化工行业上市企业后向一体化动机及其作用模式

选取2010年国内化工行业上市公司的数据,采用VAS法衡量企业的纵向度,对企业选择后向一体化的动机进行实证研究。研究发现：化工行业企业投资资产专用性较高,生产成本占总成本的比重超过90％,不同子行业的后向一体化程度有显著差异;企业后向整合度与生产成本负相关,与资产专用性程度、盈利能力、交易费用及管理费用正相关,与产业上下游联系、企业规模和行业差别相关性不显著。化工行业的投资资产专用性较高,为了节省交易费用和管理费,企业选择后向一体化战略,提高盈利能力的同时也降低了生产成本。     

Analysis of threshold cointegration with asymmetric adjustments in the Hong Kong grocery industry

High market concentration in the Hong Kong grocery industry has been prevalent over many years with the domination of a few large supermarket chains. However, no research has been conducted on the price dynamics between the supermarket and non-supermarket sectors to investigate whether the non-supermarket sector can impose competitive discipline on the dominating supermarket chains. We argue that standard cointegration tests cannot allow for transaction costs and distinguish whether the price co-movement is attributable to price competition or collusion. Our study therefore fills this research gap by adopting the threshold cointegration tests in a three-regime threshold vector error-correction model to account for the asymmetric price adjustment dynamics between supermarket and non-supermarket sectors of Hong Kong and evaluate the market power of the supermarket sectors in the presence of transaction costs. Our results favour the presence of cointegration between the supermarket and non-supermarket price indices with asymmetric adjustment dynamics. We interpret the results of statistically significant downward price adjustments in the outer-band regimes as the evidence of mutual price competition. Nevertheless, the supermarket sector has stronger market power than the non-supermarket sector, and therefore can sustain higher price level without inducing substantial competition pressures inside the neutral band.     

环境管制:从管理到治理的转变

环境管制旨在应对因资源环境消费而产生的外部性问题,它通过三种不同类型政策工具的运用得以实施,即:命令与控制型、基于市场型以及自愿型。对政府而言,这意味着三种具有不同交易成本发生和负担机制的管制手段选择。环境管制的发展沿革包含了一种政府在管制过程中不断减少交易成本的尝试,这种努力使得在最新的环境管制形态——自愿环境协议中,企业、非政府组织等多元社会主体共同形成决策并参与管制的实施,分担改善环境质量的社会责任与成本投入,环境管制因而实现了从管理到治理的转变。     

A new approach to measuring universal banking

Noninterest income is widely used in the literature to account for the degree of the universal business model by banks. This paper proposes a novel measure of universal banking constructed using the relative contribution of each operating segment to total assets using an entropy approach. We here propose a novel dataset containing the Universal Banking Index (UBI) at both country and bank levels. Using a sample of international banks, we evaluate the extent to which our proposed metric affects banks’ profitability, stability, liquidity and capitalisation. Results suggest that a higher degree of diversification is associated with increased stability. In addition, banks that feature a more diversified business model, as proxied by the UBI, are also better capitalised, as opposed to banks with high noninterest income share. Our results suggest that regulatory-induced restriction on universal banking may indeed reduce the benefits of risk sharing across operating segments, exposing banks to heightened risks.     

China's emerging market for property rights: Theoretical and empirical perspectives1

his paper contrasts state–directed and market–mediated reform of enterprise ownership rights in transition economies. We evaluate China's emerging market for enterprise ownership rights from the perspective of conditions underpinning the Coase Theorem: the assignment of property rights, the degree of competition, and the nature of transaction costs. China's recent experience suggests that policies designed to expand and support the scope of decentralized, market–based restructuring of ownership rights, even under conditions that deviate widely from the ideal assumptions underlying the Coase Theorem, may prove more beneficial than direct official intervention. JEL classification: G34, K11, L1 and P3.     

The origin of money: A survey of the contemporary literature

Introducing money into a scheme of general economic equilibrium entails manifold problems, which have emerged in many contributions to the literature. Some of these problems have been adequately addressed at the level of micro-based approaches which can be traced back to the monetary theory of Carl Menger. In this survey we shall review such issues, after which we shall attempt to illustrate the contribution to solving the problem of the origin of money offered by the literature on transaction and information costs inspired by Menger's monetary theory. (JEL: E40, E42, D83) Although this paper is the fruit of a common effort, credit for Sections 1, 2, 3, 5, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 goes in particular to Giuseppe Mastromatteo, and for Sections 4, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 6 to Luigi Ventura. The authors would like to thank the referees for most useful comments and suggestions; the usual disclaimer applies.     

Economic integration and stock market dynamic linkages: evidence in the context of Australia and Asia

Countries are becoming economically integrated and it is contended that this will also lead to their financial markets becoming integrated. This contention is important since international financial market integration diminishes portfolio diversification benefits and creates contagion risk. We test this contention in this article in the context of the Australasian region. Australia and Asia have experienced very significant economic integration through a rapid growth in their bilateral trade. We utilize a battery of econometric techniques – cointegration, asymmetric generalized dynamic conditional correlations and panel regression models. As expected, we find that trade intensity significantly drives the interdependence between their stock markets in both the short run and the long run. Thus, given the ever increasing economic integration in this region, this finding implies that their stock markets face the risk of contagion, and that investors in these markets would also be confronted with the prospect of lower diversification benefits.     

ADVANCING THE THEORY OF THE COOPERATIVE ORGANIZATION: THE COOPERATIVE AS A TRUE HYBRID

ABSTRACT: What is a cooperative? Is it a form of vertical integration, an independent organization or an intermediate form of governance between the market and the hierarchy? This paper contributes to the economic theory of the cooperative organization by examining it from a comparative economic perspective. Departing from Williamson's one‐dimensional continuum of governance structures, the paper adopts the view that governance structures exhibit multiple dimensions and true hybrids are market‐like on some of these dimensions while hierarchy‐like on others. I show that the cooperative blends market‐like attributes with hierarchy‐like mechanisms and thus should be viewed as a true hybrid rather than as an intermediate form. The paper concludes with a discussion about the usefulness of this approach and potential avenues for future research.     

Transaction costs and the property rights approach to the theory of the firm

The standard property rights approach is focused on ex ante investment incentives, while there are no transaction costs that might restrain ex post negotiations. We explore the implications of such transaction costs. Prominent conclusions of the property rights theory may be overturned: A party may have stronger investment incentives when a non-investing party is the owner, and joint ownership can be the uniquely optimal ownership structure. Intuitively, an ownership structure that is unattractive in the standard model may now be desirable, because it implies large gains from trade, such that the parties are more inclined to incur the transaction costs.     

A market game approach to differential information economies

In this paper we recast a differential information economy as a strategic game in which players propose net trades and prices. Pure strategy Nash equilibria are strong and determine both consumption plans and commodity prices that coincide with the Walrasian Expectations equilibria of the underlying economy. The authors acknowledge support by research grants BEC2003-09067-C04-01 (Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia and FEDER), PGIDT04XIC30001PN (Xunta de Galicia) and SA070A05 (Junta de Castilla y León). JP Torres-Martínez is also grateful to CNPq-Brazil and University of Vigo for financial support. We are indebted to N.C. Yannelis for helpful comments and insights.     

中间组织的起源及比较优势--一个新的理论分析框架

交易费用理论的经典"企业-市场两分法"无法对中间组织为什么会存在,以及与企业和市场相比其优势有哪些做出较好的解释,原因就在于这种分析方法仅仅以交易成本作为衡量各种经济组织效率的唯一标准,只注重效率,不注重效益.而经济组织的存在和演进并不一定仅仅取决于节约交易成本,还可以从效益优势中获得存在和发展的依据.因此,要想对中间组织这种目前越来越普遍存在的组织形式进行更透彻的理解,就必须超越经典的"企业-市场两分法",构建一个既能反映效率、又能反映效益的新的经济组织的分析框架.     

Not measuring sustainable value at all: A response to Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen

In their article in this issue of Ecological Economics, Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen [Kuosmanen, T. and Kuosmanen, N., this issue. How Not to Measure Sustainable Value (and How One Might). Ecological Economics.] aim to criticise the measurement of Sustainable Value as proposed in our previous research. By adopting a production perspective and based on a productive efficiency analysis, they claim that the proposed way of measuring Sustainable Value represents an invalid simplification that rests on restrictive and unrealistic assumptions. Our response is to show that their argument rests on a fundamental misspecification of the Sustainable Value approach. We identify three conceptual misfits: a mismatch in the perspective of the analysis, a misspecification of opportunity costs and the irrelevance of production functions. Ultimately, Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen's train of thought rests entirely within the realm of productive efficiency analysis, whereas Sustainable Value builds on the foundations of financial economics and consequently adopts a macro rather than a firm perspective. It is thus not surprising that the findings of Kuosmanen and Kuosmanen appear to contradict the Sustainable Value approach. However, this is due to their fundamental misspecification of the Sustainable Value approach. As a result, rather than providing novel insights into how Sustainable Value might be measured in a better way, they do not measure Sustainable Value at all.     

区域经济一体化对多边自由贸易体制的影响——一个简单的制度经济学解释

区域经济一体化组织的出现是否有利于推动多边自由贸易的实现,这一问题已经引起了学者们的广泛关注.从制度经济学的角度看,先走区域经济一体化的道路,然后再进行区域经济组织的自由贸易合作,从而最终实现全球贸易的自由化,能够比"一味地"等待世界所有国家同时实现贸易的自由化给各利益主体带来更大的现期净收益.因此,相比WTO所推行的多边贸易自由化而言,区域经济一体化具有更多的现实性和可行性,它将为世界自由贸易的实现做阶段性准备.当然在此过程中,还应该注意加强WTO对区域经济一体化组织的监督和协调,以引导它向更有利于提高世界福利和贸易自由化的方向发展.     

Macro-financial linkages and business cycles: A factor-augmented probit approach

In this paper, we analyze macro-financial linkages in the euro area by implementing an innovative factor-augmented probit model estimated using a large database. In particular, our model specification enables the identification of the leading influence of financial variables on euro area business cycles, in addition to the coincident information conveyed by standard macroeconomic variables. We also point out that dynamic factor models lead to more accurate replication of business cycles than static ones.     

A normative and statistical approach to measuring classical horizontal inequity

A local measure of classical horizontal inequity (HI) in an income tax or tax‐benefit system is proposed and aggregated into a global index. This index expresses the revenue gain per capita that would come from eliminating HI welfare‐neutrally, and also reveals the loss of vertical performance, in terms of the Blackorby and Donaldson (1984) progressivity index, caused by the presence of HI. Non‐parametric estimation procedures that can be used to tackle the ‘identification problem’ are delineated. An application to the Canadian tax‐benefit system between 1981 and 1994 reveals the changing profile of local HI, its sources, and its aggregate significance. JEL Classification: C14, D31, D63, H23 Approche normative et statistique à la mesure de l'inéquité horizontale classique. Nous nous intéressons dans ce document au problème tenace de la mesure de l'inéquité horizontale. Nous proposons tout d'abord une mesure locale d'inéquité horizontale, que nous agrégeons ensuite en un indice global. A la différence d'autres approches, qui s'intéressent au gain en bien‐être social qu'il y aurait àéliminer l'inéquité horizontale en gardant constant le revenu de l'État, notre indice global mesure le gain fiscal per capita qui échoirait au gouvernement si l'inéquité horizontale était éliminée sans changement dans le niveau de bien‐être social. Lorsque ce gain fiscal est exprimé en proportion des revenus moyens nets, notre mesure constitue un élément (négatif) dans l'indice de progressivité de Blackorby et Donaldson (1984); elle quantifie alors la perte de performance verticale causée par un traitement fiscal discriminatoire vis‐à‐vis d'individus qui étaient égaux avant l'intervention de l'État. Notre ‐indice étant exprimé en unités monétaires, son interprétation est facile et intuitive. Nous proposons finalement des procédures d'estimation non‐paramétrique pour résoudre le problème important de l'identification des individus égaux dans une distribution de bien‐être. A notre connaissance, il s'agit d'ailleurs de la première solution statistiquement cohérente au problème classique de la mesure de l'inéquité horizontale. La méthode est appliquée à la distribution canadienne des revenus bruts et nets en 1981 et 1994, et révèle à la fois la variation du profil de l'inéquité horizontale le long des quantiles et son importance comme source de perte de progressivité et de redistribution. Nous décomposons aussi l'inéquité horizontale totale entre et à travers différents groupes socio‐économiques, et testons la sensibilité de ces estimés à la variabilitééchantillonnale ainsi qu'au choix d'échelles d'équivalence et d'intervalles des fonctions de noyaux.     

科斯《企业的性质》之质疑

企业是资源所有者的取得更多的收益而建立起来的经济组织，交易成本的存在并不是企业存在的根本原因，科斯将企业定义为不同于价格调节机制的企业家计划调节机制，源于其错将企业计划混同于计划经济，事实上，企业是以市场合约为基础形成的，按市场运行原则运作的市场性组织，其资源配置并不独立于市场价格机制之外，价格调节机制与企业家调节机制是不可分割的两个方面，任何企业作为市场参与者与市场都是互动的。     

Modelling energy and labour linkages: A CGE approach with an application to Iran

We develop a unique dynamic CGE model suitable for analysing the policy interrelationships between fuels, crude oil and the labour market. Special emphasis is placed on the modelling of energies, crude oil, and the factors of production in the economy. To fully outline the model's features, we build simulations that hypothesize removing fuel and crude oil subsidies in an oil exporting economy to assess their effects on the labour market. The model allows for extensive treatment of transition dynamics, featuring gradual as well as immediate removal of the subsidies. We focus on constructing two alternative simulations applied to a purpose built Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) of the Iranian economy, with the revenue from subsidy elimination redistributed to households as extra income or into increased investment. The study pays particular attention to SAM data construction of energy goods and factors of production. In the specific case of Iran, the model shows that rebating the revenue from subsidy removals to households affects the labour market adversely, while channelling revenue into investment improves labour fortunes in the long run. The model is sufficiently detailed and encompassing to allow for further applications to other countries and energy–labour policy issues.     

A two-stage translog marginal cost pricing approach for Floridian hospital outputs

Since the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, issues still remain regarding the mandated purchase of insurance to ensure more universal coverage. One such issue is the pricing of these insurance packages and whether or not the reimbursements will cover necessary services. Therefore, policy concerns exist that increasing the number of insured individuals may not curtail costs. Conversely, providers may not wish to treat patients covered by excessively frugal plans such as Medicaid; hence the trade-offs between access and cost control. In this article, we present findings from a cost function and a productivity approach to determine the marginal cost of providing inpatient hospital care for hospitals operating in Florida during 2005. Using these methodological approaches, we are able to use the marginal rate of transformation to determine the relative marginal costs while controlling for hospital technical and allocative inefficiency. Our work differs from earlier articles as we avoid the Greene problem for cross-sectional models through a two-step approach. By including both reimbursement rates under conditions of hospital efficiency, we can ascertain payment schemes that should, at least in theory, cover necessary costs for patient care without leading to excessive input usage.     

A latent dynamic factor approach to forecasting multivariate stock market volatility

This paper proposes a latent dynamic factor model for high-dimensional realized covariance matrices of stock returns. The approach is based on the matrix logarithm and combines common latent factors driven by HAR processes and idiosyncratic autoregressive dynamics. The model accounts for positive definiteness of covariance matrices without imposing parametric restrictions. Simulated Bayesian parameter estimates are obtained using basic Markov chain Monte Carlo methods. An empirical application to 5-dimensional and 30-dimensional realized covariance matrices shows remarkably good forecasting results, in-sample and out-of-sample.     

A strategic market game with seigniorage costs of Fiat money

Summary. A model that includes the cost of producing money is presented and the nature of the inefficient equilibria in the model are examined. It is suggested that if one acknowledges that transactions are a form of production, which requires the consumption of resources, then the concept of Pareto optimality is inappropriate for assessing efficiency. Instead it becomes necessary to provide an appropriate comparative analysis of alternative transactions mechanisms in the appropriate context. Received: September 5, 2000; revised version: May 3, 2001