Exit Constraints Research Articles

Exit, Voice & Innovation: How Human Capital Policy Equality (& How Inequality Hurts Growth)

If an employee believes her organization is failing, she can take action using one of two strategies: exit (leaving the company) or voice (advocating change from within). But what happens when both exit and voice are restricted? Change itself–including both innovation and equality–suffers. This article, written for the 24th Annual Frankel Lecture, investigates the connections between fields that are usually kept separate: intellectual property and innovation policy; antitrust law and market competition; employment law and contract norms; and anti-discrimination law and equality policy. In employment, non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), non-compete agreements, innovation assignment clauses, non-disparagement agreements, mandatory arbitration, and secrecy policies all create exit constraints. These restrictive clauses also serve to silence employees, inventors, creators, and entrepreneurs from speaking up and from expressing themselves creatively. These trends impede mobility in the job market while also suppressing voice. The recent steep rise in the use of restrictive clauses has shaped human capital in ways that are harmful to all workers, as well as to industries and innovation at large. Still, the burden of these restrictions is not equally distributed. By integrating economic theory and new empirical research in the field of equality and innovation, this article shows that restricting mobility and voice has negative effects on gender diversity, particularly with respect to women’s opportunities to lead, create, and invent. As a result, industries using these techniques become more concentrated, with less new entry and start-up activity and less gender parity. And because the process operates endogenously, the more an industry is concentrated, the more mobility and equality suffer. The article argues that recent findings on the gender deficit in patenting activity, intellectual property ownership, leadership, and entrepreneurship should be understood in relation to exit and voice policy infrastructure. It concludes with directions for future research and policy recommendations.

Different Exit Effects between a Combined Riser with Variable Exit Constraints and a Conventional Riser with Weak Exit Constraints

A large-scale cold model experimental setup of combined riser with variable constraint exit (CRVCE) was established. The axial and radial distributions of solids holdup and particle velocity, under different operating conditions, were investigated experimentally, and the results were compared with conventional riser (CR). Experimental results showed that, the exit restrictive effect of combined riser with variable constraint exit was weak when particle circulation flux and static bed height in upper fluidized bed were lower, while it turned to be strong when superficial gas velocity and static bed height in upper fluidized bed were higher. Under the same conditions, averaged cross-sectional solids holdup of CRVCE was characterized by C type distribution when article circulation flux was higher, while that of CR with weak constraint exit was characterized by linear distribution. In axial direction, averaged cross-sectional particle velocity of CRVCE changed in order: acceleration-constant-decrease velocity, while that of CR changed in another: acceleration-constant velocity. The maximum of local solids holdup value of CRVCE appeared at the dimensionless radius position r/R=0.7, while that of CR appeared in the wall region. Their local particle velocities were similar in the core region, while local particle velocity of CRVCE was lower than that of CR in the annular region.

A Hybrid-Coded Genetic Algorithm Based Optimisation of Non-Productive Paths in CNC Machining

In order to optimise the non-productive paths in CNC machining under entry or exit constraints (such as in laser engraving and flame cutting), a hybrid-coded genetic algorithm (HCGA) is proposed in this paper. There are two chromosomes in the HCGA. One chromosome, called the master chromosome, uses a natural number-coded mode, and represents the sequence of productive contours, The other chromosome, called the slave chromosome, uses a binary-coded mode, and represents the entry or exit nodes of the productive contours. The two chromosome use the same evaluation function and selection mechanism, but the crossover and mutation operators are different. The coding and genetic operators for open, closed and mixed productive contours are discussed in detail. The result shows that the HCGA is simple but effective for the optimising of non-productive paths in CNC machining.

Determination of optimal path under approach and exit constraints

To economize machining process used in component manufacturing number of procedures are used. Typical parameters which are optimized are feed rate, spindle speed, depth of cut, machining time etc. Almost no consideration is given to non-productive machining time, which is an important parameter on modern computer numerical control machine tools. Its importance is further augmented in the area of numerically controlled cutting where surface area to thickness ratio is high. The problem is formulated as a large scale traveling salesman problem. The cases of symmetric, asymmetric and symmetric asymmetric TSP in two dimensions are presented. The stochastic search procedure simulated annealing algorithm is used to solve these instances of TSP. The perturbation scheme is modified for asymmetric graph and mixed symmetric asymmetric graph TSPs. An investigation is also carried out for empirically finding a suitable value of acceptance probability for random topology of nodes. Effect of problem size and node distribution on the convergence is also monitored. Solution of symmetric, asymmetric and mixed symmetric asymmetric TSPs are provided. This solution allows the optimization of non-productive movement thus reducing the machine tool resident time and the power consumption. The solution is also applicable to a number of other areas such as multi axes production machinery, pick and place technology, and quality control machines.

Industrial Sickness, Primary and Secondary: The Effects of Exit Constraints on Industrial Performance

In an attempt to protect workers from unemployment, governments in some countries subsidize firms which would otherwise fail. This article examines the effects of such subsidies on output, prices, and welfare. It also briefly reviews the effects for varying price elasticities of supply and demand, for nontraded and fully traded goods, and for firms in which wages exceed their free market level. If the firm produces a nontraded good, the “sickness” of one firm that is subsidized to maintain production can spread to other firms that would be viable in the absence of the subsidies. The analysis shows that the exit constraints have the most detrimental effect when the elasticity of demand is low and supply elasticity is high, and when the government weighs the welfare of the firm's workers and consumers less than that of the general taxpayers and the firm owners. When labor costs are higher than their free market levels and output is thus less than the optimal levels, the subsidies could have an effect similar to that of an optimal production subsidy. In practice, however, this possibility is likely to be outweighed by associated rent-seeking costs and other distortions.

On a stochastic control problem with exit constraints

In this paper the logarithmic transformation of Fleming [1] is used to discuss a specific problem of controlled diffusions. The problem is to minimize a certain quadratic functional of the applied drift while satisfying the requirement that the place where the process exits a domain is not in a specified subset of its boundary. The main result is that the solution of this problem is given by the logarithm of a related exit probability.