Revista Internacional de Economía y Ciencias de la Gestión

First-Price-Sealed-Bid (FPSB) are widely used in both the public and private sectors. In a FPSB procurement common value auction, a seller must first estimate their cost to provide the product requested by the buyer and then determine a bid amount by adding a markup to the cost estimate. This markup must consider desired profits as well as informational uncertainties regarding the cost estimates since actual costs of production are known only after the product is produced. In this paper, we investigate the impact of better cost estimates on firm profitability and bidding strategy in a two- and three-bidder auction. Based on field data from over 1000 procurement auctions, we assume that errors in cost estimation follow a normal distribution. This assumption greatly complicates the analysis such that finding an analytical solution is unlikely. Therefore, using a numerical solution approach, we find the equilibrium solution for each type of seller under a variety of parameter settings. We find that advantaged sellers will be more profitable yet submit more aggressive bids. These results depend on the number of advantaged and disadvantaged sellers competing. Indeed, if there is more than a single advantaged seller competing, they will submit very aggressive bids resulting in profits that may actually decrease as each gets better at estimating costs. Our results provide a clear understanding as to the importance of accurate product cost estimates and extends the research on the effects of cost estimation accuracy in procurement auctions.

The distribution of the underground economy in China shows obvious regional differences and has an important impact on the environmental pollution of relevant provinces. The spatial data analysis method is used to study the spatial differences between central and peripheral areas and between developed and backward areas in China’s underground economy, and the degree of provincial environmental pollution has significant spatial dependence. On this basis, the spatial error model and spatial lag model are further used to empirically analyze the impact of the underground economy and its scale on China’s environmental pollution, and the impact degree of underground economic growth on the ecological environment in various provinces of China is discussed. The research results show that there is a negative correlation between the underground economy and environmental pollution in various provinces of China, and the development of and changes in the underground economy and the way it acts on the macroeconomic determine the sustainability of this relationship. In addition, the impact degree of China’s provincial underground economic growth on the ecological environment differs in different regions. The impact of the underground economy on the ecological environment in the eastern and central regions is most significant from the early stage to the middle stage, and the impact of the underground economy on the ecological environment in the western region is most obvious in the middle stage.

The aim of the study was to evaluate mediating influence of employees commitment on participatory management and employees’ performance in water service providers in Murang’a County. The study was guided by the following objectives; a) To evaluate mediating effect of employees commitment on relationship between participatory management and employees’ performance in selected water service providers in Murang’a County, (b) To assess the mediating effect of employee commitment on the relationship between Participatory Management; Predicting Employees’ Performance. The study embraced an exploratory research design. A sample of 206 employees was selected from five water service providers namely: Murang’a Water and Sanitation Company Limited, Murang’a South Water and Sanitation Company Limited, Gatanga Water and Sanitation Company Limited, Gatamathi Water and Sanitation Company Limited and Kahuti Water and Sanitation Company Limited. Random sampling was applied in picking the respondents for the study. Self-administered questionnaires aided in collecting primary data and analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. A pilot study was steered on data collection tool to pre-test it’s validity prior to the main survey. Data reliability was measured using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was used to aid in coding, entry and analysis of data. conclusions and recommendations based on the findings were finally outlined. The study concludes that participatory management through consultative management, quality circles, representative participation and delegation is vital and significantly affects performance of employees in water service providers in Murang’a County, Kenya. However, the study finally concludes that employees commitment failed to mediate the relationship between participatory management and employees’ performance. Employees commitment therefore played insignificant part in enhancing effectiveness of participatory management to enhance employees’ performance. Suggestion that employees commitment partially mediates the relationship between participatory management and employees’ performance is a call to the management of water service providers in Murang’a County, Kenya to institute programmes that will ensure employees are committed to the job and organization as this is vital in enhancing effectiveness of participatory management .

The question of performance evaluation is of great importance for any economic or financial institution. Evaluating the performance of commercial banks remains a necessary process because of the changes in the banking sector that have had an impact on the performance, efficiency and profitability of commercial banks. The objective of this paper is to study the concept of banking performance, firstly: following the theoretical approaches to performance evaluation, and secondly: according to the empirical study that we conducted on the evaluation of the performance of BNA bank, while basing ourselves on financial performance indicators. Which leads us to situate the state of play of the Algerian banks, in other words, to arrive at determining; where are these performance banks