The relationships between intangible organizational elements and organizational performance

Despite the growing awareness of the importance of researching core strategic resources and activities, the work that has been done to date has largely taken the form of anecdotal reports and case study analysis. We have yet to see large‐sample studies demonstrating how organizational elements, independently, complementarily and interactively, may or may not enhance the organization's performance. Moreover, little attention has been given to researching this topic in public sector organizations. The present study aims to bridge this gap by examining the impact of a set of independent intangible organizational elements and the interactions among them on a set of objective organizational performance measures in a sample of local government authorities in Israel. The results of a multivariate analysis indicate that organizational performance (measured by self‐income ratio, collecting efficiency ratio, employment rate, and municipal development) can be well explained by six intangible organizational elements (managerial capabilities, human capital, internal auditing, labor relations, organizational culture, and perceived organizational reputation) and the interactions among them, which need to be taken into account in any cost effective development. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Can collusion promote sustainable consumption and production?

Several competition authorities consider the exemption of horizontal agreements among firms from antitrust liability if the agreements sufficiently promote public interest objectives such as sustainable consumption and production. We show that when consumers value sustainable products and firms choose investments in sustainability before choosing output or prices, coordination of output choices or prices boosts investments in sustainability and may even enhance consumer surplus when products are sufficiently close substitutes and the marginal cost of investment in sustainability is relatively low. By contrast, coordination of investments in sustainability leads to lower investments and harms consumers.     

A Comparison of Construction Contract Prices for Traditionally Procured Roads and Public–Private Partnerships

Theoretical literature suggests higher asset construction costs in a public-private partnership (PPP) than in traditional public procurement, due to the bundling of construction and operation and the transfer of construction risk, among other factors. Data on ex ante road construction prices in Europe suggest a PPP road to be 24% more expensive than a traditionally procured road, ceteris paribus. This estimate resembles reported ex post cost overruns in traditionally procured roads. Thus, the public sector seems to pay a premium on ex ante PPP construction contract prices mostly to cover construction risk transfer. Other reported sources of higher PPP road construction costs, including bundling, seem on average of lesser importance.     

Retail Mergers and Food Prices: Evidence from France

This paper analyzes the impact of a merger in the French supermarket industry on food prices. Using consumer panel data, we compare the changes in prices for merging and rival firms in affected and comparison markets. We use a novel definition of affected markets when some firms have a local pricing strategy and others a more centralized pricing strategy. We find that prices increase significantly following the merger, and that the merging firms lose market shares. For the rivals, the price increases are larger in local markets, in which concentration increased and differentiation changed after the merger.     

Guanxi and organizational dynamics: organizational networking in Chinese firms

This paper focuses on the utilization of guanxi, which is an important cultural and social element in China, and the impact of guanxi on firm performance. Although guanxi is embedded in every aspect of Chinese social life, companies demonstrate different needs and capacity for guanxi cultivation. Chinese firms develop guanxi as a strategic mechanism to overcome competitive and resource disadvantages by cooperating and exchanging favors with competitive forces and government authorities. We develop an integrative framework theorizing guanxi utilization according to institutional, strategic, and organizational factors, and we explore the impact of guanxi on firm performance, primarily sales growth and net profit growth. Our findings, based on a survey of 128 firms in central China, provide strong support that institutional, strategic, and organizational factors are critical determinants of guanxi with competitive forces. However, only institutional and strategic factors are significant for guanxi utilization with government authorities. In general, guanxi leads to higher firm performance, but is limited to increased sales growth, and has little impact on profit growth. Guanxi benefits market expansion and competitive positioning of firms, but does not enhance internal operations. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Economics of Style: Measuring the Price Effect of Neo‐Traditional Architecture in Housing

Vintage effects have received considerable attention from economists in the context of house prices. Although strongly related, the impact of architectural building styles on prices has not been studied yet. Using a cross‐sectional hedonic price analysis including building styles of recently developed homes in the Netherlands we find a significant price premium for housing with neo‐traditional architecture. Extensive intervention by local authorities on the supply side of the housing market seems the most probable explanation of this effect. The decreasing price premium over time reflects the impact of supply restrictions on price, but also indicates that style does matter.     

Flex cars and competition in fuel retail markets

We study how the diffusion of flex (bi-fuel) cars affected competition on ethanol and gasoline retail markets. We propose a model of price competition in which the two fuels become closer substitutes as flex cars penetration grows. We use a large panel of weekly prices at the station level to show that fuel prices and margins have fallen in response to this change. This finding is evidence of market power in fuel retail and indicates that innovations that increase consumer choice benefit even those who choose not to adopt them.     

Platform Price Parity Clauses and Consumer Obfuscation*

Several antitrust authorities have investigated platform price parity clauses around the world. I analyze the impact of these clauses when platforms design a search environment for sellers and buyers to interact. In a model where platforms choose the unit search cost faced by consumers, I show when platforms can profitably obfuscate consumers through high search costs. Then, I show that price parity clauses, when exogenously given, can increase or reduce obfuscation, prices, and consumer surplus. Finally, when price parity clauses are endogenous, they are only observed in equilibrium if they hurt consumers.     

国际基础设施建设PPP项目关键绩效指标研究

PPP项目以提高公共产品供给的效率和效能为目标,但在实际操作中却缺乏有效而完善的监控指标,使得公共部门在项目监管中缺少导向和绩效评价的基础与依据,造成了PPP项目的绩效评价缺位和产出不能达到预期目标,制约了PPP模式的发展。以VFM为导向,采用关键绩效指标(Key Performance In dicators,KPI)方法,结合大量文献,构建PPP项目的KPI概念模型。以此作为PPP项目潜在的KPI识别平台,48个PPP项目绩效指标被识别出来。通过全球范围内的问卷调查评判了这些指标的相对重要性,调查结果表明全部指标均是重要的(>3.000),其中31个指标是更加重要的绩效指标(>3.500)。问卷调查的结果成为进一步筛选最关键的绩效指标的基础,为公共部门监控PPP项目绩效和产出提供了坚实的理论基础,也为私人部门特别是我国进入国际PPP市场的企业提高自身绩效提供可供参考的重要依据。     

Cash to spend: IPO wealth and house prices

This study demonstrates the impact of initial public offerings (IPOs) on local house prices. Applying spatial difference-in-differences methods to IPOs in California from 1993 to 2017, we find house prices increase by 0.7%–0.9% near an IPO firm's headquarters around filing and issuing dates. Upon lockup expiration, price changes depend on postissuance returns. Treating the San Francisco Bay as a commuting barrier, we identify sustained price increases after filings and temporary increases after issuing and lockup expiration. We also confirm post-IPO price divergence between the treatment and synthetic control areas. Our findings indicate the effect of liquid wealth under mild financial constraints.     

Evaluating the impact of reforming the food subsidy program in Egypt: A Mixed Demand approach

Food subsidy is one of the policies considered to protect consumer welfare against food price increases, in particular when the insufficient local production has to be complemented by food imports with volatile prices. Egypt has experienced several “food crises” (the latest in 2008), which put an halt to attempts to reform in depth the system of food subsidies because of social unrest. In this paper, we use a Mixed Demand approach to analyze the consumption structure of Egyptian households. Our model specification takes into consideration the characteristics of the Egyptian food subsidy system, where some food items have predetermined quotas while others are associated with predetermined (subsidized) prices. Price, income and quota elasticities are estimated from the Egyptian family expenditure survey, and welfare change measures are derived by income class. Simulations of various options to eliminate subsidies on selected food items are conducted. We estimate the negative welfare impact of the reforms, especially in the context of increasing food prices, by comparing welfare effects of policy options by income quartiles and by household category (rural, urban).     

On optimal scarcity prices

This article contributes to the debate of missing money (compare Joskow(2007a)). This debate has seriously questioned the desirability of limiting scarcity prices in markets with fluctuating demand by emphasizing their potentially negative impact on firms' investment decisions in the long run. A prominent example are recently liberalized electricity markets, where competition authorities have imposed price caps³ or adopted other measures to mitigate high scarcity prices.The impact of reduced scarcity prices in the long run still is only incompletely explored. We thus analyze investment of firms in base load and peak load technologies in a market with fluctuating demand under imperfect competition. We show that an appropriately chosen limitation of scarcity prices is not only beneficial in the short run but also in the long run. It leads to a strict increase of investment in peak load technologies, leaving investment in base load technologies unchanged. Furthermore, we characterize the optimal limit on scarcity prices.     

Antitrust in High-Tech Industries

Recent economic growth has been led by high-technology industries (See Jorgenson, Ho & Stiroh (2005) for a summary of the research on the recent acceleration of productivity growth). Many firms in these industries have achieved a dominant market position, thereby attracting the attention of competition authorities, often resulting in major monopolization cases. Unfortunately, this attention has not resulted in improved market outcomes. In this paper, we evaluate the effect of Section 2 Sherman Act cases brought against IBM, AT&T, and Microsoft. We conclude that these cases had limited effect on consumer welfare because they did not stimulate entry or innovation. In these industries, competition authorities cannot expect to promote simply an expansion of output and lower commodity prices; rather they should focus their remedies on promoting innovation—new products that replace or compete with the dominant firm’s products.     

Regulatory bias in the price structure of local telephone service

This article combines a discrete choice model of demand for residential local telephone access and an optimal price regulation model to estimate the welfare weights that state regulators implicitly place on consumers with different incomes and locations. I find no evidence of a bias towards rural consumers on average, but the relative weight on low income consumers in a geographic area can vary as a function of the proportions of rural and poor population and the political characteristics of the regulator. I also measure the welfare consequences of deviating from total consumer surplus maximization and disconnecting prices from costs.     

Demand for coffee in Sweden: The role of prices, preferences and market power

There is a widespread belief that consumer coffee prices are high relative to bean prices and that lower consumer prices would lead to substantial increases in bean exports from Third-World countries. This issue is evaluated by analysing how retail prices, preferences and market power influence coffee demand in Sweden. A demand function is estimated for the period 1968–2002 and used, together with information on import prices of coffee beans, to simulate an oligopoly model. This approach gives estimates of the maximum average degree of market power and shows how coffee demand would react to reductions in marginal cost to its minimum level. The maximum level of market power is found to be low, but it generates large spreads between consumer and bean prices because the price elasticity has low absolute values. Moreover, the impact of a price decrease would be small because long-run coffee demand is dominated by changes in the population structure in combination with different preferences across age groups. Hence, a change to perfect competition would only have a negligible effect on bean imports.     

Private Labels,National Brands and Food Prices

We study the relationships between national brand prices and the development of private labels, using home-scanned data from a consumer survey reporting purchases for 218 food products. When the impact of private label development is significant (116 cases out of 218), we observe a positive correlation (89%) between brand price and purchases of private labels. When controlling for changes in product quality, we still find a positive relation between private label development and national brand prices. Thus, the change in the national brand product characteristics only partly explains the increase in the national brand prices. Furthermore, the price reactions of national brands differ according to the type of private labels they face. Finally, we demonstrate that the development of private labels has less effect on the prices of second-tier brands than on the prices of the leading brand.      

Providing incentives for private investment in municipal broadband networks: Evidence from the Netherlands

The paper examines the incentives provided by public–private partnerships (PPPs) to stimulate private market parties to participate in municipal fibre networks in the Netherlands. Although there has been a growing interest of Dutch municipalities in fibre technologies since the beginning of the 2000s, PPP models to implement these technologies developed rather slowly in response to changes in public policy, the legislative environment and experiences gained in early projects. In 2005, the viability of a cooperative PPP model called “Ons Net” Nuenen was tested in an experimental setting for the first time using government subsidies. In undertaking a techno-economic analysis of the PPP “Ons Net” in Nuenen, the paper examines its objectives, boundaries and viability. It shows that the experience of this PPP based on ubiquity, open fibre access and demand aggregation provided important incentives for companies to invest in (other) municipal fibre networks in the Netherlands. The paper concludes furthermore that mandating of open access will become a key task for (local) governments to foster competitive entry and to facilitate innovation in municipal fibre networks.     

Consumer Decision-making at an Internet Shopbot: Brand Still Matters

Internet shopbots compare prices and service levels at competing retailers, creating a laboratory for analysing consumer choice. We analyse 20,268 shopbot consumers who select various books from 33 retailers over 69 days. Although each retailer offers a homogeneous product, we find that brand is an important determinant of consumer choice. The three most heavily branded retailers hold a $1.72 price advantage over more generic retailers in head-to-head price comparisons. In particular, we find that consumers use brand as a proxy for retailer credibility in non-contractible aspects of the product and service bundle, such as shipping reliability.     

Grade inflation in restaurant hygiene inspections: Repeated interactions between inspectors and restaurateurs

Restaurant hygiene grading schemes are considered exemplars of targeted transparency policies. We investigate the impact of an administrative design feature found in many schemes: repeated interactions between health inspectors and restaurateurs. Data was analyzed from 336,208 inspections of 27,119 restaurants conducted by 493 inspectors from 2000 to 2010 by the Los Angeles Department of Public Health (LADPH). The findings associate repeated interactions with higher public letter grades, and these grades drop with the assignment of a new inspector. Specifically, a one-unit increase in the logged number of visits by a prior inspector is associated with a 71% increased chance the restaurant will be downgraded to a lower letter grade upon the arrival of a new inspector. Exploiting an inspection protocol change in 2007, we also find that inspectors with more repeated visits to a restaurant are more likely to code a higher number of compliant rules as “Not Observed,” thereby possibly avoiding potential violations and corresponding penalties. Analysis of subsequent consumer complaints filed with the local health department shows that a one-unit increase in repeated inspector-restaurateur interactions is associated with an 10% increase in the likelihood of a consumer complaint, suggesting a public health impact. Coupled with prior evidence, the study demonstrates that administrative and design features of targeted transparency policies can impact the information provided to the public and potentially affect health outcomes.     

Learning: What and How? An Empirical Study of Adjustments in Workplace Organization Structure

We seek to understand how firms learn about what adjustments they need to make in their organization structure at the workplace level. We define four organizational systems: traditional (the simplest system), high‐performance (the most complex system), decision‐making oriented, and financial‐incentives oriented (intermediate complexity). We analyze (1) learning‐by‐doing on adoption of more or less complex systems, (2) the performance–experience learning curves associated with different systems, (3) the match between perceived organizational capabilities and the choice of systems, the influence of (4) other firms’ systems and performance on a firm’s adjustment decisions, and of (5) a firm’s location on its decisions.