Welfare and efficiency in incomplete market economies with a single firm

In the quasilinear case, surplus maximization leads to constrained efficient Drèze equilibria. We investigate the question of whether surplus maximization can be useful beyond the quasilinear case.     

互联网时代的商业价值观与企业平台化建设

互联网背景下的社会价值观对传统组织管理产生了强烈冲击,信息技术革命为管理创新提供了空间与动力.通过梳理归纳互联网时代商业领域的基本价值观,分析用户需求导向、个体价值实现、市场资源配置与利益共享等互联网价值链的基本逻辑,提出企业的持续创新需要用平台化的组织结构去反映市场,而企业平台化建设还应该从激活个体价值出发来设计和推动组织结构变革,以创建高效能的组织与人的共生关系和价值创造生态圈.     

Dynamics and equilibrium in a structural model of wide‐body commercial aircraft markets

This paper develops and estimates a dynamic equilibrium model of the market for new and used commercial aircraft. The model is estimated by maximum simulated likelihood using data on wide‐body aircraft owners and prices for transactions occurring 1978‐1997. The importance of explicitly modeling dynamics and equilibrium in new and used markets for durable goods is illustrated in two counterfactual experiments. Estimates of the structural model are used to show that implementing an investment tax credit not only increases demand for new wide‐body aircraft by the airlines that receive the tax credit, but also increases the number of new wide‐body aircraft owned by airlines not directly affected by the policy. Further, the model indicates that a policy which improves the efficiency of secondary markets for used wide‐body aircraft will also stimulate demand for new wide‐body aircraft. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The location theory of firm revisited impacts of rising energy prices

The impact of rising energy prices on the locational pattern of industries is analyzed by a simple two-firm straight line location model. The concavity of average cost function of final consumer's good with respect to locational variables is proved for the case of linear homogeneous Cobb- Douglas production functions and this leads to the possible three cases of end-point location. The rise in energy prices induces ‘double location at the market’ or ‘double location at the port’ instead of separate location of two industries, i.e., intermediate good industry and consumer's good industry.     

The strategic use of managerial incentives in a non‐profit firm mixed duopoly

A mixed duopoly setting is examined where a private non‐profit firm (NPO) competes with a private profit‐maximizer. The NPO's stakeholders select a contract for their managers. A novel NPO objective function is utilized which takes into account all the likely returns to the NPO's stakeholders (NPO profits and the surplus accruing to the NPO stakeholders) in such a commercial setting. In sub‐game perfect equilibria, it is shown that the NPO's managers generally will not be given the NPO's true objective to optimize. It is also shown that aggregate social welfare may increase or decrease due to this managerial contracting behavior or the use of NPO membership fees. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Institutional barriers in labor markets: Examples, impacts, and policies

This paper examines the institutional biases that impede the competitive functioning of labor markets. Two contexts are considered. The first relates to Moroccan labor migrants in The Netherlands, where institutional bias distorts the competitive functioning of the labor market by downgrading the educational returns to migrant workers and acting as a disincentive for further investment in human capital. The second relates to labor markets in Indonesia and Pakistan. Institutional bias in these two countries leads to an exaggeration of labor returns to certified education, and to over-investment in university education. We argue that such biases are fed by misinformed beliefs and group interests, and stand in the way of achieving higher growth and equity.     

The need for speed: impacts of internet connectivity on firm productivity

Broadband access is widely considered to be a productivity-enhancing factor, but there are few firm-level estimates of its benefits. We use a large micro-survey of firms linked to longitudinal firm financial data to determine the impact that broadband access has on firm productivity. Propensity score matching is used to control for factors, including the firm’s own lagged productivity, that determine a firm’s internet access choice. Instrumental variables estimates are employed as a robustness check. Results indicate that broadband adoption boosts firm productivity by 7–10%; effects are consistent across urban versus rural locations and across high versus low knowledge intensive sectors.     

A simple proof of the equivalence theorem for oligopolistic mixed markets

In a rather long and complicated way Shitovitz proved that in mixed markets with at least two large traders all of the same ‘type’, all core allocations are competitive. We provide a simple and short proof for this important result. Unlike Shitovitz, we do not prove directly this equivalence. Rather, we first show that the core of an oligopolistic market coincides with the core of the atomless market derived by splitting the atoms into a continuum of traders. We then apply Aumann's Equivalence Theorem to this atomless market, whose set of competitive equilibria coincides with that of the original mixed market.     

The impacts of investor sentiment on returns and conditional volatility of international stock markets

One of the main arguments of behavioral finance is that some properties of asset prices are most probably regarded as deviations from fundamental value and they are generated by the participation of traders who are not fully rational, thus called noise traders. Noise trader theory postulates that sentiment traders have greater impact during high-sentiment periods than during low-sentiment periods, and sentiment traders miscalculate the variance of returns undermining the mean-variance relation. The main objective of this research is to construct a model to evaluate the returns and conditional volatility of various stock market indexes considering the changes in the investor sentiment by measuring the effects of noise trader demand shocks on returns and volatility. EGARCH model is used to determine whether earning shocks have more influence on the conditional volatility in high sentiment periods weakening the mean–variance relation. This paper takes an international approach using weekly market index returns of U.S., Japan, Hong Kong, U.K., France, Germany, and Turkey. Weekly trading volumes of these indexes are regressed against a group of macroeconomic variables and the residuals are used as proxies for investor sentiment and significant evidence is found that there is asymmetric volatility in these market indexes and earning shocks have more influence on conditional volatility when the sentiment is high.     

The bargaining set and the core in mixed markets with atoms and an atomless sector

We show that for a large class of both finite and mixed market games, the Bargaining Set coincides with the core, and is strictly larger than the set of all Walrasian allocations. This is to be constrasted with the recently established equivalence between the three sets in atomless markets.     

Managing functional flexibility in a passenger transport firm

In this study we focus on how a Dutch passenger transport firm managed the functional flexibility of employees when it had to become more flexible due to increased competition. Specifically, we examine the relationships between the personal characteristics of employees and their work perceptions on the one hand and their functional flexibility on the other. Our results show that functional flexibility consists of two dimensions, willingness and ability to be flexible, and that work perceptions are more closely related to the willingness, rather than the ability, to be flexible. Willingness to be flexible was positively related to need for growth, tendency for innovation, organisational support and negatively to task formalisation. Ability to be flexible was related to need for growth, tendency for innovation and general self‐efficacy. The implications for management are then discussed.     

Testing a model of intraurban firm relocation

A neoclassical model of firm behavior, analogous to Muth's household analysis, in a monocentric urban environment yields comparative static predictions concerning radial direction of relocation. Knowledge of plant production and demand conditions and economic characteristics of the urban environment is needed to make relocation predictions. Expected and unexpected relations between the technology, economic environment, and comparative static results on input demands and location are derived. A small, detailed data set from Cincinnati is used to test a probit model of the relocation decision. The results are consistent with theoretical expectations. Demand changes, initial plant size, and the relative magnitude of transport costs are the most important determinants of the propensity to decentralize. Traditional measures of agglomeration economies lack explanatory power.     

An econometric model of a retail firm

Existing models of retail resource allocation generally specify response functions in a somewhat ad hoc manner. These are not usually derived from an explicit model of consumer maximization, and they generally do not explicitly consider the supply side of the market. This paper shows how the model of Ehrlich and Fisher (1982) can be used to provide insights into the proper specification of these functions. We illustrate the application of this model on data from a retail chain; our application extends work in Ratchford and Stoops (1988) to the demand side of the market. Potential areas of application of the model are to understanding the demand for labor and advertising services by consumers, and to the measurement of retail productivity.     

Ownership structure and firm performance in emerging markets: A comparative meta-analysis of East European EU member states,Russia and China

Using a total of 4425 estimates collected from 204 previous studies, this paper presents a meta-analysis performed to compare East European EU member states, Russia and China in terms of the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance. The results indicate that, as the standard theory predicts, state ownership negatively influences the performance of firms the state invests in, while the presence of domestic outside investors and foreign investors as company owners positively affects firm performance irrespective of the difference in country/region. Furthermore, we also found that ownership of managers tends to exert a positive impact on the performance of their owned firms. Overall, however, the linkage between corporate ownership and performance is weak. This finding implies that, in comparison with advanced economies, management discipline by investors is less sufficient in emerging markets.     

Innovation efficiency and firm performance in a benchmarking context

This paper examines the effect of innovation efficiency on firm performance using the Greek version of the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2012–2014 and employs a dataset of 1,274 innovative manufacturing firms. Introducing a data envelopment analysis (DEA)-type benchmarking strategy with non-continuous knowledge inputs, the main findings suggest that innovation efficiency, although does not exert a direct impact on firm performance, moderates the relationship between the internally generated knowledge and firm performance. On the other hand, such a moderation relationship is not confirmed for the relationship between external knowledge and innovation spillovers on firm's performance. Although the impact of the embodied to innovation inputs spillovers, on firm performance, is always positive and significant, empirical results indicate that absorptive capacity exhibits diminishing returns with respect to performance.     

Technological capability assessment of a firm in the electricity sector

The importance of technological capability enhancement in today's highly competitive and demanding business environment is well accepted. This paper proposes a methodology to assess the elements of strategic, tactical and supplementary capabilities, all of which together constitute the technological capability of a firm. In addition, the methodology includes the assessment of the steering capability of the firm in its analytical framework. The proposed methodology comprises five steps: identification of value addition stages performed by a firm; determination of technological capabilities needed at these stages; development of indicators for assessing the identified technological capabilities; benchmarking the capabilities assessed with a state-of-the-art firm; and analysis of the reasons for the technological capability gap between the firm being studied and the state-of-the-art firm.The development of the indicators is illustrated using a firm from the electricity sector. Some suggestions are then made as to how the assessment exercise can be used for technological capability enhancement planning. Special attention is paid to specific external and internal factors that can influence technological capability enhancement. Policy makers are often interested in examining the benefits and disbenefits of assessment exercises such as the one proposed in this paper. This aspect is also addressed briefly and some suggestions are made as to how problems, that could arise out of the findings of the assessment exercises, may be managed.     

Behavior of the firm in a market for heterogeneous labor

This paper develops a dynamic model of the firm in a labor market where workers and jobs are heterogeneous with respect to skill. The firm's recruitment policy, in a heterogeneous market, consists of both a wage offer and a skill requirement. The explicit derivation of this policy serves to clarify the difference between the long-run and short-run relationship between wages and skills. The short-run shift in this relationship helps to explain the occupational upgrading that occurs in cyclical upswings. The model also highlights the impact of the skill level distribution on the rate of change of firms' wage offers.