Agency costs in U.S. manufacturing: An empirical measure using X-efficiency

By adapting the concept of X-inefficiency, the deadweight cost associated with agency problems is estimated for U.S. manufacturing industry. X-inefficiency theory postulates that agent’s opportunistic behavior will lead to second-best outcomes in imperfect markets. When the methodology is applied to the 1986/87 fiscal year, thirty industries are identified as X-inefficient. The total deadweight agency cost generated by these industries amounts to some $76 million. On average, in any given industry, agency costs represent two-tenths of one percent of that industry’s annual sales.     

Slower economic growth affects the 1995 labor market

As the pace of economic activity moderated in 1995, job growth slowed. Nonetheless, it was enough to absorb the small increase in the supply of labor, with the result that the unemployment rate remained at about the same level it had reached at the end of 1994. In the first quarter of 1995, employment grew at a brisk pace but, as the economy began to slow, job gains fell sharply. Employment growth continued at a much more moderate pace for the balance of the year, so that, by the fourth quarter, nearly 1.9 million jobs had been added to the Nation's payrolls. By comparison, in the fourth quarter of 1994 alone, payroll employment had grown by 1.1 million. Most of the job gains in 1995 were in the services industry group. Manufacturing employment, which had been rising since the fall of 1993, began to decline in the spring, and by the end of 1995, that industry group had lost nearly a quarter of a million jobs. Employment increased in most of the other major industry groups, even though declines in some of their component industries partly offset gains in others.     

From kites to computers: Pennsylvania's Ben Franklin partnership

The traditional strength of the Pennsylvania economy has been steelmaking and other heavy manufacturing activities. During the past decade Pennsylvania has felt the impact of mature markets for steel and other capital goods, international competition and new technologies, as unemployment in the state has consistently exceeded the national average. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, state policymakers were faced with the problems of how to ease the state's reliance upon these declining industrial sectors, help existing industries within the state to modernize, and stimulate the formation of new growth industries.Recognizing Pennsylvania's history of technological innovation and its strong resource base in corporate and university research and development, state policymakers set out to create flexible public/private partnerships to encourage greater university/industry cooperation, and to focus regional economic development efforts toward innovation and modernization. In 1982, the Pennsylvania General Assembly created the Ben Franklin Partnership program, which established four regional advanced technology centers at major research universities in the state. These advanced technology centers are consortiums of universities, businesses, economic development organizations, financial institutions, and others committed to the goal of job creation through industrial modernization and technological innovation.To date, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has provided $29 million to the advanced technology centers for joint industry/university research and development projects, entrepreneurial development and education and training. This state funding was matched by $90 million from businesses, foundations, and other sources. Because of the long-term nature of such a program, the early results of the Ben Franklin Partnership are modest; however, the program has been successful in establishing relationships among universities, businesses and economic development organizations which will serve as the basis for long term growth.     

Purchasing: a necessary partnership

According to a recent survey published in Hospital Purchasing News, a Mcknight Medical Communications publication, the average hospital in the United States spent $16.7 million, not including equipment purchases, in 1994. This represents an increase of 41.6 percent over the amount spent in 1990, $11.8 million. The hospital's objective of having year-end revenues exceed expenses largely depends on the ability to purchase materiel at the best price, not necessarily the lowest cost. This goal can be achieved by partnering with suppliers and customers (hospital administrative and surgical staff, as well as patients) through open communication and trust. Reducing costs by a percent on the dollar could return $167,000 to the average hospital. Partnering can assist in achieving these savings!     

Competition and Conflict in the U.S. Atlantic Coast Menhaden Industry

Abstract . Fluctuations in the harvest of menhaden off the U.S. Atlantic coast, a common property resource, have caused competition and conflict among the small number of companies, two large and several small, which operate in the fishery. With no strong central management, the resource is not being exploited to the optimum and increased fishing pressure and effort bring, cyclically, a peak catch followed by contraction in catch and industry. The industry, state agencies and federal offices disagree on corrective measures. Restriction of the fall harvest off the North Carolina coast to replenish the stock would call for an extraordinary sacrifice by the North Carolina industry—costing it between $4.4 and $6.8 million to provide increases between $6.6 million and $8.4 million in gross revenues for the rest of the industry from Maine to Florida. This raises problems of equitable sharing of the burden. A bioeconomic computer model quantifies short and long run impacts that must be faced.     

How robots change the world

• ? The global robotics revolution is rapidly accelerating, as fast‐paced technological advances converge. This will transform robots’ capabilities and their ability to replace human workers, including in services where robot use is also set to rise steeply.
• ? The global stock of industrial robots multiplied three‐fold over the past two decades, to 2.25 million. Trends suggest it will multiply even faster in the next 20 years, reaching as many as 20 million by 2030, with 14 million in China alone.
• ? The rise of the robots will boost productivity and growth, and create new jobs, some in yet‐to‐exist industries. We estimate a 30% rise in robot installations by 2030 would create around $5 trillion in additional global GDP in today's prices.
• ? But existing business models will be disrupted and jobs lost – we estimate up to 20 million manufacturing jobs by 2030. Each new industrial robot eliminates 1.6 manufacturing jobs on average and almost twice that in low‐skilled regions.
• ? Job losses will vary greatly across countries and regions, with the toll falling disproportionately on lower‐skilled workers and on poorer local economies, aggravating social and economic stresses. The challenges for governments and policy‐makers are daunting at a time of already growing political polarisation

     

增值税“扩围”改革对行业税负变动的预期影响

增值税“扩围”改革将影响到各行业的流转税负担.利用投入产出表数据,测算增值税“扩围”改革对目前属于增值税征收范围的行业(即“增值税行业”)和目前属于营业税征收范围行业(即“营业税行业”)流转税税负变动的影响,结果显示:增值税行业的总体税负将有小幅下降,服务中间投入比率是影响各增值税行业减税效应大小的关键因素;各营业税行业的税负变化情况差异较大,商务服务业等大多数行业的税负将减轻,但租赁业等部分行业的税负可能会加重,税改后的增值税税率水平选择与中间投入比率是影响各营业税行业税负变动的主要因素.为了促进行业间税负公平,减少增值税“扩围”改革对行业发展的不利影响,有必要适当降低租赁业、交通运输业的税率水平.     

New evidence on the dynamic wage curve for Western Germany: 1980–2004

Blanchflower and Oswald [Blanchflower, David G. and Oswald, Andrew J., 1994a, The Wage Curve, (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press), Blanchflower, David G. and Oswald, Andrew J., 1994b, Estimating a Wage Curve for Britain 1973–90, The Economic Journal 104, 1025–1043. Eine praktische Einführung, Nürnberg] reported that they have found an ‘empirical law of economics’ — the Wage Curve. Our paper reconsiders the western German Wage Curve using disaggregated regional data and is based on almost one million employees drawn from the Federal Employment Services of Germany over the period 1980–2004. We find that the wage equation is highly autoregressive but far from unit root. The unemployment elasticity is significant but relatively small: only between ? 0.02 and ? 0.04. We also check the sensitivity of this elasticity for different population groups (young versus old, men versus women, less educated versus highly educated, German native versus foreigner), confirming that it is stronger the weaker the bargaining power of the particular group.     

Modeling the performance of US direct investment in Japan: Some empirical estimates

Foreign firms' direct investments in Japan increased from about $930 million in 1984 to $2.2 billion in 1987, and are still increasing at a rapid rate. Most of these investments come from the United States and Europe. In this paper a short-run model for the performance of a foreign parent firm's subsidiary in Japan is presented. The model is based on theories presented by Hymer, Caves, Buckley and Casson, among others, and consists of two equations: one for profitability and the other for growth. Duality is used to relate a parent firm's activities to its subsidiary firm's profitability. The model is estimated using data for US firms' subsidiaries in the Japanese chemical industry. We find that for jointly owned subsidiaries (joint ventures), imports from US parent firms and the R&D spending by both US and Japanese parent firms are major determinants of profitability and growth. US firms' fully owned subsidiaries, however, exhibit considerably different profit and growth behavior than their jointly owned counterparts. Because of the small sample sizes used, it is not possible to ascertain the sources of the observed differences.     

Using input–output models to estimate sectoral effects of carbon tax policy: Applications of the NGFS scenarios

The Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) has engaged in scenario analysis that estimates a $200/ton carbon tax would be required to transition to net zero carbon by 2050. Using a $200/ton carbon tax as a base, this paper uses input–output (IO) modeling to generate price and revenue effects of a carbon tax. Results from these models, which can only be interpreted as the short-run, upper-bound effects of the carbon tax policy, imply that in response to a $200/ton tax on CO₂e emissions, carbon-intensive industries, such as agriculture, extraction, transportation, utilities, and chemicals, may experience price increases in the range of 10-30 percent. Other industries will also experience price increases, but to a lesser degree, due to increased input costs associated with the tax. In addition, modeling results also suggest that industries facing elastic pricing regimes may face similar-sized declines in revenues as a consequence of the carbon tax. Rank-ordered impact results from these models can be utilized by bank supervisors and firms to adequately plan for sectoral-level transition risk within their lending and/or investment portfolios.     

Regional Assistance by Tax Reform

In late November the Government announced a new package of regional assistance, which closely followed the lines indicated in the December 1983 White Paper and included a reduction of $300 million in expenditure and a stronger emphasis on selectivity and cost-effectiveness in job-creation. Dr Bracewell-Milnes argues that by free-market standards the new form of assistance will on balance be worse than the old at any given amount of expenditure. Regional subsidies ought to have been replaced by regional tax-cuts.     

The effect of labor supply changes on output: empirical evidence from US industries

In this paper we examine the relationship between labor supply and industry-level output in the context of the specific factors model. Jones (Trade, balance of payment and growth: essays in honor of Charles P. Kindleberger, Amsterdam, pp 3–21, 1971) shows that a rise in the amount of labor in the economy will increase the output in all industries. We empirically show which industry output is predicted to expand more when the size of labor force grows. Unlike the commonly used Rybczynski Theorem (Economica 22:336–341, 1955) of the Heckscher-Ohlin model, the specific factors model shows that a comparison both of labor intensities and labor demand elasticities plays an important role in determining which output expands relatively more when the size of labor force grows. For this purpose, we illustrate the importance of the parameters of the model in determining how changes in the labor supply affect the output change, with special reference to elasticities of substitution in production. We estimate the elasticity of substitution by using CES production function and show how these estimates describe the general equilibrium of production with one mobile factor (labor) and 25 industries of the US economy using data for 1979–2001. We show that the increase in the supply of labor raise output in all industries, but the magnitudes of the increases in some industries are more than others depending on the value of the elasticity of substitution along with factor intensities between industries. The largest output effect occurs for educational, health care and social service, where a 1 % supply of labor increase would raise output 10.5 %. However, the growth in the labor supply has a small impact on output growth in the range of 0.1–0.6 % in agriculture, petroleum, coal product and finance and insurance industries.     

The Costs of Air Quality Deterioration and Benefits of Air Pollution Control: Estimates of Mortality Costs for Two Pollutants in 40 US. Metropolitan Areas

A bstract . Although it is still impossible to place a dollar value on human lives and on the total health effeets of air pollution , the excessive mortality costs of two air pollutants– sulfur dioxide (SO₂ and total suspended particulates (TSP)-have been quantified for most of the 40 Standard Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the United States. Based on 1970 data, total mortality damage for SO₂ was estimated at $887 million and for TSP at $1.044 billion. The benefit from reducing these pollutants could exceed $1.328 billion annually, a figure useful in evaluating control costs.     

Export Composition and Manufacturing Employment in the US during the Economic Downturn of 1991-92

This paper examines the effect that export composition had upon manufacturing employment in the US during the 1991 recession. Although it takes, on average, approximately $66 000 in exports to create one job, the exact gains in terms of total employment depend upon the labour-intensity of the products being exported. Foreign sales by the chemical and textile industries result in a far greater increase in employment than exports by the petroleum refining or steel industries. This analysis estimates the employment effects of manufacturing exports over the 1989-95 period, utilizing an input-output model to capture both direct and indirect effects. The results demonstrate that export composition has, at times, both strengthened and reduced demand for labour. Consequently, if job-creation is a national goal, it may be in the interests of the US to promote exports from sectors that are labour-using.     

The Spatial Distribution of Japanese Manufacturing Industries in Indonesia

This paper presents an analysis of regional changes in the spatial pattern of Japanese manufacturing industries and the effect of deregulation of foreign investment in Indonesia during 1984–1994. Empirical analysis in this paper uses data of 560 Japanese manufacturing industries in Indonesia. The result of this study indicates their continuous regional concentration in the core region of Java. The regression analysis indicates that market, agglomeration and infrastructure continue to be the main reasons for the location of Japanese manufacturing industries. The current economic crisis has substantially reduced the level of new investment in the core region of Java.     

Controlling inventory in a small specialty hospital

Controlling inventory in a small specialty hospital has many parallels to controlling inventory in a large, acute care hospital. However, in a specialty hospital, there seems to be a plethora of specialty items that must always be on hand in ample supply. To achieve a significant inventory reduction, a strategic plan was developed that revolved around training sessions with the materiel management team, meetings with key hospital staff, and the establishment of two prime vendor contracts. In 1991, the annual inventory value in the general storeroom was approximately $2.3 million; in 1992, the inventory value was $1.6 million, and the projected inventory value for 1993 is $1.2 million. Implementing a just-in-time program to control inventory is best achieved through a collaborative effort with all of the materiel management team feeling a sense of contribution as well as receiving recognition from hospital administration.     

Air service and urban growth: Evidence from a quasi-natural policy experiment

While significant work has been done to examine the determinants of regional development, there is little evidence on the role of air services. This paper exploits the large and swift changes to air traffic induced by the 1978 Airline Deregulation Act to identify the link between air traffic and local economic growth. Using data for 263 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) over a two-decade time period, we estimate the effects of airline traffic on local population, income, and employment growth. Our most conservative estimates suggest that a 50-percent increase in an average city’s air traffic growth rate generates an additional stream of income over a 20-year period equal to 7.4 percent of real GDP, the equivalent of $523.3 million in 1978 dollars.     

Are commercial bank lending propensities useful in understanding small firm finance?

We consider recent criticism by Berger et al. (J Bank Finance 31:11–33, 2007) of the use of commercial bank lending propensities (e.g., small business loans/total assets) as research tools. We use 2SLS cross sectional regressions with bank fixed effects to examine the relationship between small business lending and bank size. Our results indicate that the propensity to lend to small businesses declines as bank size increases, and the growth in small business lending does not keep pace with the growth in bank size. An increase in bank asset size from $1 billion to $100 billion reduces the ratio of small business loans to total loans and leases by 28 percentage points. Contrary to Berger and Black (2007) we find that most small business loans are made by small banks. For 1993 to 2006 as a whole, small banks (those under $1 billion) accounted for only 14.1% of total deposits and 9.7% of total banking assets, but they accounted for 28.4% of small business loans outstanding. This is consistent with the pattern shown by lending propensities. We conclude that these propensities remain very useful tools in research on small firm finance.     

Consistency of Regional Industrial Diversification and Air Quality Policies

Regional industrial diversification policies promote industries that will increase economic welfare by improving the balance between the standard of living and the stability of that standard of living. Regional air quality policies seek to reduce undesirable air emissions. This paper analyzes the interaction of regional air quality and industrial diversification policies, using a simple but tractable stochastic equilibrium model of regional income formation. We apply the model to data that describe the relationship between industrial structure and air emissions in Saskatchewan, and find that, in general, taxes designed to reduce harmful air emissions increase the variability of income. The major exception is a tax on refined fuels, which both reduces emissions and income variability.     

Industrial structure distortion and urban ecological efficiency from the perspective of green entrepreneurial ecosystems

Improving the entrepreneurial ecosystem plays an important role in the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and achieving the coordinated development of economy and environment among cities is important for improving the quality and efficiency of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Using the panel data of 286 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this study adopts the global reference super efficiency slack-based measure model considering undesirable output to measure China's urban ecological efficiency. In addition, the spatial lag model is used to investigate the impacts of industrial structure advancement and rationalization on ecological efficiency, and the impacts of the heterogeneity of industrial structure and economic development under the distortion of resource dependence on ecological efficiency. The results show that: every one-unit increase in the advancement of industrial structure will lead to a 0.0741 unit increase in ecological efficiency, but the high dependence on natural resources will inhibit the promoting effect of industrial structure advancement on ecological efficiency, and such an inhibiting effect will weaken with the improvement of economic development level; moreover, the influence coefficient of industrial structure rationalization on ecological efficiency is not significant, nor is it affected by the natural resource dependence and the level of economic development. This paper hereby proposes that in the process of promoting green entrepreneurial activity at present, the Chinese government should give full play to the role of industrial structure advancement on improving ecological efficiency, actively break through the constraints restricting the impact of industrial structure rationalization, reduce excessive dependence on resource industries, improve the level of regional economic development, and strive to transform resource-intensive industries to technology-intensive industries to support the sustainable development of a green entrepreneurship ecosystem.