Scale-free distribution as an economic invariant: a theoretical approach

The presence of power laws (scale-free distributions) in widely different economic and social phenomena is well established. Here we focus on three specific cases viz. wealth distribution, firm size distribution and the city size distribution. We present a common framework to explain the origin of this feature in such seemingly unrelated contexts. It is shown that the equilibrium configurations of some general economic mechanisms are consistent with a power law in general and Zipf’s law in particular, in size distribution and it is an attractor under some conditions.     

Spatial Cournot competition and economic welfare: a note

We investigated welfare implications in location-quantity models in a symmetric linear city. We found that when firms are not agglomerated in equilibrium, increasing the distance between firms raises (reduces) producer surplus and social welfare (consumer surplus). Moreover, central agglomeration is always optimal for consumers among symmetric locations, but not necessarily for producers. Central agglomeration can be inefficient even if it is the unique equilibrium outcome. In short, the firms are more likely to agglomerate or locate closer than what welfare maximizers would dictate, whereas they locate farther apart than what consumer surplus maximizers would recommend.     

网络营销活动中的物流配送系统设计

新经济时代的到来，是以电脑、卫星通讯、光缆通讯和数码技术等为标志的现代信息技术和全球信息网络发展的必然结果。同时促使传统营销方式、营销手段、营销技术及营销组织谋求不断的创新。网络营销就是在此背景下的产物，而网络营销活动的关键环节则是实体性产品的物流配送问题，物流配送系统的构建及其服务的高效化、快捷化、规范化将决定着企业网络营销活动最终的绩效。     

The dimension,nature and distribution of economic insecurity in European countries: A multidimensional approach

Economic insecurity is a key well-being outcome because the anticipation of future economic distress reveals itself as a true threat to current well-being. Insecurity has been shown to affect quality of life and to change an individual’s consumption, fertility, labor supply and even political support decisions to mitigate risk. This paper provides evidence on the dimension, nature and distribution of economic insecurity for 27 European countries during a whole decade by using a multidimensional individual approach that considers both objective and subjective indicators. The young, the less educated and the unemployed living in households with dependent children have significantly higher levels of economic insecurity everywhere. However, insecurity affects the population in the middle class only in some countries but not in others, and the level of insecurity in liberal regimes is more linked to large income losses than elsewhere. The role of objective versus subjective dimensions is larger in post-transition Eastern European regimes than in long-standing capitalist countries.     

Physician location and distribution: a social systems approach

A social systems model of the health services system serving the state of Indiana is presented. The model specifies the causal relationships hypothesized as existing among a set of social, demographic and economic variables known to be related to the supply of health manpower and facilities. Inclusion of feedback into the model as well as lagged values of physician supply variables permits the examination of the dynamic behavior of the social system over time. Estimates of the model parameters are based on data obtained from the U.S. census, the American Medical Association's physician distribution series and the annual guide issue of Hospitals, the journal of the American Hospital Association.Methods for deriving the reduced form and the final form of the structural model are presented along with the reduced and final form equations. These equations provide valuable information for policy decisions regarding the likely consequences of changes in the structure of the population and in the supply of health manpower and facilities. The structural and reduced forms of the model have been used to examine the likely consequences of several proposed policies that would affect the delivery of health services in the state of Indiana.     

Wider economic impacts of heavy flooding in Germany: a non-linear programming approach

Wider economic impacts of heavy flooding in Germany: a non-linear programming approach. Spatial Economic Analysis. This paper further develops a new methodology to estimate the wider, indirect impacts of major disasters, and applies it to the 2013 heavy flooding of southern and eastern Germany. We model the attempts of economic actors to continue their usual activities, as closely as possible, by minimizing the information gain between the pre- and post-disaster pattern of economic transactions of the economy at hand. Findings show that government support of local final demand substantially reduces the indirect losses of the floods, while having a disaster at the top of the business cycle increases them. Moreover, we find that assuming fixed trade origin shares and fixed industry market shares, as in all multiregional input–output models, leads to implausibly large estimates of the indirect losses.     

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

The economic performance of cities: A Markov-switching approach

This paper examines the determinants of employment growth in metro areas. To obtain growth rates, we use a Markov-switching model that separates a city's growth path into two distinct phases (high and low), each with its own growth rate. The simple average growth rate over some period is, therefore, the weighted average of the high-phase and low-phase growth rates, with the weight being the frequency of the two phases. We estimate the effects of a variety of factors separately for the high-phase and low-phase growth rates. Growth in the high phase is related to both human capital and industry mix, while growth in the low phase is related to industry mix only, specifically, the relative importance of manufacturing. Overall, our results strongly reject the notion that city-level characteristics influence employment growth equally across the phases of the business cycle.     

Interdependence and the location of economic activities

This paper deals with the ability of a decentralized price system to sustain an optimal assignment of activities assuming complete interdependence among them. There are two goods, each of which is used in its own production and in the production of the other, along with land. An infinitely elastic final demand exists for both goods at given market prices, and either good may be imported. It is demonstrated that a decentralized price system will sustain an optimal allocation of land, and that a nonoptimal allocation of land will not be sustained.     

A network model of economic growth: A regional analysis

In this paper we consider a linear model of economic growth in which production and consumption occur at specific sites represented by nodes, and commodities can be shipped from one node to another along arcs. It is shown that under fairly reasonable conditions a stationary optimal growth plan will exist and that it can be computed by means of Lemke's linear complementary algorithm.     

Composition versus decomposition in two-stage network DEA: a reverse approach

A two-stage production process assumes that the first stage transforms external inputs to a number of intermediate measures, which then are used as inputs to the second stage that produces the final outputs. The fundamental approaches to two-stage network data envelopment analysis are the multiplicative and the additive efficiency-decomposition approaches. Both they assume a series relationship between the two stages but they differ in the definition of the overall system efficiency as well as in the way they conceptualize the decomposition of the overall efficiency to the efficiencies of the individual stages. In this paper, we first show that the efficiency estimates obtained by the additive decomposition method are biased, by unduly favouring one stage against the other, while those obtained by the multiplicative method are not unique. Then, we present a novel approach to estimate unique and unbiased efficiency scores for the individual stages, which are then composed to obtain the efficiency of the overall system, by selecting the aggregation method a posteriori. Within the particularity of two-stage processes emerging from the conflicting role of the intermediate measures, we develop an envelopment model to locate the efficient frontier whose derivation from our primal multiplier efficiency assessment model is effectively justified. The results derived from our approach are compared with those obtained by the aforementioned basic methods on experimental data as well as on test data drawn from the literature. Similarities and dissimilarities in the results are rigorously justified.     

Corporate responsibility activities and economic performance: a theory of why and how they are connected

Whether a firm undertakes corporate responsibility (CR) activities for strategic or altruistic reasons, it is important to understand the relationship between such activities and economic performance. CR activities may be distinguished based on which combination of three possible outputs – learning, reputation and CR outcomes – they produce. This distinction matters not only for the ultimate environmental and social sustainability but also for the relationship between CR activities and economic performance. Taking advantage of this distinction, an integrative synthesis of knowledge of the relationship between CR activities and economic performance can be developed that presents the relationship in terms of a dynamic, case‐specific, inverted U‐shaped efficiency frontier and the vertical distance from this frontier. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Business formation — a network approach

This article suggests that the key to entrepreneurial success is to be found in the ability to develop and maintain a personal network. In elaborating this proposition I regard the environment of the business venture as “enacted”. The inexperienced new entrepreneur needs support to create a personal network and to manage the enacted environment. The concept of the “organizing context”, defined as a clustered sociocentric network, is introduced to provide a tool with which the entrepreneur can deal more efficiently with the different subprocesses that create his or her reality. The approach supplies a framework within which various forms of entrepreneurship — indigenous, corporate, etc. — can be compared and analysed beyond their institutional differences. The interaction between various forms of entrepreneurship and organizing contexts is empirically illustrated from case studies.     

Estimating the economic impacts of public spending in a sub-region: an econometric approach.

Expenditures on a public institution represent not only a cost to the taxpayer but an economic benefit to the region in which it is located. The economic impact on a region's income is here calculated through an econometric model and associated multipliers. The impact on government income tax recepits is similarly calculated. The tax revenues are also used in determining the net cost of operation of the institution. These calculations are performed for the expenditures associated with the new State University Hospital at Stony Brook, N.Y. located in the region formed by Nassau and Suffolk Countries. The regional income multiplier is found to be 1.64.     

Regional environmental and economic impact evaluation: An input-output approach

This article develops a regional input-output model which deals with both the environmental sector and the traditional treatment of the economy. The model differs from previous work in that environmental interactions are treated non-linearly and explicit account is taken of environmental feedback to the economic sector. Estimation of non-linear environmental feedback makes it possible to more accurately assess the sensitivity of the regional economic-environmental structure to shifts in final demand over time.     

An economic analysis of Japanese distribution systems

We investigate Japanese distribution systems by using a successive monopoly model in which the dealer can increase demand for the commodity. We compare the Tatene system (TS) with the open price system (OPS), and show that in cases where the dealer's power of sales promotion is small (large), the total profits obtained through TS become larger (smaller) than those of the OPS. This result justifies the actual change from TS to OPS from an economic point of view. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diffusion of environmental business practices: A network approach

The purpose of this research is to build a conceptual foundation that examines network effects on the diffusion of environmental business practices (EBP) among suppliers. This research extends a network perspective to adoption of an environmental business practice across a large network of suppliers. The context of EBP is used to better understand adoption of a complex business practice, with perceived costs that are often greater than the perceived benefit. Variation in the level of structural and relationship embeddedness affect network diffusion of environmental business practices differently. Increased levels of structural and relational embeddedness are proposed to be positively associated with diffusion of EBP. From a practical standpoint, firms that leverage embeddedness may facilitate higher diffusion and adoption of environmental business practices. This facilitation may lead network actors to engage in EBP, and leverage benefits that may stem from these practices. This research introduces the concept of embeddedness to the environmental supply chain literature. Practicing managers can use the findings in this research to better position themselves within a network to diffuse EBP. This research also helps managers understand how supply chain members that are weakly connected to the primary network are important for introducing new ideas and innovations.     

Modeling regional economic dynamics: Spatial dependence,spatial heterogeneity and nonlinearities

Spatial modeling of economic phenomena requires the adoption of complex econometric tools, which allow us to deal with important methodological issues, such as spatial dependence, spatial unobserved heterogeneity and nonlinearities. In this paper we describe some recently developed econometric approaches (i.e. Spatial Autoregressive Semiparametric Geoadditive Models), which address the three issues simultaneously. We also illustrate the relative performance of these methods with an application to the case of house prices in the Lucas County.     

The heterogeneous impact of taxation on economic development: New insights from a panel cointegration approach

In this paper, we study the role of taxation on long-run income performance. In the theoretical part of the study, we develop a stylized model based on Barro (1990), in which income taxation has two contradictory roles in the standard Solow (1956) setup: on the one hand, taxation appropriates resources that would otherwise be used for physical capital accumulation, and on the other, it is the source of government spending, which is used to support private production. In the empirical part of the study, the impact of consumption tax, personal income tax, corporate profit tax and property tax on income is estimated using the common correlated effects (CCE) panel cointegration approach, which allows for cross-sectional dependencies and provides both panel- and country-specific results. The panel findings for 30 OECD countries for the period of 1995–2016 indicate that only consumption tax has a statistically significant negative effect on long-run income. However, because the type and sign of the tax coefficients are heterogeneous for the country-specific results, we conclude that taxation has heterogeneous effects on income.