The theory of the marketing firm

The theory of the marketing firm locates the rationale of the modern business enterprise that lies in its responding profitably to the imperatives of marketing orientation. Economic theories of the firm generally fail to recognize these imperatives, enhanced consumer choice and sophistication, which entail marketing orientation as the rationale of the firm. The paper propose a competence theory of the firm as a metacontingency and examines the bilateral contingencies by which firms link to their consumerates, which indicate their capacities for customer orientation. The marketing firm emerges as a means of encapsulating entrepreneurship, economizing on transaction costs, and enabling the management of marketing specialization.     

规划理论二分法中的本体理论和程序理论

规划的本体理论与程序理论是规划理论二分法中最为显著的一组二元对立.首先界定了规划本体与规划程序之间的差异,然后通过辨析三组规划理论,即规划中的理论与规划的理论、系统理论与理性理论、导向型理论与交往型理论,深入探讨了规划的本体理论与程序理论之间的联系与区别,以及它们对规划方法和实践的影响.     

Disentangling economic crisis effects from environmental regulation effects: Implications for sustainable development

With climate change becoming more severe, policy makers must impose environmental regulations that will lead firms to adopt sustainable corporate models. According to the Porter hypothesis, environmental regulation can favour the implementation of business strategies that improve economic and environmental performances. In this study, we examine how one such form of regulation, the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), impacts firm performance, and we subsequently widen the examination beyond the regulation to evaluate an economic crisis which could potentially confound regulation effects. We estimate a panel model with time- and firm-fixed effects for different subsamples that disentangle the effect of the EU ETS policy from the 2008 economic crisis. The results indicate that the EU ETS policy in its third phase can activate the Porter hypothesis and is effective in fuelling the implementation of sustainable corporate models by firms. However, we also find that the economic crisis neutralises the effects of the regulation on firm performance, precluding the triggering of the Porter hypothesis in severely affected firms.     

A decision problem of long-term economic planning

The model described in the present paper has been worked out to approximate a concrete problem of national economic planning. The problem presented itself in the daily practice of the National Planning Board of the Hungarian People's Republic in the course of a planning project carried out with the aim of laying the foundation of the national economy's long-term development.     

Should the firm or the employee pay for upskilling? A contract theory approach

Upskilling involves costly effort on behalf of existing employees to acquire new skills that are required to execute high value-added projects. A firm-financed training scheme allows the screening of applicants but comes with the cost of hidden actions, as some employees might train themselves yet continue working on low-value projects. A policy relying on worker self-training and incentive compatible contracts allows attracting more workers to high-value projects, yet it must grant a positive informational rent to flexible workers. The analysis reveals the optimal contract specific to each of the two training schemes. The profit comparison shows that the training strategy depends on how large is the net value created by upskilling, which is a characteristic of the business or industry.     

Musgrave’s “target saver” theory: Implications for macroeconomic stability and economic policy effectiveness”

Musgrave develops the concept of the “target saver,” in which the household saves in the present in order to finance a target level of consumption outlays in the future. The resulting household behavior is one in which a rise in the rate of interest in the present period reduces the amount of saving needed for future consumption, so that household saving is inversely rather than positively a function of the interest rate. The present study examines the potential implications of the target saver in the aggregate for macroeconomic stability and economic policy effectiveness.      

Multiple objectives in the theory of the firm

An objective function with measures for two objectives is maximized to determine production decisions. These are shown to be analogous to production decisions under pure profit maximization, but using prices which include internally determined prices, different from market prices. The standard case of pure profit maximization results as a special case—as a testable hypothesis—by particular restrictions on parameters.A first draft of this paper was presented at the Philadelphia ORSA/TIMS Conference in 1990. The first draft was coauthored by Wolfgang Schwander, who contributed the empirical part to it, which has been deleted. Matthew S. Goldberg of the Institute for Defense Analyses and Götz Uebe of Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, provided helpful comments on the first draft. The revised versions benefitted substantially from the very constructive comments by three referees. The refereeing process of this paper was handled through Knox Lovell.     

Outline of economic planning for underdeveloped countries

Planning is a complex activity that requires positive efforts to organize resources for promoting development. It involves the use of imagination in setting or appraising goals, analyzing problems, and conceiving solutions. In its broad outlines, the plan will represent not only specifications of things to be done but criteria for judging the validity of things that happen outside of the areas of direct control. The planning agency can have at its disposal only limited means of control by which to encourage or curb the actions of others according to whether they serve or impede progress. At times essential projects or activities will either be overlooked by others, or the latter will lack incentives for undertaking them, so that specific measures have to be proposed to obtain balance between sectors or to fill out neglected aspects of the overall plans. Flexibility in adjusting to changing circumstances must be retained, but without sacrificing valid long-range objectives to expediency. Information and participation programs should serve to increase the acceptability of plans and to gain support at the political level.     

Customizing competitive strategy to entry timing: Implications for firm performance in the pharmaceutical industry

Our study examines the effect of business-level strategy on performance. Past literature examining the aforementioned effect in the pharmaceutical industry is scarce. Furthermore, there is a lack of studies that analyze how competitive strategy is contingent on firm entry timing. Hence, to explore our understanding in this area, the present study was conducted in the German pharmaceutical industry. Two hundred valid responses were collected from CEOs. The data were analyzed using SPSS and partial least square (PLS) techniques. The findings indicate a surprising result that, while the differentiation strategy is significantly related to pharmaceutical companies' performance, cost leadership strategy is not.     

Location theory of the firm under price uncertainty

This paper presents a theory of location under price uncertainty employing a general utility and production function. The analysis is also conducted by incorporating a homogeneous production function. Risk preferences of the firm are treated as an integral part of the model.     

从赫尔普曼看经济失衡

北京的国贸桥是中国经济增长的一个巨大的LOGO。大概3年前,茶色玻璃搭建而成的中国大饭店和国贸中心都是北京最为辉煌的风景之一。而现在,它的后面突然竖起了一道明晃晃的摩天大楼,硬是要把国贸楼比拼下去。无论如何,这些看上去很美的现代化建筑,都在告诉世界:     

Linking words in economic discourse: Implications for macroeconomic forecasts

This paper develops indicators of unstructured press information by exploiting word vector representations. A model is trained using a corpus covering 90 years of Wall Street Journal content. The information content of the indicators is assessed through business cycle forecast exercises. The vector representations can learn meaningful word associations that are exploited to construct indicators of uncertainty. In-sample and out-of-sample forecast exercises show that the indicators contain valuable information regarding future economic activity. The combination of indices associated with different subjective states (e.g., uncertainty, fear, pessimism) results in further gains in information content. The documented performance is unmatched by previous dictionary-based word counting techniques proposed in the literature.     

Location theory of the firm under price uncertainty : Some New Conclusions

This paper presents certain general results of my earlier location theory of the firm under price uncertainty. An expected utility maximizing firm excludes all intermediate locations between the market and raw material site.     

Signalling,financial hierarchy and agency theory as explanations for dividend behaviour: Evidence from Italian firm data

Starting from the traditional Lintner model, an asymmetric model of dividend behaviour is derived. It allows both the speed of adjustment and the desired pay-out structural parameters to vary according to firm- and time-specific economic conditions. The model is then tested on a sample of large Italian quoted and non-quoted firms. The main result of the econometric testing is that managers adjust more quickly when they have to reduce dividends than when they have to increase them. This finding is not consistent with the traditional view that firms are more reluctant to reduce than to increase dividends because of signalling problems. It is, however, consistent with the existence of a financial hierarchy. If internal sources of funds are cheaper managers will rationally adjust relatively quickly when they have to reduce dividends in order not to cut investment and will adjust relatively slowly when they have to increase them in order to build financial slack. One further interesting result observed is that quoted firms are found to fix a higher pay-out ratio than non-quoted firms.