Economics Insights @ CBS

This paper addresses a class of single-machine scheduling problems with a common due-date for all jobs, and general earliness and tardiness costs. We show that a class of simple, polynomial, "greedy-type" heuristics can be used to generate close-to-optimal schedules. An extensive numerical study exhibits small optimality gaps. For convex cost structures, we establish that the worst-case optimality gap is bounded by e−i ≈ 0.36, if the due-date is non-restrictive.

This paper analyzes how organizations can minimize costs of processing and communicating information. Communication is costly because it takes time for an agent to absorb new information sent by others. Agents can reduce this time by specializingin the processing ofparticular types ofinformation. When these returns to specialization outweigh costsofcommunication, it is efficient for several agents to collaborate within a firm.

To explore if, when, and how intentionally corporate officers conceal negative organizational outcomes from shareholders, we used computer-assisted content analysis of over 1,000 president's letters contained in annual reports to shareholders. Results suggest that outside directors, large institutional investors, and accountants limit such concealment, but small institutional investors and outside directors who are shareholders prompt it. Low disclosure is associated with subsequent selling of stock by top officers and outside directors.