中国与东盟双边贸易成本测度、贸易增长分解及影响因素研究

本文首先使用Novy(2008)放松了双边贸易成本对称性假设的贸易成本估计模型,对我国与东盟及其他主要贸易伙伴国的双边贸易成本进行准确地估计;随后,对影响我国与东盟贸易增长的因素进行分解;最后,从距离、语言、人均GDP差额、汇率波动等方面对影响我国与东盟贸易成本的因素进行回归分析.测度及回归结果表明,我国与东盟的贸易成本在1995-2009年间平均下降了33.34％;收入增长、贸易成本下降和多边阻力下降分别解释了我国与东盟贸易增长的92.52％、45.16％和- 37.68％;汇率波动对贸易成本影响最为显著,其次是共同语言、距离和人均GDP差额.     

资本流动、货币错配与外源融资成本——基于有管理浮动汇率制度下的分析

本文研究在有管理浮动汇率制度下和考虑企业的货币错配的条件下,资本流动对企业外源融资成本的影响.一方面,资本流动通过影响汇率而影响企业的净值,进而影响企业的外源融资成本;另一方面,资本流动通过影响货币供求而影响利率,进而影响企业的外源融资成本.外源融资成本变动的方向和幅度取决于两方面力量的时比.     

试论企业成本管理的变革与拓展

成本是影响企业效益的重要因素。受传统成本管理观念的影响 ,企业成本管理存在许多问题 ,需要变革和拓展。文章从成本管理指导思想、成本管理主体、成本管理范围、成本控制手段和成本分析方法等方面展开分析。     

国际服务外包承接地区位优势研究

国际服务外包已成为我国多个地区重点发展和积极推动的业务。基于文献研究建立了影响承接地竞争能力的综合分析模型,对示范城市承接企业进行因子分析,并据此比较中国不同地区承接国际服务外包的区位优势。结果显示:生产能力、配套环境、经营成本这三个因子的共同作用影响着承接地综合竞争能力。珠三角经营成本较高、生产能力一般,但在软件开发等业务有突出表现;长三角地区在服务外包配套环境方面显示出优势,在生产能力和经营成本方面表现也不错,因而在系统与网络服务等领域具有相对优势;环渤海地区生产能力卓越,在系统集成服务、软件测试等领域具有区位优势;中国内地在承接服务外包方面具有成本优势,但囿于生产能力和配套环境方面的劣势,仅在客户服务外包和金融财会服务外包等业务领域享有相对优势。     

傅山集团钢铁物流状况调查的认识

通过对山东淄博傅山集团钢铁物流的调查了解,认为中小钢铁企业效益下降的重要原因之一就是物流成本过高。造成物流成本过高的原因主要有五个方面:一是物流管理科学水平不够;二是物流与生产需要时有脱节;三是物流成本刚性上升;四是物流环境推升物流成本提高;五是物价刚性上涨的影响。解决办法:一是要大力培养和利用物流专业人才;二是要逐步发展先进的物流运作方式;三是切实改善运输环境;四是努力克服影响物流成本的刚性上涨因素。     

劳动合同法的成本效应分析

很多企业家担心劳动合同法实施后会增加企业成本,因此不少企业赶在该法实施之前采取规避措施.本文通过广泛企业调查,对劳动合同法的成本效应进行了实证分析,发现劳动合同法实施后带来的成本增幅存在较大差异.从规模角度看,对小规模企业影响较大;从不同所有制形式看,对私营企业影响较大;从行业看,对服务业、建筑业等行业的影响较大.文章建议从三方面完善劳动合同法的实施.     

新经济因素对煤炭成本管理的影响

文章分析了新经济条件下煤炭经济运行的主要特征,进一步探讨了这一运作特征对煤炭成本管理在预测、控制、核算、分析及考核方面造成的影响;透视煤炭企业经济运行的特征,探讨煤炭企业成本管理的发展。     

浅析高校后勤餐饮成本管理

为了加强高校后勤餐饮成本管理,提高后勤餐饮服务效益,从高校后勤餐饮成本的构成、餐饮成本管理的现状分析、餐饮成本管理的措施和方法三个方面简要分析如何加强高校餐饮的成本管理:第一,成本管理最有效的方法是把成本管理意识根植于员工的思想中去;第二,制定严格规范的采购制度和监督机制,以控制采购成本;第三,利用季节、市场变化,制定相对稳定的、折中的原材料出库价格,形成标准化的餐饮成本核算体系;第四,定期分析主料投入比例对总成本的影响和对食品制作过程的管理,达到控制餐饮成本的目的。     

加强服装制造企业的成本控制

任何企业生存的动力和最终的目的都是为了赢利,在企业销售收入增长受到资金投入、市场竞争等影响时,有效的成本控制就成为企业增加利润的关键手段;同时也是企业取得竞争优势的重要手段.本文根据服装制造企业生产流程,从开发设计阶段的成本控制、材料成本控制、生产成本控制、质量事故处理及索赔的成本控制四个方面探讨加强服装制造企业成本控制的方法和措施.     

债务融资的企业价值效应分析

文章从债务融资与税收、财务危机和代理成本三个方面考察其对企业价值的影响。研究认为:不管企业是否亏损,只要有息税前利润债务融资就会为企业带来税收利益;债务融资可以减少内部经营者可支配的自由现金流从而降低了代理成本;此外,随着债务融资比例的增加,边际债务危机成本递增。     

A dynamic profit function with adjustment costs for outputs

It is well known that there are adjustment costs associated with many input factors, which delays firms response to changes in relative prices. Although adjustment costs are implicitly acknowledged when a cost rather than profit function is used, little attention has been given to adjustment costs for outputs. However, in many cases there will also be adjustment costs associated with changes in the product mix for multioutput firms. In this paper we formulate a firm’s optimization problem in a profit maximizing set up that allows adjustment costs for all netputs from which it follows that adjustment cost for some factors affect the adjustment of both inputs and outputs. We also show that one can test whether a factor is quasi-fixed or fully fixed.      

An Estimable Model of Supermarket Behavior: Prices, Distribution Services and Some Effects of Competition

In this paper we present and estimate a simple model of supermarket behavior that has several attractive properties: It permits the incorporation of the (distribution) services provided by a supermarket as an output of supermarkets and a determinant of demand for supermarket products; it generates, as a special case, one of its main competitors in the supermarket literature – the so called full price model of services; and, it can be estimated with a unique data set originally constructed by the Economic Research Service of USDA. The main results of the analysis are three. First, the aggregate demand for a supermarket's products depends critically on distribution services: at the substantive level, a 1% increase in these services increase quantity demanded by 0.4%; at the methodological level, the restrictions on the parameter values implied by the model are critical in the evaluation of functional forms for demand. Second, supermarkets exhibit constant marginal costs with respect to the quantity of output or turnover and substantially declining marginal costs with respect to (distribution) services, which implies substantial multiproduct economies of scale. Third, in response to an exogenous increase in competition those supermarkets that have adopted newer formats such as superstores and that employ newer technology such as optical scanners choose prices and (distribution ) services in ways that increase consumer welfare, whereas those that do not have these characteristics choose prices and services in ways that lower consumer welfare.     

The neglected effects of demand characteristics on the sustainability of collusion

According to standard IO models, the parameters that characterize market demand (intercept, slope, and elasticity) and technology (the level of symmetric marginal costs) do not play any role in defining the sustainability of collusive behaviors in Bertrand oligopolies. This paper modifies this counterintuitive result by showing that all of the aforementioned factors do indeed matter when prices are assumed to be discrete rather than continuous. The sign of these effects is clear. Their magnitude varies greatly; i.e., in some cases, it is totally negligible, while in others, it becomes extremely relevant.     

Comparing the True Cost of Living Indices of Demographically Different Households

The comparison of true cost of living indices between demographically different households (relative equivalence scale) is argued to be sensitive to the way demographic characteristics enter demand analysis. In particular, parameters reflecting the cost of demographic characteristics at base prices, though themselves do not have welfare (equivalence scale) interpretation, can alter the benchmark from which demographically varying inflation effects are measured. The empirical analysis, based on a rank‐3 demand system applied to UK individual household data, shows that the inflation adjustment of child benefits can vary with the way demographic costs at base period prices are specified.     

Pricing access: Forward-looking versus backward-looking cost rules

Regulators across many different jurisdictions and industries have recently adopted the practice of setting access prices based on the current costs of providing the relevant facilities. Though widely regarded as being efficient, the efficiency implications of using current costs instead of historical costs have not been formally analyzed. Our analysis shows that given stochastic costs, forward-looking access prices retard investment and are generally dominated by access prices determined by historical cost whenever investment is desired.     

Determinants of domestic and import prices in Canadian manufacturing industries

This paper examines the determinants of the prices of domestic and imported goods in the domestic market using time-series data for a broad sample of Canadian manufacturing industries. It is found that the costs of both goods are the fundamental determinants of their prices, that the pass-through of costs into prices depends on the levels of domestic and import costs, real income per capita and concentration, and that factors which increase the sensitivity of both prices to domestic costs also reduce their sensitivity to import costs. In addition, it appears that the way in which prices are determined differs between industries with low versus high advertising-sales ratios.     

Incomplete cost pass-through under deep habits

A number of empirical studies document that marginal cost shocks are not fully passed through to prices at the firm level and that prices are substantially less volatile than costs. We show that in the relative-deep-habits model of Ravn, Schmitt-Grohé, and Uribe [Ravn, M., Schmitt-Grohé, S., Uribe, M., 2006. Deep habits. Review of Economic Studies 73, 195–218], firm-specific marginal cost shocks are not fully passed through to product prices. That is, in response to a firm-specific increase in marginal costs, prices rise, but by less than marginal costs leading to a decline in the firm-specific markup of prices over marginal costs. Pass-through is predicted to be even lower when shocks to marginal costs are anticipated by firms. In our model unanticipated firm-specific cost shocks lead to incomplete pass-through (or a decline in markups) of about 20 percent and anticipated cost shocks are associated with incomplete pass-through of about 50 percent. The model predicts that cost pass-through is increasing in the persistence of marginal cost shocks and U-shaped in the strength of habits. The relative-deep-habits model implies that conditional on marginal cost disturbances, prices are less volatile than marginal costs.     

A review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies

Transitioning towards a sustainable energy system requires the large-scale introduction of novel energy demand and supply technologies. Such novel technologies are often expensive at the point of their market introduction but eventually become cheaper due to technological learning. In order to quantify potentials for price and cost decline, the experience curve approach has been extensively applied to renewable and non-renewable energy supply technologies. However, its application to energy demand technologies is far less frequent. Here, we provide the first comprehensive review of experience curve analyses for energy demand technologies. We find a widespread trend towards declining prices and costs at an average learning rate of 18 ± 9%. This finding is consistent with the results for energy supply technologies and for manufacturing in general. Learning rates for individual energy demand technologies are symmetrically distributed around the arithmetic mean of the data sample. Absolute variation of learning rates within individual technology clusters of 7 ± 4%-points and between technology clusters of 7 ± 5%-points both contribute to the overall variability of learning rates. Our results show that technological learning is as important for energy demand technologies as it is for energy supply technologies. Applying the experience curve approach to forecast technology costs involves, however, unresolved uncertainties, as we demonstrate in a case study for the micro-cogeneration technology.     

Re-examining the effects of switching costs

Consumers often incur costs when switching from one product to another. Recently, there has been renewed debate within the literature about whether these switching costs lead to higher prices. We build a theoretical model of dynamic competition and solve it analytically for a wide range of switching costs. We provide a simple condition which determines whether switching costs raise or lower long-run prices. We also show that even if switching costs reduce prices in the long run, they may still increase prices in the short run. Finally, switching costs redistribute surplus across time, and as such are shown to sometimes increase consumer welfare.     

Downtown parking meter demand in a border metropolitan economy

Prior research establishes that the price of parking in the city centre often impacts the decision to travel downtown and the mode of transportation utilized. Other factors that influence the decision to drive and park downtown have received less attention. This study uses time series data to analyse the demand for metered parking spaces in El Paso, Texas, USA. In addition to meter rates, the determinants of demand include personal income, gasoline prices and the price of a substitute good, parking garage spaces. Because international bridges connect downtown El Paso to neighbouring Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, the impacts of trans-boundary traffic flows, bridge tolls and other cross-border economic variables are also included as potential determinants of metered parking demand. Results indicate that parking meter rates, other transportation-related costs, and economic conditions in both countries affect meter use.