The effect of concentration and market power on food prices: evidence from Finland

This research examines empirically the relationship between economies of scale, concentration, and market power in food retailing. With unique, local market data available Finland, the analysis could investigate the impact of both local concentration and industry-wide concentration (which can be interpreted as multimarket contact) are taken into account in the evaluation of grocery retail competitiveness. The results show that the main factor affecting market power is the size of the retail firm. Larger share grocery retailers, for both the local and the national markets, carried higher mark-ups. At the same time, no firm-level scale economies were found from these larger firms. I conclude from these findings that the main purpose of large grocery retail mergers is to gain market power not efficiency.     

Is your brand''s loyalty too much, too little, or just right?: Explaining deviations in loyalty from the Dirichlet norm

This paper formally investigates the factors that relate to the deviations of brand's actual loyalty levels from theoretical norms in packaged goods markets. An aggregate measure of brand loyalty, share of category requirements, commonly tracked by marketing managers is used for this analysis. The comparison is conducted against the estimated share of requirements provided by the well established Dirichlet model of purchasing behavior. We posit that a brand's positioning strategy and marketing mix can influence the magnitude and the direction of the deviation from the norm. We use a two step modeling procedure where we first compute the deviation from the norm for each brand and subsequently conduct a regression analysis of this brand-level data to test the proposed hypotheses. We find that on average, brands that cater to some market niche, are bought in higher quantities, have lower prices, promote to a lesser extent, and have shallower price-cuts and enjoy higher than expected loyalty levels. We discuss possible implications of these results and offer guidelines that managers can use to better assess both the actual and the theoretical loyalty levels of their brands.     

Keiretsu and relationship-specific investment: implications for market-opening trade policy

This paper considers the implications of relationship-specific investment within keiretsu for policies aimed at opening the Japanese market for intermediate goods, such as auto-parts. Both VIEs applied to parts and VERs restricting Japanese exports of autos cause the keiretsu to import a wider range of parts, but of a relatively unimportant type, such as seat covers. Since keiretsu investment and output fall, the total value of US parts exports may actually fall. For a given value of these exports, a VIE is less costly for US consumers and Japanese producers, but a VER is preferred by US automakers.     

再论中国市场经济地位--兼评欧盟对中国市场经济地位的初步评估

2004年6月,欧盟对中国市场经济地位做出了初步评估意见,认为中国还没有完全达到其反倾销法律规定的市场经济标准.欧盟评估的这一结论引起了国内政界、学术界的不满,也引发出国内学术界和媒体对向欧盟争取市场经济地位必要性的疑问与争议.本文从中国是否应申请市场经济地位、中国能否算是市场经济国家和如何看待欧盟的初评意见三方面谈了自己的看法.     

中美农产品贸易互补性分析

本文运用贸易结合度、RCA指数、相似度指数、经常市场份额模型对中美两国的农产品贸易进行分析,研究结果表明:中美两国的农产品贸易存在较大的互补性,农产品贸易结合度不断提高;中国对美国农产品出口增长贡献最大的是农产品竞争力提升效应,美国对中国农产品出口增长贡献最大的是市场扩大效应。     

国际贸易计价货币的选择——兼论人民币国际化

本文以出口商预期利润最大化为视角,介绍和归纳了出口商计价货币选择的有关模型。得出结论:一国货币作为国际贸易发票货币取决于货币汇率的波动性;该国占据的出口市场份额以及该国出口产品的差异性程度,并利用经验数据检验了以上结论,展望了人民币国际化的前景。     

An Investigation of Market Orientation (MO) and Tourism Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises’ (SMEs) Performance in Developing Countries: A Review of the Literature

This paper aims to build a structured literature review of the field of market orientation and its impact on tourism small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) performance in developing countries. This literature review will present a comprehensive survey of market orientation (MO) published articles to facilitate good understanding of MO. It serves as an archive and aims to help the scholars and practitioners to explore, analyse, and develop a clear understanding about the different research points and methodologies implemented in previous studies related to MO and its impact on tourism SMEs’ performance. The paper systematically reviews and categorizes the published literature implementing a three-stage methodology, and thereafter analyzes and reviews this literature methodologically. The review covered many areas and identified some factors that drive/hinder market-oriented activities within tourism SMEs. Furthermore, suggestions have been made to understand more thoroughly how market orientation influences tourism SMEs performance in developing economies. A research gap in the area of market orientation and tourism SMEs performance in developing countries was identified. The study provides great benefits for owner-managers, government policy makers, scholars, and educators by clarifying the concept of market orientation and its relationship with performance in the context of tourism SMEs.     

对我国国债市场流动性的实证研究

本文从流动性的宽度和深度两个角度,对上海交易所和银行间债券市场的流动性进行量化分析,分析中使用一阶序列自协方差模拟估计有效价差(宽度),用换手率和Amivest流动性比率估计深度及宽度.经研究发现:两个市场的流动性具有结构性特征,不能简单比较,得出孰高孰低的结论;在回购交易品种中,银行间市场的7天回购流动性最佳,其价格可以作为基准利率;债券市场存在新券和旧券之间的流动性替代效应.     

Prisoner’s Dilemmas, Cooperative Norms, and Codes of Business Ethics

Prisoner's dilemmas can lead rational people to interact in ways that lead to persistent inefficiencies. These dilemmas create a problem for institutional designers to solve: devise institutions that realign individual incentives to achieve collectively rational outcomes. I will argue that we do not always want to eliminate misalignments between individual incentives and efficient outcomes. Sometimes we want to preserve prisoner's dilemmas, even when we know that they systematically will lead to inefficiencies. No doubt, prisoner's dilemmas can create problems, but they also create opportunities to practice the cooperative norms that make market institutions possible in the first place. An ethical market culture, I argue, benefits from the presence of prisoner's dilemmas. I first consider standard approaches for solving prisoner's dilemmas. I then argue for the value of prisoner's dilemmas. Finally, I show the significance of this argument for advocating codes of business ethics.     

我国二板市场实施做市商制度的障碍与对策研究

在建立我国二板市场的讨论中 ,关于借鉴纳斯达克市场 ,采用做市商制度的呼声正日益高涨。在中国将要推出的“按新体制运行”的二板市场微观结构设计中 ,是否引入做市商制度 ?针对国情 ,当前我国应大力培育和发展柜台市场 ,建立多层次的资本市场体系 ;应制定有利于做市商制度实施的规则、法律条款及其监督落实的一系列制度 ,提高二板市场的效率。