流通企业的(规模)边界

现代企业理论对企业边界为何受到限制做了详细分析,且大都将其归因于有限理性条件.但流通企业具有不同于生产企业的经济性质,其本质是交易的专业化生产者(或提供者);信息技术提高市场交易效率,推动流通产业发展,同时也提高企业管理和控制效率,使流通企业比生产企业更容易利用品牌和统一经营模式进行"复制"和"选择性干预",实现分店扩张.     

零售企业连锁扩张的边界分析

零售企业通过分店复制方式(连锁经营)实施规模扩张的行为,在取得规模收益的同时放大了系统风险。企业控制幅度增加而引起的管理成本,委托代理关系而产生的组织协调成本,企业在跨区域适应过程中的学习成本,这些构成了零售企业规模扩张的硬性约束。本文在深入探究连锁企业扩张的经济学成因的基础上,通过构建企业最优化决策模型得出了零售企业连锁扩张的最佳规模边界。     

中国大型零售企业跨区域扩张现状的探讨——兼论中国大型零售企业跨区域扩张应具备的条件

为了深入研究中国大型零售企业跨区域扩张的现状,首先对大型零售企业进行界定,本文所涉及的"大型零售企业"是以商业联合会发布的零售企业前百强为标准,凡在近5年(2000年～2005年)内一直保持前一百强的零售企业被认为是中国大型零售企业.大型零售企业跨区域扩张是其自身发展的必经阶段,据相关数据表明,2004年世界百强企业中,平均每家在7个国家和本国的90%的地区有自己的连锁店,而且实现了跨地区扩张的零售企业销售额增长明显快于没有跨区域扩张的零售企业.目前,我国零售市场处于一个大调整和筛选的过程,在这个过程中培育一批能力强、区域化程度高的大型零售企业是很必要的.我国大型零售企业在扩张中区域限制已经成为进一步发展的瓶颈,因此,我国零售企业患有发展的先天性不足.本文将从企业实力入手分析我国零售企业跨区域扩张的现状.     

零售企业并购绩效实证分析

2006年,国美收购永乐,作为永乐的创立者,陈晓入驻国美成了职业经理人;而2010年,陈晓领衔的国美与黄光裕上演国美电器争夺战.以并购和融合的方式调整零售产业的资源配置的优化究竟是否能够提高企业的绩效还是由于规模的扩大而损害企业效率,这是需要实证的数据进行检验论证的零售企业不同于生产企业,由于其服务的可复制性,其并购和融合并不想生产企业那样需要生产规模的扩张和规模报酬递增才能实现并购收益因此,零售企业的并购绩效是一个较为复杂的问题,如何判断还没有较统一和明确的实证研究方法.本文利用"马氏均线模型",以期能够从统计意义上检验并购前后企业价值的变化,从而检验并购绩效本文以几年前国美并购永乐为案例对其并购的绩效进行实证分析,希望能够在理论和实践上对零售企业的并购行为提供可行的参考依据.     

“进场费”的法律观察和分析

随着中国大型零售企业近年来的迅速发展,特别是国外知名连锁零售企业的登录扩张,新型零售行业中出现了一些新现象,包括"进场费"风波,供货商进驻零售企业等激化现象,笔者认为这些激化矛盾的背后,其实是中国新型零售业法律规范的缺失,本文以"进场费"为切入点,对中国新型供、零关系,从法律视角进行观察和分析。     

企业交易费用的核算

传统经济学认为,企业是一个简单的生产单位,是一个内部组织无需解释的"黑匣".经典西方经济学认为企业规模呈现日益扩大的趋势,对于某些自然垄断行业来说,扩大企业规模甚至会减少生产单位产品所投入的成本.但是,在实际经济活动中,没有一家企业能够实现无限制的扩张,针对这个问题科斯提出的交易费用理论恰好弥补了传统经济学理论在这方面缺乏解释力的缺陷.但企业的交易费用不同于生产成本,很难对其进行核算.本文旨在总结前人对交易费用理论研究的基础上,得出交易费用的核算公式,量化企业交易费用的核算,为企业确定最佳规模提供理论上的可行性.     

跨国零售企业在华扩张动因探析

目前跨国零售企业在中国进行全面扩张是与其动因分不开的。现有的文献对零售企业海外扩张动因有较多的研究,但有关跨国零售企业在华扩张动因的研究较少。本文认为跨国零售企业在华扩张的动因主要有母国市场的推动力、中国市场的拉动力及企业本身发展的内在动力,并对此进行了深入分析。     

跨国零售企业在华扩张动因探析

目前跨国零售企业在中国进行全面扩张是与其动因分不开的。现有的文献对零售企业海外扩张动因有较多的研究,但有关跨国零售企业在华扩张动因的研究较少。本文认为跨国零售企业在华扩张的动因主要有母国市场的推动力、中国市场的拉动力及企业本身发展的内在动力,并对此进行了深入分析。     

零售企业连锁经营规模对产出效率的影响效应统计研究

文章以生产函数为模型框架,以我国2013年连锁零售百强企业部分企业为样本,实证检验了零售企业连锁经营规模对产出效率的影响。结果显示,虽然零售企业连锁经营规模的适度扩张是企业产出效率得以提高的一个重要因素,但当前我国零售企业连锁经营规模扩张带来的效率提升效应也面临一系列的瓶颈,连锁零售企业的规模报酬正处于递减状态。根据分析结论,最后提出了相关对策建议。     

中外零售企业中国市场的跨区域扩张——基于58家连锁企业店铺布局的比较研究

本文应用35个中国跨区域经营的零售企业和23个在中国市场跨区域经营的跨国零售企业店铺布局的调查数据对中外零售企业在中国市场的跨区域扩张战略进行了比较研究.研究结论表明,中外零售企业都选择了大型超市和超市作为跨区域扩张的主导业态,而本土企业的业态组合更加复杂;本土企业的市场覆盖率高于跨国企业,但其店铺网络呈现出"广泛覆盖,局部密集"的特征;跨国企业在跨区域扩张过程中的战略布局意图比本土企业更为明显.     

Regularity and diversity in firm size distributions in U.S. industries

The size distribution of firms in manufacturing industries has long been a matter of interest in industrial organization. Distribution in different industries show considerable regularity that static economic theory fails to explain. Stochastic growth models appear to provide some insights, but empirical tests of the log-normal or Pareto distributions have been inconclusive. This paper draws on market share data for over three hundred U.S. manufacturing industries and analyses the distribution of largest firm sizes. A statistical test of the Pareto hypothesis, rather different from previous tests in the literature, decisively rejects that hypothesis as a general explanation for the upper tail of the distribution. Instead, great diversity among distributions is found, and the regularities that do emerge imply a greater clustering of large firms than predicted by theory.     

Animating the big middle

A Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective captures the motivating social and cultural contexts of retail patronage and purchase behaviors and the myriad motivating factors behind the retail purchase decision. A CCT perspective complements behavioral decision theory and social cognition research in retailing. For consumers, retailers represent a field in which operant resources interact. In these marketspaces, firms and consumers exert a mutual gravitational pull. Firms compete for a role in the culturally constituted projects that consumers pursue by offering certain resource combinations. A CCT-based approach to retailing strives to account for co-creation, namely, how consumers deploy their own cultural resources, aided by retailer-provided resources, to accomplish the pursuit of their personal identity and communal projects. The paper discusses strategic orientations for retail firms that spring from a resource view, four types of firm supplied operant resources, suggests some mechanisms through which consumers animate cultural resources and their motivations to do so, and offers suggestions for future research.     

Firm Growth,Size, Age and Behavior in Japanese Manufacturing

This paper investigates the relationship between firm growth and firm size, firm age and firm behavior, such as R&D activity and subcontracting, based on the data of nearly 14,000 Japanese manufacturing firms. The stylized facts that firm size and age have a negative effect on firm growth are confirmed in the case of Japanese manufacturing firms. Also, a firms survivability rises with its size and age. R&D expenditure per employee has a significant positive effect on firm growth, which justifies the argument made by Hall (1987). Although subcontracting to only one company has no significant effect on firm growth, it has a significant positive effect on a firms survivability. In addition, subcon-tracting firms depending on only one company as a customer are subject to no significant age effects. This possibly suggests that the age effect itself has some relation to the extent of the trade network.     

Foreign Market Competition as a Determinant of Exporter Performance: Evidence from Slovenian Manufacturing Firms

Most studies on the link between exporting status and firm productivity find no evidence of learning‐by‐exporting, whereas self‐selection of more productive firms into exporting is most often confirmed. Furthermore, empirical tests of the learning‐by‐exporting hypothesis rarely rely on a specific learning mechanism and instead estimate very general tests of the effects of exporting on improvements of firm efficiency. Lack of explicit controls for specific learning mechanisms in turn biases the empirical estimates against finding the learning effects. Here I undertake a more targeted approach to learning‐by‐exporting by using data on Slovenian manufacturing enterprises between 1994 and 2002 to explore a specific channel for learning in the export markets. Using a variety of empirical tests, I show that competition in exporting markets serves as an added criterion in firm self‐selection as only the most productive and fastest growing firms choose to enter more competitive foreign markets. Once home‐market competition is explicitly controlled, a significant productivity adjustment effect of exporting firms in response to intensification of export market competition is revealed. Crucially, this provides tentative evidence of learning‐by‐exporting, which has so far been elusive in the relevant literature.     

Manufacturing entrepreneurs: An empirical study of the correlates of employment growth in the Tulsa MSA and rural East Texas

Manufacturing firms and firms totally dependent on manufacturing provide more than 50% of the jobs in the United States and other industrialized nations. In spite of the belief that the United States has become an “information economy,” it has recently been recognized by researchers, politicians and industry experts that the loss of America's leadership position in manufacturing threatens the American industrial position. In addition, small firms provided most of the job growth in the decade of the 80s and the most innovation and new products.The impact of these factors indicates the importance of determining what it takes to be successful as a manufacturing entrepreneur. Beyond the importance to the national economy of understanding the success-related factors in manufacturing entrepreneurship, several stakeholder categories have a vested interest in this information as well. Job creation, job growth and economic development become major agenda items in the 1992 presidential campaign. Also, investors would like to have a model of small firm growth on which to base their investments in start-up firms. Finally, political units are looking for mechanisms to create much-needed new jobs to provide tax revenue.The purpose of this study was to: (1) determine the relationship between eight literature-based predictor variables and employment growth in entrepreneurial manufacturing firms and (2) attempt to develop a meaningful linear model, incorporating as many significant variables as possible from the original eight that would explain variance in firm performance.The focus of this study was 327 manufacturing entrepreneurs located in the Tulsa Metropolitan Statistical Area and 13 contiguous counties in East Texas. Manufacturing entrepreneurs were defined as the founders of their firms. The firms included in the study were all less than ten years old, independent (not a division of some other firm) and had primary SIC codes between 2000 and 3999. Usable responses to a mail survey were 103, a 31.5% response rate.Results of this study suggest that age (of the entrepreneur) at founding, entrepreneurial management experience, industry experience and environmental scanning practices are significantly correlated with firm performance as measured by employment growth.     

The Two Faces of R&D: Does Firm Absorptive Capacity Matter?

This paper examines the dual effect of firm R&D efforts on productivity growth for Swedish manufacturing firms. The R&D efforts do not only stimulate innovation but also enhance firms?? ability to identify, assimilate and exploit new knowledge from the environment (Cohen and Levinthal. Economics Journal 99:569?C596, 1989). In this paper, we assume that the principal channel of transmission of new knowledge is through I/O linkages. Our econometric evidence suggests that in addition to the firm??s own R&D activities, R&D spillovers embodied in traded goods within the industry, others imported from abroad, and technology spillovers transferred from the technological frontier within an industry are important determinants of firms?? productivity growth. Results suggest that domestic R&D spillovers following the I/O links between industries are of minor importance in this respect. We also analyze whether firms?? absorptive capacity matters for productivity growth. Analyzing absorptive capacity is particularly important for assessing the effective contribution of spillovers from other firms. The effect of a firm??s absorptive capacity is found to interact positively with imported R&D spillovers, whereas domestic rents spillovers seem to play a minor role for productivity growth.     

Welfare gains from Foreign Direct Investment through technology transfer to local suppliers

We hypothesize that multinational firms operating in emerging markets transfer technology to local suppliers to increase their productivity and to lower input prices. To avoid hold-up by any single supplier, the foreign firm must make the technology widely available. This technology diffusion induces entry and more competition which lowers prices in the supply market. As a result, not just the foreign-owned firm, but all firms downstream of that supply market obtain lower prices. We test this hypothesis using a panel dataset of Indonesian manufacturing establishments. We find strong evidence of productivity gains, greater competition, and lower prices among local firms in markets that supply foreign entrants. The technology transfer is Pareto improving — output and profits increase for firms in both the supplier and buyer sectors. Further, the technology transfer generates an externality that benefits buyers in other sectors downstream from the supply sector as well. This externality may provide a justification for policy intervention to encourage foreign investment.     

Skill Formation Of Engineers In Large Korean Firms: An Analysis From A Comparative Perspective

On the basis of firm‐level case studies, this paper examines the actual performance of university education and in‐firm training for engineers in large Korean manufacturing firms. University education fails to meet the actual demands for skills at the firm level, while in‐firm training fails to devote sufficient resources to the continuous, lifetime skill formation of engineers. The poor performance of this education is explained by the rigid university administration system in Korea, and worsened by exclusive government intervention. The limitations of in‐firm training are accounted for by several features of corporate management, including the prevail‐ing production strategies and top‐down governance structures inside firms as well as the distinct occupational culture popular among young engineers.     

Linking net entry to regional economic growth

Regional growth differentials could be explained by how intensively and dynamically new firms of a particular region enter expanding industries. Although the direct contribution of new firms to value creation and growth may be regarded as tautological, the aggregate impacts are largely empirically unobserved. After a brief motivation, we use an expression of firm net entry as an indicator of the distinctive capacity of regional entrepreneurial resources to enter new industries and create value. Using data for Belgian districts, we test the net entry effects on subsequent economic growth in the manufacturing and services industries. Our analysis helps emphasize the different dynamics at work within the manufacturing and services industries and, although requiring cautious interpretation, provides evidence for some positive impact of net entry on regional economic growth in the services industry.