The impact of implementing the airline deregulation act on stock returns

Between 1978 and 1985, the airline industry underwent a period of phased-in deregulation. Airline deregulation resulted from passage of the Airline Deregulation Act on October 24, 1978. This paper investigates the impact of two main provisions of this Act on the security returns in the airline industry. Using event study methodology, this study examines the impact of (1) airlines becoming responsible for determining their domestic routes and schedules (December 31, 1981) and (2) airlines being allowed to set domestic fares and engage in price competition (January 1, 1983) on the returns of a sample of airline common stocks. The study finds a positive market response around the phase-in provision permitting airlines to assume responsibility for determining their domestic routes and schedules, but a negative response around the phase-in provision allowing airlines to set domestic fares and engage in price competition.     

后疫情时代低成本航空公司运营模式应用研究——以AA航空为例

当今航空公司根据服务类别分为三大类,即全服务航空航司、低成本航空公司、干线航空公司。对于大部分航空公司而言,这一年则是按下了暂停键,在庚子年初始全球迎接了一场史无前例的大流行病,对全球运输业影响深远。各航空公司纷纷以成本控制为导向调整运营模式,低成本市场空间不断被压缩,加速了低成本航空公司探索新的运营模式的进程。论文以AA航空公司为例,探讨在后疫情时代下低成本航空运营模式,希望能为其他航空公司转型提供参考。     

Policy changes in the Swiss electricity market: Analysis of likely market responses

The Swiss electricity market is still a public monopoly. Switzerland do not intend to be part of the single European electricity market, but given its strategic geographical position—Switzerland is in the middle of the core area of the European Union, Swiss power producers maintain electricity exchanges (imports and exports) with neighbouring countries. These exchanges represent an important source of revenue for Swiss utilities.

Switzerland is currently facing a period of fundamental policy changes. Even though the market has not been legally liberalised, emergent liberalisation is taking place. Furthermore, nuclear dismantling has been debated since the early 1980s. People have not yet accepted the dismantling proposition, so there is actually no law banning the construction of new nuclear plants, but given the current attitude of the population and the politicians any new nuclear investments are most unlikely.

The aim of this paper is to illustrate likely market responses to different policy changes in the Swiss electricity market, such as nuclear phase-out and changes in international exchanges policies that may arise as a consequence of the emergent liberalisation that is taking place in this market.

This article presents a conceptualisation model that helps understanding the logic of the dynamic behaviour of the Swiss electricity market, and illustrates the rationale of politicians and decision makers involved in the market planning process, as well as the possible consequences of the implementation of different policies. The purpose is not to forecast or quantify market response, but to identify and understand possible scenarios for market behaviour.     

Accounting for Environmental Influences in Stochastic Frontier Models: With Application to International Airlines

The principal aim of this paper is to measure the efficiency of international airlines. We obtain measures of technical efficiency from stochastic frontier production functions which have been adjusted to account for environmental influences such as network conditions, geographical factors, etc. We observe that two alternative approaches to this problem have been proposed in the efficiency measurement literature. One assumes that the environmental factors influence the shape of the technology while the other assumes that they directly influence the degree of technical inefficiency. In this paper we compare the results obtained when using these two approaches. The two sets of results provide similar rankings of airlines but suggest differing degrees of technical inefficiency. Both sets of results also suggest that Asian/Oceanic airlines are technically more efficient than European and North American airlines but that the differences are essentially due to more favourable environmental conditions. Nevertheless, it is among Asian companies that the major improvements in managerial efficiency (technical efficiency with environmental factors netted out) took place over the sample period (1977–1990).     

REGULATION BY DUOPOLY

This paper analyzes, within the framework of the new regulatory economics that emphasizes asymmetries of information, the optimal structure of an industry. The duplication of fixed costs incurred in a duopoly structure may be socially justified in a static model by three effects: the sampling effect, the yardstick competition effect, and the increasing marginal cost effect.
We show that in general, asymmetric information favors duopoly when the market structure is decided before firms discovers their cost characteristics (a common situation in dual sourcing for procurement), and favors monopoly when the market structure is decided after firms discover their cost characteristics (the case of split-award auctions).     

Estimation of market power in the presence of firm level inefficiencies

“The quiet life hypothesis” (QLH) by Hicks (1935) argues that, due to management’s subjective cost of reaching optimal profits, firms use their market power to allow inefficient allocation of resources. Increasing competitive pressure is therefore likely to force management to work harder to reach optimal profits. Another hypothesis, which also relates market power to efficiency is “the efficient structure hypothesis” (ESH) by Demsetz (1973). ESH argues that firms with superior efficiencies or technologies have lower costs and therefore higher profits. These firms are assumed to gain larger market shares which lead to higher concentration. Ignoring the efficiency levels of the firms in a market power model might cause both estimation and interpretation problems. Unfortunately, the literature on market power measurement largely ignores this relationship. In the context of a dynamic setting, we estimate the market power of US airlines in two city-pairs by both allowing inefficiencies of the firms and not allowing inefficiencies of the firms. Using industry level cost data, we estimate the cost function parameters and time-varying efficiencies. An instrumental variables version of the square root Kalman filter is used to estimate time-varying conduct parameters.     

电力系统营销模式与自动化建设

电力行业是维持社会输电及供电的主导产业。构建综合性的电力系统是确保企业正常运营的基本条件。新时期先进的经济学理念应用于企业经营,电力行业不仅要注重内部生产效率的提升,还应加强对外营销政策的改善,以此增强企业应对外部竞争的实力。电力营销是电力行业走向市场的关键一步,利用营销方式可以使其在市场中树立自己的品牌价值,不断扩大电力行业的经济影响力。鉴于此,文章主要分析了电力系统营销模式与自动化建设的问题。     

The role of property rights in the positive theory of monopoly

The traditional approach to monopoly posits a dead-weight loss, a classic inefficiency, wherever market power is discovered. Critics such as Joseph Schumpeter argue that such dead-weight losses are inconsequential in a dynamic setting, where long-run trade-offs are said to dominate them with postive sum gains, which are also claimed to flow from market power. Yet further examination reveals that even the static monopoly argument showing Pareto inefficiency is not due to a positive analysis but is an outcome determined by the normative interpretation of the monopolist's property rights. The costs which a firm possessing market power has in expanding its output are not considered as legitimate for inclusion in our analysis. (In other markets, traders are sometimes allowed to collect such rents without being labeled as inefficient—for instance, in the labor market.) The interesting questions become: Why have economists adopted this particular normative view of property rights? Is public policy thereby well served?     

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE THEORY OF NATURAL MONOPOLY

Abstract. This paper examines two important recent developments in the theory of natural monopoly, or more generally the theory of market structure. The first is a series of papers, involving Baumol with various co-authors, investigating the theory of industry structure, whilst the second is particularly associated with the names of Shaked and Sutton, and the relationship they develop between product differentiation and industry structure. The paper surveys and to some extent contrasts these two new approaches.
Baumol et al. 's contribution is seen to be in the area of clarifying the concept of natural monopoly, refining the definitions of multiproduct costs, and developing a notion of social efficiency applicable to industries where economies of scale are important. Shaked and Sutton employ a new definition of natural monopoly unrelated to market size and utilize information about consumers'income distributions to develop their notion of vertical product differentiation and natural oligopoly.     

我国银行业的市场结构分析及改革对策

经过二十多年的改革,我国银行业市场结构有了很大变化。运用市场份额、市场集中度、进入、退出壁垒和产品差异化等指标,分析了我国银行业的市场结构,得出我国银行业有寡头垄断特征,并呈现出向垄断竞争市场结构过渡的趋势。在分析我国银行业市场绩效低下原因的基础上,初步提出了银行业优化市场结构,提高竞争力的对策。     

Determining market power exertion between buyers and sellers

Empirical techniques commonly used in industrial organization to measure market power exertion typically assume imperfectly competitive behaviour by firms on only one side of the market. Firms on the other side are assumed to be perfectly competitive. In this paper we extend traditional NEIO methods by developing a method to estimate market power exertion when firms on both sides have potential market power. Using Monte Carlo simulations, we find that the model correctly estimates market power exercised by firms on either or both sides of a market and also correctly estimates firms' technology parameters. When applied to the US leaf tobacco market, findings indicate that cigarette manufacturers exert some monopsony power in purchasing leaf tobacco while producers, organized as a cartel, exhibit no countervailing monopoly market power. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Relationship Between Stock Market Returns and Technical Efficiency Innovations: Evidence from the US Airline Industry

This paper analyzes the association between two firm performance measures: stock market returns and relative technical efficiency. Using linear programming techniques (Data Envelopment Analysis and Free Disposal Hull), technical efficiencies are calculated for a panel of eleven US airlines observed quarterly from 1970–1990. A relationship, between efficiency news in a quarter and stock market performance in the following two months, is found. A risky arbitrage portfolio strategy, of buying firms with the most positive efficiency news and short-selling those with the worst news during this time frame, results in zero beta risk yet yields annual returns of 17% and 18% for the two methodologies.     

Supply chain integration and shareholder value: Evidence from consortium based industry exchanges

Recent trade and academic literature point to the importance of supply chain integration among partners as a key determinant of value creation. This paper analyzes the shareholder value effects of setting up industry exchanges, a prominent mechanism used to achieve supply chain integration. Shareholder value effects are estimated by measuring the stock market reaction (abnormal returns) associated with announcements to form or join industry exchanges. We find that abnormal returns from participation in industry exchanges are positive but only marginally significant in the whole sample of 144 firms in 18 exchanges formed during 2000–2001. In the sub-sample of 88 exchange founders who were part of the original announcements to form the exchange, the abnormal market reaction is about 1% and significant. We also find that firms with greater bargaining power and higher process efficiency benefit more from participation in industry exchanges.     

Measurement of industry conduct with a latent structure

Empirical industrial organization economists have long been concerned with measuring the degree of competition in markets and understanding its underlying determinants, but they have faced serious difficulties, including data requirements and misspecification issues. This paper offers an alternative method of estimating market power and industry conduct. Market power is estimated for the fresh apple industry with a latent modelling structure. Specifically, variations of the MIMIC model are adapted to this problem. These variations are the multiple‐indicators (MI) and the filtered‐measure (FM) approaches. The results suggest that although the Washington apple industry has a large market share, it does not exercise market power. Factors that mitigate the exertion of market power in the fresh apple market include competitor shipments and retailer power. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

构建科学的内部竞争机制——电力企业综合水平提升的关键

由于我国电力企业长期处于垂直一体化垄断地位,造成了其管理工作更加趋向于传统的国有企业,造成人浮于事、机构臃肿等现状。随着我国电力市场结构的改革,电力市场竞争逐渐加剧,电力企业也必须针对市场结构的改变积极构建科学的内部竞争机制,促进企业机构的整合与优化,促进企业的健康发展。本文就电力企业如何在激烈的市场竞争中以内部竞争机制提高企业的综合水平进行了简要的论述。     

Has bank consolidation in Korea lessened competition?

This paper examines market concentration and competition in the Korean commercial banking market for the period of 1992–2004. While market concentration decreased due to financial regulation before the Asian financial crisis, the Korean banking industry has become increasingly concentrated in the process of restructuring and consolidation since the crisis. Contrary to a growing concern over market power in Korean banking, this study finds that increased concentration has not lessened competition. The H statistic of the Panzar–Rosse model indicates that the Korean commercial banking market was monopolistically competitive during the pre-crisis period and the post-crisis period with temporary deviation to the level of perfect competition during the crisis period.     

Legislation and the American Dialysis Industry:

A bstract Monopoly power in the dialysis industry in the United States is linked to Public Lau'92-603 (section 2991) of the Social Security Amendments of 1972 under which 90 percent of all patients with end-stage renal disease became eligible for Medicare coverage In effect, Congress spawned a new government enterprise by removing the constraining factor of price to the consumer and legalizing government-subsidized monopoltes in renal care which were empowered with the right to supply renal care services within designated areas without competition Those who suffer from renal insufficiency encounter monopoly on the supply side of the product (dialysis units) market, and the labor market (kidney specialists) since outside nephrologists are not permitted to treat patients'assigned' to "closed staff" units     

Abatement R&D,market imperfections,and environmental policy in an endogenous growth model

We develop an endogenous growth model featuring environmental externalities, abatement R&D, and market imperfections. We compare the economic performances under three distinct regimes that encompass public abatement, private abatement without tax recycling, and private abatement with tax recycling. It is found that the benefit arising from private abatement will be larger if the degree of the firms’ monopoly power is greater. With a reasonably high degree of monopoly power, a mixed abatement policy by which the government recycles environmental tax revenues to subsidize the private abatement R&D is a plausible way of reaching the highest growth rate and welfare.     

国家专营条件下的盐业物流系统模式探讨

阐述了我国食盐流通体系的现状,分析了我国国家专营条件下的盐业物流系统应具备的功能,其内部作业流程,以及系统的网络结构。     

Foreign exchange market volatility in EU accession countries in the run-up to Euro adoption: weathering uncharted waters

The paper analyzes foreign exchange market volatility in four Central European EU accession countries in 2001–2003. By using a Markov regime-switching model, it identifies two regimes representing high- and low-volatility periods. The estimation results show not only that volatilities are different between the two regimes, but also that some of the cross-correlations differ. Notably, cross-correlations increase substantially for two pairs of currencies (the Hungarian forint–Polish zloty and the Czech koruna–Slovak koruna) in the high-volatility period. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of these findings.