with Minimum Performance Constraints’, by Lucie Tepla, INSEAD, August 1999.

VERGHOTE P., GILLIOT D., Développements et usages des infrastructures télématiques dans les universités – Vers une recherche en réseau, ECARE-ULB, Brussels, Belgium, March 26, 1999.

VERGHOTE P., SUBRAMANIAN V., AIB’s 1999 Annual Conference, The Janus face of globalisation, Charleston, South Carolina, USA, November 20-23, 1999.

VERDIN P., presentation Sense and Nonsense of Globalization, Tijd Academie and Video Management, Senior Management Briefing - Brainproof for the new millennium, Brussels, Belgium, October 28, 1999; TIAS Tilburg University and Video Management, Tilburg, The Netherlands, October 29, 1999.

VERDIN P., presentation ‘From Local Champions to Global Masters’, Harvard Business School Club and Royal Society for the Advancement of Arts, London, UK, December 1, 1999.

VERDIN P., Eureko Alliance: Building a Pan European Network in Insurance and Banking (A-B-C).

The Eureko Case A-B-C, examines an innovative alliance of European insurance companies created in response to the expected consolidation of the industry in an integrating Europe. By exploring the evolution of the Alliance it addresses the critical issues both alliances and organisations integrating across regional boundaries have to confront.

Also: Teaching Notes (A, B & C)

VERDIN P., BOGAERT R. and DEMEYER A. (INSEAD), Alcatel Access Systems Division, Cases A, Learning from the past; B, Building for the future; and C ADSL – the Virtual Company.

The A and B cases describe the process, issues and challenges of Integration, in particular from the product development dimension. In the Alcatel case the integration initiative is intimately linked to a strategic change process which seeks to respond to a host of environmental discontinuities in the telecom industry.

The C-case zooms in on a specific initiative taken by Alcatel to spur innovation across geographical, functional and cultural borders. The key issue here is whether this provides an alternative for established development efforts and the tried route of acquisitions.

Also: Teaching Notes (A, B and C).

VERDIN P. and WALTER I. (Stern School of Business, New York University and INSEAD), The European Insurance Industry in 1998: The Urge to Merge, 1999.

This industry note describes structure and major changes affecting the sector which is currently undergoing drastic restructurings within and across borders and raises questions of the appropriate strategies for different types of players; to be used separately or in conjunction with the above mentioned cases on Eureko.

VERDIN P., VAN HECK N. AND VERCAEMST P., The Tractebel Group (in context of the Tractebel Chair for European Management Development at K.U.Leuven), Cases A, The Tractebel Group (A): Heading for the 90s; B, The internationalization of a big Goup from a small country; and C, The evolution of the Group until its 10^th anniversary.

Extended case series on the strategic reorientation, organizational change and internationalization challenges at Tractebel, major Belgian international utilities and enigneering group (now part of Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux world player) under the tenure of Mr. Ph. Bodson, CEO.

Case A describes the corporate transformation of a typical monopolistically oriented electricity holding in the 70s and 80s towards an industrial company in the 90s facing deregulation and competitive markets.

Case B describes the group’s internationalization strategy and the evolution of this strategy along the process of corporate transformation towards a competitive player in the formerly highly regulated energy industry.

Case C describes various international projects and the process of international organisation development within the Tractebel group.

Also: Teaching Notes (A, B & C).

VANHOENACKER J., BRYANT A. and DEDENE G., Striving for Methodological Fit in Business Process Management, Knowledge and Process Management, Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1999, pp. 24-36.

Much of the current debate around BPR centers on its claims for succesful implementation, and its distinctive novelty. In this paper we seek to move the debate more forward by observing that the methodological basis for BPR lacks transparency, and, very often, fundamental justification. We will explain some methodological shortcomings, and offer the SPARTA framework for developing a far more inclusive, integrative and adaptive approach to the field of I-BPM – Integrated Business Process Management. Poreover, the paper will elaborate on how this concept of methodological fit can be applied at various conceptual levels.

DEDENE G., Gestructureerd en Objectgericht ontwikkelen: aanvulling of tegenstelling?, Beleidsinformatica Tijdschrift, 4, (24), p. 1 – 41, 1999.

De vooruitgang van de informatica wordt gekenmerkt door een gestadige opeenvolging van vernieuwingen. Deze vernieuwingen gebeuren op het vlak van de informatie- en communicatietechnologie (I.C.T.) zelf, maar evenzeer op het gebied van de methoden en technieken voor de ontwikkeling van informatiesystemen, én de beheerstechnieken voor informatiesystemen. Een gevaarlijke gedachtengang hierbij is de veronderstelling dat iedere vernieuwing het vorige overbodig maakt. Bij de vooruitgang van methoden en technieken voor systeemontwikkeling blijft echter nog steeds de veronderstelling hardnekkig aanwezig. Het enthousiasme over een nieuw inzicht doet de goede kanten van vorige methoden en technieken vergeten. In dit artikel wordt uitdrukkelijk ingegaan op de manier waarop objectgerichtheid de kijk op gestructureerd ontwikkelen, ontwerpen en programmeren heeft veranderd. Het zijn precies de COBOL-programmeurs waarvan men zegt dat zij het moeilijkst te overtuigen zijn om over te gaan tot objectgerichtheid. Het is dan ook pijnlijk om te zien dat precies de handboeken met voorbeelden van Object-oriented COBOL (OO-COBOL) (te) vaak ongestructureerde voorbeelden bevatten. Nochtans is de rol van OO-COBOL voor de inburgering van objectgerichtheid te vergelijken met de rol van COBOL 85 voor het verder benadrukken van gestructureerd programmeren in COBOL. De bedoeling van dit artikel is dan ook tweeërlei. Enerzijds wordt uitgelegd hoe de ideeën van objectgerichtheid gestalte krijgen in COBOL. Dat wordt dus een critische blik op de ontwikkeling van OO-COBOL. Anderzijds wordt uitgelegd hoe de erfenis van gestructureerd programmeren nog steeds toepasbaar is bij objectgerichte talen. In het bijzonder worden voorbeelden gegeven van toepassingen van de JSP-techniek bij strenge objectgerichte talen, zoals JAVA, Eiffel en ook OO-COBOL.

Dedene G., Verhelst M. and Snoeck M., Bedrijven modelleren met MERODE, Business In Zicht, 1999.

Bedrijfsmodellering is het gebruik van formele modellen voor het begrijpen, en desnoods bijsturen, van bedrijfsverrichtingen, op een dergelijke wijze dat de modellen gemakkelijk vertaald kunnen worden naar informatie- en communicatiesystemen. In september 1999 verscheen bij Leuven University Press het boek "Object-Oriented Enterprise Modelling with MERODE", met als auteurs Monique Snoeck, Guido Dedene, Maurice Verhelst en Anne-Marie Depuydt, allen verbonden aan de K.U.Leuven. Dit boek verschaft inzicht in de methode MERODE. (Model-based Existence-dependency Relationship Object-oriented Development), ontwikkeld binnen de vakgroep Beleidsinformatica, als resultaat van jarenlang onderzoek rond bedrijfsmodellering. Verschillende bedrijven, waaronder partners van het LIRIS (Leuven Institute for Research in Information Systems), passen de methode met succes toe, en koppelen hun bemerkingen terug naar de vakgroep.

PAUWELS K., VAN QUICKENBORNE C. and VANTHIENEN J., De unified modeling language (UML), Beleidsinformatica tijdschrift, Volume 25, Number 4, p. 1-47, 1999.

Het toenemend succes van het object-georiënteerd programmeren eind jaren tachtig en begin jaren negentig leidde tot een groeiende behoefte aan methoden voor de ondersteuning van deze vorm van software-ontwikkeling. Dit resulteerde in een veelheid aan methoden die vaak voor specifieke probleemdomeinen ontwikkeld werden. Al deze methoden hadden of hebben een aantal sterke en zwakke kanten en verschillen in wisselende mate van elkaar.

Ervaren ontwikkelaars maken vaak gebruik van een combinatie van verschillende methoden waarbij er dan één als basis gebruikt wordt. Na verloop van tijd, met de verdere ontwikkeling van de diverse methoden, begonnen ze steeds meer op elkaar te lijken en steeds meer van elkaar te lenen. Er ontstond dus een potentieel voor één methode die alle goede ideeën en sterke kanten combineert.

Het is in deze context dat de Unified Modeling Language ontwikkeld werd, met als één van de doelen het beslechten van deze "methodenstrijd".

VAN DEN BOSSCHE F., VANTHIENEN J., WETS G. and WITLOX F., Het ontwikkelen van een fuzzy kennissysteem voor de evaluatie van vestigingsfactoren voor petrochemische bedrijven, Beleidsinformatica tijdschrift, Volume 25, Number 1, p. 1-34, 1999.

In deze bijdrage wordt gerapporteerd over een onderzoek naar de praktijk van fuzzy kennissystemen. Hierbij werd een fuzzy kennissysteem uitgewerkt, gebaseerd op Matisse, een geheel van 90 beslissingstabellen dat werd opgesteld om petrochemische bedrijven in het Antwerpse havengebied toe te laten hun locatie te evalueren. De doelstelling van deze bijdrage is tweevoudig. Vooreerst wordt nagegaan hoe in de praktijk fuzzy kennissystemen van enige omvang kunnen gebouwd worden. Nadien wordt onderzocht of de resultaten, die door een fuzzy kennissysteem worden gegenereerd, inderdaad beter en meer intuïtief zijn dan de beslissingen die met behulp van een klassiek kennissysteem worden genomen.

VANDENBULCKE J., Databases, datawarehousing, OLAP en mining, Beleidsinformatica tijdschrift, Volume 25, Number 2, p. 1-36, 1999.

In een al maar sneller veranderende wereld worden informatie en kennis over de eigen organisatie en over de buitenwereld steeds belangrijker. Business Intelligence is sinds enige tijd een populaire verzamelterm voor het fenomeen dat erin bestaat om informatie en kennis uit gegevens te destilleren. Business Intelligence Systemen zijn systemen waarmee deze activiteit op een systematische wijze kan worden georganiseerd.

VERHELST M., VANDENBULCKE J. and MEES M., 25 jaar beleidsinformatica, Beleidsinformatica tijdschrift, Volume 25, Number 3, p. 1-32, 1999.

Op 15 november 1999 werd het feit gevierd dat de eerste diploma's Beleidsinformatica 25 jaar geleden werden afgeleverd aan onze Faculteit, met een academische zitting in de Universiteitshal en met meer dan 300 aanwezigen, alumini en belangstellenden. Dit was tevens de viering van 25 jaar CBL. De teksten van de toespraken worden in dit nummer integraal weergegeven, samen met een aantal foto's die herinneringen oproepen aan deze heuglijke dag.

WETS G. and VANTHIENEN J., Intelligente bedrijfsvoering door kennisontdekkingsproces, Informatie, Volume 41, Number 1, p. 48-55, 1999.

Een goede omschrijving geven van Business Intelligence is geen gemakkelijke opdracht. Vaak blijkt dat deze term verschillende ladingen dekt. Hierbij duiken dan begrippen op als datawarehousing, datamining en knowledge management. Business Intelligence kan gezien worden als een verzameling van concepten met als doel een toegevoegde waarde te leveren voor 'the business'. Hoe dit echter concreet moet ingevuld worden om goede resultaten te verkrijgen, is vaak minder duidelijk.

DEDENE G., Teaching Eiffel as a first programming language, Proceedings of Technology for Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS USA 99), Santa Barbara (U.S.A.), Prentice Hall, 1999.

About 25 years ago Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven) inserted information systems studies in its academic curriculum. Apart from special studies, such a Business Engineering in Information Systems, some compulsory computer courses for all Economy students were inserted. One such course is the "Introduction to Information Systems", a 60-hours course which shares two major goals. First of all, after the course, the student should have gained insight in the current state-of-art of Information and Communication Technology (I.C.T.), sufficient to judge the possibilities (as well as restrictions) of that technology for business applications. Hence one half of the course is devoted to Information and Communication Technology subjects, including computer platforms (hardware trends, operating systems) and networking. Next the students should learn the basic mechanisms to understand and construct computer applications. The ambition level is a first contact with software construction, illustrated with simple systems examples. The Applied Economics curriculum has two more 60-hours courses addressing more complex systems based on databases and office software. The majority of the participants to this course had no programming experience so far. None of them will really become a programmer in a later life. This paper explains how the transition was made from structured programming, based on PASCAL, to Eiffel, a pure object-oriented language with a PASCAL-like syntax.

POELS G. and DEDENE G., Modelling and measuring object-oriented software attributes with proximity structures, in: F.Brito e Abreu en H.A. Sahraoui (eds.), Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Quantitative Approaches in Object-Oriented Software Engineering, juni 1999.

We present an approach to model software attributes with proximity structures. These are empirical relational structures that describe the concept of dissimilarity or conceptual distance. Measurement theory is used to formally validate software measures as measures of distance. Our 'distance-based' approach is presented as a constructive five-step measurement procedure that hides the complexity of the underlying measurement theoretic constructs from the user. Special attention is paid to an intuitive hierarchy of assumptions on which the constructive procedure is based. We also give a brief overview of some results regarding the distance-based measurement of object-oriented enterprise models.

SNOECK M. and DEDENE G., The case against message passing, in Object Technology ’99 Conference Proceedings, Oxford (U.K.), March 1999.

Object-orientation started with programming languages. OO Design and analysis methods have taken over the same ideas virtually unchanged. However, as this tutorial will show, message passing is far too implementation-specific to be helpful for OO analysis. Instead, we propose a new interaction mechanism, at a higher level of abstraction. In this tutorial, we shall teach this new form of interaction and link it to message passing. Delegates will learn the advantages of this new form of interaction by developing a simple example. The transition to design will show the possible implementation options.

VANHOENACKER J., BRYANT A. and DEDENE G., Creating a knowledge management architecture for Business Process Management and Business Process Change, Proceedings of the ACM SIGCPR (Special Interest Group in Computer Personnel Research) Conference, ACM Press, april 1999.

In this paper we seek to elaborate on a recent understanding that successfully inducing business process change is highly dependent upon the knowledge management capabilities of an organization. From this perspective, we believe that the current methodological basis for business process management lacks transparency and, very often, fundamental justification. Most methodological support advanced in the literature is taken too often for granted, and does not seize business process change as a knowledge creation effort. As a consequence, many business process professionals fail to mobilize, exploit and capitalize on the organizational knowledge base, which is needed for inducing business process change. In this paper, we will explain some of these methodological shortcomings, and offer the SPARTA framework for developing a far more inclusive, integrative and adaptive approach to the field of business process knowledge management. The framework reflects our belief that successful business process change highly depends on a degree to which some key dimensions fit together harmoniously. Moreover, the paper will elaborate on how this concept of methodological fit can be applied at various conceptual levels. Illustrations from the Financial Services Industry will accompany our understandings.

DEDENE G., €-Commerce with distributed trusted objects on the Internet: the Experience Economy in action, Proceedings of the GSE International 40^th Anniversary Conference, Porto (Portugal), October 1999.

This keynote presentation addressed the need to understand trust as a fundamental driver for future €-Commerce acitivities, and the way how trust is realised in distributed object-oriented frameworks. The lecture addressed both economical and technological aspects of this problem, and linked it into the emerging experience economy theory of J. Pine.

DEDENE G., No reengineering without engineering: in search of consistency in object-oriented models, Proceedings of the PWC PDC Surgery Workshop, Dessau (Germany), September 1999.

This lecture has explained the importance of consistency in object-oriented models, and in particular business models, to an audience of business process change consultants. The principles of MERODE have been explained and illustrated.

POELMANS S., The Acceptance of Workflow Systems, The 6th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Copenhagen, Denmark, 12-16 September 1999.

VANTHIENEN J., Tabular Verification & Validation of Knowledge-based Systems, 7^th Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Databases, Szklarska Poreba, Poland, May 14-16, 1999.

VANTHIENEN J., An Illustration of Verification and Validation in the Modeling Phase of Knowledge Based Systems, International Seminar for the Bilateral Project in Knowledge Acquisition and Distributed Learning, Krzyzowa, Poland, November 18-20, 1999.

HAEGEMANS A., LATOUCHE G. and LEEMANS H., How the condition number of the caudal characteristics reflects the dynamics of a QBD, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9940, 13 p., 1999.

The spectral radius h of the rate matrix of a QBD is known to be indicative of the tail behaviour of the steady state probability distribution. Therefore, h is called the caudal characteristic and is used as a descriptor of the dynamics of the QBD. In this paper, we show that additional information is given by the condition number of the spectral radius, k(h), especially in those cases where k(h) is huge.

LEEMANS H., Provable bounds for the mean queue lengths in a heterogeneous priority queue, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9909, 20 p., 1999.

We analyze a two-class two-server system with nonpreemtive heterogeneous priority structures. We use matrix-geometric techniques to determine the stationary queue length distributions. Numerical solution of the matrix-geometric model requires that the number of phases be truncated and it is shown how this effects the accuracy of the results. We then establish and prove upper and lower bounds for the mean queue lengths under the assumption that the classes have equal mean service time.

MARTENS J. and PUT F., A theory of structural model validity in simulation, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9936, 53 p., 1999.

During the last decennia, the practice of simulation has become increasingly popular among many system analysts, model builders and general scientists for the purpose of studying complex systems that surpass the operability of analytical solution techniques. As a consequence of the pragmatic orientation of simulation, a vital stage for a successful application is the issue of validating a constructed simulation model. Employing the model as an effective instrument for assessing the benefit of structural changes or for predicting future observations makes validation an essential part of any productive simulation study. The diversity of the employment field of simulation however brings about that there exists an irrefutable level of ambiguity concerning the principal subject of this validation process. Further, the literature has come up with a plethora of ad hoc validation techniques that have mostly been inherited from standard statistical analysis. It lies within the aim of this paper to reflect on the issue of validation in simulation and to present the reader with a topological parallelism of the classical philosophical polarity of objectivism versus relativism. First, we will position validation in relation to verification and accreditation and elaborate on the prime actors in validation, i.e. a conceptual model, a formal model and behaviour. Next, we will formally derive a topological interpretation of structural validation for both objectivists and relativists. As will be seen, recent advances in the domain of fuzzy topology allow for a valuable metaphor of a relativistic attitude towards modelling and structural validation. Finally, we will discuss several general types of modelling errors that may occur and examine their repercussion on the natural topological spaces of objectivists and relativists. We end this paper with a formal, topological oriented definition of structural model validity for both objectivists and relativists. The paper is concluded with summarising the most important findings and giving a direction for future research.

MARTENS J., PUT F., VIAENE S. and VAN BRECHT J., A hybrid genetic algorithm for solving a layout problem in the fashion industry, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9938, 28 p., 1999.

As of this writing, many success stories exist yet of powerful genetic algorithms (GAs) in the field of constraint optimisation. In this paper, a hybrid, intelligent genetic algorithm will be developed for solving a cutting layout problem in the Belgian fashion industry. In an initial section, an existing LP formulation of the cutting problem is briefly summarised and is used in further paragraphs as the core design of our GA. Through an initial attempt of rendering the algorithm as universal as possible, it was conceived a threefold genetic enhancement had to be carried out that reduces the size of the active solution space. The GA is therefore rebuilt using intelligent genetic operators, carrying out a local optimisation and applying a heuristic feasibility operator. Powerful computational results are achieved for a variety of problem cases that outperform any existing LP model yet developed.

POELMANS S., Worklow and modelling in object-oriented environments: requirements, state-of –the –art and future challenges, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9939, 33 p., 1999.

In the past decade, many research efforts have gone into the object-oriented development of information systems and the design of workflow systems. Both domains however, have largely evolved independently. Nevertheless, particular advantages of object-orientedness such as reusability, scalability and portability can be useful in workflow systems. Obviously, strategic advantages that have been gained by analysing business environments with a process view are also important when considering object-oriented developments. In this paper we will describe the necessary requirements to model a business process using the object-oriented approach. Next, we will discuss two approaches to combine workflow systems with object-oriented development: the pure and the mixed approach. Both methods have their strengths and weaknesses and none can claim to be the best solution. We will conclude by giving a short overview of existing models and applications in both approaches.

POELS G. and DEDENE G., DISTANCE: a framework for software measure, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9937, 41 p., 1999.

In this paper we present a framework for software measurement that is specifically suited to satisfy the measurement needs of empirical software engineering research. The framework offers an approach to measurement that builds upon the easily imagined, detected and visualised concepts of similarity and dissimilarity between software entities. These concepts are used both to model the software attributes of interest and to define the corresponding software measures. Central to the framework is a process model that embeds constructive procedures for attribute modelling and measure construction into a goal-oriented approach to empirical software engineering studies. The underlying measurement theoretic principles of our approach ensure the construct validity of the resulting measures.

The approach was tested on a popular suite of object-oriented design measures. We further show that our measure construction method compares favourably to related work.

SNOECK M. and DEDENE G., Modeling the dialogue aspects of an information system, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9947, 18 p., 1999.

In this paper we investigate techniques offered by current object-oriented development methods for the specification of the user-system dialogue aspect of a software system. Current development methods do not give very extensive guidelines on how to model this aspect and the available techniques need some refinement and elaboration to fit this particular task in the software specification process. The paper first compares a number of approaches. The common elements of these approaches are summarized and further developed into one comprehensive set of techniques that addresses the needs of functional requirements analysis.

SNOECK M., POELS G. and DEDENE G., Reusing business models, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9934, 20 p., 1999.

The focus of this paper is on the reuse of business models. It investigates how business models can be reused, how such reuse can be measured and what the consequences are for software development.

VIAENE S., WETS G., VANTHIENEN J. and DEDENE G., The eclectic quadrant of rule based system verification of fuzzy rule bases, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9946, 29 p., 1999.

In this paper, we used a research approach based on grounded theory in order to classify methods proposed in literature that try to extend the verification of classical rule bases to the case of fuzzy knowledge modeling. Within this area of verification we identify two dual lines of thought respectively leading to what is termed respectively static and dynamic anomaly detection methods. The major outcome of the confrontation of both approaches is that their results, most often stated in terms of necessary and/or sufficient conditions are difficult to reconcile. This paper addresses precisely this issue by the construction of a theoretical framework, which enables to effectively evaluate the results of both static and dynamic verification theories. Things essentially go wrong when in the quest for a good affinity, matching or similarity measure, one neglects to take into account the effect of the implication operator, an issue that rises above and beyond the fuzzy setting that initiated the research. The findings can easily be generalized to verification issues in any knowledge coding setting.

VIAENE S., BAESENS B., DEDENE G., VANTHIENEN J. and VANDENBULCKE J., Sensitivity based pruning of input variables by means of weight cascaded retraining, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9954, 21 p., 1999.

This paper investigates the adoption of a wrapped feature selection approach using neural networks for classification purposes. The presented framework consists of a primary model selection or network construction phase and a subsequent input feature pruning phase, introduced here under the name of Weight Cascaded Retraining (WCR). The theoretical exposition in the first part of the paper will be illuminated and validated by means of real-life empirical case material. The main conclusion of the paper can be stated as follows. Feature selection can be very effective in reducing model complexity for classification modeling via neural networks. It allows one to partially circumvent the curse of dimensionality when being confronted with a high number of irrelevant/redundant features. Furthermore, by reducing the number of input features in the neural network training phase, both human understanding and computational performance can be vastly enhanced.

WETS G., WITLOX F. and VANTHIENEN J., Verification and validation of knowledge-based systems with an example from site selection, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9908, 26 p., 1999.

In this paper, the verification and validation of Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) using decision tables (DTs) is one of the central issues. It is illustrated using real-market data taken from industrial site selection problems.

One of the main problems of KBS is that often there remain a lot of anomalies after the knowledge has been elicited. As a consequence, the quality of the KBS will degrade. This evaluation consists mainly of two parts: verification and validation (V&V). To make a distinction between verification and validation, the following phrase is regularly used: Verification deals with "building the system right", while validation involves "building the right system". In the context of DTs, it has been claimed from the early years of DT research onwards that DTs are very suited for V&V purposes. Therefore, it will be explained how V&V of the modelled knowledge can be performed. In this respect, use is made of stated response modelling designs techniques to select decision rules from a DT.

Our approach is illustrated using a case-study dealing with the locational problem of a (petro)chemical company in a port environment. The KBS developed has been named Matisse, which is an acronym of Matching Algorithm, a Technique for Industrial Site Selection and Evaluation.

SNOECK M., DEDENE G., VERHELST M. and DEPUYDT A., Object-oriented Enterprise Modelling with MERODE, Leuvense Universitaire pers, ISBN 90 6186 977 3, 227 pp. , 1999.

This book is about a particular methodology for object-oriented system development, called MERODE. Designed by the authors at the Department of Applied Economic Sciences of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, the methodology has been tested and applied in a large number of companies in Belgium and the Netherlands. The book is intended for teachers, students and system developers. The most outstanding feature of MERODE is that it uses the principle of existence dependency. This contributes to completeness, flexibility and ease of modelling, enabling at the same time the use of formal methods for improving the quality of the resulting system. Second, the methodology makes a clear distinction between specification and implementation, implementation being achieved by transforming the specification, not by elaborating it. Finally, MERODE is different from most other object-oriented methodologies in that it guarantees an extremely large degree of independence between the enterprise model and the functionality model. This feature further improves flexibility and extensibility of the resulting system. Although the entire methodology is explained, the emphasis is on enterprise modelling, as the title suggests.

MARTENS J. and PUT F., Applying univariate ARIMA modelling in validating simulation models, Eureopean simulation multiconference, p. 279-286, 1999.

Often one of the most complicated tasks within the lifecycle of a simulation study is an assessment of the validity of the simulation model. Although the analyst can count on a broad spectrum of well documented statistical theory for proper validity appraisal, many approaches are too cumbersome to carry out or may constrain the validation study to a mere comparison of means and variances. In this paper, a simple validation approach based on a univariate time series analysis, is outlined. As will be demonstrated, univariate ARIMA modelling can constitute an effective tool to discriminate between strong and weak simulation models of a particular system of interest. The applicability of ARIMA analysis to validation is illustrated by means of a fictive G/G/s queuing system as an example model. Employing an easy to use likelihood contour plot, the analyst will be equipped with a practical instrument to identify the best simulation model among a set of candidate models.

VANHOENACKER J., BRYANT A. and DEDENE G., Integrated Business Process Management – How it all fits together, in Reengineering in Action – The Quest for World Class Excellence , New York/Singapore: Imperial College Press, World Scientific Co, p. 55 - 76, 1999.

Much of the current debate around BPR centers on its claims for succesful implementation, and its distinctive novelty. In this chapter we seek to move the debate forward by observing that the methodological basis for BPR lacks transparency and, very often, fundamental justification. Most methodological support advanced in the literature is taken too often for granted, and needs to be specified far more exactly and appropriately. As a consequence, many business process professionals can no longer appreciate how the endless list of modeling techniques, the variety of decision making guidelines and the numerous staffing prescriptions ‘ fit together’ into a comprehensive whole to facilitate their decision making. Not surprisingly, many fail to mobilize, exploit and capitalize on the organizational knowledge base, which is needed for inducing business process change. In this chapter, we will explain some of these methodological shortcomings, and offer the SPARTA framework for developing a for more inclusive, integrative and adaptive approach to the field of I-BPM – Integrated Business Process Management. Illustrations from an I-BPM effort in the Financial Services Industry will accompany our understandings.

VANTHIENEN J. and MORENO GARCÍA A. M., Illustrating knowledge base restructuring and verification in a real world application, in Vermesan A. & Coenen F. (Eds.), Validation and Verification of Knowledge Based Systems, Theory, Tools and Practice, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston, pp. 177-191, 1999.

This paper discusses the restructuring of a knowledge-based system as a particular use of a decision table modeling tool. The aim of this exposition is to apply the approach in a real world application, SEAR (an Enterprise Human Resources Advisory System). All problems in restructuring the Knowledge-Based System (KBS) will be analyzed. It will be shown how a decision table tool is an interesting alternative in this process that facilitates the maintenance. First, the real world application is given and its current structure is shown. Next, the restructuring process is applied to the application. A summary that contains the obtained results and a brief evaluation conclude this paper.

DEDENE G., lid redactie I.T. Management Select (tenHagen&Stam), Tijdschrift voorManagement & Informatie (tenHagen&Stam), L’Object (Hermès).

Vanthienen J., was tot mei 1999 lid van de redactieraad van Informatie (tenHagen&Stam).

Project BWTS97/01 Bilaterale Wetenschappelijke en Technologische Samenwerking met Polen (Wroclaw University of Economics) "Knowledge acquisition and intelligent distributed learning in resolving managerial issues", Vlaamse regering, administratie wetenschap en innovatie, januari 1997 - maart 2001. Hoofdpromotor: L.U.C.; co-promotor: VANTHIENEN J.

This research project on the domain of intelligent methods and tools will concentrate from one site on the acquisition of knowledge and from the other side on the intelligent information search on the net, the integration of this information flow in the internal information system, and the distributed learning via the net.

Onderzoeksprogramma F.W.O. nr. G.O135.95 ‘Ontwerp van methoden voor ontwikkeling, validatie en implementatie van kennisgebaseerde informatiesystemen’, januari 1995 - december 2000.

Promotor: VANTHIENEN J.; co-promotor: VERHELST M.

Het project heeft als doel een inzicht te verschaffen in de methodologische onderbouw van de ontwikkeling van kennisgebaseerde informatiesystemen en het gebruik van diverse representatietechnieken bij het opbouwen, weergeven of toepassen van kennis in het algemeen. Het onderzoek richt zich daarom essentieel naar de uitdieping en uitbreiding van methoden en formalismen voor ontwikkeling van dergelijke systemen vanaf het voortraject van kennisverwerving en voorstelling, over kwaliteitsbewaking en -verbetering, tot en met het eindstadium van transformatie van de kennis naar bestaande kennisgebaseerde hulpmiddelen en produkten.

OT/98/4, Formele specificatie van informatiefunctionaliteit rond objectgerichte bedrijfsmodellen, Onderzoeksraad K.U. Leuven, Oktober 1998 – September 2001.

Promotoren: DEDENE G. and VERHELST M.

Het project heeft als doelstelling het uitwerken van een formele onderbouw voor de specificatie van informatiefunctionaliteit rond objectgerichte bedrijfsmodellen, ontwikkeld volgens MERODE, en dit naar analogie met de formalisering van objectgerichte bedrijfsmodellen. De onderzoeksactiviteiten zijn onderverdeeld in enerzijds een uitwerking van de theoretische, algebraïsche basis voor informatiefunctionaliteit met het ontwikkelen van een gelaagde structuur voor de specificatie van functionaliteit en gebruikersinteractie, en anderzijds een onderzoek naar mogelijkheden voor verificatie en implementatie van objectgerichte specificaties van informatiefunctionaliteit.

Lemahieu W., Improved Naviation and Maintenance through an Object-Oriented Approach to Hypermedia Modelling, K.U.Leuven, publicly defended July 5, 1999, K.U.Leuven; members of the commission: VANDENBULCKE J. (promotor), VANTHIENEN J., VERHELST M., DEDENE G., DE BRA P. (T.U.Eindhoven).

Poels G., On the Formal Aspects of the Measurement of Object-Oriented Software Specifications, K.U.Leuven, publicly defended 16 April 1999, K.U.Leuven; members of the commission: LEUNIS J., DEDENE G. (promotor), VERHELST M., VANDENBULCKE J., SNOECK M., MAES R. (Univ. Amsterdam), ZUSE H. (T.U. Berlin).

Vanhoenacker J., Formalizing a Knowledge Management Architecture Meta-Model for Integrated Business Process Management, K.U.Leuven; members of the commission: DEDENE G. (promotor), BRYANT A. (co-promotor, Leeds Metropolitan Univ.), VANDENBULCKE J., VERHELST M., MAES R. (Univ. Amsterdam).

VANTHIENEN J., member of the program committee, European Symposium on Verification and Validation of Knowledge Based Systems (EUROVAV'99, Oslo, June 9-11, 1999), 7^th Conference on Knowledge Discovery in Databases (Szklarska Poreba, Poland, May 14-16, 1999).

VANTHIENEN J., lid van de onderzoeksraad van EHSAL.

VANTHIENEN J., Guest Professor UIA, Informatie- en Bibliotheekwetenschap

DEBACKERE K., LUWEL M. and VEUGELERS R., Can technology lead to a competitive advantage? A case study of Flanders using European patent data, Scientometrics, Volume 44, Number 3, p. 379-400, 1999.

The study tries to analyze regional technological capabilities, linking technological positions to economic strength of the region. To measure this link, we correlate the EPO patent data with trade data to assess the degree to which technological advantages are translated into comparative advantages for the Flemish region in Belgium. The analysis for Flanders provides some interesting insights. Following the skewed distribution of firms, the technological areas in which Flanders is able to build a strong position are very specific: printing technology, weaving technology, photography and recently also telecommunications. Weak positions are outspoken in car technology. Linking these strengths and weaknesses in technological areas to economic activity revealed an important mismatch between both. Most of the Flemish patents are in sectors without any comparative advantage, while most of the sectors where Flanders does hold a comparative advantage, like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, do not show strong technological advantages in terms of patents. Given the mismatch that was detected between technological positions and economic advantages, it is of crucial importance to better understand the (missing) links between the various actors in the regional innovation system. The analysis points out two important issues. The large and growing number of foreign applicants to Belgian/Flemish inventors and the large number of subsidiaries of foreign firms among Belgian/Flemish applicants illustrate the pervasiveness of the foreign dimension in the Belgian/Flemish technological landscape. Also very specific to the Belgian/Flemish situation, is the limited importance of universities or research centers in terms of patenting activities.

GAEREMYNCK A. and VEUGELERS R., The revaluation of assets as a signalling device: a theoretical and an empirical analysis, Accounting and business research, Volume 29, Number 2, p. 123-138, 1999.

In many countries firms can choose whether or not to report a revaluation in the financial statements. An analytical model is developed to indicate conditions in which it is more likely that successful firms will choose not to revalue assets as a credible signal to potential investors. These industry settings include a high variance in success and low equity-to-debt ratios. The empirical results for Belgium indeed confirm that successful firms are less likely to revalue assets in those industries. However, only the revaluation of fixed tangible assets and not financial assets seems to be a credible signal. Finally, the results support the choice to revalue, but not the amount of revaluation, as a signalling

GOEDHUYS M. and SLEUWAEGEN L., Entrepreneurship and growth of entrepreneurial firms in Côte d'Ivoire, The journal of development studies, Volume 36, Number 3, p. 123-145, 1999.

This article analyses the determinants of individuals' choice for self-employment and entrepreneurial success in Côte d'Ivoire. Entrepreneurial activity is found to be undertaken by individuals who succeed in increasing their entrepreneurial abilities and reducing the risk of starting a business through a learning process that takes place through ageing, professional experience, and apprenticeship or, alternatively, formal education. The learning process takes place both before and after entry into the industry, as firms grow into a larger size. However, financial constraints continue to play a major restraining role for entrepreneurship and firm growth.

LANGERAK F., COMMANDEUR H. R. and SLEUWAEGEN L., Het verband tussen marktgerichteid en het bedrijfsresultaat van industriële ondernemingen in uiteenlopende bedrijfstakken, Tijdschrift voor economie en management, Volume 44, Number 2, p. 175-194, 1999.

Ondernemingen onderkennen het belang van marktgerichtheid, maar in de wetenschap en de praktijk worden uiteenlopende betekenissen aan het concept toegekend. Het is dan ook niet verwonderlijk dat marktgerichtheid veelvuldig tot controversen leidt. Dit wordt versterkt door empirische onderzoeken naar het verband tussen marktgerichtheid en het bedrijfsresultaat, alsmede naar de invloed van verschillen tussen en binnen bedrijfstakken op dit verband. Tegen deze achtergrond wordt in dit artikel de vraag behandeld van wat marktgerichtheid inhoudt en of er een positief verband kan worden aangetoond tussen de marktgerichtheid en het bedrijfsresultaat van ondernemingen in uiteenlopende branches van de Nederlandse industrie. De invloed van verschillen tussen en binnen bedrijfstakken op het bedrijfsresultaat wordt eveneens onderzocht, alsook aanbevelingen gedaan voor vervolgonderzoek.

VEUGELERS R. and CASSIMAN B., Make and buy in innovation strategies: evidence from Belgian manufacturing firms, Research Policy, 28, p. 63-80, 1999

This paper characterizes the innovation strategy of manufacturing firms and examines the relation between the innovation strategy and industry-, firm- and innovation-specific characteristics using Belgian company data from the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey. In addition to important size effects explaining innovation, we find that high perceived risks and costs and low appropriability of innovations do not discourage innovation, but rather determine how the innovation sourcing strategy is chosen. With respect to the determinants of the decision of the innovative firm to produce technology itself (Make) or to source technology externally (Buy), we find that small firms are more likely to restrict their innovation strategy to an exclusive make or buy strategy, while large firms are more likely to combine both internal and external knowledge acquisition in their innovation strategy. After controlling for this size effect, companies for which internal information is an important source for innovation are less likely to source exclusively, but rather combine internal and external sources of technology. The strength of the appropriation regime and the internal organizational resistance to change affect negatively the decision to source exclusively externally.

VEUGELERS R. and VANDENBUSSCHE H., European anti-dumping policy and the profitability of national and international collusion, European economic review, Volume 43, Number 1, p. 1-28, 1999.

The effect of European antidumping policy on market structure is studied. The incentives for firms to engage in a domestic or international cartel of implicit collusion in a multi-stage setting is analyzed and the influence of European antidumping policy on the incentives for firms to collude domestically or internationally is examined. The question whether antidumping regulation helps establish, maintain or rather endanger full cartels as well as cartels restricted to domestic firms only is tackled. Findings suggest that antidumping legislation can both have a procompetitive and an anticompetitive effect. Which case prevails depends crucially on the welfare objective function used by the European government and also on the cost asymmetry and the degree of product heterogeneity between domestic and foreign firms. In addition to market structure, welfare effects are also discussed. It is found that antidumping measures are capable of both increasing or decreasing total community welfare depending on the type of measures installed.

DEBACKERE K., Innovatie voor en door het onderwijs: reflecties omtrent innovatief kennismanagement, Tijdschrift voor Onderwijsrecht en Onderwijsbeleid, No. 3-4, p. 290-293, 1999.

SLEUWAEGEN L. and DE VOLDERE I., Europese netwerkvorming en delokalisatie in België, Bedrijfskunde: tijdschrift voor modern management, Volume 71, Number 4, p. 7-12, 1999.

Dit artikel tracht het fenomeen van delokalisatie te plaatsen in de context van de Europese eenwording en de daaropvolgende uitbouw van Europese netwerken. Herstructureringen binnen multinationale ondernemingen hebben geleid tot verschuivingen, waarbij voor elke eenheid binnen de grope de beste locatie wordt gezocht door een afweging te maken van comparatieve en competitieve voordelen. Het zijn dergelijke verschuivingen in internationale netwerken die vaak aan de basis liggen van delokalisaties. In tegenstelling tot wat vaak wordt verwacht, vinden delokalisaties dan ook vooral plaats naar omringende landen en niet zozeer naar typische lagelonenlanden in Oost-Europa of Zuid-Azië. Empirisch materiaal voor België ondersteunt deze theorie.

VEUGELERS R., KONINGS J., MOMMAERTS G. and SELDESLACHTS J., Schepping en vernietiging van banen: de invloed van O&O-actieve bedrijven, Economisch en sociaal tijdschrift, Volume 53, Number 1, p. 79-108, 1999.

This article studies the impact of technological innovation on the process of jobcreation and -destruction in Flanders. Using firm level data to study this relationship, we control for the impact of firm size and the innovativeness of the sector. The results show that innovative firms, whether in innovative sectors or not, have a lower jobcreation rate. At the same time, these firms have a significantly lower jobdestruction rate. The latter effect seems to dominate, at least after correcting for the firm size effect, such that in total innovative firms in Flanders do have a superior net jobperformance.

DEBACKERE K., Academic science and innovation: from R&D to spin-off creation, Proceedings of the 1999 R&D Management Conference, CSIR Dehli, p. 102-110, December 1999.

CROMBEZ C., Party Competition in Recent Italian Elections, presented at the Annual Meetings of the Public Choice Society, New Orleans, March 1999.

CROMBEZ C., The Treaty of Amsterdam and the Codecision Procedure, presented at the Annual Meetings of the Public Choice Society, New Orleans, March 1999, at the European Public Choice Society Meetings, Lisbon, Portugal, April 1999 and at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Atlanta, September 1999.

DEBACKERE K., The impact of design technologies on new product development, EIASM International New Product Development Conference, Cambridge University, July 1999.

SLEUWAEGEN L., Local content requirements, vertical cooperation and foreign direct investment, Turin, EARIE Conference, September 1999.

VEUGELERS R. and CASSIMAN B., Spillovers and R&D Cooperation: some empirical evidence, Onderzoeksrapport 9829, K.U.Leuven and CEPR Discussion Paper 2330, Turijn, EARIE Conference, September 1999.

VEUGELERS R. and DE BACKER K., Access to external knowledge : an empirical analysis of alliances as spillover channel, Turijn, EARIE Conference, September 1999.

VAN LOOY B., DEBACKERE K. and R. BOUWEN, Community-spanning strategies to handle path-dependency during innovation processes, Academy of Management Conference, Chicago, August 1999.

DEBACKERE K. and DE BACKER K. Clusters in Vlaanderen, IWT Conferentie Clusters als Hefboom tot Innovatie, Gent, April 1999.

DEBACKERE K., Technologies to develop technology : the impact of new technologies on the organisation of the innovation process, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9901, 39 p., 1999.

Companies are under increasing pressure to develop new product more effectively and efficiently. In order to meet this challenge, the organisation of the new product development process has received ample attention both in the academic literature and in the practitioner literature. As a consequence, a myriad of methods to design new products has been developed. These methods aim at facilitating concurrent product design and engineering. However, it is only recently, through the advent of families of new design technologies, that concurrency really becomes possible. In this paper, research on the impact of new design technologies on the product development process is reported and discussed. It is demonstrated that these technologies can have a significant impact on the organisation of innovation processes.

DEBACKERE K., ZIMMERMANN E. and VERMEULEN H., Effecten-onderzoek naar overheidsprogramma's inzake milieupreventie, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9902, 30 p., 1999.

This research report discusses the results of a performance study of Flemish environmental policy for Small and Medium Sized companies. Extensive field research, based on interviews and questionnaire surveys with over 20 professional associations and over 700 companies belonging to the sectors stimulated by the Flemish PRESTI-programme, allowed us to use to assess the positive effects of a sectoral policy geared towards stimulating SMEs to become more conscious and active on the topic of waste prevention. The PREST-programme was specifically aimed at stimulating waste prevention action plans at SMEs via the interface of professional associations at the sector level. These results are encouraging, the more since this research project was the first one that attempted at assessing the impact of a specific programme at the level of Flemish environmental policy.

SLEUWAEGEN L., DE VOLDERE I. and SCHEP K., Relevant market delineation with the use of strategic business information, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9928, 35 p., 1999.

In this paper an overview of methods used in antitrust analysis to delineate relevant markets is provided and shortcomings are pointed out. A practical methodology to delineate relevant geographic and product markets is developed, starting from the theoretical definition of a relevant antitrust market. Based on criteria used by business strategists in segmenting markets, the new methodology makes use of strategic information on the position of a company and its competitors in a specific industry sector to delineate relevant markets. The usefulness of the new methodology is illustrated for the European truck industry.

VANDENBUSSCHE H., VEUGELERS R. and BELDERBOS R., Undertakings and antidumping jumping FDI in Europe, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9941, 30 p., 1999 and CEPR discussion paper series, volume 2320 p. 2-29, 1999.

This paper studies the effects of EU antidumping policy when foreign firms have the possibility to 'jump' antidumping measures by engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the EU. Using a multi-stage framework, we study the EU administration's choice between an antidumping duty and a price-undertaking, taking into account the effect of these measures on the location decision of the foreign firm and the subsequent price competition between local and foreign firms. Our findings suggest that the EU administration acting purely in the EU industry's interest prefers a price-undertaking to a duty, if the latter leads to 'duty jumping' FDI. FDI toughens price competition in the EU market and leaves local firms worse off. Antidumping jumping FDI will only occur if the EU administration has broader objectives than just protecting the profitability of EU industry, if fixed costs of FDI are not too high, and if the cost advantage of foreign firms are, at least partially, firm-specific and transferable abroad. If foreign firms are able to act strategically taking into account EU antidumping policy, the presence of antidumping law can also discourage FDI that would have taken place under free trade conditions.

VAN LOOY B., LELIAERT A., DE WEERDT S., CORTHOUS F. and BROECKMANS J., Establishing a relational field that fosters learning processes: some tentative propositions, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9956, 30 p., 1999.

In this article, we look at the recent introduction of more relational oriented learning principles and how they translate into practice by documenting the experiences of both trainees and instructors. It became clear that actors held different opinions and viewpoints on learning objectives and process ingredients for achieving these objectives. This divergence in opinions resulted in an 'impoverished' learning trajectory. We suggest that remedying this situation implies introducing reflexivity regarding learning processes or, stated otherwise, addressing 'meta-cognitions' participants inevitably bring to the process as they affect the way in which people engage in the relational field that encompasses the learning trajectory. Despite some recent arguments in favour of a distinction between cognitive and meta-cognitive mediation, we argue for a similar approach with respect to both types of mediation. We end this article by suggesting that designing learning trajectories with this dual concern in mind might open the road to 'learning to learn'.

VEUGELERS R. and CASSIMAN B., Innovative strategies and know-how flows in international companies: some evidence from Belgian manufacturing, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9927, 30 p., 1999.

Recent trends in the literature have suggested a change in the relative importance of the international dimension in the innovation process. International companies need to sense new market and technology trends worldwide, and respond to them adequately through generating new ideas which are then implemented around the world. This has important implications for the role of subsidiaries in global innovative strategies and consequent international know-how flows. This paper tries to empirically assess how technology flows are structured in international firms, using Belgian company data from the Eurostat Community Innovation Survey.

While all types of international firms, including subsidiaries, are found to be more innovation active than local firms, companies which are part of an international group, as affiliates but especially as headquarters, have the widest innovation strategy, relying on internal as well as external sources. These external sources are located nationally as well as internationally, and are accessed through buying and cooperative strategies. In addition, internal transfers and intra-group cooperation are quite pervasive in these companies, although the evidence for transfers from headquarters to subsidiaries is stronger than for the reverse flow from subsidiaries to headquarters.

The analysis further suggests the importance of reciprocity in know-how flows, through the importance of cooperative R&D agreements which relies on mutual exchange, and the complementary occurrence of selling and buying technology. An important implication for the host economy is that transfers to the local economy are more likely to come from subsidiaries that are integrated into the MNEs innovation process. Subsidiaries which are independent from the group's innovative process, are found to be less integrated with the local economy as well.

VEUGELERS R. and DE BACKER K., Access to external knowledge: an empirical analysis of alliances as spillover channel, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9921, 25 p., 1999.

The theoretical IO literature has modeled the relationship between spillovers and cooperative (R&D)-agreements extensively; suggesting that spillovers induce cooperation as a means to internalize these involuntary effects, while cooperation simultaneously enhances voluntary spillovers through information sharing. The empirical literature on this topic however is scarce. This paper empirically assesses the interactions between alliances and transfers of knowledge. A first finding is that, consistent with the theoretical literature, the occurrence of alliances is correlated with traditional measures of (involuntary) spillovers, based on input-output relations and technology proximity. But not only R&D-cooperation corresponds to (the lack of) appropriability; the evidence shows that also non-R&D alliances are associated with transfers of knowledge. In a second part the impact of external know-how on the performance of industries in OECD-countries is analyzed. Following the association of alliances with spillovers, the impact of external know-how is weighted by the occurrence of alliances with the external source, based in the same industry or in other industries. Using information about 588 inter- and intra-industry R&D and non-R&D alliances formed in the period '86-'96, we find that industry R&D levels accessed through intra-industry R&D alliances have a negative impact on (the growth of) own productivity, while this effect is positive for industries with intra-industry non-R&D alliances. Know-how from other sectors has no significant impact on productivity, unless for those sectors with which R&D alliances are prevailing that extend beyond R&D to include production and/or distribution. In contrast to the findings in other studies, this effect of inter-industry spillovers is found to be negative.

VEUGELERS R. and CASSIMAN B., Importance of international linkages for local know-how flows: some econometric evidence from Belgium, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9948, 25 p., 1999.

External knowledge is an important input for the innovation process of firms. Increasingly, this knowledge is likely to originate from outside of their national borders. This explains the preoccupation of policymakers with stimulating local technology transfers coming from international firms. We find that firms that have access to the international technology market are more likely to transfer technology to the local economy. In doing so, we qualify the traditional assertion that multinational firms are more likely to transfer technology to the local economy. Once controlled for the superior access to the international technology market that multinationals enjoy, we find that these firms are not more likely to transfer technology to the local economy compared to exporting or local firms that have access to the international technology market. In summary, the main result of this paper is that it is not so much the international character of the firms, but rather their access to the international technology market that is important for generating external knowledge transfers to the local economy.

DEBACKERE K., LUWEL M. and VEUGELERS R., De Vlaamse technologiepositie: een sectoriële en ondernemingsanalyse van de EPO gegevens, AWI Onderzoeksrapport, februari 1999.

DEBACKERE K. and DE BACKER K., Clusterbeleid: een innovatie-instrument voor Vlaanderen? Reflecties op basis van een analyse van de automobielsector, IWT Observatorium Publicaties, No. 21, 1999.

KONINGS J., VANDENBUSSCHE H. and VEUGELERS R., Union wage bargaining and European antidumping policy in imperfectly competitive markets, CEPR discussion paper series, Volume 1860, p. 2-31, 1999.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the interaction between union bargaining power and the likelihood and type of European antidumping measures (duties and undertakings) in imperfectly competitive product markets. We present a simple theoretical model which is well embedded in EU legal practice, to show that cost asymmetries, induced by union wage bargaining in a European firm, lead to an increase in both the likelihood and the level of antidumping protection against foreign imports of a similar product. In addition, our results indicate that a cost asymmetry, in the form of a unionized wage differential, alters the relative probability of a duty versus an undertaking. We show that the size of these effects depends on the intensity of product market competition. In a further step, we use Belgian firm level micro-data to provide some evidence for our predictions.

DEBACKERE K., Technologies to develop technology, MAKLU Publishers, 1999.

DEBACKERE K., (ed.), Vlaams Indicatorenboek Wetenschap, Technologie en Innovatie, AWI en IWT Publicatie, 1999.

DEBACKERE K., Het Vlaams WTI-systeem, in Vlaams Indicatorenboek Wetenschap Technologie en Innovatie, 1999.

DEBACKERE K., LUWEL M. and VEUGELERS R., De Vlaamse technologiepositie: analyse op basis van EPO octrooien, in Vlaams Indicatorenboek Wetenschpa, Technologie en Innovatie, 1999.

DEBACKERE K., De innoverende onderneming va de toekomst: innovatie als paradox, in Trends in Marketing, Frambach and Poiesz (eds.), Samsom, 1999.

GOEDHUYS M. and SLEUWAEGEN L., Barriers to growth of firms in developing countries: evidence from Burundi, in Audritsch D., Thurik R. (eds.), Innovation, industry evolution and employment, Cambridge University Press, p. 297-314, 1999.

Consistent with results obtained for developed countries, firm growth in Burundi is subject to a learning process over time. However, the growth process is hampered by several institutional and environmental conditions which are particular to developing countries, including primarily the absence of well-functioning resource and product markets. Among the constraining factors, access to credit for young and smaller firms shows up as a major constraining factor. Formally registered firms, which grow significantly faster than informal firms, report that they are more severely hampered by credit constraints, overregulation, and market conditions. Informal firms, on the other hand, seem to focus on a mere survival objective in an unregulated segment of the economy where small-scale investment and technological upgrading do not pay off.

CROMBEZ C., member of the Editorial Board of the Legislative Studies Quarterly.

DEBACKERE K., member of the Editorial Board of R&D Management; member of the organizing committee of the International Product Development Management Conferences, the RADMA Conferences, and the European Doctoral Summer School on Technology Management; member of the RADMA Prize Committee.

DE BONDT R., member of the editorial board "Business In-Zicht" and "Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management"; member of the Executive Committee of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE), since 1984.

SLEUWAEGEN L., member editorial board of the International Journal of the Economics of Business.

VEUGELERS R., associate editor of the International Journal of Industrial Organisation, since 1999 and of the Journal of Industrial Economics, since 1993 –1999; member of the editorial board: Spanish Economic Review, Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management.

AWI, Ontwikkeling van een Vlaams WTI-indicatorensysteem.

Promotor: DEBACKERE K.

CEFS, ‘A Nonmarket Strategy for the European Sugar Industry,’ 1999, (European Sugar Federation);

co-promotors: CROMBEZ C. and SLEUWAEGEN L.

D.W.T.C., Delokalisaties, innovaties en werkgelegenheid, December 1995

Promotor: SLEUWAEGEN L.

D.W.T.C., The strategic analysis of organizations: microeconomic and management perspectives, with an application to universities, Interuniversity attraction pole (IUAP P4/28), 1997-2001, co-promotor: DE BONDT R.

EC-DGII, Service Contract, Determinants of industrial concentration, market integration and efficiency in the European Union, December 1999- November 2000,

Promotor: VEUGELERS R. and L. SLEUWAEGEN

Electrabel Chair in Managerial Economics, July 1996-1999, titularis: DE BONDT R.

E.U. project CBSTII-ST1-A1, Linking the systems of Science and Technology, 1999-2000,

Promotor: DEBACKERE K., LUWEL M. and VEUGELERS R.

FKFO, Spillovers, networks and company innovation efforts, January 1998- December 2001,

Promotor: VEUGELERS R. and DEBACKERE K.

IWT, Clusterbeleid in Vlaanderen, IWT Observatorium

Promotor: DEBACKERE K.

IWT, (OZM/O&O), Analysis and Validation of R&D Surveys 96 and 98, July 99 - January 2000,

Promotor: VEUGELERS R.

IWT, Samenwerkingsverbanden in O&O en kennisdiffusie

Promotors: VEUGELERS R. AND DEBACKERE K.

KBC Chair Entrepreneurship, University of Leuven, 1995 – 2000, titularis: SLEUWAEGEN L.

ONDERZOEKSFONDS, Leven en sterven van startende ondernemingen, October 1996 – October 2000.

Promotor: SLEUWAEGEN L. with KONINGS J., VAN DE GUGHT L. and ROODHOOFT F.

P.B.O., Ontwikkeling van een methodologisch kader voor wetenschaps- en technologieverkenning in Vlaanderen, October 1998 - September 2002.

Promotors: DEBACKERE K., VEUGELERS R. and BOUWEN R.

P.B.O., Uitbreiding van de EU naar Oost-Europa: becijfering en prognose van de handelsgebonden effecten op de sociaal-economische realiteit in Vlaanderen, October 1999 - September 2001.

Co-promotor: VEUGELERS R.

Goedhuys M., Industrial Organisation in Developing Countries, Evidence from Côte D’Ivoire, K.U.Leuven, publicly defended on March 17, 1999; members of the commission: SLEUWAEGEN L. (promotor), BERLAGE L. (co-promotor), AUDRETSCH D. (Indiana University), KONINGS J., VEUGELERS R.

CROMBEZ C., Visiting Professor, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University, Summer and Fall 1999.

DE BONDT R., visiting professor at International Executive MBA Program, Kellogg/Recanati, Northwestern University-Tel-Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel, March 1999.

SLEUWAEGEN L., Visiting professor at Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, Spring 1999.

VEUGELERS R., Research stay at UPF, Barcelona, April 1999.

DE BONDT R., 'Seminarie Vertrouwen en wederkerigheid'-Presentation 'Cultuur en Samenwerking', Centrum voor Economie en Ethiek, K.U.Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, april 23, 1999; 74^th Annual Conference, Western Economic Association International, San Diego, USA, 6-10 July 1999; 48^th International Atlantic Economic Conference, Montréal, Canada, 7-10 October 1999.

SLEUWAEGEN L., AIB programme Committee Member; Program Committee Member EARIE 1999; voorzitter Commissie mededinging VWEC;

SLEUWAEGEN L., European Commission, Scientific committee member, ‘The Competitiveness of European industry.

VEUGELERS R., CEPR Research Fellow (Industrial Organisation, International Trade) from 1999; Executive Committee Member EARIE (European Association for Research in Industrial Economics) from 1999; Member of the Jury for the Young Economist Essay Competition, from 1999; EC-Expert for DG Enterprise, Member of the Scientific Advisory Committee assisting in the preparation of the fourth Competitiveness Report III/99/072; Bestuurder-directeur (Director) van het Interuniversitair College voor Managementwetenschappen (CIM). (1998-2001).

DEBACKERE K., Managing Director of K.U. Leuven Research & Development and Chairman of the Gemma Frisius-Fonds, the venture capital fund of K.U. Leuven.

DE BONDT R., "Pro-decaan", Faculty of Economic and Applied Economic Sciences, Catholic University of Leuven, since August 1997; member of the "Council for Research Policy", Catholic University of Leuven, since 1996; President of K.U. Leuven Research and Development, since November 1995; President of Innovation and Incubation Centre K.U. Leuven, n.v., since 1996; Council member of D. Collen Research Foundation v.z.w., since 1996; member "Beschermcomité CERA Bank leerstoel ondernemerschap", since 1996; substitute member "Raad van Bestuur, Interuniversitair College voor Managementwetenschappen", since October 1997.

DEKIMPE M. and HANSSENS D., Sustained spending and persistent response: a new look at long-term marketing profitability, Journal of marketing research, Volume 36, Number 4, p. 397-412, 1999.

An intuitively appealing decision rule is to allocate a company's scarce marketing resources where they have the greatest long-term benefit. This principle, however, is easier to accept than it is to execute, because long-run effects of marketing spending are difficult to estimate. The authors address this problem by examining the over-time behavior of market response and marketing spending, and identify four commonly occurring strategic scenarios: business as usual, hysteresis in response, escalating expenditures and evolving-business practice. The authors explain and illustrate why each scenario can occur in practice, and describe its positive and negative consequences for long-term profitability.

The authors propose to use multivariate persistence measures to identify which of the four strategic scenarios is taking place, and illustrate the approach in the pharmaceutical and packaged-foods industries. We observe several long-term marketing effects, calculate their long-term profitability impact, and use the results to diagnose the strategic wisdom of price changes and of resource allocations in sales calls, advertising and promotion. The results substantiate the authors' proposition that the strategic scenario is a major determinant of marketing effectiveness and long-term profitability. This conclusion sets up a substantial agenda for future research.

DEKIMPE M., HANSSENS D. and SILVA-RISSO J. M., Long-run effects of price promotions in scanner markets, Journal of econometrics, Volume 89, Number 1/2, p. 269-291, 1999.

Good marketing decisions require managers' understanding of the response function relating performance measures to variations in the marketing mix. We use unit-root techniques to address market response in evolving markets, with a focus on their response to price promotions. We distinguish between evolution at the primary-demand vs. selective-demand level, and examine four consumer product categories for which high-quality scanner records are available. We find category and brand sales to be predominantly stationary, with differences in promotional impact between national and private-label brands. Even in the rare occurrence of performance evolution, the long-term effects of price promotions are not necessarily positive.

PIETERS R. and WARLOP L., Visual attention during brand choice: the impact of time pressure and task motivation, International journal of research in marketing, Volume 16, Number 1, p. 1-16, 1999.

Measures derived from eye-movement data reveal that during brand choice consumers adapt to time pressure by accelerating information acquisition, by filtering information and by changing their information acquisition strategy. In addition, consumers with high task motivation filter brand information less and pictorial information more. Consumers under time pressure filter textual ingredient information more, and pictorial information less. The results of a conditional logit analysis reveal that the chosen brand receives significantly more intra-brand and inter-brand saccades and longer fixation durations than non-chosen brands, independent of time pressure and task motivation conditions. Implications for the theory of consumer attention and for pretesting of packaging and shelf lay-outs are discussed.

ROODHOOFT F. and WARLOP L., On the role of sunk costs and asset specificity in outsourcing decisions: a research note, Accounting, organizations and society, Volume 24, Number 4, p. 363-369, 1999.

The accounting literature has argued that firms overengage in outsourcing because they ignore the transaction costs involved in buying services from external suppliers. A filed study with health-care managers shows that decision makers are actually quite sensitive to the asset specificity and uncertainty associated with the "buy" option in an outsourcing decision. However, they also appear inappropriately sensitive to the sunk costs inherent in most real-life outsourcing decisions, and may actually underengage in outsourcing. Prior commitment to internal procurement systematically reduced the willingness to outsource, relative to a pure "make or buy" scenario

VAN DEN POEL D. and LEUNIS J., Consumer acceptance of the internet as a channel of distribution, Journal of business research, Volume 45, Number 3, p. 249-256, 1999.

In this study, we will propose a conceptual model for repeat mail-order buying behavior. We will (1) investigate from a theoretical perspective what variables should be included in models of mail-order buying behavior for modeling repeat purchasing, and (2) empirically validate how thesevariables perform for predictive purposes. In the conceptual model of repeat mail-order buying we distinguish between two dimensions: (1) behavioral-versus non-behavioral predictors of direct-mail consumer behavior, and (2) company- versus non-company specific variables. Three specific research questions are addressed in this study: (1) the importance of the combined use of the three RFM (recency, frequency and monetary value) variables in predicting repurchase behavior, (2) the relative importance of recency, frequency and monetary value in predicting

repurchase behavior, and (3) the predictive power of the additional (non-RFM) variables proposed. In terms of methodology, we focus on purchase-incidence modeling using a logit model. We evaluate the performance of models based on two criteria: (1) percentage correctly classified (PCC), and (2) area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). Preliminary results with regard to the research questions indicate that: (1) about 50 % (25 %) of the maximum possible improvement in terms of PCC (AUC) can be achieved by the combined use of RFM variables, (2) frequency is the most important predictor of repeat mail-order buying behavior, followed by monetary value, and recency, and (3) out of the many variables proposed on theoretical grounds, most are not capable of significantly improving the predictive accuracy of the RFM model, with the exception of 'Length of relationship', and 'Financial convenience'.

Alden D.L., Steenkamp J.B. and Batra R., Global Brand Positioning and Advertising Effectiveness: Does Acculturation to Global Consumer Culture Make a Difference?, paper presented at the AMA Summer Educator's Conference, San Francisco, CA, August 7-10, 1999.

Baumgartner H. and Steenkamp J.B., Response Styles in Marketing Research: A Cross-National Investigation, paper presented at the 28th Conference of the European Marketing Academy, Berlin, Germany, May 11-14, 1999.

De Clerck S., The Effect of Item Deletions on Long Term Category Primary Demand, presentation on the EMAC Docoral Colloquium, Berlin, May 1999.

Nijs V., Dekimpe M.G., Steenkamp J.B. and Hanssens D.M., The Category Demand Effects of Price Promotions, presentation on the Conference on Competition and Marketing, Mainz/Wiesbaden, Germany, June 20-21, 1999.

Smeesters D., Warlop L., Vanden Abeele P. and Ratneshwar S., Exploring the Recycling Dilemma: Consumer Motivation and Experiences in Mandatory Recycling Programs, presented at the 1999 EMAC Conference, Berlin, May 1999 and at the 1999 SPUDM Conference, Mannheim, August 1999. Also presented at the OSTC Workshop ‘Participatie en Publieke Actie voor een Duurzame Ontwikkeling’, Brussels, February 4, 1999.

Steenkamp J.B., Pan-European Market Segmentation Based on Consumer-Product Relations, paper presented at the MSI conference Understanding Consumers (combined academics-practitioners conference), Paris, June 22-23, 1999.

Warlop L., New insights on the role of trivial similarity in consumer choice, presented at the 1999 bi-annual ACR-Europe Conference, Paris, June 1999.

Warlop L., Baeyens F., Vanhouche W. and Lerouge D., Acquired valence of brand consumption experiences: first empirical results, presented at the 1999 bi-annual ACR-Europe Conference, Paris, June 1999.

Warlop L. and Novoseltsev A., Consumer fair price judgments for subsidized and nonsubsidized firms, at the Baruch College Pricing Conference, New York, October 1999.

DEKIMPE M., PARKER P. M. and SARVARY M., Multi-market and global diffusion: a research agenda, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9913, 36 p., 1999.

FRANÇOIS P. and MACLACHLAN D. L., Bridging designs for conjoint analysis: the issue of attribute importance, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9935, 42 p., 1999.

Conjoint analysis studies involving many attributes and attribute levels often occur in practice. Because such studies can cause respondent fatigue and lack of cooperation, it is important to design data collection tasks that reduce those problems. Bridging designs, incorporating two or more task subsets with overlapping attributes, can presumably lower task difficulty in such cases. In this paper, we present results of a study examining the effects on predictive validity of bridging design decisions involving important or unimportant attributes as links (bridges) between card-sort tasks and the degree of balance and consistency in estimated attribute importance across tasks. We also propose a new symmetric procedure, Symbridge, to scale the bridged conjoint solutions.

NIJS V. R., DEKIMPE M., STEENKAMP J.-B. E. M. and HANSSENS D., The category demand effects of price promotions, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9932, 36 p., 1999.

While price promotions have increased in both commercial use and quantity of academic research over the last decade, most of the attention has focused on their effects on brand choice and brand sales. By contrast, little is known about the conditions under which price promotions expand short-run and long-run category demand, even though the benefits of category expansion can be substantial to manufacturers and retailers alike.

This paper formulates several hypotheses on the category-demand effects of consumer price promotions, and tests them on five hundred and sixty consumer product categories over a four-year period. The hypotheses are derived from the economic, marketing science and consumer behavior literatures, and focus on the moderating effects of marketing intensity and competition (both conduct and structure) on short- and long-run promotional effectiveness. Modern techniques in covariance structure modeling and multivariate time-series analysis are used to operationalize constructs and to disentangle short-run and long-run effects.

We present our results in the form of hypothesis tests and empirical generalizations on both the main effects of price promotions on category demand in the short and the long run, as well as how these effects change with marketing intensity and competition. The findings generate an overall picture of the power and limitations of consumer price promotions in expanding category demand.

PIETERS R., WARLOP L. and WEDEL M., The influence of advertisement familiarity and originality on visual attention and brand memory, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9953, 59 p., 1999.

Based on Mandler's theory of schema organization and previous visual attention research, we formulate and test hypotheses about the impact of ad familiarity and ad originality on attention and memory for print advertisements. To that end, one hundred and nineteen consumers browsed through two consumer magazines containing 68 print advertisements. Attention to the ads and their brand, picture and text components was assessed through infrared eye tracking. Trained judges rated the ads independently for familiarity and originality. In support of the hypotheses we find a sharp attention decline with ad familiarity, which is largely due to a reduction in attention to text. Originality of ad execution serves as a buffer against the negative influence of ad familiarity on attention, but only for the brand and picture components. The reduction of attention to the text is even larger for original than for unoriginal ads. Moreover, over and above their indirect influence through visual attention patterns, ad familiarity, ad originality and their interaction had a direct influence on brand memory.

SMEESTERS D., WARLOP L., VANDEN ABEELE P. and RATNESHWAR S., Exploring the recycling dilemma: consumer motivation and experiences in mandatory garbage recycling programs, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9924, 17 p., 1999.

Household recycling is conceptualized as a social dilemma in which households have a choice between cooperative and defective options. Promoting cooperative choice in the recycling dilemma has emerged as an important issue for social marketing in recent years. Most of the available insights that could guide policy makers in designing appropriate social marketing strategies are based on research conducted in the context of voluntary recycling programs. Increasingly social marketing action takes the form of mandatory programs, though suffering from a lack of transparency and imperfect coercion. On the basis of two explorative studies into the underlying values and consumer experiences with mandatory programs, we argue that the primary motivational basis for cooperation has shifted from environmental values to 'civic duty' related values. We describe how these values drive both individual experiences of recycling behavior and the reactions to non-cooperative behavior by others. Implications for public policy and social marketing are discussed.

WARLOP L., SMEESTERS D. and VANDEN ABEELE P., Selling brotherhood like soap: influencing everyday disposal decisions, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9952, 32 p., 1999.

Sorting garbage during disposal is effortful for the individual and the household, but beneficial to society in the long run. This makes recycling a typical example of a social dilemma, and a prime target for social marketing interventions. Household disposal acts are relatively mindless routine behaviors embedded in daily housekeeping tasks of a well-managed household. Higher-order goals to support compliance with recycling guidelines are readily available for reflection, but so are justifications for defection. We argue that the current theoretical basis for social marketing in social dilemmas is not well suited for this class of prosocial behaviors. Social marketing may benefit from strategies that make values and higher order goals accessible as a basis for decision making without promoting further elaborative thought.

VAN DEN POEL D. and LEUNIS J., Customer-Oriented Conceptual Model of Repeat Direct-Mail Patronage Behavior, Proceedings of the 10^th International Conference on Research in the Distributive Trades, p. 336-346, 1999. August 26-28, Stirling, Scotland, U.K.

When reviewing the vast amount of literature on database marketing, it becomes evident that only very limited attention has been devoted to selecting the right set of variables to include into a response model. In fact, most studies do not offer a formal justification of their choice of variables, which therefore is often of an ad hoc nature. In contrast, this study focuses on what variables to include in the response model. More specifically, we propose a conceptual model for repeat mail-order buying behavior, i.e., we investigate from a theoretical perspective what customer-related variables should be included in models of mail-order buying behavior for modeling repeat purchasing. In the proposed framework, we distinguish between two dimensions in the categorization of predictors: (1) company- versus non-company specific variables; and (2) behavioral- versus non-behavioral predictors of direct mail consumer behavior.

DEKIMPE M.G., member of the editorial board of Marketing Science since 1998, International Journal of Research in Marketing since 1994 and Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management since 1992; ad hoc reviewing for the Journal of Marketing Research since 1997 and for the Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the European Marketing Academy since 1994.

VANDEN ABEELE P., member of the editorial board, International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM), Rechercher et Applications en Marketing (RAM).

IWT, ‘Parent-child Interaction and Young Children’s Use of Visual Package Cues in Product Evaluation’, May 1998 - May 2000

Promotor: WARLOP L.with Paulus I. and Smeesters E.

FWO Project G.0321.99 (Flemish National Science Foundation) "Evaluative Learning and Brand Equity", January 1999 – December 2001.

Promotor: WARLOP L. and Baeyens F., K.U.Leuven (Psychology Department).

F.W.O. & Onderzoeksraad K.U. Leuven, ‘Meerwaarde van merken: meet- en managementaspecten’, oktober 1996 - september 2000.

promotors: STEENKAMP J.B. en DEKIMPE M.G.

OSTC, ‘Between green words and green deeds: the relationship between environmental concern and domestic source separation behavior’, July 1997 - June 2001.

Promotor: WARLOP L. and Vanden Abeele P.

Provincial Government of Vlaams-Brabant, ‘The influence of illusionary superiority on the perceived relevance and effectiveness of law enforcement and government campaigns against drunk driving’, May 1999 - December 2000.

Promotor: WARLOP L.

Gielens K., ‘International Entry Decisions in the Retailing Industry: Antecedence and Performance Consequences’, K.U.Leuven, publicly defended on 27 August, 1999; members of the commission: DEBACKERE K. (co-promotor), DEKIMPE M.G. (promotor), HANSSENS D. (UCLA), HEIL O. (Univ. of Mainz), VANDEN ABEELE P.

Roozen I., ‘Milieu en Consument: Determinanten van Milieuvriendelijk Gedrag van Consumenten’, Doctoraat aan RUCA, Antwerpen; commissielid: DEKIMPE M.G.

Van den Poel D., ‘Response Modeling for Database Marketing Using Binary Classification’, K.U.Leuven, publicly defended August 5th 1999; members of the commission: VANDENBORRE R., LEUNIS J. (promotor), DEKIMPE M.G. (promotor), GOCHET W., McGOLDRICK (Manchester School of Management, Manchester Business School), GIJSBRECHTS E. (UFSIA).

Van Heerde H., ‘Models for Sales Promotion Effects Based on Store-Level Scanner Data’ Doctoraat aan Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, NL, commissielid: DEKIMPE M.G.

DEKIMPE M.G. and HANSSENS D., Winner of the Paul E. Green award for the best article in the Journal of Marketing Research with the article: Sustained spending and persistent response: a new look at long-term marketing profitability, Journal of marketing research, Volume 36, Number 4, p. 397-412, 1999.

STEENKAMP J.B., member of the program committee of the Association for Consumer Research, European Conference, Boston 1999; member of the program committee and session chair, European Marketing Academy Annual Conference, Berlin, 1999; scientific committee member of the Third International Research Seminar on Marketing Communications and Consumer Behavior, La Londe les Maures, 1999.

STEENKAMP J.B., Davidson Institute Research Fellow, University of Michigan Business School 1998-2000; Honorary Professor of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM) 1997-2000. E

VANDEN ABEELE P., chairman, doctoral selection committee of the Foundation Nationale d’Enseignement en Gestion, (FNEGE), Paris.

HERROELEN W.S. and DE REYCK B., Phase transitions in project scheduling, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Volume 50, Number 2, p. 148-156, 1999.

Researchers in the area of artificial intelligence have recently shown that many NP-complete problems exhibit phase transitions. Often, problem instances change from being easy to being hard to solve to again being easy to solve when certain of their characteristics are modified. Most often the transitions are sharp, sometimes they are rather continuous in the order parameters that are characteristic of the system as a whole. To the best of our knowledge, no evidence has been provided so far that similar phase transitions occur in NP-hard scheduling problems. In this paper we report on the existence of phase transitions in various resource-constrained project scheduling problems. We discuss the use of network complexity measures and resource parameters as potential order parameters. We show that while the network complexity measures seem to reveal continuous easy-hard or hard-easy phase transitions, the resource parameters exhibit a relatively sharp easy-hard-easy transition behaviour.

DE REYCK B. and HERROELEN W.S., Bieden projectplanningspakketten de oplossing? Projectmanagement en -scheduling (1), Business Logistics, p. 46-57, 1999.

Projectmatig werken zit in de lift. Projectmanagementsoftware behoort tot de sterkste klimmers in de softwaremarkt. Desondanks is een gemeenschappelijk kenmerk van de meeste projecten dat de toegekende budgetten en de geplande duur ruim worden overschreden en/of dat al te vaak consessies worden gedaan op de voorgeschreven werkinhoud. In dit artikel wordt dieper ingegaan op de fundamentele principes van het moderne projectmanagement en worden mogelijkheden en beperkingen van huidige projectplanningssoftware doorgelicht.

DE REYCK B. and HERROELEN W.S., Complex samenspel tussen tijd-, volgorde- en hulpmiddelenbeperkingen. Projectmanagement en -scheduling (2), Business Logistics, Number 4, p. 19-28, 1999.

In dit artikel gaan we dieper in op project scheduling en meer bepaald op het opstellen van een projectplan dat diverse soms uiteenlopende doelstellingen van modern projectbeheer moet realiseren.

DE REYCK B. and HERROELEN W.S., Inzicht in een complexe driehoeksverhouding ...: theorie blijft schedulers voor, Business Logistics, Number 8/9, p. 28-33, 1999.

In dit artikel belichten we de moeilijke relatie tussen doorlooptijd, beperkte capaciteit en volgorderelaties.

DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., Tutorial: Resource-constrained project scheduling: A classification and overview, Paper presented at the INFORMS Spring Meeting, Cincinnati, 2-5 mei, 1999.

Scheduling project activities subject to various types of precedence and resource constraints under various types of objective functions is a crucial problem in the field of project management which has gained wide and growing interest from both theory and practice over the past few years. Marketed off the shelf computer software is claimed to be the most prevalent among all fields of OR. Recent research efforts have focused on a wide variety of problem types and have resulted in a wide spectrum of exact and heuristic solution procedures for solving important practical problems resulting from the often counterintuitive interaction between project network structure, resource requirements and resource availabilities. Using the framework provided by a recently developed classification scheme, this presentation will identify the most important problem types which have been researched in the literature and will survey the recently developed solution strategies which have allowed to obtain computational advances that have significantly increased the domain of solvable practical problems.

HERROELEN W.S. and DE REYCK B., Phase transitions in project scheduling, Paper presented at the INFORMS Spring Meeting, Cincinnati, 2-5 mei 1999.

We report on phase transitions that have been observed in various resource-constrained project scheduling problems. While network complexity measures, i.e. order strength, complexity index, etc. reveal continuous easy-hard or hard-easy phase transitions, resource parameters, i.e. resource-constrainedness, exhibit a relatively sharp easy-hard-easy transition behaviour.

VANHOUCKE M., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., An exact procedure for the resource-constrained weighted earliness-tardiness project scheduling problem, Paper presented at the INFORMS Fall Meeting, Philadelphia, 7-10 november 1999.

Project activities have a deterministic due date, an earliness as well as a tardiness penalty cost and renewable resource requirements. We present a B&B procedure for which the objective is to schedule the activities in order to minimize the total weighted earliness-tardiness penalty cost of the project.

HERROELEN W.S., Projectmanagement – Planning, scheduling and control, Lezingendag Nederlands Genootschap Besliskunde, Utrecht, November 4, 1999.

HERROELEN W.S., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and DE REYCK B., On the paper "Resource-constrained project scheduling: notation, classification, models and methods" by Brucker et al., Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9904, 12 p., 1999.

The great variety of project scheduling problems studied in the ever growing literature motivated the recent development of classification schemes. In a recent paper (EJOR, 112 (1999) 3-41), Brucker et al. make the claim that, so far, no classification scheme exists which is compatible with what is commonly accepted in machine scheduling and introduce a new classification. In this note, we critically review major shortcomings of the suggested scheme which play heavy limitations on its potential use.

HERROELEN W.S., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and DE REYCK B., An integrated classification scheme for resource scheduling, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9905, 14 p., 1999.

Both machine and project scheduling are the subject of intensive research activities. A wealth of problem types have been studied over the past years and a wide variety of exact and suboptimal solution procedures have been developed. It appears that both fields have evolved independently, despite the fact that problems under study have a lot in common. While it is customary to classify machine scheduling problems by a standard three-field classification scheme, project scheduling problems are still identified using rather confusing acronyms. In this paper, we present an integrated classification scheme for resource scheduling, which allows for the unique classification of both machine and project scheduling problems. We hope that the presented integrated classification scheme is a first step towards the unification of research in both the machine scheduling and project scheduling area, which, we believe, may lead to substantial synergies in both areas.

LAMBRECHT M. and DEJONCKHEERE J., A bullwhip effect explorer, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9910, 30 p., 1999.

The analysis of the supply chain is one of the most active research areas these days. Recent interest in supply chain management focuses on the bullwhip effect. The bullwhip effect refers to the phenomenon where orders to the suppliers tend to have larger variance than sales to the buyer and the distortion propagates upstream in an amplified form. The bullwhip effect is rather difficult to understand, for that reason, a number of researchers designed games. There are several games on the market ranging from manual to computerized versions. The purpose of our game, which is based on a spreadsheet application, is not to focus on the oscillations in orders as such, but to explore the effect on orders of well known inventory policies such as order up to policies, echelon stock policies, etc. ... We assume in our bullwhip explorer that the members of the game are optimising and rational and that consequently the effect is not the result of "irrational" behaviour.

VANHOUCKE M., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., An exact procedure for the unconstrained weighted earliness-tardiness project scheduling problem, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9907, 13 p., 1999.

In this paper we study the unconstrained project scheduling problem with weighted earliness-tardiness penalty costs subject to zero-lag finish-start precedence constraints. Each activity of this unconstrained project scheduling problem has a known deterministic due date, a unit earliness penalty cost and a unit tardiness penalty cost. The objective is to schedule the activities in order to minimize the weighted earliness-tardiness penalty cost of the project, in the absence of constraints on the use of resources. With these features the problem setting become highly attractive in just-in-time environments.

We introduce a two-step recursive algorithm. The first step consists of a forward pass procedure which schedules the activities such that they finish at their due date or later. The second step applies a recursive search in which the activities are eventually shifted backwards (topwards time zero) in order to minimize the weighted earliness-tardiness cost of the project. The procedure has been coded in Visual C++, version 4.0 under Windows NT 4.0 and has been validated on a randomly generated data set.

VANHOUCKE M., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., An exact procedure for the resource-constrained weighted earliness-tardiness project scheduling problem, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9911, 12 p., 1999.

In this paper we study the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with weighted earliness-tardiness penalty costs. Project activities are assumed to have a known deterministic due date, a unit earliness as well as a unit tardiness penalty cost and constant renewable resource requirements. The objective is to schedule the activities in order to minimize the total weighted earliness-tardiness penalty cost of the project subject to the finish)start precedence constraints and the constant renewable resource availability constraints. With these features the problem becomes highly attractive in just-in-time environments.

We introduce a depth-first branch-and-bound algorithm for the unconstrained weighted earliness-tardiness problem to compute lower bounds. The procedure has been coded in Visual C++, version 4.0 under Windows NT and has been validated on a randomly generated problem set.

VANHOUCKE M., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., On maximizing the net present value of a project under resource constraints, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9915, 22 p., 1999.

In this paper we study the resource-constrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows. Each activity of this resource-constrained project scheduling problem has resource requirements for each resource type and a known deterministic cash flow which can be either positive or negative. Cash flows are assumed to be known in both their amount and timing. Progress payments and cash outflows occur at the completion of activities. The objective is to schedule the activities subject to a fixed deadline in order to maximize the net present value (npv) subject to the precedence and resource constraints. With these features the financial aspects of project management are no longer ignored.

We introduce a depth-first branch-and-bound algorithm which makes use of extra precedence relations to solve a number of resource conflicts and a fast recursive search algorithm for the max-npv problem to compute the upper bounds. The recursive search algorithm exploits the idea that positive cash flows should be scheduled as early as possible while negative cash flows should be scheduled as late as possible within the precedence constraints. The procedure has been coded in Visual C++, version 4.0 under Windows NT and has been validated on three randomly generated problem sets.

VANHOUCKE M., DEMEULEMEESTER E.L. and HERROELEN W.S., Scheduling projects with linear time-dependent cash flows to maximize the net present value, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9949, 33 p., 1999.

In this paper we study the unconstrained project scheduling problem with discounted cash flows where the net cash flows are assumed to be linear dependent on the completion times of the corresponding activities. Each activity of this unconstrained project scheduling problem has a known deterministic net cash flow which is linear and non-increasing in time. Progress payments and cash outflows occur at the completion of activities. The objective is to schedule the activities in order to maximize the net present value (npv) subject to the precedence constraints and a fixed deadline. Despite the growing amount of research concerning the financial aspects in project scheduling, little research has been done on the problem with time-dependent cash flows. Nevertheless, this problem gives an incentive to solve more realistic versions of project scheduling problems with financial objectives.

We introduce an extension of an exact recursive algorithm which has been used in solving the max-npv problem with time-independent cash flows and which is embedded in an enumeration procedure. The recursive search algorithm schedules the activities as soon as possible and searches for sets of activities to shift towards the deadline in order to increase the net present value. The enumeration procedure enumerates all sets of activities for which such a shift has not been made but could, eventually, have been advantageous. The procedure has been coded in Visual C++ version 4.0 under Windows NT and has been validated on a randomly generated problem set.

DE REYCK B. and HERROELEN W.S., Management en planning van magazijnprojecten, Number 3.3.D, p. 3.3.D-01-3.3.D-28, Praktijkboek Magazijnen/Distributiecentra, Kluwer, Deventer, 1999.

Het oprichten en (her-)inrichten van een distributiecentrum vormt een complex project of een combinatie van verschillende projecten. In dit hoofdstuk wordt ingegaan op de fundamentele principes van het moderne projectmanagement inzake het oprichten van magazijnen of distributiecentra, en worden de mogelijkheden en de beperkingen van de huidige projectplanningssoftware doorgelicht.

LAMBRECHT M. and DEJONCKHEERE J., Extending the beer game to include real-life supply chain characteristics, ManagingOperations Networks (Bartezzaghi et.al. (Editors)), Servici Grafici Editoriali, Padova, p. 237-244, 1999.

The analysis of the supply chain is one of the most active research areas these days. Recent interest in supply chain management focuses on the bullwhip effect. The Bullwhip effect refers to the phenomenon where orders to the supplier tend to have larger variance than sales to the buyer and the distortion propagates upstream in an amplified form. There are several games on the market ranging from manual to computerized versions. The purpose of our game, which is based on a spreadsheet application, is to explore the effect on orders of well known inventory policies such as order up to policies, order batching, echelon stock policies, fair share allocation, etc…

DEMEULEMEESTER E.L., Associate editor of the Journal of Scheduling since 1998.

HERROELEN W.S., Associate Editor of Management Science since January 1998; member of the Editorial Review Board of Production and Operations Management – An International Journal of the Production and Operations Management Society since the start; member of the Editorial Board of Foundations of Computing and Control Engineering since 1998.

F.W.O. G.0063.98, Extending queueing networks to practical applications for production planning, 1999-2001

Promotor: LAMBRECHT M.

This project will extend the research on queueing approximations in manufacturing systems. The extensions will deal with assembly structures, the modelling of machine breakdowns and the inclusion of realistic demand patterns.

LAMBRECHT M., finalist of the Franz Edelman Award, 1999, for the achievement in the practice of Operations Research and the Management Sciences, Informs: Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

HERROELEN W.S., voorzitter van de wetenschappelijke commissie G2 Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek - Vlaanderen Economische wetenschappen en bedrijfskunde; lid van de stuurgroep Vlaams Overleg Bouwmanagement en voorzitter van de werkgroep Projectmanagement van de Vlaamse Confederatie Bouw.

Heylighen A., Bouwen J.E. and Neuckermans H., Walking on a thin line - The balance between passive knowledge and active knowing of components and concepts in architectural design, Design Studies, The international journal for design research in engineering, architecture, products and services, Volume 20, number 2 (March), 211 – 235., 1999.

This study explores concept generation in architectural design from a knowledge point of view. First, it considers different kinds of knowledge/ways of knowing underlying the generation of a meaningful concept, resulting in a framework which distinguishes between passive knowledge and active knowing of components and concepts. Second, this theoretical framework is used in an experiment aiming to explore the development of concept generation in the design studio. Focus of attention is how the interaction within the studio helps the student to develop a meaningful concept. Important roles are here reserved for the studio teacher, and the instruments and language used within the interaction.

HUYS R., SELS L., VAN HOOTEGEM G., BUNDERVOET J. and HENDERICKX E., Toward less division of labor? New production concepts in the automotive, chemical, clothing, and machine tool industries, Human relations, Volume 52, Number 1, p. 67-93, 1999.

JANSSENS M. and STEYAERT C., The inhuman space of HRM: Sensing the subject, Organization, Volume 6, Number 2, p. 371-383, 1999.

In this after-text, we rely on Lyotard’s anamnesis and the double inhumanness to remember the different contributions of this special issue on HRM. Anamnesis brings us the idea of HRM as a politics of non-forgetting consists of creating sensitivity for what gets lost and forgotten. Lyotard’s second type of inhuman, the childlike nature, brings us to a possible space for theorizing about HRM. Reading HRM from the perspective of 'child' brings us resistance and sensibility as two concepts which may construe HRM research and practices.

JANSSENS M. and STEYAERT C., The world in two and a third way out? The concept of duality in organization theory and practice, Scandinavian journal of management, Volume 15, Number 2, p. 121-139, 1999.

An organizational form that is emerging today is that of the "dual organization" or the "dualistic enterprise," in which the process of organizing and managing requires the building of tension. The aim of this paper is to examine the changing use of dual thinking in organization literature, and its implications for dealing with tensions in organizing. We distinguish between a structural, a cultural and a personal dimension, and compare the dualities discussed in the 1990s with those described in classical organization literature. In light of this change in conception we then discuss six strategies referred to in the literature as ways of dealing with dualities, at the same time examining their potential for approaching dualities in processual terms. We suggest a processual approach to coping with dualities in organizing, by relying on the concept of trialectics.

SELS L. and HUYS R., Towards a flexible future? The nature of organisational response in the clothing industry, New technology, work and employment, Volume 14, Number 2, p. 113-128, 1999.

Quick response behavior is a necessity in the clothing industry. It was expected that the requirements for this would show a number of dysfunctions in the Taylorist production concept. However, it is concluded that the way in which clothing companies are attempting to reorganize their processes can be termed "intensification': changes designed to increase productivity without substantial reorganization of the Taylorist production concept.

STEYAERT C. and JANSSENS M., Human and inhuman resource management: saving the subject of HRM, Organization, Volume 6, Number 2, p. 181-198, 1999.

When the concept of HRM was introduced in the 80’s the expectations of finding ways to manage the social capital in organizations were high. The praise of the eighties has been followed by a salvo of criticism in the nineties. Currently, questions of HRM’s future and the way it is conceived as a theoretical domain are being raised. The purpose of this special issue is to take up this type of question and create a dialogue about the possible directions HRM can take. As a way to begin, we would like to find ways of theorizing which develop the concept of HRM and concepts in HRM. Before introducing the notion of ‘moving concept’ and ‘human’ as one possible example, we will elaborate on our argument that little theorizing on HRM exists. This argument is based on our examination of how the current HRM literature has been developing the field of HRM and in which way they have contributed to theorising on HRM. Looking at the HRM literature, we see three ways of researching HRM: scholars who are oriented towards designing theoretically-based HRM tools; those who examine HRM as a field of practice, and those who reflect in a critical way on the concept of HRM and its implementation in practice. Our plea for taking a more reflexive approach to the study of HRM can already be found in recent initiatives that take a Foucauldian perspective on HRM. Simultaneously (and in contrast to Foucauldian’s analyses), we find it useful to consider other ways of reorienting how we understand the domain of HRM.

BOUWEN J., JANSSENS M. and WOUTERS A., HRM vanuit een kennisperspectief, Tijdschrift voor HRM, Number 3, p. 7-26, 1999.

This study examines HR activities from a knowledge perspective, using the distinction between component and architectural knowledge. While component knowledge refers to knowledge about a particular element, architectural knowledge refers to knowledge about the ways in which the elements are integrated into a coherent whole. A survey study indicates the existence of types HR activities. Two types of HR activities represent component knowledge referring ‘Individual and ‘Performance’. These two types refer to in- and outflow activities and to reward activities. Two types of HR activities representing architectural knowledge refer to ’System’ and ‘Function.’ Work system choices such as job rotation or project groups as well as training activities concerning social and problem solving, are exponents of a ‘System’ type of architectural knowledge. In contrast, well-defined jobs and limited employee influence are exponents of a ‘Function’ type of architectural knowledge. This study suggests how architectural knowledge and component knowledge can be used as a framework to assess the coherence and contradictions among different HR activities.

JANSSENS M., Laaggeschoolden en human resource management: verdringing of waardering van diversiteit?, Tijdschrift voor arbeidsvraagstukken, Volume 15, Number 3, p. 221-234, 1999.

Human Resource Management is often proposed as a way to integrate the so-called minority groups in an organization. This paper takes up this proposition by examining HRM practices and the way they can provide solutions for the group of lower educated people. HRM is first analyzed for its underlying assumptions related to idea of the 'other.' It then discusses an alternative implementation of HRM which departures from the assumption of heterogeneity in the organization and which reconsiders the norms based upon the needs of the lower educated people as well as other so-called minority groups.

SELS L. and DEJONCKHEERE J., VIONA rapporteert. Arbeidsherverdeling: bekend maakt bemind, Nieuwsbrief van het steunpunt WAV, Volume 9, Number 1/2, p. 103-106, 1999.

SEYNAEVE K. and JANSSENS M., Werknemers als stakeholders bij directe participatie: rechtvaardigheids- of zorgrelaties?, Economisch en sociaal tijdschrift, Volume 53, Number 4, p. 591-621, 1999.

This study examines to what extent the content of participation may cohere with the type of relationship between the different stakeholders. Four participation domains - strategic, planning, social and operational themes – and two types of stakeholder relationship -relationships of justice and care - were being distinguished. Case study research on four participation workgroups indicated that relationships of care occur when operational themes of optimizing a work situation were being discussed. Important aspects of a relationship of care were attention towards needs of the stakeholders, connection among stakeholders and respect for the perspectives of others. In contrast, relationships of justice develop when a strategic theme involving constriction and reduction was the focus of the discussion. Important aspects of relationships of justice were contrasting interests, autonomous and separate orientation and protection of rights. An important condition that influenced the development of relationships of care or justice was leadership style.

Van den Brande I., Het psychologisch contract. Een kritische discussie van het concept en haar operationalisatie. Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken, 15 (1): 65-78, 1999.

This article seeks to contribute to a greater conceptual clarity of the psychological contract. It is based on a review of the psychological contract literature. We start the article with a few definitions of the psychological contract. In the second part of the article we discuss the concept by answering the following questions: (1) What is the role of the exchange relationship between employer and employee in the development of the psychological contract?, (2) What is the nature of the expectations and obligations that constitute the psychological contract?, (3) What is the role of the individual employee en what is the role of the organization in the development of the psychological contract?. In the third part of the article we discuss some issues concerning the operationalization of the psychological contract. Questions that are raised are: (1) How can different types of psychological contracts be distinguished?, and (2) How can we evaluate the psychological contract? We conclude the article by illustrating how future research of psychological contracts can contribute to the practice of HRM.

Bouwen J., Heylighen A. and Neukermans H., Knowledge, knowing and learning in architectural design, presentation at the 6th annual EDINEB international conference, Bergen, Norway 23-26 June 1999.

Bouwen J., Heylighen A. and Neukermans H., Studying the design studio, CUDE (Clients and Users in Design Education) presentation at the Conference at De Montfort University, Leicester (UK), 22-23 april, 1999.

Overlaet B., Cultural aspects of the search conference method, the International Association for Conflict Management (IACM) Meeting, San Sebastian, Spain, June 1999 and at the 6^th International Conference on Multi-Organizational Partnerships and Cooperative Strategy, Tilburg, The Netherlands, July 1999.

Sels L. and Van Hootegem G., Belgium – The Netherlands. Does temporary unemployment make the difference? A comparison concerning flexible work, paper for the Internationale Konferenz der Denkwerkstätte Graz Arbeit und Arbeitslosigkeit ‘Soziale Sicherheit und Strukturwandel der Arbeitslosigkeit’, Wirtschaftskammer Steiermark, Graz, 27^th – 29^th May 1999.

Sels L., De componenten van het loon: tendensen en knelpunten, studiedag Functiewaardering. Systemen, kwaliteitsvereisten, impact op het personeelsbeleid, Federaal Ministerie van Tewerkstelling en Arbeid, 21 september 1999.

Sels L., De organisatie van deeltijdarbeid in het bedrijfsleven, studiedag Deeltijds leidinggeven: realiteit of sprookje?, georganiseerd door het Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Departement Algemene zaken en Financiën, Brussel, Markiesgebouw, 2 juni 1999.

Sels L., Flexibilisering in het kader van het capaciteitsbeheer, studieavond De a-typische werknemer georganiseerd door ISUA (Universiteit Antwerpen), Wilrijk, UIA, 16 december 1999.

Sels L., Lonen in Vlaanderen: loonhoogte en loonsamenstelling, studiedag Lonen in Vlaanderen georganiseerd door SFD, Wilrijk, De Jachthoorn, 10 december 1999.

JANSSENS M., Laaggeschoolden en Human Resource Management: verdringing of waardering van diversiteit?, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9923, 23 p., 1999.

Human Resource Management is often proposed as a way to integrate the so-called minority groups in an organization. This paper takes up this proposition by examining HRM practices and the way they can provide solutions for the group of lower educated people. HRM is first analyzed for its underlying assumptions related to idea of the 'other.' It then discusses an alternative implementation of HRM which departures from the assumption of heterogeneity in the organization and which reconsiders the norms based upon the needs of the lower educated people as well as other so-called minority groups.

MAES J. and SELS L., De evaluatie van opleidingseffecten: een vergelijking van evaluatiemethoden, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9919, 62 p., 1999.

Eén van de belangrijkste oorzaken van 'onderinvestering' in bedrijfsopleidingen betreft de moeilijkheid om de effectiviteit van deze opleidingen te bepalen. Dit meetprobleem stelt zich zowel op het niveau van effecten op het leervermogen en/of het gedrag van werknemers en als op het niveau van langetermijneffecten op de afdelings- of bedrijfsperformantie. Deze onzekerheid over de effectiviteit of het rendement van een bedrijfsopleiding zou de 'minimalistische' benadering van het bedrijfsopleidingsbeleid in de hand werken. De ontwikkeling van accurate methoden voor de evaluatie van opleidingseffecten is dan ook een absolute prioriteit. Dit onderzoeksrapport bevat een kritische bespreking, vergelijking en verdere uitwerking van twee types evaluatie-instrumenten. Enerzijds methoden voor de procesevaluatie (hoe wordt een opleiding ervaren door cursisten, vinden zij dat de (leer)doelen bereikt zijn, etc.) en anderzijds instrumenten voor de productevaluatie . Bij productevaluatie staat de meting van het rendement van opleidingen centraal (effecten op productiviteit, kwaliteit, etc.).

SEYNAEVE K. and JANSSENS M., Werknemers als stakeholders bij directe participatie: rechtvaardigheids- of zorgrelaties?, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9912, 33 p., 1999.

This study examines to what extent the content of participation may cohere with the type of relationship between the different stakeholders. Four participation domains - strategic, planning, social and operational themes – and two types of stakeholder relationship -relationships of justice and care - were being distinguished. Case study research on four participation workgroups indicated that relationships of care occur when operational themes of optimizing a work situation were being discussed. Important aspects of a relationship of care were attention towards needs of the stakeholders, connection among stakeholders and respect for the perspectives of others. In contrast, relationships of justice develop when a strategic theme involving constriction and reduction was the focus of the discussion. Important aspects of relationships of justice were contrasting interests, autonomous and separate orientation and protection of rights. An important condition that influenced the development of relationships of care or justice was leadership style.

CLUDTS S., An inquiry into the normative core of stakeholder theory: towards a community of stakeholders?, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9929, 28 p., 1999.

A number of normative theories have already been suggested as competing normative cores of stakeholder theory. As a consequence, suggesting yet another normative core for stakeholder theory will probably add to the confusion facing managers and academics who try to catch up with the rapid developments of stakeholder theory. However, a critical assessment of some of these existing stakeholder theories shows that most of them fail to take the distinct contribution of the stakeholder concept into account. I argue that this distinct contribution is the awareness of the existence of multiple stakeholders and diverse stakeholders interests. This contribution, though it was primarily made on a descriptive level, has profound implications for people who want to develop a normative theory of the corporation which could really be called a normative stakeholder theory of the corporation. In this paper, I try to clarify these implications.

SELS L. and DEJONCKHEERE J., Arbeidsherverdeling: kosten en baten, p. 5-202, 1999.

SELS L. and OVERLAET B., Lonen in Vlaanderen: wat verdient u en wie verdient meer? Vacature salarisenquête, p. 5-224, 1999.

VAN VALCKENBORGH K., DOUTERLUNGNE M. and SELS L., Modules als bouwstenen voor het onderwijs: ook in Vlaanderen?, p. III-315, 1999.

SELS L. and VAN HOOTEGEM G., België-Nederland: strijd om de meeste flexibiliteit, p. 159-184, 1999.

Bouwen J., reviewer for the MOCIG interest group for the AOM conference 1999 in Chicago.

JANSSENS M., member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Organization Behavior, since January 1999 and member of the Editorial Board of Journal of World Business, since February 1999.

Sels L., redactiesecretaris Tijdschrift voor Sociologie, sinds 1 december 1997; lid van de kernredactie Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken, sinds 1 september 1999.

Fonds voor Vakopleiding in de Bouwnijverheid, Ontwerp van een methode voor de meting van het rendement van bedrijfsopleidingen, augustus 1998 – mei 1999.

Promotor: Sels L., Onderzoeker Maes J.

FWO, De invloed van de institutionele context op het psychologisch contract bij de werknemer. Een survey onderzoek bij Belgische arbeiders, bedienden, kaderleden en ambtenaren, januari 1999 - december 2001;

Promotor: JANSSENS M. in samenwerking met SELS L., OVERLAET B. en VAN DEN BRANDE I.

Ministerie van de Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Departement Coordinatie Gelijke Kansen in Vlaanderen, Gelijke Kansen voor mannen en vrouwen aan de universiteit? Onderzoek naar de factoren die het stopzetten van een doctoraat beïnvloeden, oktober 1998 - juni 1999.

Promotor: JANSSENS M.

Onderzoekers: FORRIER A. en SEYNAEVE K.

Vacature, Jaarlijks onderzoek ‘lonen in Vlaanderen’, OVERLAET B. en SELS L.

Arbeidsmarktonderzoeksprogramma VIONA, ‘Het opleidingsbeleid in Vlaamse bedrijven: determinerende factoren en knelpunten’, november 1998 – april 2000.

Promotor: L. SELS (i.s.m. Buyens D., Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School).

Arbeidsmarktonderzoeksprogramma VIONA, ‘De impact van de institutionele context op de flexibiliteitspolitiek van industriële en dienstverlenende bedrijven en de gevolgen voor de kwaliteit van de organisatie en de kwaliteit van de arbeid’, december 1998 –november 2000. SELS L. (i.s.m. Van Hootegem G., HIVA & De Witte H., Universiteit Gent).

Arbeidsmarktonderzoeksprogramma VIONA, ‘Personeelsbeleid in KMO’s. Een onderzoek naar de kenmerken van een effectief KMO-personeelsbeleid’, november 1999 – april 2001.

Promotor: SELS L. (i.s.m. Van Hootegem G. en Lamberts M., HIVA).

Vlaams Minister voor Onderwijs en Ambtenarenzaken, Evaluatie van het Non-Discriminatiebeleid, januari 1998 - december 1999;

Promotor: JANSSENS M. in samenwerking met VERLOT M., ICO, RUGent en KESTELOOT C., K.U.Leuven.

Wetenschappelijk en Technisch Centrum voor de Bouwnijverheid, Onderzoek naar de determinanten van falingen in de bouwsector, maart 1999 – maart 2000.

Promotor: SELS L. (i.s.m. Roodhooft F.), onderzoeker: Maes J.

Newbury W. Interoffice shared perceptions as a control method in an integrated multinational corporation, New York University, dissertation defense, December 14, 1999.

Beoordelaar: Janssens M.

Verlot M., Allochtonen in het onderwijs: een politiek-antropologisch onderzoek naar het integratie- en onderwijsbeleid in de Vlaamse gemeenschap en de Franse gemeenschap van België (1998-1999), Universiteit Gent, publicly defended April 23, 1999; Beoordelaar: Janssens M.

Janssens M., was during 1999 a visiting professor at New York University, Stern School of Business, International Business Group for 7 months.

Bouwen J. chairperson of the MOCIG session "Cognitive Systems, Transitions, and Change in a Pluralistic World" at the AOM Conference in Chicago, Tuesday, August 10^th, 1999.

Sels L., lid van de Interuniversitaire Begeleidingsgroep van het VIONA Onderzoeksprogramma.

BEIRLANT J., DIERCKX G., GOEGEBEUR Y. and MATTHYS G., Tail index estimation and an exponential regression model, Extremes, Volume 2, Number 2, p. 177-200, 1999.

One of the most important problems involved in the estimation of Pareto-indices is the reduction of bias in case the slowly varying part of the Pareto-type model disappears at a very slow rate. In other cases, when the bias problem is not so severe, the application of well-known estimators such as the Hill (1975) and the moment estimator (Dekkers (1989)) still asks for an adaptive selection of the sample fraction to be used in such estimation procedures. We show that in both circumstances, solutions can be constructed for the given problems using maximum likelihood estimators based on a regression model for upper order statistics. Via this technique one can also infer about the bias-variance trade-off for a given data set. The behaviour of the new maximum likelihood estimator is illustrated through simulation experiments, a.o. for ARCH processes.

DEGRAEVE Z., SCHRAGE L., Optimal Integer Solutions to Industrial Cutting Stock Problems, INFORMS Journal on Computing, Vol. 11, Nr. 4, December 1999, 406-419.

DEGRAEVE Z., ROODHOOFT F., Effectively Selecting Suppliers Using The Total Cost of Ownership Criterion, The Journal of Supply Chain Management, (formerly The International Journal of Purchasing and Materials Management), Vol. 35, Nr. 1, Winter 1999, 1-15.

DEGRAEVE Z., ROODHOOFT F., Improving the Efficiency of the Purchasing Process Using Total Cost of Ownership Information: The Case of Heating Electrodes at Cockerill Sambre S.A., European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 112, Nr. 1, January 1999, 42-53.

DEGRAEVE Z., ROODHOOFT F., SERE P., GENOE D., SMETS R., Total Cost of Ownership voor Aankoop: De Implementatie, (in Dutch), Business Logistics, December 1999, 9 p.

DEGRAEVE Z., ROODHOOFT F., Total Cost of Ownership voor Aankoop: Een Raamwerk", (in Dutch), Business Logistics, november 1999, 9 p.

DEGRAEVE Z., ROODHOOFT F., Hoe Aankoopkosten Verminderen: Het Gebruik van Total Cost of Ownership Informatie in een Mathematisch Programmeringsmodel", (in Dutch), Business In-zicht, mei 1999, 2 p.

Goos P., Tack L. Vandebroek M., Designing experiments with replicated observations for variance function estimation, American Statistical Associations, 1999 Proceedings of the Section on Quality and Productivity.

Tack L., Goos P., Vandebroek M., Efficient D-optimal designs under multiplicative heteroscedasticity, American Statistical Associations, 1999 Proceedings of the Section on Quality and Productivity.

Goos P., Vandebroek M., Exploiting correlation in the construction of D-optimal response surface designs, American Statistical Associations, 1999 Proceedings of the Section on Quality and Productivity.

DEGRAEVE Z., Alternative Formulations for a Layout Problem in the Fashion Industry, with Jans R., ORBEL 13, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, January 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., Benchmark Results for the Cutting Stock and Bin Packing Problem, with Peeters M., ORBEL 13, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, January 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., Branch and Price Algorithms for the Dual Bin Packing Problem and the Maximum Cardinality Bin Packing Problem, with Peeters M., International Philadelphia INFORMS Fall 1999 Meeting, session about ‘Discrete Optimization Techniques’, Philadelphia, United States, November 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., Tire Production Scheduling at Solideal, with Jans R., International Philadelphia INFORMS Fall 1999 Meeting, session about ‘Applications of Operations Research’, Philadelphia, United States, November 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., Total Cost of Ownership Purchasing of Services : the Case of Airline Selection at Alcatel Bell, with Labro E. en Roodhooft F., 22nd Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association, Bordeaux, France, May 1999 and at the 8^th International Annual IPSERA Conference, Belfast and Dublin, Ireland, March 1999.

Goos P., Correlated Data in Response Surface Methodology, Invited speaker, Workshop on correlated data modeling, Trieste, Italy, Oktober 23, 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., ‘An Evaluation of Vendor Selection Models form a Total Cost of Ownership Perspective’, with Labro E. and Roodhooft F., doctoral research seminar in accounting, London School of Economics, June 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., ‘A Mathematical Programming Approach for Procurement using Activity Based Costing’, with Roodhooft F., doctoral research seminar in Decision Sciences London Business School, February 1999.

Goos P., Exploiting Correlation in the Construction of D-optimal Response Surface Designs, Colloquium: Current Issues in Statistics, Universitair Centrum voor de Statistiek, K.U.Leuven, April 29, 1999.

Goos P., Tack L. and Vandebroek M., Optimum Designs for Variance Function Estimation Using Sample Variances, Colloquium: Current Issues in Statistics, Universitair Centrum voor de Statistiek, K.U.Leuven, April 29, 1999.

Tack L., Goos P., Vandebroek M., Efficient D-optimal Designs under Multiplicative Heteroscedasticity, 7^th Annual Meeting of the Belgian Statistical Society (SBS-BVS), Nieuwpoort, Belgium, Oktober 8, 1999 and Colloquium: Current Issues in Statistics, Universitair Centrum voor de Statistiek, K.U.Leuven, April 29, 1999.

BEIRLANT J. and GOEGEBEUR Y., Regression with response distributions of pareto-type, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9931, 29 p., 1999.

In this paper we discuss the estimation of the Pareto index when covariate information is available. The Pareto index is modelled as a function of the explanatory variables and hence measures the tail heaviness of the conditional distribution of the response variable given this covariate information. The original response data are transformed in order to obtain generalized residuals, possessing a common Pareto-type distribution. Extending the results of Beirlant et al. (1999), an exponential regression model will be developed for these generalized residuals. The parameters of this model are estimated using a profile likelihood method. The resulting maximum likelihood estimates of the regression coefficients will be used for the estimation of extreme quantiles of the conditional distribution of the dependent variable. The methods developed will be illustrated with two practical examples.

GOOS M., TACK L. and VANDEBROEK M., Optimal designs for variance function estimation using sample variances, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9918, 18 p., 1999.

Using sample variances for estimating a variance function is intuitively more appealing than using residuals. Main advantage of sample variances over residuals is that they are robust to misspecification of the mean function. However, due to the replication requirement neither standard response surface designs nor small designs generated by design construction algorithms can be used to estimate the variance by means of sample variances. Based on maximum likelihood and weighted least squares estimation, two alternative approaches for the construction of optimal designs for variance function estimation with sample variances are proposed. A generic exchange algorithm and computational results are presented. Irrespective of the link function between the variance and the linear predictor, the algorithm serves as a useful tool to construct tailor-made designs for variance function estimation by means of sample variances.

GOOS M. and VANDEBROEK M., Outperforming completely randomized designs, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9933, 20 p., 1999.

Bi-randomization designs have become increasingly popular in industry because some of the factors under investigation are often hard-to-change. It is well-known that the resulting compound symmetric error structure not only affects estimation and inference procedures but also the efficiency of the experimental designs used. In this paper, the use of bi-randomization designs is shown to outperform completely randomized designs in terms of D-efficiency. This result suggests that bi-randomization designs should be considered as an alternative to completely randomized designs even if all experimental factors are easy-to-change.

GOOS M. and VANDEBROEK M., Optimal response surface designs in the presence of random block effects, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9945, 21 p., 1999

The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, it provides the reader with an overview of the literature on optimal response surface designs for random block effects models. Special attention is given to cases in which D-optimal designs do not depend on the degree of correlation. These situations include some cases where the block size is greater than or equal to the number of model parameters, the case of minimum support designs and some orthogonally blocked designs. However, in many instances the optimal design depends on the degree of correlation and no exact optimal designs can be found in the literature. In the second part of this paper, an algorithm is presented that produces D-optimal designs for these cases. Examples will illustrate the construction of optimal designs for each design problem described.

TACK L., GOOS M. and VANDEBROEK M., Efficient D-optimal designs under multiplicative heteroscedasticity, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9925, 21 p., 1999.

In optimum design theory designs are constructed that maximize the information on the unknown parameters of the response function. The major part deals with designs optimal for response function estimation under the assumption of homoscedasticity. In this paper, optimal designs are derived in case of multiplicative heteroscedasticity for either response function estimation or response and variance function estimation by using a Bayesian approach. The efficiencies of Bayesian designs derived with various priors are compared to those of the classic designs with respect to various variance functions. The results show that any prior knowledge about the sign of the variance function parameters leads to designs that are considerably more efficient than the classic ones based on homoscedastic assumptions.

TACK L. and VANDEBROEK M., (D_t, C) – optimal run orders, Research Report DTEW, K.U.Leuven, nr. 9957, 28 p., 1999.

Cost considerations have rarely been taken into account in optimum design theory. A few authors consider measurement costs, i.e. the costs associated with a particular factor level combination. A second cost approach results from the fact that it is often expensive to change factor levels from one observation to another. We refer to these costs as transition costs. In view of cost minimization, one should minimize the number of factor level changes. However, there is a substantial likelihood that there is some time order dependence in the results. Consequently, when considering both time order dependence and transition costs, an optimal ordering is not easy to find. There is precious little in the literature on how to select good time order sequences for arbitrary design problems and up to now, no thorough analysis of both costs is found in the literature. For arbitrary design problems, our proposed design algorithm incorporates cost considerations in optimum design construction and enables one to compute cost-efficient run orders that are optimally balanced for time trends. The results show that cost considerations in the construction of trend-resistant run orders entail considerable reductions in the total cost of an experiment and imply a large increase in the amount of information per unit cost.

DEGRAEVE Z., member of the redaction and editor of the publications of Tijdschrift voor Economie en Management, Departement Toegepaste Economische Wetenschappen, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, September 1992 – now; ad hoc referee for publications in the International Journal of Production Research, 1993 – now; ad hoc referee for Operations Research, 1998 – now.

Alcatel Bell, Antwerpen en Cockerill Sambre, Luik, 1996 - now, DEGRAEVE Z. and ROODHOOFT F, A Mathematical Programming Approach for Supplier Selection Based on Activity Costing. Studie van het leveranciersselectieprobleem gebruik makende van Activity Based Costing en Mathematical Programming. A Mathematical Programming Approach for Supplier Selection Based on Activity Costing. Studie van het leveranciersselectieprobleem gebruik makende van Activity Based Costing en Mathematical Programming.

European Commission, Directorate General of Economic and Financial Affairs, 1994 - now,

promotors: DEGRAEVE Z., PROOST S. (K.U.Leuven)

Onderzoek betreffende de studie en evaluatie van de transport-, leefmilieu- en energiepolitiek, "Spatial - Temporal Least Cost Traffic Regulatory Policies for Achieving Air Quality Standards in the European Union", met G. J. Koopman, kabinetsmedewerker van Commissaris Neil Kinnock, met 2 medewerkers via Leuven Research and Development. Onderzoek betreffende de studie en evaluatie van de transport-, leefmilieu- en energiepolitiek, "Spatial - Temporal Least Cost Traffic Regulatory Policies for Achieving Air Quality Standards in the European Union", met G. J. Koopman, kabinetsmedewerker van Commissaris Neil Kinnock. Project ter waarde van 300.000,- ECU met 2 medewerkers via Leuven Research and Development.

Onderzoeksfonds K.U.Leuven, 1999 - 2003, DEGRAEVE Z. and Roodhooft F., Research Fund of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Onderzoekstoelage OT/99/6, A Decision Support System for Strategic Procurement Management Based on Total Cost of Ownership Information.

DEGRAEVE Z. associate professor of Decision sciences at the London Business School from September 1999.

DEGRAEVE Z., lid van de raad van bestuur van de Belgische Vereniging van Operationeel Onderzoek SOGESCI-BVWB, aanwezig als vertegenwoordiger van het departement Toegepaste Economische Wetenschappen van de Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.