No abstract

Cow herd inventories are the primary determinant of beef supply. The principal decisions determining inventories are studied in a dynamic framework. Short-run and long-run impacts of one-time shocks in economic factors influencing culling and replacement decisions are estimated via simulations. Changes in economic factors have the greatest impact on younger members of the herd. These changes have long-term impacts on inventories through their influence on age dynamics. Impacts on age dynamics could influence the cattle cycle. Copyright 1997, Oxford University Press.

Ocean Spray Cranberries, a $1 billion fruit-processing cooperative, tracks sales and assesses the effectiveness of its marketing programs with large data bases collected through bar-code scanners in supermarkets. Their level of detail is so great that it can obscure important facts and trends. Ocean Spray needed to automate as much of the analysis as possible. Working with Ocean Spray, Information Resources developed an expert system, CoverStory, to uncover the important facts and trends in the data base. Using a series of subanalyses, CoverStory reveals brands and markets that are newsworthy and identifies marketing factors that may be causing changes in these brands and markets. CoverStory is part of an overall DSS at Ocean Spray that permits a single marketing professional to manage the process of alerting all the marketing and sales managers to key problems and opportunities and to provide them with daily problem-solving information.

Laboratory experiments are used to generate data that facilitate investigation of pricing behavior in forward and spot markets. Results suggest a tendency for prices in a spot market to converge to levels higher than those in a forward market. The difference in these market environments is the supply schedule. Buyers in a spot market are aware that supply is inelastic and become relatively aggressive bidders. Forward markets have a relatively elastic supply schedule and buyers fare better. This may motivate firms to promote forward markets and/or vertically integrate in the procurement of inputs.