Market structure and market performance in E-commerce

We analyze the interaction between market structure and market performance and how it varies over the product cycle. To account for the potential endogeneity in this relation, we use an instrumental variable approach. We combine data from the largest Austrian online market for price comparisons with retail data on wholesale prices provided by a major hardware producer for consumer electronics. Our results show that instrumenting is important for estimating the empirical effect of competition on the markup of the price leader. One more firm in the market is associated with a reduction of the price leader׳s markup which is equivalent to competition between existing firms for an additional 3 weeks in the product life cycle. Our results support search theoretic models and contradict models of monopolistic competition. Moreover our results support the existence of price dynamics over the product cycle. They also highlight the substitutability between newly innovated and old expiring technologies and how it varies with respect to competitors׳ and own brand innovations.     

APPRENTICES AND YOUNG WORKERS: A STUDY OF THE NORWEGIAN YOUTH LABOUR MARKET

Apprenticeship programmes are in many countries important stepping stones into the labour market. However, recruitment of apprentices seems to follow the business cycle. This pattern may be caused by firms' contemporaneous demand for labour, but may also be consistent with an investment hypothesis. A model, in which the tightness in the labour market is taken into account, is tested on a sample of Norwegian quarterly firm‐specific data. The empirical findings give moderate support to an investment hypothesis. The apprentices substitute to some degree for skilled labour but are recruited primarily based on the labour market situation. The wage level plays a minor role for recruitment of apprentices.     

Export growth slowdown and currency crisis: the Malaysian experience

A slowdown in export growth occurred in all East Asian economies that were affected by the Asian currency crisis. Misaligned exchange rates have been widely cited as a cause of the slowdown. In the Malaysian context at least a vulnerability to the downturn in the electronic cycle could also be a major factor leading to poor export performance. Using the US/yen dollar rate as a proxy for exchange rate misalignment and US total new orders for electronics as a proxy for global electronics demand, cointegration analysis was used to establish the likely causes of a slowdown in Malaysia's export performance. Empirical results suggest that a unique long-run relationship exists between all three variables. The policy implications of these results including exchange rate monitoring and export diversification are discussed in the conclusion.     

Financial Market Imperfections, Labour Market Imperfections and Business Cycles

A Greenwald–Stiglitz (1993a) style rational expectations business cycle model is introduced in which uncorrelated productivity shocks or monetary shocks generate autocorrelated employment fluctuations due to financial constraints. The propagation mechanism is carefully modelled: because of capital market imperfections (only standard debt contracts are traded), firms' labour demand changes in response to changes in their balance-sheet position; because of labour market imperfections (efficiency wages), employment and unemployment fluctuate in response to shifts in labour demand. The virtue of the model is its simplicity. Despite the fact that unemployment is endogenous, the dynamic behaviour of the model under rational expectations can be characterised analytically.
JEL classification : E 32     

Can learning explain boom-bust cycles in asset prices? An application to the US housing boom

This paper argues that boom-bust behavior in asset prices can be explained by a model in which boundedly rational agents learn the process for prices. The novel feature of the model is that learning operates in both the demand for assets and the supply of credit. Interactions between agents on either side of the market create complementarities in their respective beliefs, yielding strong internal propagation. The model is applied to US housing markets. Quantitative exercises explain the recent boom-bust in US house prices from observed fundamentals whilst replicating key moments of housing market variables at business cycle frequencies.     

Interpreting fluctuations in output growth in China

Unlike in OECD countries, fluctuations in output growth in China are not straightforward in their interpretation. On the one hand, they reflect the business cycle, which results from shocks to aggregate demand. On the other hand, they also reflect the structural transformations that have accompanied China’s transition to a market economy. Demand shocks can be identified by virtue of the persistence of their impact. This paper decomposes the variance in provincial, regional, and national output growth according to its persistence characteristics. The results suggest that during the reform period, only a minority of output growth variance can be attributed to demand shocks and business cycle fluctuations. It is also found that there is substantial heterogeneity in the persistence characteristics of output growth across provinces. Implications of the findings for macroeconomic policy are discussed.     

市场需求、创新政策组合与企业创新绩效——企业生命周期视角

以北京A股上市公司为研究对象,基于创新驱动理论,运用多元回归分析方法,探索市场需求与政府干预对处于不同生命周期企业创新绩效的影响。结果表明：①研发补助和税收优惠政策组合协同互补效应显著,但组合效果会因企业所处生命周期不同而呈现显著差别。具体来说,对成长期企业二者组合竞争效应显著,组合效果为负协同。对成熟期企业,二者组合互补效应显著,组合效果为正协同。对衰退期企业,二者组合效果无显著影响,组合效果为无协同;②总体来说,市场需求显著促进企业创新绩效提升,但对于成长期和成熟期企业的正向促进效应显著,对于衰退期企业抑制作用显著;③市场需求在创新政策组合与企业创新绩效之间起负向调节作用,且对处于不同生命周期的企业结论一致。对成长期企业,政府干预优于市场调节,对成熟期企业,市场调节优于政府干预,对衰退期企业,政策引导效果更优。最终,提出促进创新高质量发展的对策建议。     

Labor market frictions and the international propagation mechanism

The paper studies the role of labor market frictions in accounting for international business cycle comovement. To this aim, we embed labor market search and matching frictions in a two-country New Keynesian model. We show that labor market frictions amplify the international propagation of supply and demand shocks. In terms of cyclical properties then, they raise the cross-country output correlation. Adding labor market search in the New Keynesian model thus improves its ability to account for the business cycle comovement observed in G7 countries in the recent decades. Nominal wage rigidity substantially contributes to this result. Labor market institutions also play a role. Yet, their impact is not unequivocal depending on the institution considered. Business cycle synchronization is thus found to increase with the generosity of the unemployment benefits system, whereas it decreases with the strictness of employment protection.     

Power-by-the-hour: the role of technology in reshaping business strategy at Rolls-Royce

There is a recognised trend of manufacturing companies offering not only products, but also services and even complete solutions to business problems. Research has highlighted economic, market demand and competitiveness factors as responsible for the reshaping of business strategies that this has involved. This study analyses the extent to which another factor, technology, has been a significant factor in the switch from product oriented to service-oriented strategies. A case study of the aero engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce is used to analyse the impact of technology, which is found to have led manufacturers to reshape their business strategies. The study finds that developments in one technology in particular, namely digital electronics, have been a powerful enabling factor facilitating the implementation of service strategies. This provided original equipment manufacturers like Rolls-Royce with a competitive advantage relative to conventional service providers, by enabling them to acquire new knowledge management capabilities.     

Bequest Motives and the Demand for Life Insurance in East Germany

Empirical studies of household saving remain inconclusive about the role of bequest motives. This may be due to the diluting effect of different tax regimes across countries and time on estimates of bequest motives. Relative to market‐based economies, the former German Democratic Republic can be viewed as an experimental institutional setting where life‐insurance demand was not influenced by tax considerations. This allows isolating bequest motives from other life‐cycle and precautionary savings motives. Analyzing the demand for life insurance, we find a significantly higher ownership probability among households with children and a high regard for the family, confirming bequest motives in life‐insurance demand.     

A DISEQUILIBRIUM ECONOMETRIC MODEL OF THE AUSTRALIAN RAW WOOL MARKET*

This paper develops a quarterly disequilibrium model of the Australian wool market. It is postulated that because of inherent market imperfections the market does not clear. The model consists of demand and supply equations for both private and government traders, a minimum condition to determine quantity transacted and a price adjustment equation based on excess demand/supply. Effective demand/supply concepts which recognise the expectation of rationing are employed to model private demand/supply. Supplier price expectations explicitly account for the lower bound imposed by the minimum reserve price scheme (RPS). The estimates suggest that the disequilibrium hypothesis cannot be rejected, as a consequence measures of market imbalance are provided. The model is also used to simulate the effects of the removal of the RPS.     

A stochastic estimated version of the Italian dynamic General Equilibrium Model

This paper aims at identifying the main drivers of the Italian economic cycle. To this end, we estimate a small-open economy model based on a dual labor market, which captures the main features of the Italian economy. Our results indicate that labor market rigidities are important structural features of the Italian economy, but they provide a limited contribution in explaining the business cycle fluctuations. Long-term dynamics are mostly driven by supply factors (productivity and markups). However, demand factors, including monetary and fiscal policies, play a sizeable role in the short run. Policy experiments show that expansionary fiscal policies crowd out private consumption and investment. The paper also contributes to the recent debate on fiscal consolidation. Estimated fiscal multipliers support the view that plans aimed at reducing the public debt should be based on tax increases rather than expenditure cuts.     

Forecasting demand for a newly introduced product using reservation price data and Bayesian updating

Forecasting demand during the early stages of a product's life cycle is a difficult but essential task for the purposes of marketing and policymaking. This paper introduces a procedure to derive accurate forecasts for newly introduced products for which limited data are available. We begin with the assumption that the consumer reservation price is related to the timing with which the consumer adopts the product. The model is estimated using reservation price data derived through a consumer survey, and the forecast is updated with sales data as they become available using Bayes's rule. The proposed model's forecasting performance is compared with that of benchmark models (i.e., Bass model, logistic growth model, and a Bayesian model based on analogy) using 23 quarters' worth of data on South Korea's broadband Internet services market. The proposed model outperforms all benchmark models in both prelaunch and postlaunch forecasting tests, supporting the thesis that consumer reservation price can be used to forecast demand for a new product before or shortly after product launch.     

“潜在过度城市化”视角下房地产价格攀升探析

近几年，中国各地区房地产市场一片欣欣向荣，房地产价格在短时间内迅速增长，尤其是一些大城市的房价非常规地攀升已使政府和学术界开始密切关注。住房价格的迅猛增长使老百姓叫苦不迭，争论就在于这种价格增长是属于市场供求驱动还是投机呢？房地产市场的经济周期符合供求分析，而当前的价格迅猛攀升源于有效需求的强力支撑，潜在过度城市化功不可没。     

美国塑料电子产业的起步与发展

进入21世纪以来，塑料电子逐步发展成为电子技术新革命的前沿科技领域。本文分析了美国科技界、产业界围绕塑料电子开展研发、提出创新理论、开发创新成果并促进成果转化的主要经验和措施，研究了美国在孕育和促进电子技术革命方面所发挥的作用。本文指出，美国塑料电子产业仍然处于发展初期，但展示出广阔的市场前景。     

When does the majority become a majority? Empirical analysis of the time at which main market adopters purchase the bulk of our sales

The idea of a dual-market structure in the early stages of a product's life cycle has become one of the most widely accepted ideas among new product marketing practitioners in the past decade. Concepts such as “Early Market/Main Market” and “Visionaries/Pragmatists” have entered the lexicon of high-tech executives to express the notion that the market for new products is composed of early and main markets with a discontinuity in the diffusion process in between them. Moreover, these concepts have been at least partially tested and verified in the marketing academic literature in the past few years.We extend this branch of research by investigating the timing issues in dual-market cases. We define Change-of-Dominance Time (CD-Time) as the number of years it takes main market adopters to outnumber early market adopters. We empirically investigate this timing issue on a comprehensive data set of new product sales in the consumer electronics industry. We find that regarding explanatory determinants of CD-Time, external influence, such as advertising, to the early market is the most important explanatory variable.We examine the relationship between CD-Time and other early product life cycle phenomena: Takeoff, Saddle, and Rogers' size of adopter categories. We found relatively high correlations between these phenomena and CD-Time.The answer to the question “When does the majority become a majority?” is indeed “at 16%”! In a dual-market setting, the average time at which the main market outnumbers the early market is when 16% of the market has already adopted the product. In terms of time, in 75% of the cases the majority becomes a majority in 5 to 10 years.     

How important is the stock market wealth effect on consumption in India?

We examine how shocks emanating from changes in the stock wealth affect the consumption demand in India using a Bayesian VAR framework. The effect of the stock market wealth shock on consumption demand in India is relatively small in magnitude. The estimates suggest that a 10% increase in the real stock wealth raises the consumption demand by 0.3%, which seems to be consistent with some empirical estimates for the emerging market economies given a relatively low share of stock wealth in the household asset portfolio and its asymmetric distribution. The stock market wealth effect being short run in nature does not have a large and persistent effect on consumption demand since consumers may not perceive the changes in the stock wealth to cause a permanent shift in their wealth.     

报酬递增与经济波动的微观机制——理论框架与中国经验

本文通过引入报酬递增和市场饱和点,采用D-S模型方法,分析技术冲击引起经济波动的微观机制,回答了真实经济周期理论无法解释技术倒退的困境,通过缩短技术和产品创新周期可以有效降低经济波动的幅度。笔者的分析表明:技术冲击和市场饱和点引起的需求约束,有助于理解耐用品消费和产业结构升级引起的中国近三十年经济波动。     

略论战略性贸易政策在中国电子信息产业的适用性——基于市场结构视角

战略贸易政策总是与寡头垄断的市场结构相联系,且该产业应具有超额垄断利润和外部规模经济.绝大多数战略性贸易政策理论模型都建立在双寡头的Cournot模型的基础上.从产业组织理论和贸易类型两个角度看,目前中国电子信息产业属于垄断竞争市场结构,不适宜实施战略性贸易政策.而应考虑到国外同一产业的市场结构和本国的产业绩效,针对价值增值不同的产业环节,结合产业政策,促进产业市场集中度的提高,实行保护程度不同的贸易政策.     

When do market games have transferable utility?

A pure exchange economy generates a “market game” in which the allocations achievable by any coalition are determined by the initial endowments of its members. Subject to certain regularity conditions, it is shown that for a market game it is possible to find utility representations for each consumer so that the game can be treated as a game with transferable utility if and only if indirect utility of all consumers can be represented in the Gorman polar form. This is the class for which aggregate demand behaves as if it were the demand of a single consumer.