Efficiency and Technological Change in the U.S. Brewing Industry

This study demonstrates that the measurement of technological change and economic efficiency are tightly linked. Efficiency measures may depend on carefully controlling for technological change, while tests of technological change may be sensitive to empirical model specifications. Moreover, the study underlines Solow's (1994) and Romer's (1994) admonition that econometricians should pay attention to industry and institutional evidence in building models of technological change. The empirical results presented here suggest that there has been substantial technological change in the U.S. brewing industry from 1950 to 1992. This occurred in the form of a dramatic shift in technology beginning with the introduction of super breweries in about 1972. There has also been a substantial increase in scale economies, which undoubtedly caused many inefficiently small firms to exit the industry during the 1960s and 1970s. Further results suggest that a more complete specification of technological change and the stochastic nature of the frontier production function leads to higher and more tenable estimates of efficiency.     

Profitability and Efficiency in the U.S. Life Insurance Industry

This study explores the relationship between cost inefficiency and profitability in the U.S. life insurance industry. Earnings have particular importance to life insurance companies because earnings and capital determine the viability of the insurer. Since the life insurance industry is mature and highly competitive, cost efficiency may be the main driver of profitability. We derive cost efficiency using the stochastic frontier (SF) method allowing the mean inefficiency to vary with organizational form and the outputs. In addition, the estimation of the cost efficiency measure takes into account the underlying accounting concepts that generate the data and, consequently, the product mix (long-duration policies vs. short-duration policies) to avoid distorted estimates. Our results suggest that cost inefficiency in the life insurance industry is substantial relative to earnings, and that inefficiency is negatively associated with profitability measures such as the return on equity. The analysis of inefficiency and organizational form suggest that stock (shareholder-owned) companies are as efficient and profitable as mutual (policyholder-owned) companies.     

U.S. Strategic Trade Policy and the Competitiveness of the U.S. Construction Industry in Developing Country Markets

SUMMARY

U.S. government trade policy increasingly reflects “strategic trade” beliefs that, because competition in markets is imperfect, governments can act strategically to affect trade flows and enhance national welfare. The U.S. National Export Strategy targets the infrastructure sector in twelve developing countries as a strategic opportunity for U.S. construction firms. This paper examines whether U.S. government export promotion initiatives effectively implement strategic trade policy by providing appropriate support to these firms in that target market. It concludes that, within limits, they do.     

Joint Ventures in the U.S. Steel Industry:

A bstract . In 1958 Daniel Fusfeld examined the role of joint ventures in the U.S. steel industry and concluded that joint ventures served as a substitute for mergers forbidden by the Justice Department. Since the Fusfeld study, things have changed drastically for integrated domestic producers. Competition from imports and domestic mini- mills have forced steel firms into bankruptcies and missive plant closings. The contemporary industry's participation in joint ventures is examined in an attempt to understand steel's restructuring. Today's integrated producers jointly may hold tighter control over raw materials, participate in growing numbers of horizontal Joint ventures , and engage in numerous cooperative enterprises with foreign competitors, particularly the Japanese. Contemporary U.S. producers are becoming increasingly absorbed in the global economy.     

Strategic Ownership Positions in U.S. Industry and Banking

A bstract . Strategic ownership position in corporation do not necessarily imply "control" but rather participation in corporate decision making. Strategic positions in the nation's 500 largest industrial corporations and 153 largest financial institutions are described and classified. Types of owners include banks and employee stock plans, financial bolding firms, insurance companies, families and individuals, pension funds , and foreign owners. Results indicate that families continue to hold significant strategic positions in industry (28.5%) and banking (20.4%). These results have certain implications for the theory of "managerialism."     

Explaining the Choice Among Regulatory Plans in the U.S. Telecommunications Industry

We investigate why different states in the United States choose different regulatory plans in their telecommunications industry. We present a simple theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the issue. We find that a state is more likely to replace rate-of-return regulation with incentive regulation when: (1) residential basic local service rates have historically been relatively high; (2) allowed earnings under rate-of-return regulation in the state have been either particularly high or particularly low; (3) the state's leaders tend to come from both major political parties, rather than from a single party; (4) the state's urban population is growing relatively rapidly; and (5) the bypass activity of competitors in the state is less pronounced.     

美国版权产业保护政策的历史演变与启示

美国的版权保护,对内逐步提高版权保护水平;对外先是游离于当时国际主流版权保护体系之外,后是主动融入国际主流版权保护体系,并在全球推行美国的版权保护霸权。美国的版权保护做法对中国具有借鉴意义。     

美国振兴先进制造业的政策措施及启示

从20世纪70年代开始,美国制造业的大批量生产模式开始走下坡路。日本经济的兴起,以丰田汽车为代表的日本汽车工业新的生产和管理模式的成功,向世界表明大批量生产的威力已到了尽头。为振兴先进制造业,美国分别从技术、财政、信息网络、教育、企业运作模式、企业联盟等方面制定了一系列政策与计划,对其进行支持。美国所采取的这些政策措施,对于我国在“十一五”规划中如何更有效促进先进制造业的发展,具有重要的启示。     

美国炼油行业污染物排放标准对我国的启示

美国的污染物排放标准技术含量较高。标准内容详尽、复杂,不仅有技术数据,而且还规定如何执行这些技术的条款。研究美国工业行业污染物排放标准,有助于我国类似行业标准的制修订,可以有效提高我国排放标准的科学性和可执行性。     

Capacity Investment under Demand Uncertainty: The Role of Imports in the U.S. Cement Industry

Demand uncertainty is thought to influence irreversible capacity decisions. Suppose that local demand can be sourced from domestic (rigid) production or from (flexible) imports. This paper shows that the optimal domestic capacity is either increasing or decreasing with demand uncertainty, depending on the relative level of the costs of domestic production and imports. We test this relationship with data from the U.S. cement industry, in which the difference in marginal cost between domestic production and imports varies across local U.S. markets because cement is costly to transport over land. Industry data for 1999 to 2010 are consistent with the predictions of the model. The introduction of two technologies to the production set—one rigid and one flexible—is crucial to understanding the relationship between capacity choice and uncertainty in this industry because there is no relationship between these two variables in aggregated U.S. data. Our analysis reveals that the relationship is negative in coastal districts, and significantly more positive in landlocked districts.     

美国风险投资业发展历史、现状及趋势--基于现代产业组织理论SCP框架分析

本文首先回顾了美国风险投资业发展历程,然后运用现代产业组织理论SCP框架对美国风险投资业进行系统分析.研究结果表明,美国风险投资业较高市场集中度、较低的进入退出壁垒决定了美国风险投资业投资行为和市场绩效.最后探讨了美国风险投资业发展前景,并就中国风险投资业发展提出对策与建议.     

Sentiment and the U.S. business cycle

Psychological factors are commonly believed to play a role on cyclical economic fluctuations, but they are typically omitted from state-of-the-art macroeconomic models.This paper introduces “sentiment” in a medium-scale DSGE model of the U.S. economy and tests the empirical contribution of sentiment shocks to business cycle fluctuations.The assumption of rational expectations is relaxed. The paper exploits, instead, observed data on expectations in the estimation. The observed expectations are assumed to be formed from a near-rational learning model. Agents are endowed with a perceived law of motion that resembles the model solution under rational expectations, but they lack knowledge about the solution’s reduced-form coefficients. They attempt to learn those coefficients over time using available time series at each point in the sample and updating their beliefs through constant-gain learning. In each period, however, they may form expectations that fall above or below those implied by the learning model. These deviations capture excesses of optimism and pessimism, which can be quite persistent and which are defined as sentiment in the model. Different sentiment shocks are identified in the empirical analysis: waves of undue optimism and pessimism may refer to expected future consumption, future investment, or future inflationary pressures.The results show that exogenous variations in sentiment are responsible for a sizable (above forty percent) portion of historical U.S. business cycle fluctuations. Sentiment shocks related to investment decisions, which evoke Keynes’ animal spirits, play the largest role. When the model is estimated imposing the rational expectations hypothesis, instead, the role of structural investment-specific and neutral technology shocks significantly expands to capture the omitted contribution of sentiment.