Brand price differentials in retail distribution: product quality and service quality

A theoretical model is proposed to disentangle the contribution of brand quality and retailer service quality in explaining brand price differentials across retailers. Two testable hypotheses emerge: (i) for each brand type, price differences across retailers are independent of brand quality differentials and (ii) at a given retailer, price differences between different brand qualities are independent of service quality differentials. Our empirical analysis, for a sample of the U.K. grocery retailer prices, discloses that retailers that offer higher service quality sell same quality brands at higher prices. In particular, service quality premia amount to 6% for national brands and are in the range of 9–15% for low-quality store brands. Besides, at a given retailer, the price premia paid for the national brand are very large: around 150% between national brands and low-quality store brands, and around 40% between national brands and high-quality store brands. Also, the price differential between the national brand and the low-quality store brand does not increase with service quality.     

Middlemen*

This article provides an equilibrium model of intermediation based on search theory. Intermediaries, like retailers, buy goods from producers and sell them to consumers. The number of intermediaries is endogenously determined by free entry. The size and composition of their inventories is also endogenous. Larger inventories make it more likely that a random customer will find something he likes, but are more costly to store. The distribution of prices is characterized. Conditions are given under which there are too many or too few intermediaries, and under which intermediaries are too big or too small, from an efficiency perspective.     

Total factor productivity change of MENA microfinance institutions: A Malmquist productivity index approach

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate productivity changes of 33 Middle East and North Africa microfinance institutions over the period of 2006–2011 by using the Malmquist productivity index (MPI) method and a balanced panel dataset of 198 observations. The empirical findings indicate that the microfinance industry has reported overall productivity regress in the study period even though all the MENA MFIs have positive TFP growth with the exception of the year 2010–2011. In addition, our study indicates that over the period the Malmquist productivity change experienced by the MENA microfinance industry as a whole has averaged 4.9% annually which was mainly attributed to technical efficiency change. The study reveals also that the industry as a whole has exhibited a decline in technological change (2.9% decrease over the period) and suggested that there has been a deterioration in the performance of the best practicing MFIs. By decomposing the Malmquist index, the result showed that during the study period the MENA MFIs have experienced mainly an increment of pure technical efficiency (improvement in management practices) rather than an improvement in optimum size. Overall, an essential strategic implication for the MENA microfinance industry is that they need to pursue a technological progress in order to meet the dual objectives of reaching many poor people and financial sustainability.     

The effects of human resource management on small firms’ productivity and employees’ wages

This paper analyses whether employees and firms differently benefit from particular human resource (HR) practices. The focus is on small firms that may be badly informed on the impact of HR practices on firm performance. In this study on Dutch pharmacies, it is found that firms do not reward employees’ skills according to their contribution to firms’ productivity, as (1) employees are over-rewarded for their sector-specific skills and under-rewarded for the productivity enhancing effect of their computer skills and (2) employees’ work experience positively affects their wages but does not have real productivity effects. Moreover, it is found that training employees in case of vacancy problems seems to be an adequate HR practice, since it increases productivity without affecting the average wage level. The opposite holds for offering higher wages to newly recruited employees. Furthermore, we find that only the employees benefit from performance evaluation interviews, whereas employing many employees by temporary contracts appears to have a negative effect on productivity, without affecting the wage level.     

国有企业技术创新绩效责任审计指标体系研究

国有企业的技术创新绩效责任审计是评价国有企业管理人员技术创新能力的一项全面、系统的审计方法。技术创新绩效责任审计模式能有效改变国有企业只注重科技创新短期效果的错误观念,对促进科技创新可持续发展具有重大意义。该责任审计以路径依赖理论为基础,将技术创新绩效分为显性和隐性两种类型,对其主要的影响因素进行分析,最终分析结果将成为评价国有企业技术创新绩效的重要依据。其中,隐性绩效和显性绩效分别代表不同含义,隐性绩效是针对管理层的一个重要审计元素,主要由技术积累和外部效益组成,显性绩效主要由经济效益和技术效益组成。隐性绩效是衡量国有企业技术创新是否满足经济性、高效率性等的重要指标,显性绩效主要是指国有企业技术创新活动给企业带来的直接经济收益,或者新技术产生的新工艺、新产品给企业带来的经济结果,隐性绩效和显性绩效两者共同构成国有企业技术创新绩效责任审计指标体系。     

Environmental spillover effects on firm productivity and efficiency: An analysis of agri-food business in Southeast Spain

Spillover effects are treated as the influence of knowledge and innovation diffusion on an economic activity, but their analysis related to environmental practices within firms is still quite scarce. This study investigates the effect of environmental practices and related spillovers on productivity and efficiency in agri-food firms located in Southeast Spain. The low investment in research and development actions in comparison with the industrial sector, together with the relatively recent application of environmental requirements and the heterogeneity of environmental controls within firms have led to important changes in the organisation and management of their productive activity. These features are especially related to the implications that location and clustering factors have on environmental knowledge and innovation diffusion. Taking environmental management practices as knowledge of capital, we propose a specific analysis that evaluates the impacts of both environmental investment and spillover on the production function. The results indicate the relationship between productivity improvement and environmental practices, also showing the presence of positive spillovers. In a second-stage analysis, the incidence of environmental variables on the individual technical efficiency of firms is also determined. On the whole, the empirical analysis provides evidence of the links between environmental practices spillovers and economic performance.     

Sulphur emissions and productivity growth in industrialised countries

Abstract ** :  In this paper, we examine the relationship between economic and environmental performance. More specifically, we analyse the impact of SO2 reduction in the eighties (1980–1992) on productivity growth, technical efficiency and technological progress for a set of 12 OECD countries. Our timeframe roughly corresponds to the adoption and implementation of the First Sulphur Protocol signed in 1985. First, we estimate an output based Malmquist productivity index using distance functions derived from successive DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) frontiers. This index is decomposed in two components namely technical and efficiency change. Second, we regress the change in productivity and its two components on a set of explanatory variables including annual variations in SO2 emissions. The results indicate that reductions in SO2 do not seem to have had a significant impact on productivity growth. The decomposition into efficiency and technology changes suggests that two countervailing effects may explain this result. On one hand, SO2 cutbacks adversely affect efficiency but on the other hand, they stimulate technical change .     

Effects of horizontal consolidation under bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers

This article considers bilateral imperfect competition between processors and retailers to estimate the trade off between market power and cost efficiency. The model is based on pricing rules from a firm's profit maximization and nests both oligopoly and oligopsony models. An empirical analysis for US beef processors and retailers suggests that processors tend to exercise oligopsony market power in procuring cattle, but they are unlikely to exercise market power on retailers. When retailers and processors are considered as one integrated sector, efficiency effects from the increased concentration in the US beef packing industry are slightly larger than market power effects. When processors’ market power is considered separately from retailers’ market power, the difference between cost saving and market power effects becomes greater. The cost elasticity estimate, 0.99, indicates that a further merger would result in little economies of scale in the future. Therefore, although we find that efficiency effects are currently larger than market power effects, a further increase in concentration in the US beef processing industry could narrow the gap between the two effects.     

中国制造业的生产率增长、技术进步与技术效率——基于DEA的实证分析

本文以全部国有及规模以上制造业28个行业为研究对象,运用数据包络分析(DEA)相对效率评价方法,首先测算了制造业28个行业的技术效率和规模效率,在此基础上运用Malmquist生产率指数法测算了制造业全要素生产率指数、技术进步指数与技术效率指数,对技术效率指数进一步分解为纯技术效率和规模效率指数。结论认为,我国制造业行业技术效率和规模效率差异显著,多数行业不能达到技术与规模同时有效,但随时间推移技术效率和规模效率呈增长态势;制造业行业全要素生产率呈现不断增长趋势,主要原因得益于技术进步水平和纯技术效率的提高,而规模效率则表现为下降趋势,加快行业技术进步,提高技术效率和规模效率必将成为制造业行业全要素生产率提高的战略选择。     

Cost metafrontier approach for measuring the Malmquist productivity index: An example of bank groups formed after the financial reform in Taiwan

This study attempts to provide a framework under the variable returns to scale hypothesis to account for the effect of the cost scale efficiency change in the decomposition of the cost metafrontier Malmquist productivity index (CMMPI). In addition, the meta‐cost efficiency and cost frontier gap between subordinate banks of financial holding companies (FHC) and independent banks are also examined. A total of 34 banks in Taiwan are empirically analysed from 1999 to 2012. The results indicate that the meta‐cost efficiency, meta‐technical efficiency and meta‐allocative efficiency scores of subordinate banks of FHC are better than those of independent banks. The banking industry in Taiwan is found to have an improvement in cost metafrontier Malmquist productivity. The subordinate banks of FHC are also found to exhibit positive CMMPI and decomposition components, but do not achieve a significant improvement except in the case of the technical gap ratio change. The empirical results recommend that Taiwanese banks place more policy focus on the issue of scale adjustment, which should be beneficial. Based on the CMMPI decomposed results, we can gain further understanding of the growth path to enhance operational performance.     

An application of the DEA double bootstrap to examine sources of efficiency in Bangladesh rice farming

In this article we examine sources of technical efficiency for rice farming in Bangladesh. The motivation for the analysis is the need to close the rice yield gap to enable food security. We employ the DEA double bootstrap of Simar and Wilson (2007) to estimate and explain technical efficiency. This technique overcomes severe limitations inherent in using the two-stage DEA approach commonly employed in the efficiency literature. From a policy perspective our results show that potential efficiency gains to reduce the yield gap are greater than previously found. Statistically positive influences on technical efficiency are education, extension and credit, with age being a negative influence.     

战略性人力资源管理及其理论基础

在战略管理兴起的背景下,人力资源管理被提到了战略的地位.不同学者对战略人力资源管理的定义并不一致,但是其核心观点是人力资源管理活动对组织绩效非常重要.许多学者根据不同的理论提出不同的理论架构来解释人力资源管理与企业绩效的关系,如资源基础理论、人力资本理论、行为理论、一般系统理论以及交易与代理理论.它们解释的差异主要表现在人力资源管理活动与组织绩效的作用途径的不同,从而也反应了未来研究的方向.     

The market for bushmeat: Colobus Satanas on Bioko Island

Species conservation is an important issue worldwide. The market for monkeys consumed as food on Bioko Island, Equatorial Guinea, is modeled as a bargaining game. The bargaining set-up leads to the conclusion that black colobus are being over-hunted. Using daily data an empirical density is fit to the price-quantity pairs resulting from exchange between buyers and retailers. The density provides support for the bargaining model. Quantile regressions are also fit to the data. The median quantile indicates buyers have greater bargaining power than retailers. Knowing who has bargaining power aids in the design of policy to reduce bushmeat hunting. Strategic elasticities are constructed from the quantiles. Given the harvest rate of monkeys and the elasticity estimates, the monkeys of Bioko Island are under considerable pressure.     

基于DEA-Malmquist的中部地区高技术产业R&D效率实证研究

在中部科技崛起思想背景下,文章基于《中国高技术产业统计年鉴(2005—2010)》数据资料,使用C2R模型、BC2模型以及DEA—Malmquist指数分析法对2004—2009年中部六省高技术产业的R&D的综合技术效率、资源配置效率、技术进步指数等因素进行实证研究。结果认为:航天航空业综合效率无效,是导致整体高技术产业TFP值低下的主要原因;电子计算机及办公设备制造业的TFP值与技术进步指数最高;技术进步对高技术产业的推动作用超过资源配置指数。文章最后还给出了几点改进非有效行业R&D效率的对策建议。     

人力资本与区域全要素生产率分析

本文采用Malmquist指数分析了我国30个省级行政区1996—2003年的全要素生产率(TFP)增长,并将其分解为技术进步指数和效率变化指数。为了减少计算偏差,我们在使用承认无效率项存在的生产前沿技术的同时,引入了人力资本要素。本文的分析结果表明我国的人力资本水平增长迅速,30个省区的经济增长效率差距逐年扩大。同时我们发现在引入人力资本要素后,1996—2003年区域全要素生产率的增长得益于技术进步;如果不考虑人力资本存量,则低估了同期的效率提高程度,而高估了期间的技术进步指数。     

基于零售商垄断势力的纵向约束--一个经济分析框架

基于零售商垄断势力的纵向约束成为近年来西方国家反垄断司法实践所关注的焦点之一,然而现有的文献对于零售商拥有更大垄断势力的情形较少涉及.本文通过构建基于零售商垄断势力的纵向约束的经济分析框架,试图对传统产业组织理论主要针对生产商垄断势力的研究框架进行一定的补充,并对我国反垄断法的制定提出一些建议.     

基于数据包络(DEA)分析的京津冀地区环境绩效评估研究

提高资源环境绩效是区域生态环境治理的核心与关键。在构建环境绩效评估指标体系的基础上，运用数据包络分析模型（DEA）测度并分析2005-2015年京津冀地区静态环境绩效水平。利用Malmquist指数动态分析法将环境绩效分解为技术效率变化指数和技术进步指数，并探讨分解指标对环境绩效的相对贡献。结果显示：京津冀地区环境治理投入与产出水平均呈现逐年上升趋势；北京和天津的总体环境绩效水平要远高于河北，2005-2011年京津冀地区的环境绩效水平排序为北京、天津、河北,2012-2015年京津冀地区的环境绩效水平排序为天津、北京、河北（2013年除外）。河北省环境绩效水平较低的主要制约因素是技术进步缓慢与全要素生产率偏低。Malmquist指数呈现出一定的波性，这主要是由技术变化指标波动所致。最后，就如何提升京津冀地区环境绩效水平，提出相关对策建议。     

Dynamic environmental performance analysis: A Malmquist index approach

This article presents a general framework for dynamic environmental performance analysis by generalizing the approach proposed by Kuosmanen and Kortelainen [Kuosmanen, T., Kortelainen, M., 2005. Measuring Eco-Efficiency of Production with Data Envelopment Analysis. Journal of Industrial Ecology 9(4), 59-72.] from a static to a dynamic setting. For this purpose we construct an environmental performance index (EPI) by applying frontier efficiency techniques and a Malmquist index approach. Compared to other dynamic environmental productivity and efficiency analysis approaches based on these methods, our approach builds on the standard definition of eco-efficiency as it is presented in the ecological economics literature. Recognizing the importance to analyze the sources of environmental performance changes, we show how changes in overall environmental performance can be decomposed into changes in relative eco-efficiency and shifts in environmental technology, respectively. We apply the presented technique at the macro level to dynamic environmental performance analysis of 20 member states of the European Union in 1990-2003. According to the results, environmental technical change mostly explains the improvement in overall environmental performance, while relative eco-efficiency change has been minor for most countries during the sample period.     

中国金融发展与技术效率改善——基于工业制成品行业面板数据的经验研究

技术效率改善对于中国经济效率进一步的提高具有决定性作用。基于2001～2007中国国有及规模以上非国有工业制成品行业面板数据,本文在Malmquist指数法下测算了技术效率改善指数。利用该指数,本文进一步检验了金融发展与技术效率改善的联系。经验结果表明,金融发展促进了技术效率改善,而在外源融资依赖度高的行业,这种促进效应更加明显。     

Structure, conduct, and performance: evidence from the Indonesian food and beverages industry

This article employs the Structure–Conduct–Performance (SCP) paradigm to investigate the simultaneous relationship between industrial concentration, price rigidity, technical efficiency, and price-cost margin in the Indonesian food and beverages industry. This research extends the SCP framework by including price rigidity and technical efficiency as additional key variables. The results suggest that there is a simultaneous relationship between industrial concentration, price rigidity, technical efficiency, and price-cost margin with a positive bi-directional relationship between industrial concentration and price-cost margin. These findings imply that an appropriate course of action for the regulator in this highly concentrated industry is to reduce industrial concentration in order to increase competition, reduce upward price flexibility, and increase technical efficiency in the long run.