NON‐RIGID WAGES AND MERGER PROFITABILITY REVERSAL UNDER CONVEX COSTS AND CENTRALIZED UNIONIZATION

Can a merger from duopoly to monopoly be detrimental for profits? This paper deals with this issue by focusing on the interaction between decreasing returns to labour (which imply firms’ convex costs) and centralized unionization. First, it is highlighted that a wage ‘non‐rigidity’ result applies: the post‐merger wage is higher than in the pre‐merger equilibrium. Second, it is shown that a ‘reversal result’ in relation to merger profitability actually realizes when the union is sufficiently oriented towards wages. Moreover, the higher the reservation wage, the degree of product differentiation, and the union's relative bargaining power, the higher the probability that a merger reduces profits.     

Real-time decentralized information processing and returns to scale

We use a model of real-time decentralized information processing to understand how constraints on human information processing affect the returns to scale of organizations. We identify three informational (dis)economies of scale: diversification of heterogeneous risks (positive), sharing of information and of costs (positive), and crowding out of recent information due to information processing delay (negative). Because decision rules are endogenous, delay does not inexorably lead to decreasing returns to scale. However, returns are more likely to be decreasing when computation constraints, rather than sampling costs, limit the information upon which decisions are conditioned. The results illustrate how information processing constraints together with the requirement of informational integration cause a breakdown of the replication arguments that have been used to establish nondecreasing technological returns to scale. November 24, 1999; revised version: March 14, 2000     

Indeterminacy,capital maintenance expenditures and the business cycle

This paper examines how maintenance expenditures affect the occurrence of indeterminacy in a two-sector model economy, motivated by the empirical fact that equipment and structures are maintained and repaired. McGrattan and Schmitz's (1999) survey on ‘Capital and Repair Expenditures’ in Canada indicates that maintenance expenditures account for a substantial fraction of output and new investment. It is shown that the endogenous maintenance expenditures reduce the requirement of the degree of increasing returns to scale to generate sunspot equilibria. In fact, the minimum level of the returns to scale required could be as low as 1.0179. This aspect is important since empirical works such as Basu and Fernald (1997) suggest that returns to scale is close to constant.     

Economies of scale in the Australian tourism industry

The measurement of economies of scale in the tourism industry has not been done to this point, as tourism is not a specific industry according to international statistical standards. Among many industries related to tourism, four sectors (accommodation, transport, retail trade and recreational services) across six states and two territories from 1997 to 2007 are studied as they contribute nearly 70% of tourism output in Australia. By comparing regression results from the Cobb–Douglas (C–D) production function and the translog production function, we find that there is evidence of increasing returns in transport, retail trade and recreational services at the industry level. However, accommodation is characterized by constant returns to scale at the industry level. As accommodation is responsible for the biggest share of tourism output, this suggests that overall the tourism sector is not characterized by increasing returns. We also find that the degrees of returns to scale from the C–D and translog production functions are different and that the imposition of input share also influences the empirical results. Both of these factors stress the importance of model specification to the measurement of economies of scale.     

收益递增、运输成本与贸易模式

本文建立一个两国模型,研究存在运输成本和收益递增场合贸易的模式与利得分配,探讨成本递减作为贸易保护理由的条件,拓广Ethier(1982a)的分析。模型中制成品的生产可选用现代技术或传统技术,前者带来规模收益递增。基本结论是:模型参数及初始条件决定贸易均衡的类型以及贸易利益的得失。若收益递增越强、运输成本越低、制成品支出份额越高或相对经济规模越大则越容易形成专业化的生产与贸易格局,且专业化的格局类似于李嘉图模式(无运输成本、收益不变)的分析,即各国出口其具有比较优势的产品;出口收益递增产品的一方总是从贸易中获利,另一方可能获利也可能受损。建议政府大力扶持收益递增产业,积极推动工艺创新。     

Explaining peak inflation rates prior to disinflationary policy adjustments or what got us into this mess?

This study investigates, using annual data from 1974–2004, whether unionization rates, trade openness and central bank independence can help explain cross-national and inter-temporal variations in level of peak inflation prior to a disinflationary policy adjustment. I find that unionization is positively associated with both peak inflation rates whereas more independent central banks and trade openness are correlated with lower inflation levels. These results are robust to controlling for the high inflation decade of the 1970s and to using average (rather than peak) inflation as the explanatory variable.     

Export Processing Zones, Backward Linkages, and Variable Returns to Scale

This paper investigates the effects of forming export processing zones on factor rewards, national income, and the intermediate-good-producing sector under variable returns to scale (VRS). It is shown that the results obtained in the model under constant returns to scale are substantially modified if VRS is incorporated into the model.     

The role of diminishing returns in neo-Schumpeterian growth theory

Summary. This paper generalizes Segerstrom [5], a dynamic general equilibrium model of endogenous growth through quality improvements in which innovation and imitation are modeled as the outcomes of research and development (R&D) races. Specific factors introduced into the technologies of both R&D activities achieve diminishing returns to scale in R&D. The comparative-static results of subsidies to R&D activities depend on the degree of diminishing returns to scale in R&D. When there is (is not) a sufficient degree of diminishing returns to R&D, a subsidy to innovative activity increases (decreases) innovative activity. Received: July 8, 1994; revised version: June 9, 1997     

Multiple transitional growth paths in endogenously growing open economies

This paper extends research in indeterminacy literature to a small open economy, two-sector endogenous growth model. It shows that a continuum of equilibria exist in two situations, (i) the production functions exhibit social constant returns to scale with very small or even negligible externalities; and (ii) the production functions are standard constant returns to scale without externalities but the government implements asymmetric tax policies across sectors.     

Economies of scale in the US computer industry: An empirical investigation using data envelopment analysis

Up to recently, economists have had no good tools to measure the returns to scale of individual corporations in an industry. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) is a linear programming technique for determining the efficiency frontier (the envelope) to the inputs and outputs of a collection of individual corporations or other productive units. While DEA offers an avenue for calculating the returns to scale of individual corporations, the approach has been riddled by mathematical complications arising from the possibility of alternate optima. The present paper develops theory for calculating the entire range of these alternate optima. Furthermore, in a quite ambitions empirical application, DEA is employed to determine the time path of returns to scale of all publicly held U.S. computer companies over the time period 1980–1991. For the great majority of companies, a unique time path is obtained; only in less than 4 percent of the linear programming calculations is an entire range of alternate optima obtained. The results indicate that the computer industry was polarized into two camps: large aging corporations with decreasing returns to scale, and swarms of small upstart companies with advanced technology exhibiting increasing returns to scale.     

A cost function approach to the estimation of minimum efficient scale,returns to scale,and suboptimal capacity: With an application to Canadian manufacturing

This paper presents a new method for utilizing the statistical cost technique to measure minimum efficient scale (MES), returns to scale and suboptimal capacity. An application of the duality theory between cost and homothetic production functions leads to justification for ignoring poor quality or unavailable capital data and the pooling of several years observations to improve the efficiency of the estimates. The methodology is applied to 91 four-digit Canadian manufacturing industries to obtain estimates of MES, returns to scale, and suboptimal capacity. For a subsample of industries, we demonstrate that the cost function estimates of MES and returns to scale are more closely related to engineering estimates than are the ad hoc estimates usually found in the industrial organization literature.     

Equilibrium Unemployment Dynamics

The global dynamics of Pissarides' (1990) equilibrium model of aggregate unemployment are studied in the case of increasing returns to scale in production and constant returns to scale in the matching process. An equilibrium is a dynamic path for the aggregate number of matches generated by best-response search and recruiting investment decisions under rational expectations. Necessary and sufficient conditions for multiple equilibria, including limit cycles, are derived, and illustrative examples are computed. The application of saddle-loop bifurcation theory is a novel feature of the analysis. Since one equilibrium Pareto dominates all the others, a macroeconomic coordination problem exists.     

Technical progress,urban unemployment,outputs, and welfare under variable returns to scale

This paper analyzes the implications of technical progress for a small Harris–Todaro (H–T) economy under variable returns to scale (VRS). It is shown that under VRS, technical progress occurring either in the agriculture or the manufacturing may be immiserizing; the effects of technical progress on sectoral outputs, factor prices, urban unemployment, and welfare crucially depend on the signs and the relative magnitudes of sectoral elasticities of returns to scale and the employment effect; the Corden–Findlay type of ultrabiased output effect of technical progress in the constant returns to scale (CRS) H–T model carries over to the case of VRS, but with much more stringent conditions than the CRS case.     

Which drives abnormal returns,over- or under-reaction? Studies applying longitudinal analysis

This article combined both cross-sectional and time-series longitudinal analysis to identify that factor anomalies are driven by either over-reaction or under-reaction. The basic principle is, first, use a factor to form 10 portfolios in the t quarter, then observe the average prices and returns of the 10 portfolios for the previous four quarters and for the following four quarters as well. Samples in this study contain all stocks listed in the US from 1990 to 2010. The empirical evidence shows that the reason for the abnormal returns of value (book-to-price ratios, earnings-to-price ratios, sales-to-price ratios), scale and liquidity factors is over-reaction. Meanwhile, the reason for the abnormal returns of growth factors (return on equity, return on assets and revenue growth rate) is under-reaction. The results provide significant policy implications. The anomaly returns of the value, scale and liquidity factors last longer and are more appropriate to be employed for long-run investment while the growth factors are better suited for short-run investment. Furthermore, a more profitable stock-selection strategy can be formed by simultaneously considering the above two types of factors to capture both of these two sources of anomaly returns.     

On the Limits to the Long-Period Method in Classical Economics: A note

On a first reading of Theory of Production, Kurz & Salvadori (1995) appear to confine the empirical domain of the long-period models of the classical theory of value and distribution to stationary economies with non-constant returns to scale and to growing economies with constant returns to scale. Such a reading is shown to be untenable since it merges the two levels of exploring the extension of a model and of testing a theoretical hypothesis. Conversely, the way Kurz & Salvadori tackle the problems of price dynamics and returns to scale in growing economies is shown to be compatible with what appears to be Sraffa's (implicit) strategy of research.     

Unionization and absenteeism

Until recently any labour economist doing empirical work on unionization was concerned almost exclusively with the effect of unionization on wages. But beginning with Freeman's 1976 analysis of the rich institutional structure of unions, economists have been considering the role of unions in, for example, increasing productivity, lowering quit rates, enhancing fringe benefits, reducing income inequality, improving working conditions, and affecting a variety of other attributes at the workplace. ^{1 1}It is not the purpose of this paper to provide an exhaustive bibliography on the ‘new view’ of unionization. Nevertheless, the interested reader may want to see Freeman (1976, 1978, 1980) and Brown and Medoff (1978). To date, however, no study has directly addressed a question that appears ripe for empirical analysis: Does unionization affect absenteeism?

This paper presents results from a study designed to answer that question. The first section presents a simple model of absenteeism. The second section discusses the five mechanisms through which unionization influences absenteeism. The third section describes the data and variable selection. Results from logit regressions are presented in the fourth section and the paper closes with a summary of the arguments and evidence.     

Malmquist and Törnqvist productivity indexes: returns to scale and technical progress with imperfect competition

Caves, Christensen and Diewert proposed a method for estimating a theoretical productivity index for a firm using Törnqvist input and output indexes, augmented by exogenous estimates of local returns to scale. However, in order to implement their method, they assumed that the firm maximized revenue in each period, conditional on the observed input vector in each period, taking output prices as fixed. This assumption is not warranted when there are increasing returns to scale. Thus in the present paper, it is assumed that the firm solves a monopolistic profit maximization problem when there are increasing returns to scale and the results of Caves, Christensen and Diewert are modified in accordance with this assumption.     

Testing for the presence of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors in energy system dynamics: An analysis via the learning curve approach

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sources of energy system lock-in. It presents a comparative analysis of the respective contributions of some features of increasing returns to adoption factors, i.e. learning-by-doing, learning-by-searching and returns to scale effects in explaining the technological change dynamics in the energy system. The paper is technically based on a critical analysis of the learning curve approach. Econometric estimation of learning and scale effects inherent to seven energy technologies were performed by the use of several learning curve specifications. These specifications permit to deal with some crucial issues related to the learning curve estimation which are associated with the problem of omitted variable bias, the endogeneity effects and the choice of learning indicators. Results show that dynamic economies from learning effects coupled with static economies from scale effects are responsible for the lock-in phenomena of the energy system. They also show that the magnitude of such effects is correlated with the technology life cycle (maturity). In particular, results point out that, 1) the emerging technologies exhibit low learning rates associated with diseconomies of scale which are argued to be symptomatic of the outset of the deployment of new technologies characterized by diffusion barriers and high level of uncertainty, 2) the evolving technologies present rather high learning rates meaning that they respond quickly to capacity expansion and R&D activities development, 3) conventional mature technologies display low learning rates but increasing returns to scale implying that they are characterized by a limited additional diffusion prospects.     

Cooperation in Stochastic OLG games

This paper builds on Cremer's (Quart. J. Econ. 101 (1986) 33) seminal analysis which shows that (almost) complete cooperation can be achieved as an equilibrium in a game played by overlapping generations of players if the institution in which players cooperate is infinitely lived.We analyze a similar model in which the costs of cooperation are subject to random shocks. Even if these random shocks are very small, the range of parameters for which cooperation can be sustained is decreased considerably in comparison to the deterministic case. Furthermore, we show how the efficient outcome can be approximated if the level of cooperation can be varied continuously and the cooperation technology has decreasing or constant returns to scale, while this is not possible in the case of increasing returns to scale.     

Returns to scale in a matching model: evidence from disaggregated panel data

The returns to scale in the matching function play an important role in models with endogenous search effort. Due to positive externalities, increasing returns to scale in matching can support high or low activity equilibrium in the labour market. In this study, we examine this issue using panel data from Finnish employment offices. The study finds that the results from the Cobb–Douglas and translog specification are qualitatively different. The CD specification of the matching function exhibits constant returns to scale. The translog specification, in turn, exhibits increasing returns to scale. The elasticity estimate for returns, using the preferred specification and minimum and maximum sample values for job seekers and vacancies, fall in the range of 1.1 to 1.6.