Scale economies of department stores in the People's Republic of China

This paper statistically tested three hypotheses about relationships between the size and efficiency of department stores in the People's Republic of China. The results show that the enlargement of the size of stores in China had a positive impact on the efficiency of large and medium-sized department stores, and that these department stores derived their economies of scale from cost savings rather than from an increase of the average transaction size.     

竞争损害了发电侧的规模经济吗?——基于中国火力发电厂的实证检验

运用火电厂的面板数据和超越对数成本模型,对2003—2010年间中国火力发电厂的成本结构进行实证研究,分析发电侧的规模经济与火力发电厂的有效规模。结果发现:当前中国大多数发电厂普遍存在规模经济,但是发电厂的规模经济随着电厂规模的增加显著下降,同时发电厂的最小有效规模在逐年下降。因此,进一步强化发电侧的竞争,抑制大型发电企业盲目追求规模扩张的投资冲动,将有利于发电业的规模经济,促进发电业生产效率的提升。     

Economies as an Antitrust Defense Revisited: The Welfare Trade-offs and Safe Harbors

This paper incorporates a Cournot model of oligopoly pricing into Williamson’s (1968a) model to assess the welfare effect of a merger that yields economies and market power simultaneously. The results show: (i) in most cases, economies from mergers can offset price increases due to market power such that there are positive net allocative effects, and (ii) the safe harbors in the merger guidelines may fail to screen out mergers correctly. The reliability, however, can be improved by considering cost savings and price elasticities in addition to the current use of increases in HHI and post-merger HHIs.     

Non-Interest Income and Bank Efficiency in Ghana: A Two-Stage DEA Bootstrapping Approach

This paper examines the effect of the inclusion of non-interest income on efficiency and economies of scale of Ghanaian banks in a two-stage analysis. The data envelopment analysis technique is employed to estimate efficiency scores with and without non-interest income of 26 Ghanaian banks from 2003 to 2011 in the first-stage analysis. In the second stage, a truncated bootstrapped regression is estimated to examine the effect of contextual variables on bootstrapped efficiency scores. The findings indicate that the exclusion of non-interest income as output variable leads to the under-estimation of efficiency scores. From the second-stage regression analysis, we find a curve-linear relationship between bank size and efficiency to suggest that bank efficiency increases as size also increase due to economies of scale but only up to an optimal point after which inefficiency sets. Market concentration, leverage, and loan loss provisions are also identified as the other significant determinants of efficiency. Policy implications for improving bank efficiency are discussed.     

第三方物流企业规模经济的实证研究

文章利用超越对数成本函数建立了第三方物流业规模经济问题的计量模型,并运用SUR法估计了中国部分第三方物流企业(1999-2007年)的规模经济和技术进步效应.实证结果显示,被研究的中国第三方物流企业在总体上存在轻微的规模不经济,而从三种不同运输方式的第三方物流企业来看,海运和铁路企业存在规模经济,航空企业却不存在规模经济.同时,将反映技术进步的T引入模型,结果表明技术进步能降低第三方物流企业尤其是铁路物流企业的成本.     

多重交易对贸易效率与规模的影响——兼论贸易平台对促进内需扩大及外贸发展的作用

文章从契约经济理论的视角研究交易模式对交易效率与交易规模的影响。通过对孟韩德.法里斯（M Hand Fares）以赖尔登(Riordan)和威廉姆森（Williamson）模型为基础构建的新交易成本理论标准模型的扩展,建立多重交易情况（多交易对象、重复交易）的交易成本理论模型。该模型显示:多重交易有助于提高贸易效率和扩大贸易规模。文章还研究了多重交易与贸易集聚、贸易集聚与贸易平台的关系。文章最后研究了贸易平台对促进我国内需扩大和外贸发展的积极作用。     

虚拟企业中的内生交易费用

虚拟企业是由于专业化与分工进一步深化而产生的一种新的企业组织模式。采取虚拟企业这种组织模式能够在社会范围内获得专业化经济与分工经济的好处。但是在获得这种好处的同时 ,虚拟企业也在社会范围内增加了交易费用。这里从博弈论的角度分析了虚拟企业中的内生交易费用是如何在合作成员企业间产生的。     

企业规模问题的三维综合分析

在对交易费用理论、规模经济理论及范围经济理论等有关理论进行回顾和总结的基础上,从生产链、产量以及产品种类等三个维度对企业的纵向规模、横向规模、多元化规模及其各自的影响因素进行了比较深入的分析和探讨,可以系统地理解整体规模的含意及其不同维度规模之间的关系;可以更好地解释现实中不同企业在规模结构和经济效率的差异,使企业规模的研究,不能一直停留在对有关概念的无谓争论阶段。     

Role of off-balance sheet operations on bank scale economies: Evidence from China's banking sector

This paper investigates product-specific scale economies of banks with respect to off-balance sheet operations. The cost benefits from the non-separability of outputs available to banks that imply the role of OBS activities on bank scale economies are also examined. We further test whether the role of OBS operations on bank scale economies changes across heterogeneous banks. Results suggest that banks can realize more scale economies by increasing OBS operations and that scale economies can be reaped particularly for non-state-owned banks. Therefore, diversification and deregulation should be included in the policy agenda for the subsequent marketization reform of China's banking sector.     

Adverse selection costs: A study on the Chinese stock market

Employing a bid-ask spread model applicable for order-driven market, this paper decomposes the bid-ask spread of Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) into adverse selection and order processing cost components to investigate the relationship between the components of bid-ask spread and order size. It examines the impacts of firm size, price, trading activeness, and volatility on adverse selection cost, and explores the intraday pattern of adverse selection costs and informative trading. Results show that adverse selection costs increase with trade scale. However, order processing costs do not exhibit the economies of scale. Stocks of large firms, which are high-priced and actively traded, have relatively low adverse selection costs; stocks with large volatility have relatively high adverse selection costs. Moreover, this paper finds that the adverse selection component of bid-ask spread in the Chinese stock market exhibits an L-shaped intraday pattern, which implies that heavy trading around market opening is dominated by informative trading, while heavy trading near market closing is dominated by liquidity trading.     

Scale economies,entry, and welfare

This study shows how scale economies, initial size differences among firms, potential competition, and adjustment costs may influence the entry of firms into a dynamic oligopoly. It also examines the effects of these factors on the final size distribution of firms in an industry, and on the welfare levels of consumers and producers. We find that low to moderate scale economies are insufficient for Cournot-Nash competition to drive small firms from the market. Only when scale economies are quite high will the distribution of firm sizes become degenerate. Potential competition and the size of incumbent firms' capital stocks are additional barriers to entry. The welfare conclusion is that there may be a government role to preserve potential competition, but also to dissuade small firms from entering certain markets where there are economies of scale.     

A Note on the Firm Size – Export Relationship

The positive relationship between firm size and direct exports is often considered as a stylized fact. Numerous econometric investigations back theoretical considerations by showing that a ceteris paribus positive relationship between firm size and direct export activities exists. This note contributes to the literature by closely looking at an econometric modelling issues that has largely been neglected hitherto. Various approaches used in the literature to model the exports/sales ratio, which is a percentage variable with usually many observations at the lower limit, are discussed. It is argued that all these methods are seriously flawed, and an alternative approach is suggested that is applied using data from a large comprehensive recent survey of German manufacturing establishments. Furthermore, the relation between firm size and exports is examined in four selected industries to test whether the importance of economies of scale and transaction cost efficiencies vary considerably between industries.     

Market power in banking,countercyclical margins and the international transmission of business cycles

By introducing an imperfectly competitive banking sector into a standard two-country, two-good RBC model with complete asset markets, we study the international transmission of aggregate TFP shocks in an environment with noncompetitive financial intermediation. In this model, price-cost margins in a global loan market are endogenous and countercyclical. As a result, a positive TFP shock in one country spills over to another through a reduction in the global cost of both credit and externally financed investment. The quantitative analysis shows that countercyclical margins on loans play a key role in bringing the predictions of the theory closer to the observed cross-country cyclical co-movements of consumption, employment, investment and output. Recessions are deeper when the cost of credit rises during these economic downturns. Thus, a financial accelerator arises in our framework, unveiling the increased importance of stabilization policies in economies where margins in credit markets are countercyclical.     

External Economies of Scale and Insufficient Entry

Empirical evidence suggests that many industries are characterized by external economies of scale, yet the literature on the welfare effects of entry has ignored this aspect. We show that entry can be insufficient instead of excessive in the presence of external economies of scale. Using an example with specific demand and cost functions and Cournot competition, we show that insufficient entry occurs for any positive cost of entry and the possibility of insufficient entry increases with a higher cost of entry. Hence, anti-competitive entry regulation may not be justified in industries with strong external economies of scale, which may occur due to knowledge spillover.     

R&D Costs,Innovative Output and Firm Size in the Pharmaceutical Industry

This study examines the relationships between firm size, R&D costs and output in the pharmaceutical industry. Project–level data from a survey of 12 US–owned pharmaceutical firms on drug development costs, development phase lengths and failure rates are used to determine estimates of the R&D cost of new drug development by firm size. Firms in the sample are grouped into three size categories, according to their pharmaceutical sales at the beginning of the study period. The R&D cost per new drug approved in the US is shown to decrease with firm size, while sales per new drug approved are shown to increase markedly with firm size. Sales distributions are highly skewed and suggest that firms need to search for blockbuster drugs with above–average returns. The results are consistent with substantial economies of scale in pharmaceutical R&D, particularly at the discovery and preclinical development phases.     

Efficiency,scale and scope economies in the Ukrainian banking sector in 1998

This paper evaluates the current development of the Ukrainian banking system. The research was concentrated on the evaluation of cost and profit efficiency and scale and scope economies for 79 from 168 Ukrainian commercial banks in 1998. There is evidence that small banks operate more efficiently in cost terms but are less efficient in profit terms and furthermore, there is a substantial difference in scale economies between small and large banks. Large banks show significant diseconomies of scale while small ones show significant scale economies. This result could suggest that current technology in the financial sector does not allow efficient growth and concentration of the financial sector in Ukraine.     

Economies of scale in grocery retailing in Finland

This paper considers the question of store-level economies of scale in grocery retailing. Hedonic price and cost functions are used in modelling the price and cost structure of retailers, but without making the assumption of constant mark-ups, as normally done in hedonic price studies. The main result of the paper is that store-level economies of scale do exist in grocery retailing: large stores have on average 10% lower costs per sold unit than small stores. The second major finding is that most of the benefits from scale economies are passed on to consumers: the price level of large stores is 10% lower on average than of small stores.     

Capital Utilisation and Scale in the English and Welsh Water Industry

The study estimates a variable cost model of the UK water industry. From this variable cost function, estimates of economies of scale and economies of capital utilisation and capacity utilisation are made. The data used cover 20 English and Welsh water companies. The results suggest that only slight, albeit, significant dis-economies of scale and substantial diseconomies of capital utilisation exist in the industry. These estimates indicate that if output increases, with or without holding capital constant, variable costs would increase at a level above the proportional increase in output. If the water industry is not in long-term equilibrium, in terms of capital, neither merger nor acquisition amongst water companies are justified in terms of cost efficiency. A low level of capital utilisation is also indicated for the water industry. It is shown that the level of capital utilisation does increase over the sample period to approximately 30 per cent in 1996, indicating dis-equilibrium, in terms of capital, is present in this sector.     

中国城市规模效率的实证分析:1990-2001年

本文利用卡里诺模型和1990-2001年期间的时间序列数据和横截面数据分析全国222个城市的城市聚集经济以及城市规模效率,并分析东中西部地区不同城市规模的城市化经济程度差异.本文发现,目前中国城市规模效率不一样,尤其是传统工业大城市的城市化经济并不明显,而新兴工业城市的城市化经济较明显.本文还发现特大城市和超大城市的城市规模效率并不明显,而大中小城市的城市规模效率较明显.并且,东部地区小城市的城市规模效率较高,中部地区大城市的城市规模效率较高,西部地区特大城市的城市规模效率较高.     

The current account and precautionary savings for exporters of exhaustible resources

Exporters of exhaustible resources have historically exhibited higher income volatility than other economies, suggesting a heightened role for precautionary savings. This paper uses a parameterized small open-economy model to quantify the role of precautionary savings for exporters of exhaustible resources, when the only source of uncertainty is the price of the exhaustible resource. The parameterized model fares moderately well at capturing current account balances in both cross-section and time-series data. The results show that the precautionary motive can generate sizable external sector savings, the more so the greater the weight of exhaustible resource revenues in future income.