The use of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) in many fields is based on total flexibility of the weights. However, the problem of allowing total flexibility of the weights is that the values of the weights obtained by solving the unrestricted DEA program are often in contradiction to prior views or additional available information. Also, many applications of DEA assume complete discretionary of d...

Most performance evaluation models in operations management literature have assumed that tasks possess standardized completion criteria. However, in many operation systems, particularly in service and professional work, judgment is frequently required to determine when a task is completed. In thin paper, we show that introducing discretion in task completion adds a fourth variability buffer, qu...

Most performance evaluation models in operations management literature have assumed that tasks possess standardized completion criteria. However, in many operation systems, particularly in service and professional work, judgment is frequently required to determine when a task is completed. In thin paper, we show that introducing discretion in task completion adds a fourth variability buffer, qu...

Abstract Built on the exclusive funding of 1,000 large transnational corporations, World Economic Forum is a not-for-profit Swiss foundation, aiming to shape direction globalization. Its events are characterized by low degrees formality and transparency. Research what this organization does scarce. This article suggests term discretionary governance capture precarious, yet existing, social orde...

Motivated by the findings that the aggregate (discretionary) accruals positively predicts oneyear-ahead firm-level stock returns and that there is a considerable amount of co-movement in firm-level (discretionary) accruals, we decompose firm-level (discretionary) accruals into a market-wide component and a firm-specific component. We document robust evidence that the two orthogonal (discretiona...

We find that the positive relation between aggregate accruals and one-year-ahead market returns documented in Hirshleifer, Hou and Teoh [2009] is driven by discretionary accruals but not normal accruals. The return forecasting power of aggregate discretionary accruals is robust to choices of sample periods, return measurements, estimation methods, business condition and risk premium proxies, an...

The paper analyses the existence and efficiency of discretionary industrial assistance schemes under asymmetric information between an uninformed government and a uniform distribution of firms with differing productivities. Discretionary assistance allows the government to scrutinise projects in an effort to learn the type, which can reduce the ‘informational rents’ of automatic assistance, whe...