This paper documents information technology (IT) impacts that extend across organizational boundaries based on the economic theory. It evaluates how a firm's production cost is affected by the IT decisions of its business partners, over which it has no direct control. Using cross-sectional data on 100 audit engagements for the 100 largest continuing clients of a leading international public accounting firm's main office, it empirically evaluates the impact of the clients’ IT choices on their supplier's (the public accounting firm's) production costs, professional allocations and product prices. The results indicate, other things being equal, that the higher intensity or complexity a client's IT exhibits, the more effort public accounting professionals need to exert, thus, the higher the production cost incurred by the public accounting firm. In contrast, the better documentation or security a client's IT furnishes, the lower the cost the public accounting firm sustains. Furthermore, such differences in production cost are eventually passed on to the client via differences in product price.

We analyze transaction data from a recently set up electronic exchange in India that trades in various grades of coffee. Such electronic exchanges have important implications for the supply chain of agricultural commodities and have generated significant interest in the trade press because of their potential to generate higher commodity prices for producers and reduced chances of unfair trading practices by middlemen. Policy makers view such exchanges as an important tool for extending the benefits of the information age to rural communities. We model the exchange from the perspective of a risk-averse buyer and we estimate the parameters of the model by comparing the prices in the electronic exchange with those of the same grade of coffee at physical auctions held weekly. We find that electronic auction prices are 4% higher and the difference is statistically significant. Further, we find that the price differential is higher for coffee grades that have higher price volatility and that are traded less frequently in the physical exchange. We also find that the price differential increases over time as buyers become more familiar with the benefits of the electronic trading format. We discuss the implications of our results for policy makers and providers of the electronic platform.

Many maintenance problems derive from inadequate software development practices. Poor design choices result in complex software that may be costly to support and difficult to change. A general framework based upon software complexity is proposed that could be used to assess the potential maintenance impact of development tools and techniques. To test the framework, a study was conducted in two commercial organizations. The results indicate that reduced maintenance effort is associated with development practices, including structured programming, report generators and packaged software. A surprising finding is that use of a software code generator is associated with increased maintenance effort.

Measurement of software development productivity is needed in order to control software costs, but it is discouragingly labor-intensive and expensive. Computer-aided software engineering (CASE) technologies/spl minus/especially repository-based, integrated CASE/spl minus/have the potential to support the automation of this measurement. We discuss the conceptual basis for the development of automated analyzers for function point and software reuse measurement for object-based CASE. Both analyzers take advantage of the existence of a representation of the application system that is stored within an object repository, and that contains the necessary information about the application system. We also discuss metrics for software reuse measurement, including reuse leverage, reuse value, and reuse classification that are motivated by managerial requirements and the efforts, within industry and the IEEE, to standardize measurement. The functionality and the analytical capabilities of state-of-the-art automated software metrics analyzers are illustrated in the context of an investment banking industry application that is similar to systems deployed at the New York City-based investment bank where these tools were developed and tested.>

The use and benefits of repository evaluation of software reuse are illustrated through an analysis of the evolving repositories of two large firms that recently implemented integrated CASE development tools. The analysis shows that these tools have supported high levels of software reuse, but it also suggests that there remains considerable unexploited reuse potential. The findings indicate that organizational changes will be required before the full potential of the new technology can be realized.>

In this research we reconcile two opposing views regarding the presence of economies or diseconomies of scale in new software development Our general approach hypothesizes a production function model of software development that allows for both increasing and decreasing returns to scale, and argues that local scale economies or diseconomies depend upon the size of projects. Using eight different data sets, including several reported in previous research on the subject. we provide empirical evidence in support of our hypothesis. Through use of the nonparametric DBA technique we also show how to identify the most productive scale size that may vary across organizations. These results are extended to include the effects of nonparametric scale-related factors, such as project duration and the number of new staff on the project team.