The Make-or-Buy Decision in the Croatian Shipbuilding Industry: A Transaction Cost Economics Approach This paper examines the make-or-buy decision in the Croatian shipbuilding industry using a Transaction Cost Economics Approach. In other words, shipyards' decision to ‘make’ a component or to ‘buy’ it from market firms is analysed in relation to certain characteristics of the transactions in order to assess whether this decision is made in accordance with the theory's predictions. The empirical investigation, which is based on a sample of 167 observations, suggests that transaction cost hypotheses are only partially confirmed. Namely, while physical asset specificity and complexity are likely to increase the probability that a transaction will be internalised, temporal asset specificity and frequency seem not to affect significantly the integration decision. However, as the analysis leaves much of the variance in the patterns of vertical integration unexplained, the finding presented in this study should be seen as tentative. The inclusion of the remaining shipyards in the analysis as well as of new and more variables in the model are likely to improve the reliability of the results.

The multiple-slit type destructive interference in molecular high-order harmonic generation (HHG) leads to the minima in the harmonic yield for particular molecular orientation angle θL and the harmonic order n. For the case of homonuclear diatomic molecules, we have found a condition for this destructive interference in the form of a nonlinear equation over n and θL. This condition strongly depends on the molecular symmetry, on the atomic orbitals of which a particular highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) consists and on the internuclear distance R. Therefore, one can learn about the molecular structure and dynamics analysing the HHG spectra of aligned molecules. Using the example of an Ar2 molecule, having 5σu HOMO, for various internuclear distances, we analyse this interference condition and show that, in the (n, θL) plane, it manifests in the form of one or several continuous curves. Furthermore, in the (Rcos θL, λmin) plane, where λmin is an effective de Broglie wavelength of the recombining electron, this condition leads to a set of lines which are positioned between the limiting cases of molecular orbitals consisting of only one type (even or odd) of atomic orbitals (s and p in the Ar2 case).

The reassignment method is a widespread approach for obtaining high resolution time-frequency representations. Nevertheless, its performance is not always optimal and can deteriorate for low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. In order to overcome these obstacles, a novel method for obtaining high resolution time-frequency representations is proposed in this paper. The new method implements recently proposed nonparametric snakes in order to obtain accurate locations of the signal ridges in the time-frequency domain. The results of numerical analysis show that the proposed method is capable of achieving significantly higher concentration of signals in the time-frequency domain in comparison to the spectrogram and the traditional reassignment method. Furthermore, the new scheme also maintains good performance for low SNR values, while the performance of the other two considered methods significantly diminishes. It is clear from the results that the proposed method might be of significance in applications where accurate estimation of the signal components is required for low SNR values.