THE IMPACT OF MERGERS IN U.S. PETROLEUM INDUSTRY ON WHOLESALE GASOLINE PRICES

Starting in the mid‐1990s, the U.S. petroleum industry experienced a wave of mergers, several of them between large petroleum companies that were previously competitors. Using an econometric analysis of terminal city‐specific data, this study finds that the majority of the mergers led to higher wholesale gasoline prices in the United States in the mid‐1990s through 2000. (JEL L7, L13, L40)     

MERGERS, CAPITAL GAINS, AND PRODUCTIVITY: EVIDENCE FROM U.S. TELECOMMUNICATIONS MERGERS

The article examines the effects of two horizontal mergers on the performance of the respective operating companies. The effects of the mergers are investigated by comparing the performance of the merging companies with a control group of nonmerging companies and also the performance of the merging companies before and after merger. The article concludes that mergers did not produce net economies of scale, did not lead to substantial productivity growth or cost reduction, and did not generate significant shareholder wealth effects. It is, to the authors' knowledge, the first study of mergers that combines the analysis of productivity and cost effects, on one hand, with an examination of the effects on financial variables, on the other hand. (JEL L11 , L9 )     

WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT IN THE U.S. APPAREL INDUSTRY

This article uses individual-level data from the U.S. Census, Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), to examine wages and employment in the U.S. apparel industry. Total employment in this sector has been falling since 1970, and its overall average wage is the lowest of 25 industry aggregates. But disaggregation by gender, education, and nativity reveals that groups of highly educated male native workers earn higher average wages in apparel than in other industries. Moreover, after adjusting for observed individual differences in human capital (in addition to the three characteristics used to form worker subsets), highly educated male natives earn positive wage premiums in this sector. In contrast, most categories of immigrants and female natives earn relatively low average wages and experience negative wage premiums in apparel. This variation in the adjusted industry wage premiums across worker groups may be related to apparel's relative exposure to imports and immigrant workers.     

HIRING FROM HIGH‐RISK POPULATIONS: LESSONS FROM THE U.S. MILITARY

In this study, we evaluate the performance of waivered recruits in the U.S. military. Unlike the private sector, the military has formal standards for identifying ideal recruits and uses a formal screening process to determine those within risky populations who are most likely to succeed. (Recruits who make it through the screening process are issued a waiver.) The military's establishment of waiver categories and its tracking of waiver status provide us with a case study for determining whether such risk‐identification strategies work. Using FY99–FY08 service‐level waiver and personnel data, we evaluate whether the military recruiting strategy has been successful and whether firms should consider adopting similar screening mechanisms. We estimate the effect of waiver status on attrition and promotion, our primary performance indicators, after controlling for other quality indicators. We find that waivered recruits, on the whole, are not particularly poor performers, although their inherent riskiness does vary by service and by waiver type. (JEL J45, M51, J23)     

THE FUTURE OF THE U.S. DEFENSE INDUSTRY

Defense contractors in the United States face a painful choice between downsizing or investing in new high-risk commercial ventures. Past experience reveals numerous failed efforts to penetrate commercial markets and few, if any, successes.
The capabilities required to succeed in civilian business are fundamentally different from those needed to design and produce weapon systems. Defense firms and defense divisions of diversified corporations lack adequate knowledge of commercial products, production methods, advertising and distribution, financial approaches, and customer demand.
Given the outlook for a sustained decline in U.S. military spending, the author advises companies catering to military markets to cut their costs by reducing excess capacity. Smaller but more competitive positions can be achieved through restructuring, mergers, sales of assets, and, if necessary, closing down unneeded facilities. Firms that ignore the pleas for "conversion" and do not dissipate their assets in civilian markets alien to them stand the best chance of surviving during a period of reduced military demand.     

MUTUAL VERSUS PROPRIETARY OWNERSHIP: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY FROM THE UK UNIT TRUST INDUSTRY WITH A COMPANY‐PRODUCT MEASURE

ABSTRACT ** : In the debate of the relative merits of differing ownership forms, most empirical studies examine either corporate performance or the product characteristics of the financial products that are available in the financial services industry. Based on the UK unit trust industry, this paper assesses which ownership form, mutual or proprietary is more efficient in managing unit trust operations and providing high return generating unit trusts. Using a combined corporate performance and product range performance metric, this study reveals no significant differences between the two ownership forms in terms of the corporate‐product performance score. The results indicate that the owner‐customer fused role in the mutual organization must be considered in the mutual versus proprietary ownership debate.     

COMPETING EXPLANATIONS OF U.S. DEFENSE INDUSTRY CONSOLIDATION IN THE 1990s AND THEIR POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Was the consolidation of defense industry in the 1990s driven by U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) directives, or was it driven instead by the same forces that drove consolidation in many other sectors of the U.S. economy in the 1990s? To better understand the roles of DOD policy and economy‐wide forces in shaping the U.S. defense industry, we test for structural breaks in defense industry and spending data and compare our findings to those relating to other sectors and the general economy. We identify structural breaks in the defense‐related data in the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s, roughly consistent with changes in the U.S. economy, including broader merger trends. Overall, our results are more consistent with the view that economy‐wide factors drove defense industry consolidation, largely independent of the DOD policy changes that occurred early in the 1990s. (JEL E0, C2, H0)     

全球化与本地化:透视我国个人计算机相关产业群的空间演变

在田野调查的基础上，对比分析了20世纪90年代以来我国三大区域性个人计算机相关产业群的空间演变和区域间的产业联系，特别是在全球产业转移的大背景下，区域差异对地方产业群发展道路的影响。随着我国国内个人计算机市场的成长，计算机产业从以硬件制造为核心向软件、信息服务业为主的方向转变，地方产业群之间的区际分工和产业内部企业之间的专业化都在不断深入，这些转变给区域产业政策的制定提出了新的课题。     

THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL POLICY: SOME LESSONS FROM THE U.S. AND ABROAD

The accelerating United States trade deficit has again focused widespread political attention on industrial policy issues. However, given the breadth and complexity of the industrial policy issues, we can be confident that strengthening the U.S. international trade position will not be sufficient to quell concern over this area of economic policy.     

ECONOMIC FREEDOM AND GROWTH IN U.S. STATE‐LEVEL MARKET INCOMES AT THE TOP AND BOTTOM

This paper investigates the relationship between economic freedom and income growth and inequality across U.S. states over the period 1979–2011. The focus is on market income at the top and bottom of the income distribution. Results show that increases in overall freedom are associated with average income growth. When viewed separately, an increase in overall freedom is associated with larger income growth rates for income earners in the bottom 90% relative to the top 10%. Interestingly, results show that increases in overall economic freedom are related to larger relative growth rates for the top 10% incomes within high‐income states and larger relative growth rates for the bottom 90% incomes within low‐income states. Top‐to‐bottom income ratio regressions suggest a negative and statistically significant relationship between economic freedom and income inequality. (JEL D63, P16, R11)     

CREDIT,HOUSING COLLATERAL,AND CONSUMPTION: EVIDENCE FROM JAPAN,THE U.K., AND THE U.S.

The consumption behavior of U.K., U.S., and Japanese households is examined and compared using a modern Ando‐Modigliani style consumption function. The models incorporate income growth expectations, income uncertainty, housing collateral, and other credit effects. These models therefore capture important parts of the financial accelerator. The evidence is that credit availability for U.K. and U.S., but not Japanese, households has undergone large shifts since 1980. The average consumption‐to‐income ratio rose in the U.K. and U.S. as mortgage down‐payment constraints eased and as the collateral role of housing wealth was enhanced by financial innovations, such as home equity loans. The estimated housing collateral effect is similar in the U.S. and U.K. In Japan, land prices (which proxy house prices) continue to negatively impact consumer spending. There are negative real interest rate effects on consumption in the U.K. and U.S. and positive effects in Japan. Overall, this implies important differences in the transmission of monetary and credit shocks in Japan versus the U.S., U.K., and other credit‐liberalized economies.     

PRICE,PRODUCT QUALITY,AND EXPORTER DYNAMICS: EVIDENCE FROM CHINA

This article develops a model of heterogeneous firms that endogenously choose prices and product quality to build demand in export markets. New exporters optimally charge relatively low prices and produce low‐quality goods upon entry. Product quality, prices, and sales increase as demand grows. We structurally estimate model parameters using Chinese customs data. The estimated incentive to build future demand reduces average export prices by 0.7% and increases export sales by 4% upon entry. Endogenous demand accumulation causes estimated export prices, product quality, and sales to grow by 2.2%, 12%, and 79%, respectively, over the following five years.     

TRENDS IN INEQUALITY USING CONSUMPTION-EXPENDITURES: THE U.S. FROM 1960 TO 1993

While much of the evidence suggests that there was an increase in inequality in the U.S. during the 1980s, the reasons are less evident. Using the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey data, we find that the inequality of consumption-expenditures, as well as the inequality of other measures of resources, widened considerably during the 1980s. While previous studies suggest that increasing inequality is mainly due to increases in within group inequality, we show that by decomposing inequality by the interaction of family type and education almost three-fourths of the increase in inequality is accounted for by changes in inequality between groups and by shifts in the population.     

U.S. REAL PRODUCT AND REAL FACTOR INPUT, 1929–1967

The objective of this paper is to provide a conceptual basis for separating social product and social factor input accounts into price and quantity components. Despite the essential similarity between concepts of real product and real factor input, the measurement of social factor outlay in constant prices is not well established in social accounting practice.
Production accounts are constructed for the United States in current and constant prices, including social product and social factor outlay, for the period 1929–1967. The resulting estimates are applied to the measurement of total factor productivity and the study of the responsiveness of product and factor intensities to price changes.     

国际贸易的麦敕勒悖论及其验证:来自美国及OECD成员国的经验证据

本研究采用大数据样本(样本容量为173430)研究了外商直接投资(国外直接投资和港澳台直接投资)外溢效应在空间上的分布规律以及对我国企业生产率的影响,实证结果发现无论港澳台直接投资还是国外直接投资对内资企业均存在外溢的比邻效应;考虑地区进入因素后,外商直接投资对制造业的整体效应估计值降低了;外商直接投资的进入拉大了我国不同区域企业生产率之间的差距。此外,研究结论支持了Arrow(1971)与Findlay(1978)的理论推断。