Welcome text by Prof Patrick McNutt

A very warm welcome to the new software tool called Kaelo . The origin of the word is Romany gypsy, meaning black in colour, and I first heard it as a name when used by my grandmother for her black Irish collie pup. The software will help to guide you through some of the foundation steps in microeconomics. The illustrations will capture the concepts of demand and elasticity, introduce the Marris model of management behaviour, explain the basics of the concentration ratios as deployed in modern antitrust and introduce you to the foundations of basic non cooperative game theory. Kaelo compliments the executive support materials located on my web page www.patrickmcnutt.com . It also compliments the e-learning initiatives for the Managerial Economics module under the auspices of the Manchester Business School Worldwide at www.mbs-worldwide.ac.uk . Kaelo is a prototype version and we welcome your feedback on how it can be improved. Please note that we are working on new developments for Kaelo as we strive to integrate e-leaning tools with on-line discussions and course work support.

10 principles:

• 1. Price and Demand
• 2. Cobweb reactions
• 3. Marris Model
• 4. Zero Sum
• 5. Elasticity
• 6. Total revenue
• 7. Price Reaction
• 8. HHI Concentration
• 9. Game Theory
• 10. Oysters and Net Revenue

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Price and Demand

Cobweb reactions

Marris Model

Zero Sum

Elasticity

Total revenue

Price Reaction

HHI Concentration

Game theory

Oysters and Net Revenue

Stakeholder

All individuals or agents who have either a direct or indirect interest in a firm (for example, management and shareholder) or in a decision of a firm (for example, rival firms or consumers). The stakeholder set is open and compact.

s-Firm

The stakeholder firm or s-firm represents a firm that focuses on employee’s productivity and consumers’ interests and expectations inclusively of profits and revenues.

Political Scarcity

Political scarcity arises in the absence of sufficient representative voters, allowing a small majority of key voters to determine the outcome in an election with a small voter turnout

Rationed Voters

Voters who are discriminated against by virtue of class or income arising from low voter participation. Voters are also rationed if specific issues are not addressed by the duly elected politicians.

Para-politicians

Term coined by McNutt to refer to former paramilitaries or militants who become legitimate duly elected democratic politicians contributing to the stability of a post-conflict political system.

Anarchy of Legitimacy

The legitimacy refers to the democratic stability that ensues with the presence of para-politicians as democratically elected in a post-conflict political system. Democratic politicians face the choice of anarchy (no political order) or the legitimacy of para-politicians.

Conspiracy of Equality

The situation arises when policies or resources directed towards the poor serves only to exacerbate the poverty problem. More resources are expended yet poverty remains.

Negaholic

An individual or agent who can only see the negative side of particular viewpoints or fails to appreciate the remote possibility of a positive sum game.

Adminman

The bureaucrat who can always ruthlessly save a penny but cannot spend a penny judiciously.

Detached Anonymity

An individual displays detached anonymity in a post-meeting environment when the individual surrounds himself or herself with the contours of an anonymous decision implying disagreement with the unanimous outcome.

Negative Assassination

Occurs during management appraisals or bilaterals with management when employees are actually demoted by peer evaluation.

Citric Evaluation

Occurs when there is evaluation within an organisation by using performance indicators of the lowest common denominator instead of an emerging benchmark.

Hawthrone Effect

In sampling and answering questionnaires, the Hawthorne effect will occur if the respondent always give the reply they expect the questionnaire actually wants.

Penrose Effect

The Penrose effect exists within a firm or organisation when there are managerial limitations; such limitations can arise due to management inexperience or inefficient and sub-optimal decision making.

Bounded Rationality

Occurs when management decisions are limited by information deficit or information overload or as a direct consequence of bad information.

History-future

A history-future perspective is one where the past is no longer permanent rather it is integrated with the present. For example, whatever changes will be required of management and business, the changes will be guided by an economic reality in business that costs of delay in time to market (of products and services) coupled with capacity constraints at the production level can be damaging to the firm.

NoYes

To know the parameters of a No will secure a Yes. Once you understand what it is (the x) that precipitates a ‘no’ answer, a ‘yes’ answer can be secured by understanding what x actually is, the parameters of a ‘no’ answer.

Diversification Acreage

The number of products sufficiently diversified in different markets to maintain a global market share.

Penguin strategy

A credible collective response by competitors to a market event such that no one competitor acts unilaterally and all competitors are observed to behave together. It can give rise to an accidental sameness in price (ASP) observation absent tacit collusion as argued in McNutt’s Law, Economics and Antitrust.

Risk-proofing mechanism

A strategic move the objective of which is solely and exclusively to minimise risk. Management realise that maximising market share is about avoiding falling shares rather than increasing the share level.

Ceiling Signs of Seniority

Ceiling signs occur in an organisation when a subordinate’s decision-making is capped and then subsequently credited by other more senior people in the organisation.

Symmetry of the Same

Two approaches to a given problem create a perpendicular solution when both have equal weight in the argument. The inverse of the perpendicular is the symmetry of the same, and thus, there will be no unique solution.

Price Dwarf

A price dwarf is a movement in price that is not sufficiently robust as a price signal to trigger a price war between two competing players.

Bose-Einstein price

A price that is so low in a non-cooperative price game that it continues to fall to its lowest level, the zero-price equilibrium.

Square of Rectangular Ovals

This arise when a mission to do something translates into an observed omission. so that nothing seems to fit into place. Example with national utility regulators regulating price in a market of rising prices.