THE EFFECTS OF ORGANIZATIONAL FORM IN THE MIXED MARKET FOR FOSTER CARE

ABSTRACT ** : This paper uses proprietary quality of care data to examine the consequences of organizational form in privatized US foster care services. The contract failure hypothesis generically proposes that nonprofits should provide higher quality services, relative to for‐profits, when output is costly to observe. Advocates argue that the nonprofits offer important consumer protections when public services are contracted to private agencies. Contrary to expectations, we find that nonprofit firms do not offer higher quality services. We explore the possibility that monitoring efforts by state regulators or competition among foster care agencies effectively mitigate the influence of organizational form in this particular mixed market.     

Determining output shadow prices for a cost-constrained technology

We develop a method for computing output shadow prices when total cost and input prices are exogenous, using the indirect output distance function of Shephard (1974). We show that indirect distance function shadow price imputations for output prices are the same to a proportional constant as marginal cost imputations. We motivate our results by relating them to the problem of valuing the output of nonprofit institutions, to some measurement issues for noncompetitive industries, and to a problem of imputing sales of the commercial banking industry to consuming sectors of the economy in the national income accounts.Thanks are due to a very informed and helpful referee.Rolf Färe supported by IHE, Lund, Sweden.     

Coordination failure, property rights and non-profit organizations

This paper advances a socio-economic theory of nonprofit organizations aiming at conceiving this organizational form in its complexity and at analysing it from both the viewpoints of its economical and political (democratic) dimensions. This theoretical approach accounts for the existence of nonprofit organizations and the reasons why nonprofit organizations are relatively more efficient when compared with for-profit and government organizations in particular circumstances. The various current explanations of the existence of nonprofit organizations (contract failure, government failure, philanthropic failure) are regrouped around the concept of coordination failure. The paper then examines how nonprofit organizations are able to mitigate these coordination failures. The central thesis is that the specific distribution of property rights characterizing nonprofit organizations results in a particular type of governance structure which allows them to mitigate coordination failures. In turn, the ability of the organization to mitigate coordination failures and therefore its efficiency is conditioned on its democratic functioning.     

石油合同对国际油气合作博弈影响分析

本文建立了国际油气合作中的资源国与消费国之间的合作博弈模型,分析了不同的油气合同模式对资源消费国效用水平的影响.研究表明,合同模式在油气合作博弈中扮演着重要角色.从投资者的角度看,为获得效用最大化,投资者不但应注意投资区块的选择,还要对资源国的合同模式进行深入分析和利弊权衡.通过对几种石油合同模式的比较,发现在总收益相同的条件下,从风险大小的角度考虑,纯服务合同带来的效用大于产品分成合同和矿税制合同；从收益的角度考虑,产品分成合同和矿税制合同使资源消费国保留了油价上涨时获取高额利润的权利,带来的效用大于技术服务合同.     

The nonprofit sector and industry performance

Despite the importance of nonprofit industries in the economy, little analysis has been conducted as to whether the behavior of such industries differs from that of for-profit industries. Extending previous firm-level analyses, we propose a neoclassical theory with an endogenous nonprofit sector. Our analysis implies that nonprofit firms have a competitive advantage over for-profit firms, so that marginal changes in the industry operate through the for-profit sector. As such, marginal industry behavior is identical to that of a for-profit industry and nonprofit regulations may have a limited impact or even no impact on overall industry performance. Our theory has the methodological advantage that standard for-profit analysis applies directly to nonprofit firms, because they can be analyzed as for-profit firms with lower costs. We discuss aspects of the empirical literature that test this theory of nonprofit activity.     

基于心理契约违背的顾客行为

基于营销学领域的心理契约理论,界定了顾客心理契约违背的内涵。以餐饮业为例,实证检验了顾客心理契约违背与顾客感知自身义务、抱怨行为倾向和转换意向之间的关系。研究结果表明:顾客心理契约违背对顾客的自身义务感知、直接抱怨倾向、间接抱怨倾向、私下抱怨倾向、第三方抱怨和转换意向等具有负向影响。     

Risky business: Institutions vs. social networks in FDI

Political economy scholarship on foreign direct investment (FDI) emphasizes variation in host country political risk but overlooks variation in investors' sensitivity to political risk. We show that relational contracting, relationship‐based contract enforcement, is more efficient for high‐risk, human capital‐intensive activities for which the costs of writing legally enforceable contracts are prohibitive. We disaggregate FDI into two distinct varieties: mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and venture capital (VC). We propose that VC flows are less sensitive to host institutions but correlate strongly with skilled migrant networks that monitor compliance and impose reputational costs. Our empirical analysis of dyadic VC and M&A flows covers over 100 countries during 1980–2009. We address other mechanisms through which migrant networks facilitate FDI and verify our results hold at the country‐industry level. These findings suggest that relational contracting facilitates global integration of dynamic, knowledge‐intensive industries even when formal institutions are weak.     

Exporting to bypass weak institutions

Institutions have been shown to be important for trade and growth. In particular, weak institutions may reduce the returns to product quality, harming domestic welfare and making it attractive to export to countries with strong institutions where quality is better rewarded. We model this alternative story as to why the “good apples are shipped out” and explore whether exporting ameliorates the problems created by weak institutions. We find that, instead, because home prices do not reflect the marginal value of quality, access to developed markets can be welfare reducing. Specifically, there are always export prices such that total welfare (and not just consumer welfare) is harmed by exporting. Furthermore, if the domestic price equilibrates to the export price, then the marginal unit exported reduces total welfare. Exporting can even reduce producer surplus, leading to a contraction of the export industry; although, welfare can decrease even if production of the exported good increases. Thus, our results reinforce the importance of strengthening institutions to help the development of economies.     

Warranty markets and public policy

Search equilibrium models in the Economics of Information concern themselves exclusively with consumer ignorance of the prices that different firms charge. Legal regulation dealing with information, on the other hand, concerns itself primarily with contact terms. In particular, firms are often required to warrant against product related defects on the supposed ground that firms respond to consumer ignorance only by degrading contract quality. This paper is the beginning of an attempt to make the Economics of Information useful to policymakers. It models a market for warranties under imperfect information and shows that firms are more likely to respond to consumer ignorance by raising prices for the warranties that consumers prefer rather than deleting warranties from consumer contracts. Hence, policymakers should be concerned more with reducing supracompetitive prices than with “improving” contract quality.     

Business type,industry value chain,and R&D performance: Evidence from high-tech firms in an emerging market

This study focuses on how the business type and technological learning mode, which a high-tech firm chooses based on its core competence, influence the firm's R&D strategies, which in turn affect firm performance. This study also explores how the interaction between a firm's business type and industry value chain stage affects the relationship between R&D investments and operating performance. We suggest that the linkage of R&D investments and operating performance will increase gradually, when firms move from contract manufacturing to own brand business. R&D investments can contribute more to performance when firms adopt the hybrid business type. Furthermore, R&D investments generate more significant benefits for the own brand companies than the contract manufacturers at the same stage of the industry value chain. R&D investments of the downstream contract manufacturers have a negative impact on firm performance. Regardless of business type, firms in the upstream (midstream) stage of the industry value chain outperform downstream stage firms in deriving benefits from R&D activities. Finally, the lagged effects of R&D investments on operating performance are affected by the interaction between business type and industry value chain.     

我国优质蔬菜消费者麻木和敏感行为初探

消费者是整个优质蔬菜产业管理过程的最终目标指向,其在优质蔬菜消费问题上所体现的态度和消费倾向会对政府和企业行为选择产生深刻影响。研究我国优质蔬菜消费者行为,对积极推进我国优质蔬菜产业快速、健康发展具有重要的理论价值和现实意义。本文在国内外研究现状和评价的基础上,另辟蹊径,从优质蔬菜消费者行为的外在表现——消费者麻木和消费者敏感入手,结合相关案例剖析了其效应,透析了影响优质蔬菜消费者行为外在表现的内在原因,并提出了相关对策。     

Managerial compensation and incentives in for-profit and nonprofit hospitals

Differential economic behavior of for-profit and nonprofit institutionscan be manifest in both output and input markets. When behaviorin output markets is difficult to observe, behavior in inputmarkets can be useful proxies. We examine monetary compensationand its composition between base salary and bonus, and the associatedincentive structures, in the U.S. hospital industry. Our datapermit controlling for interinstitutional differences in thescope and complexity of jobs having the same titles, as wellas differences in organization size and other variables. Wefind (1) total monetary compensation for the two top executivejobs is substantially higher in the for-profit sector; and (2)the composition of compensation as between base salary and bonusdiffers materially across forms of organization, bonuses beingabsolutely and relatively greater in the for-profit sector.Particularly noteworthy is the finding that for-profit hospitalsutilize compensation mechanisms that, by involving larger contingentcomponents, provide stronger incentives - greater rewards -as compared with nonprofit hospitals, for performance that ismore easily monitored. While our findings are consistent withmore than one model of comparative organizations differ in theirgoals and, hence, in the kinds of managers they demand and thereward structures they offer. Nonprofit organizations may pursueobjectives that reflect greater concern about collective goodsor other outputs that are more difficult to measure and reward.Alternatively, nonprofits, confronted by a nondistribution constrainton the payout of profit to managers, may lack incentives forefficiency, and so may pursue other goals such as a quiet life.Such differential objective functions, together with the differentialconstraints on the distribution of profit to managers, havetwo kinds of implications. (1) Nonprofit and for-profit organizationsmay attract different kinds of managers, especially at the toplevels, because nonprofits prefer working for a nonprofit organizationand, hence, may offer a lower supply price to them. (2) Thetwo types of organizations can be expected to offer differentialcomposition of compensation as between base salary and performance-basedbonus, providing different incentives for managers. Our analysisis positive in character, the goal being to identify systematicdifferences in organization behavior.     

Supermarket Choice and Supermarket Competition in Market Equilibrium

Multi-store firms are common in the retailing industry. Theory suggests that cross-elasticities between stores of the same firm enhance market power. To evaluate the importance of this effect in the U.K. supermarket industry, we estimate a model of consumer choice and expenditure using three data sources: profit margins for each chain, a survey of consumer choices and a data-set of store characteristics. To permit plausible substitution patterns, the utility model interacts consumer and store characteristics. We measure market power by calculating the effect of merger and demerger on Nash equilibrium prices. Demerger reduces the prices of the largest firms by between 2 and  3.8%  depending on local concentration; mergers between the largest firms lead to price increases up to  7.4%  .     

Quality, reputation and the choice of organizational form

This paper revisits the hypothesis that nonprofit organizations emerge in markets that are characterized by contractual incompleteness because they ensure consumers against opportunistic behavior. We extend the Glaeser and Shleifer [Glaeser, E., Shleifer, A., 2001. Not-for-profit entrepreneurs. Journal of Public Economics 81, 99–115] framework, which studies an entrepreneur’s optimal choice of organizational form and service quality when quality is non-contractible into a repeated interaction setting. The main result is that when reputations can be sustained, then for-profit status is the preferred organizational form and high quality services are ensured. This finding suggests that existing explanations of nonprofit organizations that focus entirely on contractual imperfections in the producer/consumer relationship may be inadequate.     

Globalisation—New Demands on Public Enterprises

The globalisation of the economy and society reduces the economic policy capabilities of the state with its public enterprises considerably, but at the same time it triggers fundamental pressure on the government to compensate for the negative economic, political and social effects of the globalisation process. Using a system-theoretic framework, requirements for the public economy can be developed reaching from a social coordination function to an evolutionary-based industrial policy function of public enterprises. These functions and instrumental targets have to be implemented in a system of an internationalised public economy based on an appropriate institutional foundation. This in turn means focusing on a mixed system of public and non-profit organisations combined with market type institutions. By no means is an erosion of the public sector in the sense of radical privatisation strategies as propagated by the IMF and other prominent institutions implied. Rather a social need for public action must be considered mainly due to the public interest (Gemeinwohl). In this context, the socio-political competence of the public and nonprofit economy can be revitalised in an innovative way.     

Explaining changes in the US credit card market: Lenders are using more information

We examine two changes in the cross-sectional distribution of credit card contracts over time: the increasing variance in interest rates and the increasing variance in credit limits, using data from the 1989–2013 Survey of Consumer Finances. Within this dataset, we show that financial institutions seem to be collecting and using more consumer information when extending credit. We then develop a life-cycle model of lending using a novel contract structure reflecting modern credit cards, where interest rates and credit limits are jointly determined before actual borrowing takes place. Within the model, giving lenders more information on consumers generates realistic results along several dimensions. More information leads to better pricing, moving the market from a ‘pooling’ to a ‘separating’ equilibrium, generating the observed increase in variances, with the gains primarily going to young agents.     

The effects of rent asymmetries in experimental auction markets

We report the results of twelve ‘double-auction’ market experiments designed to analyze the effects of asymmetric induced supply and demand configurations on the price convergence path toward a competitive equilibrium. The proposition (convergence bias) that prices tend to approach the competitive equilibrium from above (below) when consumer surplus is greater (less) than producer surplus cannot be rejected. We do, however, reject the proposition (convergence symmetry) that these convergence biases are of equal absolute magnitude. Excesses of producer over consumer surplus are found to have a more pronounced effect on the sequence of contract prices.     

Contracts and asymmetric information in the theory of the firm

This paper extends the Coase notation of firms as intermediaries between consumers and input owners to incorporate asymmetric information. We show that in some cases it is optimal for consumers to pay a fixed price for a product and to ignore how the firm operates and the profit that it makes. If firms have private information that consumers cannot cheaply obtain, however, we demonstrate that the optimal contract may require constraints on firms internal operations and profits. Our work provides conditions under which cost-plus contracts are optimal, and demonstrates when nonprofit firms are the preferred organization structure.     

美国煤电合约特点及对我国的启示

从交易成本经济学的角度来看,煤炭产业和电力产业适合选择长期合约的合作方式。以美国煤电合约为研究对象,分析在20世纪80年代后美国煤电合约期限缩短(即由原来长期合约为主变为5年期以下的合约占主导)的原因。从以下三个方面对此现象做出解释:能源市场波动削弱了煤炭企业的谈判势力;电力市场放松管制增强了电力企业的谈判势力;其他政策法规产生约束作用。最后结合我国煤电合约现状,借鉴美国构建稳定煤电关系的经验,为缓和我国煤电矛盾提出如下建议:加快实现竞价上网,放松发电企业管制;完善合约条款设置;转变政府参与角色。     

Global Production Networks and Activism: Can Activists Change Mining Practices by Targeting Brands?

In this article, I mobilise a global production networks (GPN) approach to study a campaign seeking to impact mining practices by targeting a key consumer market: gold jewellery. In doing so, I make two contributions. The first is empirical: documenting this exploratory campaign and mapping activist strategies and outcomes against the gold production network. The second is theoretical: evaluating whether the GPN toolkit can help explain how the nature of a commodity and its markets impact activist strategies and outcomes. Recasting industries as sites of social struggle, a GPN approach offers a more nuanced understanding of the power permeating markets than more conventional supply chain analyses. The results clarify the challenges activists face when politicising industries by targeting brands, particularly in the extractives sector. But the findings also illuminate opportunities, including the more subtle pathways of activist influence as they: (1) gather and disseminate information, (2) place social and environmental issues on the industry agenda, (3) spur industry to create institutions around these issues, (4) insert themselves and their agenda into the production network, and (5) form alliances with industry actors pushing for change.