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The market is a complex organism that has rich implications and essential stipulations. From the property right perspective, the market is a series of property rights, rules, and system arrangements (an aggregation of rights), which are constructed, owned, operated, and managed by the state and from which the government can benefit. The market property right is owned by the government (state). The costs of market property right include tangible (explicit) cost, system cost, human cost, and other cost components. The study on the cost components of market property right is conducive to establishing the principle of matching investment with ownership, matching investment with income, and integrating (unifying) cost with efficiency.

After reading this chapter you should be able to:

• Understand what is meant by relocation cost.

• Explain the management and disbursement of relocating costs.

• Critically evaluate the calculation of relocation costs.

• Reflect on the role of human resource managers in relation to the future of the costs of relocation.

Understand what is meant by relocation cost.

Explain the management and disbursement of relocating costs.

Critically evaluate the calculation of relocation costs.

Reflect on the role of human resource managers in relation to the future of the costs of relocation.

This chapter demonstrates how the ‘golden rule’ can be applied by operators of flexible transport services to improve investment and pricing decisions.

The chapter explains why an appropriate decision making framework is particularly important for operators of flexible transport services and compares the traditional economic framework of fixed versus variable costs to the decision-oriented approach that analyses the activities of a firm in terms of costs that are avoidable (i.e. specific to a particular activity) and costs that are shared amongst a number of activities. The chapter introduces the ‘golden rule’ of decision making and discusses issues in implementing the rule.

An economic framework for decision making is particularly important for smaller scale transport operations (such as flexible transport services) because ‘lumpy’ investment costs are more significant than for larger operators. The traditional economic approach divides costs into fixed costs and those which vary by patronage. A better framework for decision making divides costs into those which are specific to a particular activity and, therefore, avoidable if that activity ceases, and those costs which are common to more than one activity.

Using this framework allows operators to apply the ‘golden rule’ in pricing their services so that the avoidable costs of each activity are recovered and the enterprise covers its shared costs overall.

This chapter will be useful to operators of flexible transport services who are new to the industry or are reacting to changes in the funding environment.

The reciprocal method for allocating support department costs is preferred over the direct and step-down methods because it captures all support services provided to other departments. However, even as business organizations increase the number of support departments and their costs, the adoption of the reciprocal method has been hindered by mathematical difficulties in solving simultaneous equations. This paper illustrates spreadsheet matrix functions that remove the difficulties associated with the reciprocal method. The algebraic expressions for reciprocated costs commonly presented in accounting textbooks are used to form an equivalent matrix relationship. Then spreadsheet matrix functions easily compute reciprocated costs for support departments from the matrix relationship, and also allocate the reciprocated costs to other departments.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis provides data from 1969 to 2016 regarding state-level and county-level unemployment costs. These data are used to construct least-squares estimations including linear growth, the persistence of business cycles, and the unique anomaly of the Great Recession. Each of these models is constructed for North Carolina data, including the state as a whole and each individual county in the state. The state and county models are compared for differences and insights.

This paper uses the results of a questionnaire survey to conduct exploratory research into the importance of product costs in decision-making. The results of the research reveal that product costs are at least important in selling price, make-or-buy, cost reduction, product design, evaluating new production process and product discontinuation decisions. Product costs that were used directly in decision-making were more important than those that were used as attention directing information and they were more important in product mix, output level and product discontinuation decisions in continuous production processes manufacturing. In general, the importance of product costs in decision-making did not vary between the methods used to allocate and assign overheads to product costs, and it was not related to operating unit size, product differentiation, competition and the level of satisfaction with the product costing system.

Wars have important economic dimensions. They involve costs requiring resources that have alternative uses such as new hospitals, schools, and roads. Economists can contribute to the understanding of wars by identifying their costs. Case studies make a valuable contribution by providing estimates of the costs of conflict. Much has been written about the costs to the USA of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Similar studies for the UK have been lacking. This chapter provides UK estimates of the costs of both conflicts.