Industry Structure and Economic Performance in the Food Manufacturing Industries

The objective of this study is to develop a simultaneous equations model of profitability, concentration, advertising expenditures and research and development outlays for the food manufacturing indushies in the United States. The data used in the estimation are subjected to regression diagnostics in an effort to determine the importance to the estimation results of a subset of the data that can have a disproportionate influence. The estimation results, especially for the advertising expenditures relationship and the research and development outlays equation, do change when a truncated data sample (based on the omission of the outliers) is used. This serves partly to explain why there is some disagreement in the literature on market structure and economic performance with regard to the impact of several economic factors.     

Generic Product Advertising, Spillovers, and Market Concentration

We examine the decision to advertise a homogenous good. We show that the likelihood of inefficiently low advertising rests heavily on how one models the mechanism by which advertising affects demand. Regardless of this mechanism, however, there is always a lower bound of concentration below which no advertising occurs even when welfare-enhancing. In such cases, mandatory programs will raise welfare if they induce entry, although producer surplus may decline. Our model also provides an explanation for the stylized fact that advertising intensity first rises and then falls as concentration increases.     

采掘业环境信息披露影响因素研究

本文以采掘业为研究对象,针对采掘业存在的生态资源利用效率低下导致的环境信息披露水平较低问题进行了深入分析。构建采掘业环境信息披露指数作为衡量采掘业生态资源利用水平和环境信息披露程度的信息载体,进而以其为因变量,以采掘业公司间的不同特征为自变量建立了多元回归模型,对影响采掘业环境信息披露的因素进行统计分析。通过研究显示,公司规模、财务杠杆系数、营运能力、盈利能力、股权集中度和独立董事占比等因素均会对采掘业生态资源利用效率产生影响,进而在环境信息披露中体现出来,最后文章针对分析的结果给出了相应的建议。     

Generic Advertising of U.S. Lamb

ABSTRACT

Generic advertising of U.S. lamb by the U.S. sheep and lamb industry is an effort to reverse an almost continual decline in the industry since World War II. This analysis explores the answers to three related questions: (1) What have been the effects of the generic lamb advertising on U.S. and foreign sheep, lamb, and wool markets? (2) Has the generic lamb advertising program effectively increased the consumption of domestically produced lamb as intended rather than imported lamb? (3) What have been the returns to U.S. sheep producers, feeders, and packers who pay for the advertising? Using a 70-equation, non-spatial, price equilibrium, simultaneous econometric simulation model of the world sheep, lamb, and wool markets, the analysis concludes that the U.S. lamb industry’s generic lamb advertising program has positively impacted their markets, enhanced profitability of the industry, and increased the industry’s share of domestic lamb consumption.     

Export Marketing Arrangements in Four New Zealand Agriculture Industries: An Institutional Perspective

The article examines the effectiveness of export marketing arrangements in 4 of New Zealand's agricultural industries within an institutional perspective. The coordination tasks and economic return from the export were investigated in each industry. Safeguarding problems within a deregulated marketing arrangement might explain reluctance to engage in joint marketing efforts. The gain from setting up new arrangements that foster profitability must be perceived as larger than the setup costs and perceived future costs of mounting down existing arrangements. A framework for design of export marketing arrangements in agriculture industries is proposed. Suggestions for future research are outlined.     

Agriculture: a case study in industrial relations reform

Organised Australian labour first demonstrated its power in the shearing industry just over 100 years ago. The system of arbitration developed over the last century continues to have a profound impact on agriculture. This article profiles the Australian rural labour market and identifies some continuing regulatory impediments to the proper functioning of the rural labour market. A brief review of the links between agriculture and other industries in Australia concludes that the greatest improvement in farm profitability from a better functioning labour market is to be had from productivity increases in industries outside the farm gate.     

STRUCTURE AND PERFORMANCE OF THE UK FOOD AND DRINK INDUSTRIES

This paper analyses the structural characteristics of the food and drink industries and assesses their recent economic performance. Although classified among the less technologically intensive group of British manufacturing industries, the food and drink industries are found to share many of the features of the more technologically intensive group, such as product differentiation, product diversification and advertising intensity. They are also found to have achieved above-average growth in labour and total factor productivity through expansion in size, capital accumulation and shedding of labour.     

Size and industry effects in the performance of agricultural cooperatives

The objective of this study is to determine if there are important size and industry effects on financial performance of agricultural cooperatives. The performance of 43 dairy, food, grain, and farm supply cooperatives in the U.S. was analyzed over the period 1970-1987 using financial ratios derived from accounting data. The analysis revealed significant size and industry effects. Large regional cooperatives are more efficient in utilizing their assets to generate sales, while small regional cooperatives have higher profitability. The findings suggest that the emphasis on growth may not always produce beneficial results among agricultural cooperatives. Among the four industries studied, the dairy regional cooperatives appear to be the strongest performers, while the food marketing cooperatives are characterized by the lowest performance measures. Since both dairy and food cooperatives engage in value-added processing, this difference in performance makes it difficult to reach clear conclusions about possible advantages of disadvantages or vertical integration relative to traditional cooperative activities. Trend analysis indicates that the profitability of the agricultural cooperatives in all industry and size categories declined in response to the downturn in U.S. agriculture after 1980. While the decline in profitability was at similar rates for both large and small cooperatives, the variation of efficiency and leverage was in opposite directions. Large cooperatives may be expected to continue improving their asset utilization without relative improvement in profitability, and increasing the level of their debt in relation to equity.     

Estimating Dynamic Relationships between Pork Advertising and Revenues

This study provides a long-run analysis of the impacts of brand and generic advertising on pork revenues. The existence of a feedback relationship between pork revenues and pork advertising is investigated. The results suggest that a short-run feedback relationship exists between total pork advertising and revenues, but not for revenues and generic pork advertising. Long-run analysis shows that revenues significantly affect both advertising measures. However, no evidence of feedback relationships was found in the long run. Results shed light on the nature of strategic responses by pork advertisers to changes in advertising by beef and poultry. Specifically, the results provide evidence that pork advertisers are accommodating to beef's changes, but respond competitively to poultry's.     

ENERGY BUDGETING: JOULES OR DOLLARS?

The assumptions which must be made to accept ratios of energy output to energy input as an efficiency measure with normative significance are examined and found to be unrealistic. It is considered better for governments to modify market prices where divergences exist between private and social costs or benefits than to use energy ratios, or prices determined by energy considerations, as a criterion in allocating resources. Moreover, in a trading world, energy considerations are often of little use in positive analysis of the relationship between energy prices and the prices, or profitability of production, of different foods in a particular country.     

The competitiveness situation of the EU meat processing and beverage manufacturing sectors

The status of competitiveness for the two most important food and beverage manufacturing sectors (meat processing and beverage manufacturing) in 13 EU countries is analysed empirically, using 1995-2002 Eurostat data. After a review of earlier agribusiness competitiveness studies, an industrial competitiveness index is proposed as a composite measure for multidimensional economic performance, covering profitability, productivity and output growth. The index approach enables relative competitiveness comparisons across industries, countries and over time. The results show that during 1999-2002, as compared to 1995-1998, for both sectors overall competitiveness in real terms slightly increased. At the same time, overall competitiveness also seems to have converged slightly across countries, implying that sector performance has become more similar. However, the two country rankings differ considerably, as do the change patterns during the analysed period.     

The Determinants of Firm Profitability Differences in EU Food Processing

This paper decomposes the variance in EU food industry return‐on‐assets into year, country, industry and firm effects using a hierarchical linear model (HLM). The HLM approach accounts for some of the methodological drawbacks of conventional approaches of variance decomposition such as anova and components of variance and additionally allows the estimation of the impact of covariates within each effect level. The results for selected EU countries show that firm effects are far more important than industry structure in determining food industry profitability. In particular, firm size and industry concentration are drivers of profitability while firm risk and age as well as industry growth have a negative influence.     

A DYNAMIC PROGRAMMING MODEL OF EARLY POTATO HARVESTING

A vegetable producer often faces complex harvest decisions where yield increases through time and varies across crop area, price is determined in erratic seasonal markets, and harvest rate is constrained. In this paper, a simplified two-period potato harvest problem is developed to define a set of marginal conditions for an optimum. The model is then extended to the multi-period case and numerical solutions are generated for a representative farm in South Wales using dynamic programming. The model provides a general framework for analysing crop harvesting systems and prescribing marginal changes, such as adjustments in the harvest capacity, which improve profitability over myopic harvest patterns.     

PRICE PREDICTIONS AND ECONOMICALLY AFFORESTABLE AREA

The profitability of forestry depends on the future trend of timber prices. Three plausible price predictions placed the margin of profitability at three widely differing levels of physical productivity. A good estimate of the elevation at which marginal profitability could be expected under each price prediction was given by productivity/elevation regressions for existing plantations in each of three localities in North Wales. Cartographic sampling enabled the cumulative area of rough grazings below this elevation to be estimated. By combining empirical relationships between price trend, profitability, productivity, elevation and cumulative area, a heavy dependence of afforestable area on future price trend can be demonstrated for North Wales; similar results would be expected throughout Britain. Inclusion of land products other than timber complicates the exercise. The significance of price trend for many forestry decisions justifies much more research on price prediction.     

Price Variability and Industrial Concentration in U.S. Food Industries

This paper focuses on the sources of intra‐industry price variability in US food industries during a period of increasing concentration, while accounting for the impact of variations in prices of primary agricultural products. Results suggest that intra‐industry price variability in food industries increases with their respective mean rate of inflation and product heterogeneity. However, industrial concentration lowers the sensitivity of relative prices to changes in the mean rate of inflation. Hence, static welfare losses to consumers from increasing concentration in food industries, a subject of recent and intensive investigation, can partly be offset by gains such as reduced price variability.     

Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Advertising: Theory and Application to Generic Commodity Promotion Programs

Profits from generic advertising by a producer group often come partly at the expense of producers of closely related commodities. The resulting tendency toward excessive advertising is exacerbated by check-off funding. To analyze this beggar-thy-neighbor behavior we compare a scenario where different producer groups cooperate and choose their advertising expenditures jointly to maximize the sum of profits across the groups, and a scenario where they optimize independently. In an illustrative example using 1998 data for U.S. beef and pork, the noncooperatively chosen expenditure on beef and pork advertising is more than three times the cooperative optimum.     

Modeling the demand for alcoholic beverages and advertising specifications

In this paper, the demand for beer, wine, spirits and soft drinks in Ontario is modeled in two parts: an equation is specifiec to endogenize group expenditures and a demand system is set up to allocate budgeted group expenditures across types o beverages. Advertising is allowed to influence both the level of group expenditures and its allocation. Three popula advertising specifications are compared using theJ‐test and the likelihood dominance criterion. Even though all threi specifications fitted well according to standard criteria, the calculated expenditure, price and advertising elasticities wen sensitive to the manner with which advertising is specified. This clearly highlights the need to rely on a sound criterion t< identify a dominant specification. From the identified dominant specification, we found that advertising has very subtle effect on expenditures on alcoholic beverages (group and individual beverages). Thus, advertising is not effective in enlarginj markets and this suggests that firms (especially breweries) use advertising to compete in zero‐sum market share games. From i public policy perspective, our results are comforting but future research should investigate whether the neutral effect o advertising on aggregated expenditures hide substantial offsetting changes in the drinking habits of individuals.     

东部6省特色农业产业集聚度分析

[目的]特色农业产业聚集度是用来衡量区域农业产业发展规模的一项指标。通过对东部6省特色农业产业集聚度进行研究,寻找特色农业产业发展的区位优势,并对特色农业产业转型升级提供理论指导。[方法]文章以东部六省特色农业产业集聚度为研究对象,选取2010—2017年相关数据,通过空间基尼系数和区位熵值指数测算法,分别从聚集综合得分、农业产业规模、经济规模和基础设施层面对东部六省特色农业产业聚集度进行比较分析,寻找东部6省特色农业产业集聚差异所在。[结果](1)因各省拥有不同的区域特征、经济水平和农业资源导致东部6省的特色农业产业聚集度存在明显的区域差异,其中,山东省特色农业产业聚集水平最高,依次是浙江省、安徽省、江苏省、福建省、江西省。(2)东部6省的特色农业产业对各省贡献程度不同,对各自省份的经济增长、第一产业值的带动效应及经济结构的转型升级所起到的作用存在差异,而其共性特征便是东部6省的特色农业产业聚集度均随着各项措施的深入,不断朝向更高的聚集程度、更大的产业规模化前进。[结论]东部6省的特色农业产业的发展尚存在区域性差异性,为实现其产业的集聚度提高和可持续高效发展,建议加强相关政策支持、资金投入以及技术指导的力度。     

南宁地区优势产业选择

在中国—东盟经济一体化和泛珠三角经济一体化的背景下,通过计算产业优势发展潜力指数,确定出物流、医药、食品加工、教育培训、纸制品深加工5个产业为南宁地区的重点优势产业;提出一条以高新技术推动南宁优势产业跨越式发展的建议。